“What?”
“My gear.” He released her hands and twisted to reach for something in the shadows at the base of the wall. When he straightened to face her once more, he was holding a guitar.
She started. “Where did that come from?”
“It was here when I woke up.” He shifted to sit cross-legged and laid the instrument flat across his lap. He ran his thumb lightly over the strings.
“Is it yours?”
He tapped the body. “Absolutely. See those scratches?”
Four short parallel lines dulled the gleam of the varnish. “Vaguely.”
“That’s where Daisy landed on it back when she was a puppy. She was chasing a cricket.”
“You have a dog as well as a horse?”
“Yep. A dog, a horse, and a truck. I’m livin’ every American boy’s dream.”
“Is she with your parents, too?”
“No, I don’t take her out there much. She’s scared of the barn cats.” He turned one of the tuning pegs. “Most days she hangs out with my landlady almost as much as she hangs with me. Probably lying on the couch eating bonbons by now. You like dogs?”
“As I’ve had no experience with them, I neither like nor dislike them.”
“You never wanted one? Not even when you were a kid?”
“There were many things I wanted as a child, but I grew out of them,” she said. Or, to be more accurate, she grew out of the desire to ask for them. She frowned as he continued to fiddle with his guitar. “Since they brought your instrument with you, then they really did plan for you to play the part of a minstrel. Or, in our current circumstances, a musician.”
“I suppose so.”
“You had a different instrument in the castle. Wasn’t that one a lute?”
“That wasn’t a lute; it was a balalaika.”
“Was that yours as well?”
“Uh-huh. It belonged to a friend of mine I used to jam with. He was Russian, but he was into country. It’s got an interesting sound, like a mandolin, only richer. I don’t use it as often as the guitar.”
“As much as I enjoyed your music, we should be concentrating on planning our escape. We don’t know how long we’ll have before dawn—” She stopped when he chuckled. “This isn’t funny, Rick.”
“Sure, it is. You assumed I was fixed on serenading you instead of helping you.”
“I wouldn’t have put it like that.”
“And you’re figuring a guitar won’t do us much good.” He gave the tuning peg another twist. “Whoever left it here must have figured the same thing.”
She realized he wasn’t tightening the string; he was loosening it. As soon there was enough slack to unhook it, he pulled it free, set the guitar aside, and yanked off his boots. When he pulled off his socks, her curiosity peaked. “What on earth are you doing?”
“The socks are for padding.” He wrapped one sock over his knuckles and coiled one end of the guitar string around it. He repeated the procedure with his other hand, then shifted closer. “Hold out your arms.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m going to saw off that plastic tie.”
Realization dawned. The guitar string he had removed was one of the lower ones and was, in fact, a metal wire that had been wound with more metal. The tight ridges from the winding weren’t sharp, but they would be much harder than plastic. She extended her arms immediately. “I’m sorry, Rick. I, uh, didn’t know what to think.”
“Uh-huh, you thought I was an idiot.”
“Of course not. Quite the opposite. This is brilliant.”
“Let’s see if it works first. It may take a while.” He angled one elbow between her arms, fitted the wire against the plastic, and drew it across. His arm bumped into her shoulder. “Could you turn sideways? I’ll get better leverage.”
She rotated so that her legs were perpendicular to his. After a few more bumps, she swung her legs across his thighs so that she could hold her wrists directly over his lap. “How’s that?”
He uncoiled the wire from his right hand temporarily so that he could slip his arm beneath hers and bring it up between them. He did a few experimental strokes across the plastic, then settled into a firm, back-and-forth rhythm. As he’d warned, it did take a while—the ridged wire wore the plastic away rather than cut it—but eventually a groove did begin to form. “Okay,” he said. “Looks like we’re in business.”
The progress was slow but steady. Elizabeth told herself to ignore the proximity of their bodies. It wasn’t easy because he was a large man. He smelled surprisingly good for someone who had been around a horse and had been tossed in a dungeon and a dirt-floored hut. As a matter of fact, he smelled as if they were in bed. She caught a whiff of cotton that reminded her of crisp, freshly laundered sheets. And his skin exuded a mellow, early-morning scent, reminiscent of a man still warm and relaxed from a night’s sleep.
But the way he smelled was no more relevant than the way the muscles in his thighs flexed beneath hers, or the way his forearm came so close to her breasts on each down stroke that she could feel his body heat. Breasts that he’d seen naked. She glanced at his bent head. The hair at his nape had a slight curl to it and was long enough to fall partly over his collar. She didn’t normally care for the look of long hair on a man, yet on Rick it seemed perfect. She could all too easily imagine how the curls would wrap around her fingertips . . .
“Does that hurt?”
“No. Why?”
“You moaned.”
“Headache.” She focused on the wire. It had begun to squeak as it moved across the plastic. The groove was deepening more quickly as it heated from the friction. The undersides of her thighs were heating, too, from the contact with his legs. “This was creative thinking. I’m glad now that you’re a Luddite.”
“To be honest, I don’t think all technology is evil. I’ve got nothing against power tools, only cell phones.”
“And computers.”
“Yeah, but I do love my TV remote.”
“Apart from news broadcasts, I don’t watch television.”
“Say it ain’t so. You don’t watch TV? No Jerry Springer? No Monday Night Football?”
“I don’t have time.”
“Too busy talking on your BlackBerry with the rest of the Borg Collective?” His elbow rubbed along the upper crease of her thigh. “Oops. Sorry.”
“I usually don’t leave the office until after ten.”
“Huh. Lots of nights that’s when I start working.”
“With your songwriting talent, I’m surprised you have to play in bars to make a living.”
