Touch of Darkness (10 page)

No. She was right. They would have to fly.

"It's a two-seater, a little heavier than normal. I can get us to the mainland."

While he broke the oath he'd made as he'd stared at Jedi's broken, tortured body. The brightest young pilot he'd ever flown with . . .

He rubbed his chest, the spot over his sorrowful heart.

But maybe it wasn't so bad. Every day he ached to fly, and if he refrained from taking the controls, if he held back from the ecstasy of being the pilot, perhaps he still embraced the essence of his vow.

"There." She brushed the loose hair off his shoulders, stood back, and inspected him. "I did an okay job, although you sort of look like—" She searched her mind.

"A pecker head?" He ran his hands over his scalp, wincing at the abrasions, but pleased to find it mostly smooth.

"Well . . . yeah." She shivered as the wind kicked up.

Off in the distance, he heard the roar of an airplane. He glanced up; it was a seaplane, landing on the ocean, loaded with reporters or curiosity seekers or the police. Yes, the report of the explosion had gone out.

"Get ready to go." He put on his dry socks, loaded his backpack, donned his belt.

She did the same. "After we land, we'll have to walk a little to rent a car—"

"No. I've scouted out a bed-and-breakfast. Out of the way. We'll stay there tonight,"

"But if we drive all night, we can get to Aberdeen by morning—"

"We don't want to drive at night. We don't need headlights on a winding, empty road at night in the middle of Scotland. It's darker than the ace of clubs out there, everyone's going to be hunting us, and the first guy that finds us will either kill us or interview us repeatedly." When she would have objected, he held out his hand. "You get us off the island. I'll get us out of Scotland alive."

She looked at his palm, reluctance clear on her face.

She didn't want to be with him any longer than required. Yet she knew he was right.

"I'll hold you to that." She tried to make this a business deal. She tried to shake his hand.

Instead, he captured her, opened her fingers, stared at her palm. At the pale, sensitive skin and the lines experience and fate had carved there. "Do you realize what happened today?"

"What?" She watched him suspiciously.

"You and I were reborn from Mother Earth, clawing our way out of the birth canal and into precarious life." Rurik stared down at her. "Together."

He could almost see Tasya's hackles rise. "What does
that
mean?"

"I don't know, but lately I've learned one thing— omens are not to be ignored." Tenderly, he brought her palm to his lips, and kissed the pad beneath her thumb. "I suspect that, soon enough, we'll find out what it means."

Chapter 8

Tasya waited until they were airborne and over the ocean before calling back, "You never fly anymore."

Rurik didn't answer. He sat directly behind her on the tiny seat, his body warm against her backbone. During preflight and takeoff, he'd been tense and uncommunicative, and she remembered all too clearly that her research had turned up Rurik's resignation from the Air Force following the accidental death of his copilot.

She hadn't been able to get more information than that; her inquiries had made the Air Force tight-lipped and suspicious, so she'd dropped the matter. She couldn't afford to make them mad; a woman who traveled the world taking photographs never knew when she might need military assistance.

But obviously Rurik had suffered some trauma because, except for taking commercial airlines, he hadn't flown since.

The motor—small, compact—hummed loudly, but the breeze blew the sound away. His weight made the ultralight handle differently. His silence made her want to help him relax. She chatted, "My instructor told me I have a real sense for flying. I don't know if he was bullshitting me, but I love this. I love the wind in my hair. I love the feeling of freedom."

No response.

"When I'm up here, I wish I could do this forever. I wish I could climb to the clouds, and skim the tops of the trees. But I won't." She chuckled. "Am I making you nervous?"

No response.

"Did you feel like that when you flew?"

Still no response.

She didn't know if he was petrified or catching a nap. As soon as they were over the mainland and the winds stabilized enough for her to glance away, she twisted around and looked at him.

His eyes were closed.

But he wasn't afraid.

He wasn't asleep.

He wore an expression of bliss unlike any she'd
seen . . . except once, when she'd held him in her arms, in her body, and felt him shudder in ecstasy. She faced forward again, and wondered what the story behind his flying might be—and desperately wished she didn't care.

Chapter 9

Rurik stood on the mat in the entry of the small bed-and-breakfast. He was dripping from the rain that had been falling for the last four hours, and Mrs. Reddenhurst wouldn't let him walk any farther into the warmth.

Instead, she stood with her hands on her ample hips, and impatiently listened to him beg.

"Please, my wife and I need a room." He wiped his face with the kitchen towel she handed him. "We decided to hike the Highlands for our honeymoon. Because we both have, you know, Scottish ancestry. And we really liked
Braveheart.
We were supposed stay in Cameron Village tonight, but then the rain started falling—"

"A wee mist." Mrs. Reddenhurst was tall, stout, and brisk, with a strong accent. "It does that here."

