Blue Knight (19 page)

The service corridor was familiar to her and it took only a second for her to identify it. She had wandered this area a day ago, when Daniel had found her. With almost a sob of relief, she oriented herself and really began to sprint as she realized she was actually heading in the right direction to reach the public areas. The two behind her were giving chase, but she had fear and adrenaline on her side and she wasn’t carrying thirty pounds of submachine gun and military issue army boots.

Inside a minute she was in the public corridors and the guards were falling behind. Still clutching her sagging trousers, Olivia slowed to a jog. She didn’t want one of the unbriefed on-duty sentries to fire at her because she was running and he got spooked.

But she had to reach the foyer and the hostages being held there, if there was anyone still there at this hour. She had no idea what time it was. If it was past curfew and everyone was locked up in their rooms, then she had to find hotel staff and get another key for her room. Above all, she had to find someone else—someone civilized.

She stood the best chance of finding them in the foyer.

She made it into the dining room, ghostly empty and forlorn with its tables bare of cloths. She ran through, her lungs burning, and burst into the foyer, still sprinting. She came to a halt, almost overbalancing, her arms pin wheeling, as her feet skidded across wet, cold tiles.

The cleaner looked up, alarmed. He dropped his mop and hurried forward to try to catch her as she slipped. Olivia managed to stay on her feet, but it was a near thing.

The cleaner grabbed her elbow to steady her.

“Mizzy, mizzy. You must, you must not….” It was there his English ran out on him. He switched to Spanish. “You must not be here at all,” he said very softly. “It’s after curfew and they’ve already taken a woman away for interrogation and it’s Serrano who is questioning her.” He stopped abruptly, this time actually looking at her. He swallowed, as his gaze took in her condition from feet to head.

Olivia wavered between pretending she did not know Spanish and wanting to reassure him. His genuine fear decided her. She squeezed his arm. “They did not hurt me so very much,” she said very softly in Spanish. She glanced over her shoulder. The guards had not bothered to follow her. Their quarry had been lost and they had given up, defeated. She could find her own way back to her room.

She sighed her relief. “Is there a night clerk on the desk?” she asked the cleaner. “I need a new key to my room. My old one was taken from me.”

The cleaner nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. We can fix that,” he said firmly. “Come along.” He picked up his mop and put it into the squeeze bucket by the public elevators and beckoned her over to the long desk. “Come, come.”

Once she had a new digital key, Olivia asked the night clerk, a tall, thin man in his late forties, with hollow cheeks and sagging jowls, to escort her to her room. She halted in front of the first sentry they came across and asked the clerk to translate for her.

Via the night clerk she explained to the guard her predicament—that she had just been questioned by Serrano and Ibarra and that the two sergeants who were to escort her to her room had abandoned her at the foyer. She needed safe conduct to her room, as the curfew was still in effect.

Her appearance must have sold her story for her more than her words, along with the rumors that must by now have thoroughly circulated the hotel. The sentry looked her up and down and glanced at the night clerk. “She is the one they took?” he asked the clerk. He thought he was safe speaking Spanish and Olivia schooled her face, keeping it expressionless.

The night clerk nodded. “Look what they did to her. You have doubts?”

“Why did the guards dump her with you?”

“They didn’t. They wanted to fuck her. She ran away from them. She’s too embarrassed to tell you that.”

Olivia battled hard not to react to the night clerk’s insightful observation.

The guard grinned. “Who can blame them?” He hefted his rifled over his shoulder and looked at her. “Come,” he said in accented English. “Where is your room?”

She told him. She and the night clerk fell behind as the guard strode along the corridor. Olivia glanced at the night clerk. “What did you tell him to make him agree?”

“I put him in a good humor,” the night clerk told her in an undertone. “I had to be crude, but it worked.”

“Thank you,” Olivia said with deep gratitude.

The guard made getting to her room uneventful, even though they passed a dozen more sentries and check points. With the night clerk there, even the guard could not misbehave.

