Secret Agent Sam

Chapter 5

Still reeling, his senses glutted with the taste, the smell, the feel of Samantha, Cory watched the men slip into the room, seeming to fill it with their silent menace and the threat of violence in their weapons and their hard, cold eyes. His eyes leaped from one impassive face to the next, looking for the one he’d come so far to meet. He wasn’t there, of course. These were the messengers, he realized; the retrieval squad, nothing more.

One of them, the designated “spokesman,” apparently, motioned with his weapon. Come.

Cory nodded. So far, so good, he thought as he picked up his laptop and tote bag.

But as he stepped toward the waiting cadre of armed men, the leader again motioned with his weapon, this time holding it up to bar his way, and his hard black stare had gone shooting past Cory to something behind him. Turning, Cory saw Sam, waiting to follow him, her face calm, body relaxed, one hip canted and the straps of the backpack slung over one shoulder.

The terrorists’ leader spoke, his voice sharp and unexpected in the stillness. “Who is this?” The rifle in his hands jerked toward Sam.

“She’s the pilot,” Cory explained, and it took all the self-control he had to say it calmly with every nerve twanging and his heart thumping. When the man’s face remained blank, he hooked his thumbs together and made flapping motions with his hands, and for good measure added, “She flies the airplane.”

The man jerked half around, and several of his companions leaned closer to confer with him in unintelligible mutters while Cory waited in silent agony, cursing the fates that had conspired to bring Sam into harm’s way. This harm he’d created. If anything happens to her, he thought…

The spokesman turned back, and with yet more jerking motions of his rifle to emphasize his words, said sharply, “She stay here. I am told to bring only you-” the gun barrel pointed toward Cory “-and you-” now toward Tony. “Come, now.”

Fear flooded Cory’s body and prickled his skin like frost. His heartbeat was a distant booming in his ears. Horrifying images, reports of extraneous captives being beheaded flashed through his mind. He could feel himself screaming, “No!” inside his head in the silent, chest-burning, throat-tearing way of nightmares, and again it was a shock to hear his own voice, sounding calm and in command. “No. She’s needed. She’s also my interpreter. She comes with us.”

The gunman thrust his chin upward in a manner that was both arrogant and dismissive. “I speak English. No need for interpreter.”

“She goes,” Cory said flatly, “or I don’t.” To demonstrate the conviction of his declaration he lowered his laptop and tote bag to the floor and folded his arms on his chest. “Tell your leader there will be no interview.”

The silence that followed shrieked in his ears. The ultimatum was, he knew, a ridiculous, utterly meaningless display of bravado; he had only as much bargaining leverage as these gunmen…terrorists, rebels, insurgents-whatever they might choose to call themselves tonight-decided to give him. And that, he was sure, depended solely on how much their infamous leader desired this interview. Or, putting it another way, how compelling was his need to get his message out to the world.

The spokesman’s face darkened as he turned once more to consult with his companions in clipped and rapid phrases. Cory couldn’t look at Tony or Sam. Literally could not; tension had him paralyzed. He felt as if his neck would crack if he tried to move his head. I’ve put us all in jeopardy, he thought. My best friend…the woman I love. They may kill us all right now. Or take Tony and me hostage and kill Sam…

What else could he have done? The only thing he had to balance against the terrible weight of responsibility for the lives of two people he cared about was the utter certainty that if he left Sam behind in this place he’d never see her alive again.

The suspense became unbearable. He began to wonder if he would ever dare to breathe again.

The spokesman turned back suddenly and rapped out a sharp and grudging, “Okay.” Then, with a series of gestures-more pointing with the rifle barrel-and barked commands, ordered them to leave everything they’d brought with them behind.

“Hey, man, not my cameras!” Tony took a step backward, clutching his bags to his chest like a mother protecting her young.

Cory thought, Oh, Lord, here we go again… as he remarked in a languid drawl, “Hey, look, I was instructed to bring a cameraman. Not much point if he doesn’t have a camera.” Fading adrenaline had left him drained…he felt loose and weak and much too warm, as if he’d just emerged from a long hot bath.

The spokesman looked at him with hatred, and his words came grudgingly. “Okay. Cameras can go. Everything else-stay here.”

“What about my computer? I can’t very well-”

“No. No computer. We have tape recorder. No need for computer. Leave everything here. Come. Now.”

