Afterglow (39 page)

He and Dakota boosted a car at the airport and drove the hundred and fifteen kilometers to Nea Roda. Rand switched vehicles halfway, and then again twenty-five kilometers outside of the small tourist town.

There’d been no indication that anyone was following them, yet he’d felt eyes on his back, off and on, the entire trip.

“If nothing else, when we’re caught, we’re going to get nailed for grand theft auto,” Dakota said, sitting back and kicking off her shoes. She was wearing the short black wig, blowing around her cheeks from the open window. She didn’t seem concerned by the possibility that they’d be thrown in jail sooner than later.

“You can always tell them you were a hostage,” Rand told her lightly, turning into a half-full public parking lot. “Grab your stuff. We’ll walk from here.”

“I wouldn’t let you take the rap alone. These guys were after me too.”

There were only a few hotels on the narrow peninsula with its spectacular beaches and touristy shops. Rand didn’t want to check into a small, intimate hotel, not this close to the endgame. The biggest hotel, however, was closed for renovation. “Excellent,” he said, seeing the sign and the scaffolding. The defunct hotel would be perfect for one night.

“The hotel not being open is a
good
thing?”

“It is for us. We don’t have to present our passports or ID to check in.”

Dakota lowered her sunglasses and gave the building a dubious look. “It looks as though it might fall down around our ears.”

“No construction workers. It’s perfect.”

They blended with a group of tourists, picking up camping supplies, then casually strolled around the back of the hotel.

“Empty,” Rand noted as he walked right in through an unlocked side door. It was screened from the street by a hedge that seriously needed trimming and watering.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Dakota said as they made their way up the wide, uncarpeted staircase to the second floor.

“You’d prefer we were being chased?”

“The way my heart’s pounding, we might as well have been. Do you think the bathrooms work?”

He pushed open a door at random. “Let’s see.” The room was empty, the carpet ripped out. It was stuffy from the day’s heat, but it had been swept clean. Dakota reached through the curtains and opened the window, which looked out over the weedy swimming pool behind the hotel, letting in the warm late-afternoon breeze. It smelled like the ocean.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Rand felt that he had a moment to catch his breath. He went into the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and tried the taps.

Dakota tossed her heavy bag into a corner and was standing back from the window looking out. “We have a toilet and cold running water,” he told her, coming up behind her to wrap his arms around her waist.

She crossed her arms over his and laid her hands on his forearms as she leaned into his chest. “All the comforts of home.”

“About three hours of daylight left. Want to grab a shower while you can still see where everything is?”

“I know where everything is, but you can always come in and remind me.”

He smiled against her hair. “Let’s check the location of the bad guy first.”

Dakota shook the metal vial case in her hand. “Just did. Strangely,” her eyes shone with excitement, “moving this way. Who would’ve thunk it?”

He let go of her and stepped back. As much as he wanted the moment to stay frozen in time, and to take her up on her offer of sharing the shower, they were here with a purpose. He wanted to leave at first light, preferring not to be trying to read a map by the beam of the small flashlight.

They’d bought a map of the area earlier. Rand spread it out on the floor, folding it so that it was a square showing the peninsula of Athos. The area was thirty miles long and about seven miles wide. He shook his head as he realized that he was automatically converting kilometers to miles; old habits died hard. “Show me.”

Holding her trusty GPS, she sank onto the floor on her knees, leaning over to look. “On the western side and up a bit.” She placed a fingertip on the monastery of Xenofon, then slid her finger a little farther north. “Right about here.”

Up a bit
looked like five or six miles. And while the peninsula was dotted with monasteries, all of them marked on the map, there was nothing in the spot Dakota was indicating. He didn’t ask her if she was positive. If she said the guy was there, he was there.

He was through doubting Dakota North.

“I see roads on the map; are we driving?” she asked.