By the time she slid the keycard into the lock on her door, Olivia felt the stresses of reaching her room had been more grueling than the questioning that Serrano had put her through.

She shouldered the door open and nodded at the night clerk and the guard. “My thanks,” she said simply.

The guard simply turned and walked away. The night clerk glanced over his shoulder at the guard as he strode back down the corridor. Then he gave her a small smile and pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to her.

She looked down at the small elongated triangular piece of wood. Its purpose was incomprehensible to her.

“For under your door,” the night clerk explained. “The chains, the locks, they are no good now, you understand? Too many people, they have keys, have too much strength. This little thing, it is much much stronger than they are. Will hold against many.”

Understanding flooded her. He was giving her another sort of protection. A very basic, old-fashioned kind. Another sort of lock.

Tears stung in her eyes.

The night clerk lifted her hand and curled her fingers around the wedge. “You must go on being strong, no? This will protect you at night when you can’t be.”

She nodded mutely.

“Go. Sleep,” he told her and patted her shoulder. He turned around and walked away.

She shut the door, but didn’t put the wedge in place, or the chain. Not yet.

Then she stripped the remnants of her clothes from her. By the time she was done, her whole body had begun to tremble.

It took her twice as long as normal to disable the microphone under her bed, but until it was done, she wouldn’t allow herself to cry. She held the sobs in, even though they were threatening to shake her apart.

As she was finishing, one of the ceiling tiles above the bed shifted and lifted up, making Olivia stagger away, holding her hand over her mouth. It was just one shock too many. She crumpled slowly down to her knees on the carpet by the end of the bed, as Daniel dropped down from the space above the ceiling. Her vision swam, as gray sickness washed over her.

His hands were on her arms, lifting her.

“No,” she tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come. She couldn’t speak. Something was blocking her words. The world was starting to spin.

“You’re hyperventilating, sweet one,” he said softly. “You must breathe. It takes an act of will to override the gasping, but you must. Slow and steady, Olivia. Take it slow and all will be right. Trust me. Take a deep breath. You’re safe now. You’re safe. I have you.”

His arms were around her. His chest against her back. Heat and the solid softness of his chest settled against her back. Daniel’s unique scent stole over her.

Suddenly, she knew she could take that first deep breath.

She breathed.

Oxygen rushed in. She could feel it flow through her, cool and fresh.

She took another. Now she became aware of details. Daniel had her on his lap and was rocking her gently backward and forward, like a child. She wanted to protest. She was naked and so filthy dirty, she could pass as a homeless person, or worse.

She kept breathing, letting the oxygen do its work.

Daniel was whispering to her, just as one would a scared child or animal. Had he been doing that all along and she just hadn’t been able to hear? It was a mishmash of Spanish and English. Reassurances that she was safe, that everything was all right. Over and over.

She took another breath. The sobs that had been tearing at her chest had gone. There were tears drying on her cheek, but the adrenaline and hyperventilating had taken care of any crying she had been about to do.

It was clear that Daniel didn’t mind the filth. So Olivia turned on his lap, wrapped her arms around Daniel’s neck and held on.

His arms tightened convulsively around her.

For long minutes he just held her. His body heat let her relax by slow degrees, each muscle in her body loosening.

Contrariwise, as she unwound, she grew aware of a building tension in Daniel. It was beneath the surface. He was trying to hide it from her but she could feel it anyway. His muscles were tightening, his breath just slightly quickening. He was trembling. It was so subtle she might have missed it, except that she was so extraordinarily calm herself.

“What is it, Daniel?” she whispered.

His hand tightened in her matted hair. “
Dios
, what were you thinking, Olivia?” he said, his lips against her neck.

“I did what I had to do,” she said.

“No one sane does something like that.”

She pulled away from him enough so that she could look him in the eye. “Yes, they do, Daniel. They do it all the time. Where have you been living all your life? On Mars?”

An emotion chased across his eyes. Fear.