“They think we might be carrying tracking devices,” Sam muttered in an undertone from behind him. “Better do as he says.”

Cory nodded in grim acceptance. Hell with it-he’d won the important battle. And he’d done interviews before laptops were invented; he could do without one now. It definitely wasn’t worth getting killed over. Getting Sam killed over.

With yet more poking and waving of rifle barrels, the three of them were herded outside, through the lanai and into the deserted village, which seemed frozen in silence under the silvery light of the almost-full moon. Nothing stirred as they made their way along the pale ribbon of road, heading in the opposite direction from which they’d come. The only sound was the muffled scuffing of their footsteps in the dusty dirt.

Just outside the main cluster of buildings where more planted fields began, the terrorist leader turned sharply away from the road. The rest of the band followed, then Tony, Sam and Cory behind them, picking their way single-file along the banks that bordered the rice paddies, with two more of the armed escort bringing up the rear. The air was warm and heavy; rain seemed to hover a breath of wind away, like a secret bursting to be told.

Cory felt a familiar exaltation rise inside him, one he could neither explain nor deny. He wondered if it was the sort of thing a hunter feels as he closes in on his quarry, or a scientist as he nears the discovery of a lifetime, a mountain climber approaching the summit. He only knew it was what had him returning again and again to the world’s most perilous places in spite of the various dangers and discomforts involved, in search of answers…the truth…a story. He couldn’t imagine himself ever doing anything else. Like the explorer seeking one more horizon or the prospector the elusive gold nugget, he knew there would always be new questions to ask, new truths to be revealed, more stories to be told.

Ahead, the jungle loomed like a dark maw, and even as it swallowed him, Cory felt his heart lift and excitement shiver along his spine.

Sam had been in jungles before. The nighttime sounds and smells were familiar to her, and in spite of uneasy thoughts of the kinds of creatures that might be making those sounds, she welcomed the darkness for the chance it gave her to pull herself together, shielded from Cory’s all-too-perceptive eyes.

She needed time to process what had just happened to her-and she didn’t mean being taken into custody by armed terrorists. Cory’s kiss, his touch, and the way she’d responded-not just her body’s responses, she could have dealt with those-but, dammit, with her heart. Yes-her wretched, pathetic, stupid heart, which apparently had no memory of being broken into tiny pieces by that very same man. She needed to face up to that, push against it, hard, the way she’d test a twisted ankle to see if she could stand the pain.

He’s just like a patch of quicksand, she thought with a shudder. I knew it was there…let myself wander a little too close…just one tiny slip, and already I can feel myself sinking…

After a time, they emerged from the darkness of the jungle onto a moonlit grass-and-dirt road that wound like a silver ribbon into the mountains. Cory moved up to walk beside her, and she felt his presence there with every nerve ending in her body. The familiar shape and smell of him overwhelmed her senses.

Memories inundated her…

Lying naked in a patch of sunshine on rumpled sheets, propped on one elbow while my fingers lightly trace the long, elegant lines of his back… I watch him sleep…the fine, sensitive mouth relaxed, silky dark hair falling across his forehead, and his face stark with the loneliness I can only see when those beautiful eyes are closed and their compassion and curiosity hidden behind shadowed lids and lashes.

I watch him sleep and wonder what lonely place he’s gone to that he never lets me share, and I ache with wanting something that always seems to be just beyond my reach.

In an effort to shake herself loose from the memories, she leaned closer to Cory, bumped him in the ribs with her elbow and said in a gravelly whisper, “What were you trying to do back there, Pearse, get us all killed?”

He grunted but didn’t reply. The urge to needle him passed as quickly as it had come, and after a moment she added a gruff, “Well…anyway, thanks.” And found herself, without meaning to, reaching for his hand. It, too, felt familiar…big and long-boned…so warm and good… She squeezed it once, then quickly let it go.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

She tensed when she felt that same big warm hand lift to the back of her neck. She held her breath when he began to rub it, the way he’d done so many times before, finding, as he always knew how to do, the trouble spots at the base of her skull.

Coming too close to the tender place behind her ear.

“Cut it out, Pearse,” she croaked as she shook herself free.

“Sorry,” he murmured, not sounding sorry at all. “Force of habit.”

Tears sprang behind her eyes. She swallowed hard-twice-and stared at the dark shape of mountains against the silver sky. After a long moment, feeling an obscure need to make amends, she said gruffly, “Sorry about your computer.”