"Yes, I guess it does. We brought slickers." He
lifted the edge of his poncho and showed her the camouflage waterproof nylon. "But we took the wrong turn. We're cold and we're hungry. Please, please, if you have any compassion in your heart—" This place was perfect. Small, out-of-the-way, a private home that catered to tourists, but not well-known.

"Mr. Telford, I told ye. We dunna' have any rooms left."

"A closet. An attic. Someplace we can bed down for the night. We'll leave first thing in the morning." He gestured out the door. "I promised Jennifer I'd come ahead and get us a room. Please. We're newly-weds and I don't want her to realize . .." He shuffled his feet. "She thinks I can do anything and I wish . . ." He took Mrs. Reddenhurst's reddened hand, and looked soulful and pitiful. "Please, don't mess me up now."

He had her. Mrs. Reddenhurst sighed hugely, but she said, "Ye remind me of my husband. A big doo-fus with more hair than brains." Taking her hand away, she wiped it on her apron. "All I've got is the attic."

"We'll take it."

"I call it the honeymoon suite."

"That's perfect!"

"I call it the honeymoon suite because the bed is awful, and ye'll both roll to the middle."

"Oh. That's even better." He'd never spoken with more sincerity in his life.

"Yell have to share my bathroom. That's down the attic stairs, first door to the left."

"Here's my credit card." He dragged his wallet out of the backpack. When the charge came through the Telford account, Jasha would notice at once. It was a smarter and safer way than a cell phone call to let the family know he was alive and safe.

"Ye'll have to make do with steak and eggs for dinner. I havena' got salmon or lamb for ye!"

"Whatever you're making smells good." It did, and he was starving. "Do you need to see my ID?"

"I'm not waiting on ye." She shook her finger at him. "Ye'll have to fend for yerselves!"

"We can do that."

"When will yer wifey get here?" Mrs. Reddenhurst peered out the door into the mist.

"I left her back about a mile ago. I'll run up and bring her back." He did his best imitation of a bashful American. "We haven't seen anything but sheep all day, and she's sort of embarrassed by the way she looks. So if you don't mind, she'll stop in and say hello to you, then skedaddle up the stairs to the attic."

"I'm fixing supper, so take her to the attic and let her get cleaned up." Obviously, it never occurred to Mrs. Reddenhurst that he might be lying.

"The other guests aren't here?" He peered down
the long corridor behind her. There were wide openings on either side—public rooms of some kind, he would guess.

"One couple is up in their room, changing for supper. The other drove to Loch MacIlvernock. Ye Americans are always so energetic!" She shook her head as if she didn't understand.

Rurik and Tasya had arrived at precisely the right moment.

As he dashed out the door, she called, "Ye'll have to eat in the kitchen."

He waved back at her, waited until she was out of sight, then walked to the shed in the yard, and found Tasya standing under the overhang, her arms crossed, her lips blue.

Her clothes had been damp while they flew over the sea, and by the time they'd set down on a flat piece of ground, she'd been shivering. They'd started across the hiking paths toward the B and B, and within an hour, the rain had started to fall. They'd both donned their slickers, but while the exertion made Rurik warm up, Tasya couldn't shake the chill.

Being Tasya, she complained heartily, pointing out that they could have reached the town and the car-rental counter within an hour, but she trudged on after him. She'd pledged to trust him, and she wouldn't break her promise because of some lousy weather.

"Come on. We can go right up to the room, so let's try to avoid being spotted." He took her hand, and for once, she was too tired and cold to wrestle it away.

They ran for the house and up the stairs to the second floor. He located the door to the attic, and when he opened it, a cold draft whipped down the narrow stairs. "The Scots and their obsession with fresh air could be the death of us," he said.

Tasya shuddered. "I'm going to the bathroom, take a shower and change, and see what I can do to make myself look different." She clutched her backpack and tried to smile. "Shaving my head may be my best bet."

He wanted to forbid her. He wanted it so badly. But looking into her eyes, he saw the mixture of mischief and challenge, and he did what he did well and she did abysmally—he picked his battle. As mildly as any henpecked husband, he said, "We want to change your appearance, not make you a terrorist suspect."

Tasya looked crestfallen that he'd refused her challenge. "I hope the owner has some makeup or some hair product I can sneak." She headed for the bathroom.

"Yeah, me, too," he muttered. Recalling Mrs. Red-denhurst's iron gray hair and thin mouth, he wouldn't bet on it.

With Tasya's pale, clear skin, her electric blue eyes, and that sooty black hair, she was far too recognizable—and far too appealing to him.

He ran up the stairs and looked around—and if Tasya had seen his wicked grin, she would have sprinted in the opposite direction and not stopped running until she reached the English border.

How many weeks had it been since he'd laid claim to her? How many weeks had he been waking every night in a roaring fury that she'd left, and he'd spent every day brewing in a red lust for her?

Now Rurik and Tasya would spend the night in a B and B in the middle of nowhere, in a cold, tiny attic, huddled together in a double bed piled high with comforters, with a mattress that sagged in the middle.