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They'd see the flicker in her eyes, the dilation of her pupils. They'd hear the hesitation in her voice, notice
the flush to her neck. And if they suspected, for even one threadbare second, that she knew more than
she was saying, they had ways to make her talk.
Heinous ways that made Sandro want to stab his paring knife into the safe house's ratty sofa.
He would never put Miranda in that position. Never. It was his battle, this life, and he would fight it by
himself.
For Gus, and for Roger.
Penance, he knew, didn't always come from confessionals or burnt offerings. Real penance came from
the soul.
The sun dipped lower against the western horizon, inviting the shadows of early evening to spill across
the dirty, hardwood floor. Sandro went to the kitchen and pulled his other purchase from his pocket,
eyed the small bottle grimly, then made one last precaution to protect Miranda from what was about to
go down. When he returned to the main room, he stared out at a few storm clouds gathering against the
twilight horizon, refusing to think about Miranda naked in a tub of steaming bubbles.
"Your turn."
He spun around in one smooth move, gun in hand.
"Whoa," Miranda said with a damningly impish smile. She lifted her hands into the air. "I didn't do it."
Oh, but she did. She stood there in the oversize Surf Portugal shirt he'd bought her to sleep in, her hair
piled behind her head, leaving a few stray tendrils to drip down and play at the corners of her mouth. Her
eyes twinkled. Her skin was scrubbed clean. Her feet were bare.
"Never sneak up on an armed man," he barked, lowering his gun. Self-recrimination sank like a rock in
his gut. "Don't you realize what I could have done to you?"
If she heard the edge to his voice, she ignored it. "You haven't done anything to or with me, Sandro,
except keep me safe. Why would I think that's going to change now?"
He looked at her standing in the shadows and hoped like hell the cavalry charged in soon. "Every man
has his limits."
"Yours mustbe far and deep, then," she said with a completely straight face, and it was all Sandro could
do not to eliminate the distance between them and crush her in his arms. He didn't understand how she
made him want to smile, when he knew damn good and well in only a few hours she would despise him.
With a casualness that belied the frustration tightening through him, he started toward her. To reach the
bathroom, he had to pass her. "The doors are locked," he said, "the windows secure. No one can get in."
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"You got that right," she agreed, her smile turning rueful. "At least not yet."
Not once in his thirty-two years had Sandro expected to see the day he didn't want a beautiful woman
to want him. Just a few more hours, he told himself.Just a few more godforsaken hours.
"Yell if you need me," he said, moving past her.
"And you'll come?" she asked glibly. "That's all it takes?"
He didn't stop, didn't turn around, just kept walking toward the small bathroom, one deliberate step at a
time. He refused to run like a coward, even though he needed to feel the cold water raining down on him
with the same intensity his body hungered to feel her moving beneath him and above him, with him.
Hell, who was he trying to kid? It wasn't just his body that hungered for her and he damn well knew it.
"Sandro."
He stopped, let her voice slam into him like a bullet. "What?"
"It doesn't have to be this way."
He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply. Exhaled raggedly. Knew better than turning to face her, exposing
himself to those bewitching eyes. Even from the shadows, he would see the green. "You don't have a
damn clue what you're saying, Miranda."
"And I suppose you do?" she asked, and he could tell she was moving toward him.
"Damn straight I do." He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
Unlike her, he clicked the lock.
Irony sluiced in from all directions. He wasn't a monk. Far from it. Granted, he hadn't been with a
woman in too many months to count, but that didn't mean the desire wasn't there, the need. Lately, it had
only been the opportunity lacking.
Now, the desire and the need and the opportunity had presented themselves to him in a tidy,
heaven-sent package. Miranda Carrington was a grown woman. His job was to protect her life, not her
virtue. There was no rule in the ISA operations manual that said he couldn't make love to a beautiful
woman who made it abundantly clear that's what she wanted.
Sandro shucked his clothes, stepped into the cool white bathtub and turned on the shower, all cold.
Water rained down on his shoulders like icy daggers, but he barely flinched. He savored, actually.
Because while there was no ordinance in ISA regulations that prevented him from having Miranda hot
and naked and twined around him, the rule did exist. Despite some of the choices he'd made, despite the
way he was raised, the example set by his philandering parents, he knew right from wrong.
And making love to Miranda would be very, very wrong.
Soon, she would think him a liar, a criminal. Soon, she would hate him. He refused to saddle her with
memories of intimacies between them, intimacies that would turn her stomach in only a matter of hours.
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She didn't deserve that, no matter how badly they burned for each other right now. Soon, desire would
be washed out by deceit.
The scream damn near stopped his heart. It was low and throaty and shocked. Scared. "Sandro!"
He ripped open the shower curtain and grabbed his gun, his pants. The locked door barely slowed him.
He tore it open and ran down the hall. "Miranda!"
Nothing. No more screams, only a silence as cold and still as a graveyard.Cristo, he thought savagely. It
was starting already. They'd come for her.
The reality of events he himself had set into motion caught him grossly unprepared. He hadn't had a
chance to take that one last precaution, the one that would protect her from the brunt of the ugliness.
"Miranda!"
She could be gone already, he knew. Special ops worked quietly and efficiently.
"Stop struggling," growled a guttural voice in broken English, and Sandro's blood ran cold. The broken
English wasn't right. He spun toward the kitchen, where he heard something loud crash to the floor.
Nothing prepared him for the sight awaiting him. The cavalry had not arrived.
The general's lieutenant had.
Chapter 9
«^»
"Expecting someone else?" Petros Racca asked mildly.
Sandro thumbed off the safety and lifted his semiautomatic toward the man who held Miranda pressed
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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