He was so close she felt him shrug. Too close. All her nerve endings were twanging, but she didn’t move away.

“I’ll get along. I’m surprised they didn’t search us, though.”

“Oh, they will,” she said with a careless shake of her head. “They’ll probably take our clothes away somewhere and go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

His head swiveled toward her, and even in the dim light she felt the probing weight of his curious, ever-searching eyes.

“Is that the voice of experience?”

She jerked a glance at him and gave a short huff of laughter. “God, no. I fly airplanes for a living, Pearse. You’re the one with that kind of experience, not me.” He didn’t comment, and after a moment she said in an undertone, “I just know he’s careful, this Fahad…al-Ramin?”

“Rami,” said Cory. “Fahad al-Rami. And he is careful. He’s had to be, to have managed to keep from getting captured or killed for so many years. He’s got to know he’s taking a big chance in allowing himself to be interviewed now.”

“So are you. Aren’t you? Taking a big chance?” It was his turn for that soft snort of laughter. She threw him a look and said dryly, “Bet you never gave that a thought, did you?” She looked away again, quickly, and laughed a little herself. “You probably said, ‘To hell with the danger. Tell me when and where, and I’m there.’ Like you always do.”

“This-” he paused, caught a breath “-it’s a news correspondent’s dream, Sam.” His words were quiet, barely audible, but she could tell by the shape of them that he was looking at her. “It’d be like, ten years ago, going into the mountains of Afghanistan to interview Bin Laden. Who could say no to that?”

She felt a heaviness in her chest, and shook her head, not in disagreement, but in the manner of one shaking off an unwelcome touch. “Okay, if al-Rami’s in the same class as Bin Laden? That makes him a terrorist, Pearse. Terrorists kill people. It’s what they do.”

“Fahad al-Rami calls himself a rebel-which I imagine is one of the things he’d like to clear up in this interview.” Cory’s voice was sardonic.

Sam replied the same way. “He blows up hotels full of people. That makes him a terrorist in my book.”

He didn’t deny it. They walked for a while without talking, listening to the scuff of footsteps, the creak of ammunition belts, the rustle of fabric against flesh. The weight in her chest seemed to grow heavier with every step.

Taking a breath that did nothing to make her feel better, Sam muttered, “It’s never going to be enough for you, is it?” She’d said it to herself more than Cory, but he answered her anyway.

“It’s what I do, Sam.”

“Dammit!” And how could she be angry when she’d sworn she didn’t care enough to be? “Why do you need this? You’ve already got your Pulitzer.”

His head snapped toward her like a spring letting go, the tension in him so palpable the quietness of his voice seemed a surprise. “Is that what you think this is about? My God, Sam. It’s not about prizes-or money, either, for that matter. Or fame or prestige-none of those things matter to me, you should know that. There’s a story here that needs to be told, and I’m the one that gets to tell it. To me, that’s the only reward that matters.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. Didn’t trust herself to. Thoughts, words, the beginnings of a quarrel simmered in her brain, and the choked-back arguments burned the back of her throat like acid. You told me to grow up, Pearse. Why? Because I wanted a career…adventure…excitement? What’s different about what you do? If growing up means I’m supposed to give up something I’ve prepared my whole life for…if it means that for me, why not for you?

The words she couldn’t say tasted bitter on her tongue, and her lips felt numb as she murmured instead, “Well, so? Do you think you’re ever gonna be ready to come in from the field? To give up the danger?”

There was a long pause, and then his voice came softly. “I thought I was ready, once. It didn’t work out.”

She waited, thinking he meant to say more, to explain. Then, with a little jolt it hit her. He’s talking about his marriage again.

He’d been ready to come in from the cold, to give up the danger-not for her, but for…Kathy, Katie…Carly-whatever the hell her name was. For his wife.

It didn’t work out.

It all came rushing back-first the shock, icy-cold, numbing. Then the pain. Just the way it had happened then…

She’d finished, finally. Finished her training. She was home after being incommunicado for a whole month of grueling survival training in the Louisiana swamps, exhilarated, keyed-up, dying to talk to somebody, even if she couldn’t talk about where she’d been or what she’d gone through. So, naturally, the first thing she’d done was call her best friend…right? Cory had been so much more than that, of course, but first, last and always, he was the closest, dearest friend she had in the world.