“Nope. Those roads are more like glorified goat paths. The going would be
very
slow and we’d stick out like the proverbial sore thumb; we might as well call ahead and tell them we’re coming.” He flipped the map over, pointing to a small inset listing travel services. “We could catch a tourist boat, followed by either a long walk or, according to this, an unreliable thirty-minute bus trip. Followed by another hike.”

It seemed that every option guaranteed they’d be spotted. He briefly considered an airdrop—but the sound of the plane would alert those on the ground, and it would also involve more people. Right now, Rand trusted no one. Other than Dakota. Well, almost no one. He pulled out his phone.

“Are you calling a cab?” Dakota sat back and grinned.

“Calling your boss again.” He reached out and brushed his hand over her bright red hair as the phone was picked up on the other end. “Who do we know with contacts in Greece? Mount Athos area, to be precise,” he asked Zak Stark without preamble.

“Be more specific,” his friend said, not asking for details about the why and how of Rand’s situation. “I’ll make a call.”

Rand was very specific, then disconnected. “He’ll call back,” he told Dakota.

“Zak knows people.”

“He does indeed.”

Rand pulled out the travel guide and settled beside her on the floor, leaning against the wall. She lay down, placing her feet in his lap. With an arm flung over her eyes, she ordered, “Read to me.”

Rand ran a finger up and down the arch of her bare foot. “According to the protocol of the monastic state, only men are allowed to visit Agion Oros, Mount Athos to you, and even then, it’s a lengthy, time-consuming process to be approved for entry.”

“We’re going to sneak over there?”

“
I’m
going to sneak over there with Zak’s help.
You
are going to stay right here and direct me in.”

She lifted her arm off her face and gave him an incredulous look. “Are we playing this same song again? Remember the loss of cell phone connection in Paris? What if that happens again? If we lose contact, then you have no clue where to go. They could be anywhere in, what? More than two hundred square miles? That’s ridiculous. I’m going with you.”

“If we’re caught, it’s going to be ugly.
Very
ugly. International-incident ugly.” Like dead ugly.

She put her arm back over her eyes. “Then we better make sure that we aren’t caught. Furthermore, if we don’t catch this bastard and stop him, it’s going to be very ugly for thousands of people.”

He couldn’t argue with her reasoning, so he settled in to wait for Zak, gently rubbing her feet and enjoying the brief lull in the action.

Zak called back ten minutes later. “I have the name of a fisherman in Trypiti who’ll give you some useful gear and firepower. He’ll take an extra boat, escort you to Dafni. You’re on your own for the last leg; looks like a little under seven miles from the port to Mount Athos. My friends need more info, but you’ll have backup if you want it. Can you give me something to give them?”

Rand wasn’t going to say no to backup. His own men were dead or AWOL. He gave Zak a quick rundown of the events to date. When he was done, he snapped his phone shut, gave Dakota’s feet one last squeeze, and announced, “Change of plans.”

THICK, SCUDDING CLOUDS OBLITERATED
the sky as the wind came up, making the watery vista as dark as a witch’s heart. The darkness was oppressive, but it lasted only a few minutes before that batch of clouds blew aside and the stars and moon appeared to light their way again for a few minutes.

God,
Dakota looked at the gleam of white highlighting the choppy waves,
we’re in the middle of
nowhere. And nowhere was noisy. The slap of the waves on the hull, the splash of oars, the sound of the wind, the
thump-thump-thump
of her own heartbeat resonating in her ears.

The little boat, which seemed ridiculously small for the three of them at the start of their journey, now seemed insanely tiny on the vastness of the open water. The fisherman turned off the engine twenty minutes before, and he and Rand were rowing hard against the swells. Wishing there’d been a third set of oars so she didn’t feel useless, Dakota huddled in the middle, hanging on to her seat with both hands for dear life.

They’d agreed on no talking the closer they got to the steep and rocky coast. Sound carried over the water, their escort had told them when they’d left three hours ago. She didn’t have the energy to spare, anyway.

