Take No Prisoners. Gayle Wilson
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it if you’d get the hell off me.” She punctuated the final sentence with another shove against his chest.
“You’re wearing white.”
The words were so low that for a moment she wondered if she had misheard them. And then, in a rush of understanding, she knew what he feared.
The sleeveless vest Landon wore over his tunic was black. With his body over hers and his back toward the entrance of the cave, he was effectively hiding the pale silk blouse and linen slacks she wore, as well as his own lighter-colored tunic.
Now that she’d made a fool of herself again, she thought with a trace of bitterness, she should shut up and wait for him to tell her their next move. That would be the smart thing to do, but then she’d never done the smart thing where Landon James was concerned.
“Since they’re gone…” she began, only to be interrupted by a noise on the trail outside.
Landon again leaned forward, putting his forehead against hers. She didn’t dare protest, not with whoever was outside so close.
Suddenly she was aware of the breathtakingly familiar scent of Landon’s body. Not the dusty miasma of his clothing, but the fragrance of his skin. Something she had once known as well as her own face in the mirror.
She closed her eyes as memories washed over her in a wave of hunger so strong nothing else seemed to matter. Not the threat of the tribesmen outside. Not Stern. Not even the very good reasons for which she had destroyed what had been between them all those years ago.
“Let’s go,” he whispered, again increasing the space between their bodies.
She opened her eyes, surprised to find they had now adjusted to the darkness enough that she could see his face. The dark patch and the mustache distorted his features, making them alien. And exactly what she’d thought before, sinister.
“What about them?”
“I think that was the last.”
“But… When they don’t find us down below, they’ll come back.”
He didn’t bother to respond, taking her hand instead to lead her toward the lesser blackness that represented the cave’s narrow entrance. He stooped beside it for a moment, checking the trail outside. Then he slipped through, obviously expecting her to follow.
Once outside, she took a deep breath of the cool night air, letting it clear her head as her eyes examined the trail below. Landon had apparently been right. In the distance she could hear the occasional shout and the sound of horses clattering over the rocks as her captors searched for them. They had been fooled by his trick, just as he’d anticipated.
“Now what?”
He turned at her question. “We go up.”
“Up?”
“Back toward the plateau.”
“But…”
“Don’t worry. We’ll skirt the encampment. By the time they figure out that we aren’t down there—” he tilted his head in the direction of the valley below “—we’ll be on the other side of the mountain.”
The other side of the mountain…
She looked up, her gaze tracing the peak that seemed to reach to the sky. The tribe’s horses had struggled up the trail to where they’d set up camp, and that was less than a third of the way up the mountain.
Surely Landon didn’t intend for them to cross it on foot and without supplies. Not even water, she realized, her heart sinking.
“Let’s go,” he said once more, putting his hand under her elbow to urge her up the trail.
“You’re seriously proposing that we go over the mountain?” she asked as she automatically began to follow him.
“Not over the top. There’s a footpath that skirts around it. It won’t be easy, but…we don’t have a lot of other choices.”
As if to punctuate his words, from below came the sound of an explosion. It was clearly not the small-arms fire she’d heard the day the chopper had been brought down. This was ordinance, only she had no idea who could be firing it.
“What was that?”
“It sounds like an unexpected reception for our friends.”
Unexpected to him? Or only to the tribesmen he’d sent down the trail? Had they encountered the Special Forces operatives Landon had told her were in the area? The ones who had necessitated the expected change in location of the camp.
If so, then why were the two of them headed in the opposite direction? Why weren’t they attempting to make contact with the good guys?
“Is that—whatever’s happening down there—something you arranged?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I wish I had that much influence.”
“You said people were looking for us.”
“They are. Somewhere. Maybe even down there. The problem is I don’t have way of knowing who that is. And until I do, I don’t intend to initiate contact. Sorry to disappoint you, Gracie, but for the time being we’re on our own.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She was already beginning to breathe more rapidly with the pace he’d set, but she thought she heard him laugh. That had always been Landon’s reaction to anything that even remotely smacked of her trying to tell him what to do. He wasn’t a man who took direction. Not about anything.
“Anna Grace Chancellor,” he said, mocking her anger over the nickname only he had ever used for her. “So who the hell did you piss off enough to end up in Afghanistan?”
“The same people you did, I imagine.”
The words were a little breathless, her voice lacking force as she struggled to keep up. It didn’t matter how loud those words had been, of course. Even if they’d been whispered, they were cruel enough to carry their own impact.
Whatever had driven Landon James from the Agency had happened here in Afghanistan. That much she knew. But there had been a conspiracy of silence—at least as far as she was concerned—about the details.
He turned, looking at her over his shoulder. “You have changed.”
“Everybody changes. It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough, it seems, that you’ve forgotten.”
Or forgiven, she thought. “Have you?”
“Only the unimportant things. This is where we go across.”
He stopped, allowing her to catch up. Despite the gunfire from the valley below, in the nighttime stillness she could hear the labored sound of her own breathing.
The moonlight illuminated the path he was indicating they should take. Even in comparison to the steepness of the trail that led up to the plateau, the ascent looked impossible. It ran straight up the rock face, hand and toe holds invisible in the darkness.
“I hope all those years of sitting behind a desk haven’t taken too great a toll.”
Without waiting for a response to his gibe, Landon began to clamber over the rocks, seeming to locate the next hold intuitively. Grace watched him for maybe ten seconds before she admitted that, no matter how she might feel about him, she had no choice about this.
She could follow Landon, or she could wait here for her captors to find her. Mike Mitchell was dead, and Stern might be, as well. Although she had not felt the affinity for the colonel that she and the pilot had quickly found, he had been another American. Someone to talk to. Someone with whom to share her concerns about whatever was going to happen next.
If she broke with Landon, then she would be on her own. And very much alone.
It