The phone at his Washington apartment rings…a recording answers, saying the number is no longer in service. I call Mom and Dad’s house in Georgia. Cory and Dad were close, they’ll know how to reach him…

Even now, three years later, she felt herself go clammy and sick remembering the terrible little silence on the other end of the line, and the awful fear that had gripped her then.

I think, Oh, God. Something’s happened to him. He goes to such awful places, he’s almost been killed before…

Then I hear Mom’s voice, so sad, so gentle, so…embarrassed. “Oh, Sammi June, honey, I can’t believe you don’t know…”

Anger. That was the third thing that had come over her that awful day, and it was anger that came back now to save her. Hot, raging anger. It swept through her like a firestorm, carrying all the heaviness and sadness away with it, leaving her feeling barren and brittle inside, but so much lighter. As if a good stiff breeze would blow her to dust.

“Too bad,” she said to Cory.

And quickening her steps, she left him and moved up to walk beside Tony instead.

“Hey,” she said, favoring him with her best smile as she gave him a nudge in the ribs with her elbow. “How ya’ doin’? Need any help carryin’ those cameras?”

Tony’s appreciative grin and undemanding charm didn’t do much to ease the ache inside her, but they did help to pass the time, and more important, hold the memories at bay.

Not long after daybreak they came to a cluster of huts too primitive to be called a village. The morning mists hadn’t yet cleared, but the ubiquitous raggedy chickens were already pecking and chuckling in the undergrowth and smoke rose lazily from metal chimneys. The smell of cooking and unfamiliar spices permeated the cool mountain air, and Cory’s stomach growled a loud and enthusiastic response.

Again there was no welcoming committee. The three “guests” were herded without ceremony into one of the huts, which, except for a brightly patterned curtain that hung across the width of the hut’s single room, partitioning it roughly in half, appeared to be empty of both people and furnishings. Their escort’s leader, still carrying his rifle but perhaps feeling more secure now that he was on his home turf, directed Sam to one side of the curtain and Cory and Tony to the other. He did so with somewhat less belligerence than he’d shown them up to now, even giving a little bow as he left them, closing the door behind him.

In the sudden silence, Cory heard Sam expel an exasperated breath.

“You get the idea they might’ve done this before?” Tony remarked in a sardonic undertone.

“Oh, I think you can bet on it,” Sam said cheerfully, pulling aside the curtain to rejoin them. “I imagine they run all their hostages through this way.”

“You think maybe they didn’t get the message we’re invited guests, not hostages?” Tony said.

“They’ll be even more cautious with us because we were invited,” Cory said with a long look at Sam. “They know we’d have had time-”

He broke off as the outer door opened. A woman of indeterminate age entered, carrying a stack of folded clothing. Although her own garments were all-concealing and her head covered with a scarf, the fabrics were brightly colored and looked hand-woven in intricate geometric patterns, and she wore a number of bracelets on both arms. Something about her style of dress reminded Cory of parts of Indonesia and Malaysia he’d visited on previous assignments.

Keeping her eyes averted from the two men, the woman went straight to Sam and spoke to her in a low, halting voice. Sam replied, a few brief syllables of acknowledgment, and the woman handed her the stack of clothing, bowed her head and quickly went out again.

“What’d I tell you?” Sam said as soon as the door had closed behind the woman. Her eyes were bright and sharp as a squirrel’s, with an excitement Cory couldn’t quite understand. “We’re to remove our clothes and put these on instead. Ours will be washed, dried and returned to us-as a courtesy.” She gave a smug little chortle. “Courtesy, hah. They want to check them for bugs-and I don’t mean the creepy-crawly kind.”

Tony muttered one of his favorite profanities. “Do you s’pose they mean everything? Underwear, too?”

“I’d imagine,” Cory said, with more equanimity than he felt.

“Well,” said Sam, “I don’t care what they said, I’m not giving ’em my underwear.” She shuddered delicately. “That’s just…no.”

“Sam.” Cory gave her an amused look. “You’re the one who said they’re afraid of us. Don’t you think you’d better do as they say? This is no time to be stubborn.”

After a long mulish glare, she gave the curtain a yank and subsided behind it, swearing and muttering under her breath. A moment later various articles of brightly colored fabric came sailing over the top of the partition.