Olivia found she was on her feet and didn’t remember getting to them. She could feel the urge to start hyperventilating pushing at her. “I’m taking a shower before I puke again.” She hurried away before she said more. Before she said something that she would regret later.

* * * * *

Daniel made himself get up off the floor and follow her into the bathroom, even though every instinct was yelling at him to leave, now, before the vault doors clanged shut on him and he was locked into the dark cavern with the unknown contents, fumbling around, lost and without a light.

Instinct? Fuck. It was habit, pure and simple. But everything about Olivia was about breaking with the pattern, wasn’t it? So he opened the bathroom door she had slammed just as the shower turned on and was in time to see her pull the curtain closed. She glanced at him through the closing veil. Anger pulsed in her sapphire blue eyes.

He shut the door more gently than she had and leaned against the sink, opposite the now-closed shower curtain.

“Explain it to me,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Why would anyone do something so insane, so self-sacrificing, for someone else? Why do so many people do such things? Pretend I know nothing and explain it to me.”

“Not through a shower curtain, I won’t.” Her voice was stiff, hard with fury.

Disappointment touched him. She wasn’t going to back down. He’d damaged the tenuous link between them, then. The idea that he might have ruined that connection touched him with fear that he had to mentally beat back down.

Why fear? That was a question to be considered at another time.

“I’ll wait outside then,” he said after a moment, standing up.

The curtain was shoved aside roughly, making the rings scrape with a metallic squawk across the rail. Olivia glared at him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” she demanded. She grabbed the front of his shirt and tugged. Hard.

Daniel managed to slide off his shoes before she dragged him into the shower with her, but that was all. It was either get wet, or use force against her. Olivia was strong for a woman.

She slid the curtain closed again and moved around the cubicle so they were both under the jet. Olivia had one of the bigger rooms that came with a separate shower and bath. The shower was a generous size but with both of them in it, the space seemed small.

“Your clothes had to be rinsed off after I’d been sitting on them, anyway,” she told him and turned so the water slid through the back of her hair, wetting down the tangles.

Daniel looked down at the front of his shirt and trousers. They had grime stains from the dirt that had been smeared all over her body. He carefully didn’t think about how the dirt had got onto her body in the first place. From personal experience and from processing the accounts of agents reporting to him, he could guess, but he didn’t want to. Not right now.

He clamped down the temptation to speculate and brushed at the stains instead.

“Use my shampoo,” Olivia told him. “It’s better than soap. Put a tiny bit in your hands and get it to lather, then rub it onto the marks. Rinse it really well. We can hang your clothes up to dry for the night and there won’t be any soap scum marks.”

Daniel didn’t voice the other positive aspect of the suggestion; his clothes would smell of Olivia and her hair.

He washed away the dirt quickly, rinsed off and shrugged out of the heavy, cumbersome garments. “Wet clothes just don’t cooperate, do they?” he grumbled, turning away from the flow of the showerhead to wring them out.

“You do seem to have far more finesse removing dry items.” Her tone was light, almost as if she was laughing. Daniel glanced at her, startled.

She was washing her hair. Eyes closed. Face like marble, giving away nothing. The trained diplomat.

His gaze ran down the length of her wet, gleaming body. The up-lifted breasts with their erect, rosy nipples. The sharp indentation at her waist and the trim hips that bracketed her completely bare pussy. The tiny slit that marked the beginning of her cleft was like a siren song to go exploring.

Just like that he was aroused enough that he wanted to slam her up against the wall and take her. His cock jerked and swelled, hardening even as he stared at her.

As she moved to rinse her hair, her thighs brushed together then separated. Her hips swayed.

He swallowed. He could pick her up, wrap those thighs around his waist and slide into her. Or turn her and push her up against the wall.

Or bend her over and separate those sweet ass cheeks….

Olivia bent her head back to let the water cascade through her hair, extending her throat, her chest, her breasts, her torso. Offering herself up.

Daniel drew in a breath that hitched.