“Thanks, but my songs aren’t exactly popular. Seems audiences like them better the drunker they get. A lot of the time I do covers of old standards so I don’t get pelted with peanuts.”
“Nonsense. Your songs are powerfully moving. Your melodies are haunting. You’re also a very skillful musician. You should have an exceptional career.”
He paused. “You know about music?”
“I studied piano in my youth.” How simple a statement that was. It didn’t begin to describe the long hours of daily practice or the years of devotion. Or how precious that dream had once been. Another example of a desire she grew out of.
“I always wished I could play the piano when I was a kid, but this old guitar was all my folks could afford.” He resumed sawing. “Just as well, because I wouldn’t be able to take a piano with me when I went to gigs, ’specially if I start going green and use Chester instead of the truck. What kind of music did you play? Ten to one it was the stuffy stuff.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that. Many of the men we consider classic composers were the rock stars of their day, quite scandalous and cutting-edge. Don’t you like classical music?”
“Can’t say as I never listened to it much.”
“Don’t let the packaging drive you off. The passion comes through, whatever format is being used. Good music is universal. It has the ability to take you out of yourself.”
“Take you out of yourself,” he repeated. “That’s a good way to put it. That’s pretty well what mine does for me.”
“I believe music does even more than that. It’s a kind of sharing that crosses all boundaries, whether they’re time or place or genre. I learned to play the classics, so that’s what moves me the most easily. Any emotion you can name has been expressed by the masters, and they do it on a level beyond words. When it’s right, it can slip straight past your conscious thoughts and . . .” She trailed off when she realized he had stopped sawing again. “What?”
“It’s good to hear you talk about emotions. Most of the time you seem to avoid them.”
“They have their place.”
“Uh-huh?”
“They’re an integral part of the best music. However, they’re counterproductive in crisis situations.”
“You ever get a melody in your head that you can’t get out? Like, if you hear a song first thing in the morning, you’re stuck with it for the rest of the day?”
“From time to time. Why?”
“It’s as useless to ignore what you’re feeling. Seems to me you might as well give in and hum along.” He dropped the guitar string, fitted a hand around each of her wrists, and gave them a sharp tug.
The plastic bundling tie snapped and fell off.
Her hands were free.
Finally. Yes. Yes.
Yes!
The relief that crashed through her was out of all proportion to the situation. Regaining the use of her hands wouldn’t matter if she and Rick couldn’t find a way out of their prison. They weren’t yet out of danger. This wasn’t over.
But he’d given her hope. That was more than she’d had an hour ago. From what she understood, it was more than she’d had in five months. She wiggled her fingers, delighting in the simple ability to move as she wanted. She was no longer completely helpless. “Thank you, Rick.”
He smiled. It was a full-face smile, not a one-sided quirk of his lips. The corners of his eyes crinkled. His cheeks lifted. And to the left of his mouth, a dimple appeared. “You’re welcome, Lady Elspeth Isabella Elizabeth.”
She flexed her fingers again, then touched his dimple. His beard stubble was softer than she would have expected. It rasped gently against her skin. She wondered what it would feel like against her lips.
Which was an incredibly inappropriate thought. As she’d told him, she shouldn’t allow herself to get emotional. They were in a life-and-death situation, and even if they weren’t, she certainly shouldn’t consider kissing him, no matter how enjoyable it would be to, well, hum along, as he put it. The more time they spent together, the more obvious it was that they had nothing whatsoever in common. In the real world, they probably would have never met.
His smile faded. “Do you hear that?”
All she could hear was her heartbeat. She dropped her hand. He couldn’t have heard her thoughts, could he? “What?”
He tilted his head. “It sounds like a helicopter.”
She held her breath so that she could listen. There was a distant throb. It was unmistakably mechanical, and it was growing louder fast. It wasn’t long before the ground beneath her vibrated in time with the engine.
They weren’t the only ones who had noticed the noise. Men’s voices came from outside. Footsteps pounded past the hut. Someone shouted orders in Spanish. Within seconds, the entire camp was abuzz with activity.
Rick yanked on his socks and boots.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“From what I can make out of what they’re saying, they think it’s a raid.”
“A raid? As in police?”
“Or the army.” The noise of the helicopter increased rapidly. It seemed to be coming from directly above the camp. Rick raised his voice. “Either one’s good news for us as long as we don’t get caught in a—”
His words were drowned out by a rapid burst of gunfire from overhead.
“Cross fire!” he yelled. “Get down!”
Elizabeth didn’t have the chance to absorb what he said before his body slammed into hers, knocking her on her back.
Bullets tore through the roof. Splinters flew from the walls. Rick dragged himself on top of her as dust and wood chips rained down on them.
Answering gunfire erupted from everywhere as the guerrillas or drug smugglers or whatever they were fought back. There was a high-pitched whistle that ended in an explosion. The ground shook. Men screamed. More explosions followed as rapidly as the gunfire. Soon a new noise joined the din: the whooshing crackle of flames. Black smoke wafted into the hut through the bullet holes.
Elizabeth struggled for air. Her vision dimmed. Frantic to stay conscious, she pushed at Rick’s shoulders. “Let me up!”
“It’s not safe.” He cupped his hand protectively over the top of her head. “We need to stay put until the firing stops.”
“No! The smoke! I can’t breathe!”
He couldn’t have heard her. The battle that raged around them was too loud.
She fisted her hand to pound his back, but didn’t have the strength to lift her arm. The energy she’d awakened with had dwindled. It wasn’t the smoke that was sapping her strength. The darkness that spread over her was coming from within.