“Would you rather I take the single room…let you two love-birds be together?” Tony asked facetiously as he simultaneously snatched several of the pieces of cloth from the air and dodged to avoid being hit by flying flip-flops.

“Very…funny,” came from the other side of the curtain.

Cory didn’t say anything. Sam’s voice had a bumpy quality, and he had a sudden vivid mental picture of her undressing with those quick jerky movements of hers, the way she did when she was in a hurry or out of sorts. The image was clear and bright in his mind…

Long, supple athlete’s body, abs arranged in a softer, gentler version of the six-pack, buttocks taut and firm with shallow indentations on the sides, breasts high and round, but with a lot more fullness than anyone would suspect, seeing her fully clothed. Only I know how incredibly pale and fine the skin is there… Not much about Sam can be called soft, but there, and low on her belly and especially between her thighs…

“Hey, man, you want the green or the purple?” Tony was holding up two brightly patterned lengths of coarse fabric, one in each hand.

The images shivered and faded from his mind, and his heart knocked hard against his ribs, as if he’d been caught doing something illicit.

“I’m not fussy.” He snagged the garment Tony lobbed at him-the green one-with one hand and showed Tony how to put it on, wrapping it around his waist and rolling the top edge over, like a towel.

“Hey,” he said with a shrug when Tony gave him a dubious look. “Whatever works, right?”

“Easy for you to say,” Tony muttered, uneasily surveying the portion of one muscular leg that was protruding through the edges of the fabric that barely met around his broad girth. “You’ve got more overlap than I do.”

Ignoring what sounded like muffled laughter from the other side of the curtain, Cory finished dressing in the loose-fitting shirt and flip-flop sandals that had been provided. The whole ensemble was surprisingly comfortable, though he couldn’t see himself trekking through snake-infested jungles in the wraparound skirt and open sandals.

He and Tony had just finished folding their own clothing into more or less neat piles when the curtain twitched back and Sam’s face appeared at its edge.

“You guys decent?” Her eyes had that squirrel-brightness again, and her lips seemed to quiver with a grin held in check.

Cory felt a buzz deep in his chest, the urge to grin back at her the way he would have done in the old days. The old days…back when they’d so often found the same things amusing, not always at appropriate times, and would exchange that secret look of barely suppressed laughter.

“What would you have done if we hadn’t been?” Tony was making no effort to suppress his grin.

“Well, then, I’d’ve taken a good long look,” she shot back at him in an exaggerated Georgia accent, thick, sweet and sassy as molasses.

“So, since you seem to be the expert on how these people operate, what are we supposed to do now?” Cory asked, frowning to disguise the pleasure he was getting just from looking at her. The rich, fiery colors she’d chosen-red, orange and yellow-had turned her hair to sunshine and her skin to honey, and she reminded him of some lush exotic flower…the kind that was probably concealing something deadly among its petals.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Wait?” She looked at Cory and Tony, then at the door, then back at Cory again. “Well, the hell with that. I’m starving. Not to mention I could sure use a bathroom. They didn’t lock us in here, did they?”

With that, she marched up to the door, took hold of the knob and turned it. Throwing a droll look back, eyebrows raised, mouth forming a little O of mock surprise, she pushed the door open and stepped through it. Cory exchanged a look with Tony, shrugged, and they both followed her onto the porch, which was a ramshackle structure made of small logs lashed together with sisal rope.

Almost immediately, as if she’d been waiting for their signal, the woman who’d brought them the clothing appeared, now bearing a large basket containing fruit, wooden bowls and eating utensils. Right behind her was another woman carrying a large pot from which steam and mouthwatering smells rose into the moist morning air. The two women placed the food on the floor of the porch like an offering to pagan gods, bowed hesitantly, and then, instead of leaving, edged past them and disappeared into the hut. A moment later they emerged with their arms full of shoes and clothing, throwing furtive glances toward Cory and the others like looters fleeing a store during a riot. Then, with eyes averted, they hurried away down a dusty path and disappeared between the clusters of rickety buildings.

“Well,” said Cory after a moment of almost comical silence, rubbing his hands together briskly. “I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m starving. Anybody for breakfast?”

They ate sitting on the porch, throwing fruit seeds and peelings to the foraging chickens. The pot proved to contain a mixture of rice, hard-scrambled eggs and vegetables, all highly spiced and surprisingly tasty. Together with the fruit, it made for a satisfying-not to mention filling-meal, although some of the fruits were too sour for Cory’s taste.

