Afterglow (40 page)

Rand squeezed her fingers. “Trust me. This is nothing compared to the north face of the Eiger,” he teased. “Come on.”

He gave her hand a little tug, and they walked to the base. The cliff wasn’t
exactly
vertical; there was a slight incline, and the face was covered with rocks and small shrubs and grasses. “Plenty of handholds, you’ll do fine.”

“I’m glad you have that much confidence in my ability,” Dakota told him dryly. “You do remember I’ve never climbed anything in my life, right?” She paused as she considered the unpredictable moonlight. “I suppose I could hold the flashlight in my teeth—”

“No. We’re exposed out here. I’ll help you. All you have to do is trust me,” Rand assured her, stuffing the backpack under the front of his T-shirt. She winced. It must be icy cold and wet against his skin, but he didn’t even flinch.

“We’re going up side by side. Grab the back of my jeans with one hand, use the other to grab what you can. Just hold on. I promise I won’t let you fall.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Dakota looked up the face of the cliff. “My extra weight will pull you over.”

“No, you won’t. I’m used to carrying a hundred-pound pack. Hell, one time Gideon Stark and I carried Zak halfway down Mount Reiner when he broke his leg.”

Dubiously, Dakota curled her fingers into the waistband of his jeans. The wet, cold fabric of his shirt fell over her forearm, but his skin was warm against her cold hand.

He glanced over at her. “Ready?”

“You bet. This was on my bucket list.”

His teeth flashed white. “That’s my girl. Hang on tight. Here we go.”

He was an experienced climber, with absolutely no fear. This must be very tame for him, she thought, as he talked her through every step and every handhold, waiting to make sure she was okay before going on. It was painstaking going. “If I weren’t here, you’d be leaping from rock to branch, stone to twig, right?”

“If you weren’t here, this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.”

Dakota smiled as she wedged her sneakered toe into the hard dirt and shifted her free hand a little higher. “Liar.” She knew he and the Starks had been climbing buddies for years. Zak had told her about some of the wild adventures they’d gone on. Including Rand’s heroism when he’d carried him down that mountain. This wasn’t even in the same league.

Holding tightly to his jeans, she placed her feet where he indicated and trusted him to get her to the top safely. He reminded her to pause every time she grabbed a branch for leverage and, when she dug a toe in for purchase, to make sure it would hold her weight. She appreciated his caution. Six stories wasn’t high for him, but it might as well have been Mount Everest for her, and she was grateful for all the help he could give her. And for the darkness that prevented her from looking down.

Suddenly there was a
thump-thump-thump.
For a moment, Dakota thought it was her own heartbeat. As she strained to listen, she realized it was the repetitive beat of wood striking wood. Over and over and over again, echoing out of the darkness across the water. It did sound like a rapid heartbeat, and seemingly from all directions. Feeling like Spiderman clinging to the cliff-face she cocked her head. “What
is
that?”

SEVENTEEN

I
t’s eleven.”

The sound seemed to be resonating inside her head. Disconcerting. “That’s a
clock
?” Dakota whispered, clinging to a prickly shrub. The gong was as good an excuse as any to pause to catch her breath.

“A
semantron
, a long wooden cymbal. One of the monks hits it with a mallet every night at eleven o’clock. Used to call an hour of private prayer. Keep moving.”

She pulled herself up, using her legs and Rand’s momentum. “How do you know that?”

“Read it back at the hotel. How’re you doing?”

“Much easier than I thought.” It was only half a fib. When she got home, she’d have to use that gym membership she’d had for a year and used only three times.

Since Rand was doing most of the heavy lifting, they made it to the top of the bluff without incident. As she climbed the last few feet, Dakota wasn’t surprised to find herself sweating despite the cold, her arms and legs shaking with muscle strain. She was the least athletic person she knew, and she was proud of herself for not shrieking like a girl and begging to be left behind with the boat.

Rand clambered over the edge, then hoisted her beside him. She took a hasty step away from the drop-off before glancing around to get her bearings. Brushing the dirt off her hands onto the seat of her uncomfortable wet pants, she caught glimpses of the telltale glint of the ocean far below, hearing the soft susurrus of the waves spilling over the rocks.

It was a very, very long way down.

They were in a copse of trees, hard to identify, as they were just denser black against the darkness. Whatever the species, the thick foliage sheltered them from the wind, but the damp fabric of her clothes felt clammy and cold. “We should change.”

“Our helpful fisherman escort said there’s a ruin just through the trees north of here. Let’s go where we’ll be more protected.” He took her hand, opening her fingers. “Your gun, ma’am.” He placed the small .38 in her palm.

Five bullets were all it held, but it made her feel marginally better. “I hope I don’t have to shoot more than five people,” she whispered, only half-joking as she adjusted her fingers on the grip. When he’d taken it from her in Albania, she’d hoped that was the last time she’d ever have to see it.

“Or attempt to shoot one person more than five times.”

“Or shoot anyone at all,” she murmured fervently. She could barely see him in the dark, but heard him shifting around, presumably arming himself as well.

“Want this now?” He nudged her arm with her tote, which he’d stuffed into the backpack for the boat trip. She took it, slinging the strap over her shoulder. When this was all over, she was going to find the smallest purse possible, and carry nothing but a key and a lipstick in it.