Dakota gripped the wood seat on either side of her hips. Not that she could feel it; she’d lost sensation in her hands and feet. Whatever was covered by the black slicker she’d pulled on was wet, and whatever wasn’t covered by the slicker was wetter. The two men didn’t have time to worry about being drenched as they fought the choppy water to keep the boat afloat and in the direction they wanted to go.

The fisherman sat in back, Rand facing her in the front of the boat. The oars dipped and gleamed in the intermittent moonlight. Silver streamers poured off the oars with each upward stroke. Splash, dip, lift. Rhythmic. Dakota concentrated on Rand’s heavy oilskin jacket.

She now knew firsthand that one could have claustrophobia in the middle of the ocean. Okay, strictly speaking, it wasn’t the ocean, just a sea. Thank God she wasn’t seasick as well. She wasn’t sure
how
she wasn’t seasick, because the angry waves slapping against the wooden hull made the boat go not only up and down but side to side. At times, she was sure it levitated.

If it weren’t for the oppressive sensation caused by her claustrophobia, her fear of drowning at any moment, and the realization that once they set foot on land she could be killed, this would be the adventure of a lifetime. Icy water splashed over her shoulders.

Against the darkness, the GPS numbers glowed brightly in her mind’s eye. Their quarry was well ahead of them. Barely moving. Had he arrived at his final destination? Their final destination? They were going to find the lab when they reached land, she was sure of it. Sure, and terrified of what, or whom, they’d find.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Rand leaned forward and gripped her fingers. Wait a minute—why wasn’t he
rowing
? As much as she wanted his hands on her, right now she’d prefer they were firmly gripping the oars. What on earth was he doing?

He let go of her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders. Warmth. Comfort. The bump and scrape as the small boat struck the rocky beach. Rand anticipated their arrival, she had no idea how, since there’d been no indication beforehand.

He spoke a few low words to the man who’d rowed them across the water; then she helped him untie the second boat from the first with mostly numb fingers, and the two of them climbed ashore. In moments, the fisherman was back on the water without a backward wave.

The wind off the water was cold, and she shivered as she helped Rand slide the even smaller boat up the rocks to the tree line ten feet away. The rocks were slippery underfoot and Dakota moved carefully; this wasn’t the time to twist an ankle, or worse.

“Okay. You can use the flashlight—keep the beam low, and cover it partially with your fingers. Yeah. Like that.” She held it so he could see to tie the boat to the twisted trunk of an old olive tree.

Rand shrugged off the backpack he wore and tossed it aside as he started unzipping his slicker. “Sorry, but we need to leave our jackets here for the return trip. We won’t need them when we get up top.”

She wasn’t too sure about that. It might be summer, but until the sun came up, the wind had a bite. She was already chilled, but she stripped off the slicker. The wind sliced right through her wet clothing, shrinking her skin a size, as she handed him the jacket. “I’m glad to hear that you believe we’ll
have
a return trip.”

He stuffed both into the boat, securing them under the bench, then picked up the pack. “Let’s get some branches, make sure the boat’s well covered, and get this show on the road.”

They broke off a few leafy limbs from the surrounding shrubs to hide the boat, then stood back and waited for the moon to reappear, to see if they needed to add more. After a few minutes, when the moon coyly remained in hiding, they decided there was no more time to waste, and it would have to do.

The breeze smelled of the ocean—salt and iodine, with a faint tang of licorice. The mastic used in Rapture. So it
did
grow here. Her heart did a little skip and a jump, a combo of terror and exhilaration.

Rand took her hand just as she was about to shove it into her armpit for warmth. His fingers closed around hers, warm and strong. “There’s an abandoned monastery just over this rise,” he said, pitching his voice low but carrying over the susurrus of the waves lapping at the smooth stones of the beach. “We can change into our dry clothes there.”

The incline from the sliver of rocky beach was steep, an almost vertical fifty or sixty feet. Six stories. Dakota gave it an assessing glance when the moon reappeared. Holy hell, it looked dangerous, especially in the dark.

“Maybe there’s a way around … ?” she suggested hopefully. She’d never gone up anything more arduous than a flight of stairs in heels.