“Filipinos like it that way,” Sam told Tony when he shuddered over the tartness. “They eat it with salt-sort of like pickles. See?” She demonstrated, then laughed out loud at the pained expression on Tony’s face.

Cory didn’t say anything. He was enjoying the sound of Sam’s laughter, filling up as he listened with a sweet tumble of joy and sadness that was like hearing an old favorite song, one that brought back painful memories of loss and regret.

At the same time he was wondering, not for the first time, how, as a pilot for a second-rate charter airline service, Sam had gotten to be such an expert on Philippine jungle culture.

They’d barely finished eating when the women reappeared, again right on cue, as if they’d been watching from some secret vantage point. This time they were accompanied by two men with rifles, one of them the leader of the band that had brought them here. While the women silently gathered up the remains of breakfast, the spokesman-using his rifle for emphasis, as usual-instructed Cory, Tony and Sam that they were to go back inside the hut now.

Sam cleared her throat loudly and rose to her feet. “Uh…excuse me, but I’d like to use the ladies’ room first?” When the guard continued to look stony and aloof, she added a word in a language Cory didn’t understand.

To Cory’s relief and amusement, the gunman’s face brightened for an instant with understanding-the classic lightbulb over the head-then just as quickly darkened with what could only have been embarrassment. He jerked his head at the women and barked a guttural command, and they immediately jumped up and beckoned to Sam, then led her off toward the cluster of shacks.

Cory watched her go with fear twisting in his gut. Fear that, if he let her out of his sight, he’d never see her alive again. Irrational, he told himself. Crazy.

“Hey, man,” Tony said plaintively, “you want to ask him where the men’s room is, or shall I?”

Without being asked, the spokesman gestured impatiently toward the jungle with his rifle. Tony and Cory looked at each other and shrugged.

“After you,” said Tony, with a sweeping gesture and arched eyebrows.

When all three had assembled once more in front of the hut, the English-speaking gunman again ordered them to go inside.

Cory could feel both his annoyance and that irrational fear growing, rising up in him like fermenting yeast. All the delay was beginning to wear on his nerves. This had been a dangerous enough mission to begin with, and with Sam thrown into the mix… Until now the danger had been trumped by the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he’d been given to interview the world’s most notorious terrorist. He knew it was possibly the most important interview he’d ever done, not just for the knowledge of what made a deadly enemy tick, but for the possibility of securing the release of the Lundquists. The importance had seemed more than worth the danger. He’d been looking forward to this, working toward it for weeks.

Now…dammit, all he could seem to think about was Sam, and the peril he’d put her in. He knew he wouldn’t draw an easy breath until she-until all of them were back safe and sound in Zamboanga.

Punching down the fear, fighting to keep the irritation out of his voice, he stepped closer to the gunman and said in a low voice, “Look, I know you’re only doing your job, but I’ve come a very long way to talk to Fahad al-Rami. Can you give me some idea when I’m going to be allowed to do that?”

Something flickered in the hard black eyes. Cory hoped…wanted to believe it might be respect. “Fahad al-Rami is not here. We go to him tonight,” the gunman said, and punched the air in front of his chest with his rifle. “Now, you sleep.”

“Hey-sounds good to me,” Tony said. He was already picking his way across the creaking porch. When Cory and Sam followed him into the hut, they found him making himself comfortable in one corner of the room, his head propped on one of his camera bags. Barely moments later, there arose from that vicinity a soft but distinct snore.

“Holy cow,” Sam said admiringly.

Cory gave a huff of laughter.

Sam stood gazing at him, chin up, one leg bent, one hip canted, arms folded, the way she had as a kid every time she’d had to start at a new school. Daring anyone to take her on. Feeling so alone, hating being in a place where she didn’t belong, a stranger.

A stranger?

I used to know every inch of this man’s body. I still do. I remember the smell, the shape, the taste, the feel of him. I remember it with my flesh and bone and blood and nerves, with every cell in my body.

So, why, right now, when there’s barely a foot of space between us, does it seem like we’re a million miles apart?

He used to be my best friend. I could have told him anything-and probably did.

Yet, here we stand together in an empty room-well, almost empty-and we have nothing at all to say to each other. Like strangers.

How did we get from there…to this?

Cory cleared his throat and said, “Well.”