Taking her free hand, Rand said, “This way,” very softly, leading her across the ankle-high grasses into the trees.

“We have a flashlight,” she reminded him as she walked into a low shrub and had to do a little dance to get around it.

“Tree cover.”

It was a nifty trick that he could speak so softly and yet she could hear him perfectly well. Walking with him on a windswept bluff in the pitch dark, knowing what they were up against, made her shiver with trepidation. She tightened her fingers in his, and he used his arm to draw her hard against his side.

Their hips brushed, their thighs moved as one. Dakota could smell the heat of his body and the tangy scent of the soap he’d used in the shower earlier. She wanted to stop. To hit pause, and just stand there with him to enjoy this moment of peace and quiet. Unfortunately, she knew they were in the eye of the storm.

Zak had promised backup. Where and how, she had no idea. Either way, she was damn glad she and Rand didn’t have to do this—whatever this was—alone.

The air was warmer as they moved between the trees and smelled strongly of pine, underscored by the smoky, resiny, aromatic scent of the evergreen shrub that produced the mastic for Rapture.

She touched the side of her purse with her gun hand—wasn’t
that
a weird observation?—and felt the familiar, smooth oblong of the vial case through the fine-grained leather, saw the numbers gliding through her mind. Moving the heel of her hand, she picked up the second GPS string of numbers from Rand’s sock. Without a map, she didn’t have much information, but knowing Rand was beside her gave her a starting point. The other set of numbers was fairly close as the crow flew. Except she knew that on the peninsula, cut off from the mainland by Mount Athos, hills, rivers, and deep valleys, nothing was as straightforward.

Geographically, they were closing the gap.

She hoped Paul’s unintentional clue would be the key to finding the lab. Her shoulder hit a tree trunk with a dull
thud,
but she didn’t cry out in surprise. A city girl, Dakota found the night silence spooky, and she was glad to hear her heartbeat and the soft crunch of their feet on the dirt and scrub grass.

“Okay?” Rand asked quietly, his fingers tightening around hers.

She nodded, realized he couldn’t see her, and whispered, “Peachy.” She had no idea how he knew where they were going, since it was completely dark. He must have eyes like a bat. Or was that ears? Radar? Instinct? Or all of the above. Maybe he was just damn good at this undercover security stuff. For a second, she allowed herself to wonder what their lives might’ve been like if he’d remained a stunt coordinator, and if he’d trusted her. What kind of life would they have had?

She’d never know.

After about ten minutes he let go of her hand and turned on the powerful flashlight, keeping the beam low and partially covered by his palm. She tucked her fingers under his arm and closed the small gap between them.

The narrow beam, filled with small flying insects, led the way through the rocky ground scattered with clumps of grass, a large tree trunk, and the occasional looming shrub. “How are our numbers?”

“Holding steady.”

“The ruins,” he announced, letting the narrow beam illuminate the walls.

Ruins
was right. The structure had four broken-down stone walls and no roof. Rand led her “inside” and scanned the walls with the light. No bigger than ten by twelve, it had once been an outbuilding of some kind for a long-vanished monastery. Now it was nothing more than a pile of rocks.

He set the light on a protruding rock, pointing it at the ground, and dropped the backpack beside it. “Strip.”

She plopped her tote down at her feet. “You say that to a woman holding a gun?”

He slid his hand under her hair and pulled her forward. “I can because I have a bigger gun.”

She tilted her face, and her lips were right there as he closed the gap and kissed her.

Too short, but definitely sweet. He looked into her eyes as he lifted his head. “Change quickly. Let’s get this over with.”

Dakota pulled dry jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts out of the backpack, held one of each closer to the meager light to check the size, and handed him his clothes. She tossed hers over a nearby rock and quickly stripped to bare, goose-bumpy skin. It felt liberating being outside on a black night, completely naked. Too bad they couldn’t linger. She toed off her shoes instead of reaching for Rand.

Rand leaned over and rubbed down her chilled skin with something dry, running the soft fabric all the way from her shoulders over her breasts and down her belly. “I hope that isn’t your nice, dry shirt,” she scolded, leaning into him, then backing up because he still wore his cold, wet clothes.

“You have goose bumps.”

She smiled. “You can’t
see
my goose bum—”

“About time you got here,” a man said without inflection. “While this is touching, we expected you two hours ago.” He stepped into the small stone ruin to join them.

CONFUSION STAYED RAND’S GUN
hand, but he guided Dakota behind him as he stared toward the voice of the man who shouldn’t be anywhere near this place.

The faint beam of the down-turned flashlight glinted momentarily on Creed’s gun. “Seth? What the hell are
you
doing here?” The director was so out of context that Rand wasn’t sure whether the man was his old friend Seth Creed or his doppelgänger. It would’ve been helpful if the damned moon would make an appearance. All that was visible were several black shapes beyond the broken wall behind Creed. The narrow beam of the flashlight did little more than make the director’s features marginally easier to identify.

Dakota crowded against his back, her cold fingers brushing the small of his back.

“Let Dr. North dress, fellas,” Creed said helpfully. He stepped aside so that several men could come up alongside Rand. “A little crowded, but we’re all friends here.”