She glanced over at him and saw that he was looking at her with eyebrows raised in a questioning way, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. She jerked away without meeting his eyes. “Yeah, well.”

“So. Here we are.”

She looked back at him then, and grinned. “Come on, Mr. Wordman, you can do better than that, I hope. It’s gonna be a long day, otherwise.”

He laughed, a low chuckle. And she remembered that, too. “It’s gonna be a long day anyway. The man’s right. If we can manage to get some sleep, we probably should. At least try.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not good at sleeping on bare floors,” Sam said with a little shudder as she watched two shiny blue lizards chase each other across the wall.

“You can use me for a pillow, if you want.”

She jerked her gaze back to him, but there was no teasing gleam in his eyes, no little sardonic half smile on his lips. Just the look of gentle sympathy that was natural to him.

“Thanks,” she said dryly, “but I think I’ll just sit and veg for a while. Maybe I’ll bore myself to sleep.”

“You want the curtained-off part? Give you a little more privacy?”

But privacy, suddenly, was the last thing she wanted, though she hadn’t known it until that moment. “No, thanks,” she said, keeping her voice carefully neutral. “I think I’ll just…take this spot right here…” She squatted down, tucking the wraparound skirt under her thighs as she examined the floor. The wooden planks appeared rough, but reasonably clean. She looked up at Cory as she settled herself with her back against the wall. “Unless you’d rather not have my company.”

“Come on, Sam.” He eased down beside her, a little awkwardly in the unaccustomed skirt, tucking the overlapping flaps between his legs as he stretched them out straight in front of him. His bare feet in the too-small flip-flops seemed oddly vulnerable. “You know me better than that.”

Do I? She thought, but didn’t say, because he was looking at her with that deep, penetrating gaze of his, and…maybe it was because of those feet-so endearingly absurd-but already she could feel herself going soft inside…like ice cream in the sun.

“Come on,” he coaxed, patting his green-patterned thigh, cajoling with the voice, the husky growl she’d never been good at resisting. “Put your head down here. Try and get some rest.”

“You’re leg’s too bony to make a decent pillow,” she muttered. But she was already rearranging herself grudgingly, scooting around, leaning toward him, then sinking down…like something without bones or will…until her head, her ear…then her cheek settled onto the hard ridge of his thigh like a weary bird finding its roost.

Weary… She hadn’t known how tired she was. Sleep, like a gate-crasher denied admittance only by the strength of her will, now came barreling through abandoned barricades to overwhelm her. Surrounded by warmth and a familiar feeling of security, she felt Cory’s hand come to rest on her hair, touching tentatively, at first, then moving slowly…lightly stroking, fingers weaving through the short, damp strands.

She thought, Oh, how I’ve missed this.

I could have had this. If I hadn’t insisted on becoming a pilot…if I hadn’t allowed myself to be recruited by the Company…if I hadn’t lost my temper that night…if I hadn’t walked away.

In her unguarded state that night came back to her so vividly. She remembered the sick cold feeling in her chest and belly, the trembling weakness in her legs as she’d walked away from him down that rainy Georgetown street.

She remembered how she’d held her head high as she walked and stared at the streetlamps through a blur of tears and rain. How she’d listened until it seemed as if her whole head was vibrating. Hoping.

Silly me-I’m hoping he’ll call to me, tell me not to go. That he’ll tell me he loves me and needs me, that he can’t possibly live without me, that he wants me just as I am, that it’s okay if I want to be a pilot, or become a spy, or whatever it is I want to do, if only I’ll come back.

But of course he doesn’t call, and I keep walking down that street in the rain, too proud to admit it isn’t what I meant to do. That this isn’t what I wanted.

If I’d done it differently…

Moisture pooled in the corners of her eyes, made tiny puddles beneath her lashes. Just moisture-not tears, she told herself. I’m not crying. Samantha June doesn’t cry, not over lost causes.

But…his touch was so gentle…so soothing. With her eyes closed, lashes floating gently on the cushion of tears, she felt his long, sensitive fingers comb the hair back from her temple…tuck a strand behind her ear. It felt so good. She gave a small, shuddering sigh. Safety and contentment settled over her. Twilight drifted down…

Then, from somewhere far above her she heard his voice, a familiar and comforting murmur, like a lullaby…

“What happened here, Sam? This little scar behind your ear?”