Return to Tomorrow (21 page)

“What is he talking about?” There was a note of panic in Rachel's voice he'd never heard before. He swung his head back to find her staring at him as though he were a stranger. “What is he trying to say?”

“We aren't dealing for Khen Sa's heroin for ourselves, Rachel,” Lonnie said quietly, proudly. “We're working for the king, himself. Brett told me two days ago.”

“The gold belongs to the Thai government.” Brett covered her hand with his. Her skin was as cold as ice.

“The government? I don't understand.” She not only looked confused, she looked terrified. “Billy?” She turned to him. “Please, explain.”

“We aren't the bad guys, Rachel. We've been workin' with the Thais and Uncle Sam to bring this deal off.”

“I didn't know.” She closed her eyes as though to block out the sight of his face, or to contain some inward pain of her own. “Micah was right all along. You should have told me.” There was a desperate little catch in her voice.

“No one is supposed to know,” Brett said, and there was no way he could disguise the grimness in his voice. “There've been too damned many leaks already.”

“Then please, Brett, don't go.” She looked at Billy, at Lonnie. Her eyes were enormous in her pale face, their color the blue-gray of thunderclouds before a storm.

“We have to go through with it, Rachel. There's no backing out now.”

“Even if it gets you all killed?”

“Yes.”

She laughed then, a funny, choked little cry that froze his blood. She pressed her fingers to her lips. Her voice dropped to a ragged whisper. “Then you are a knight in shining armor, after all. And I'm still nothing but a whore.”

She turned and ran toward the temple.

“Rachel, wait.” Understanding blazed through him. Suddenly he knew what sort of nightmares from the past still haunted her.

“Go after her, man,” Billy hissed. “She's hurtin' bad. She needs you.”

“So does this mission.” His men, his duty came first. The habit was too deeply ingrained to be shunted aside without a struggle.

“I know that.” Billy slapped his hand on Brett's shoulder, made him look at him. “But if this deal goes sour, don't come up to me outside the pearly gates and tell me you wish to hell you'd have told her you loved her one last time.”

So Billy felt it, too, that awareness at the base of his brain, in his gut, that told him something was wrong.

“How long will it take you to check out the padre's truck?”

“Give me thirty minutes.” Billy grinned.

Brett made his decision. “Give Lonnie the word on your way out of the clearing. Come after me when you get back.”

He'd set his own timetable, made his own deadline. He had thirty minutes to be with Rachel. It wasn't much, but it might have to be enough to last them both for a lifetime.

 

R
ACHEL SLID INTO A HEAP
at the base of the well and pulled her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs to help keep the misery trapped inside. It had all come rushing back to confront her in the time it took to draw a breath, in the time it took for her to realize that Brett was the man Micah had always insisted he was—brave, loyal, true to himself. And she was the worst kind of liar, because she lied about herself and to herself.

She felt soiled and shamed and betrayed. Her carefully filtered memories could no longer block out the reality of the past. She remembered it all, the hands, the faces, the bodies, as she was passed among them, one after another….

“Rachel!” Brett's voice came from far away. She didn't look up when his shadow blocked the light; her mind had turned too far inward. “Rachel?” He pulled her to her feet, wrapped his arms around her, but she couldn't feel his warmth and stayed rigid in his arms. He shook her, hard enough that her teeth rattled in her head. She felt his insistence, the strength of his will and knew he wouldn't leave her to the past.

“Brett, let me go,” she begged. “Please, let me go.”

“No.”

He pulled her tighter into his arms. She felt the rough cotton of his shirt as he pressed her face against his chest. She could smell the jungle dust on his clothes, the dampness of his skin, the faint clinging odor of pipe tobacco, and she wanted to stay there, safe and loved, forever.
Except that he wouldn't love her anymore, not after he knew the truth.

“Tell me, Rachel. Don't keep it inside any longer.”

“I can't.” She shuddered and struggled once more to be free. The sanctuary of his embrace was too tempting; it weakened her resolve. She needed to be alone where she could control the horror, shut it away, seal it off again in that hidden corner of her mind, so that she could go on as if nothing had happened and only she would know about the aching numbness in the center of her soul.

“Yes, you can.” He leaned against the base of the wall, pulled her more firmly into the saddle of his hips and tipped her chin up so that she was forced to meet his eyes. “Whatever you did in that camp, you did it to survive.”

She looked at him and her tears blurred the rugged, beloved outline of his face. Watching him was her penance. She had to see his love for her die when she told him the truth. “I sold myself to the camp commanders, each one of them, in turn. And over the course of four years, there were quite a few.” She heard the brittle harshness of her voice and barely recognized it as her own. She waited for his censure, his withdrawal, but it didn't come. He only held her tear-filled gaze and was silent. “When we were hungry enough, or cold enough, I even accommodated the guards so that I could get us another bowl of rice or an extra blanket.” She struggled against closing her eyes to keep from seeing the disgust he must surely feel for her. She couldn't do it; she dropped her lashes and felt the tears fighting to break free.

“Who do you mean by ‘we', Rachel?” His question and quiet, matter-of-fact tone caught her off guard. Her eyes flew open.

“Father Pieter…and the others.”

“What others?” She could have withstood his interrogations if he'd ranted and raved, but his calm, soothing voice, the gentle stroking of his hand on the back of her neck, were her undoing. She turned her cheek into his palm and let him gentle her, as though she were a frightened kitten.

“The other women and children. There were sixteen of us, all Vietnamese, except for Father Pieter and me. They kept us separated from the men's side of the camp. I…I never knew if there were any other Americans or Europeans being held there.”

“You felt responsible for all of them, didn't you? You bartered yourself to keep them all alive.”

“I was the camp whore.” It was an ugly word. It was an ugly truth.

“Were the other women raped?”

“Yes.” She was crying now and couldn't seem to stop. “You don't have to try to point out the error of my reasoning. I know what happened to me wasn't any different than what happened to them. My brain knows that,” she said helplessly, “but my heart says differently.” Dry, choking sobs rose in her throat and she swallowed hard to push them back. “After a while I quit fighting. When they sent for me I went. Willingly.”

“No. You did what you had to do to survive. That's all. That's what we all did over here. Lonnie. Me. Billy. All of us.”

Rachel shuddered. The past was too close; nausea boiled up inside her. “I kept on going until I realized, finally, that I was pregnant. They left me alone after that. I think it was an embarrassment to them. No one wanted to be held responsible if any of the brass from
Hanoi showed up. They moved Father Pieter and me apart from the rest. The guard started taking long walks away from our compound, leaving us alone. Then one day we just walked away into the jungle.”

“Jesus Christ.” His fingers bit into the flesh of her arms. “You've kept this to yourself all this time?”

“I didn't want anyone to know. It was so long ago. The officials in Washington believed me when I said the camp commander raped me and the baby belonged to him. My family believed me because they love me. When I begged them not to talk about it anymore, they did as I asked. They think I'm noble and brave and good because I survived and I'm going on with my life, as if it matters….” She laughed and shook her head. “How wrong they are.”

“You were a victim, Rachel,” he said between clenched teeth. “A prisoner of war. You had no choice. Nothing that happened to you, nothing you did was your fault.” She shook her head, letting the scalding, shameful tears free at last. “Rachel.” There was a note of desperation, of pleading, in his voice she couldn't resist. “Look at me! Listen to what I'm saying. I love you, Rachel. What do I have to do to make you believe me?”

“Don't say that.” She lifted her hand and covered his mouth with her fingers. “Don't. Not now. All these months I've lied to everyone, lied to myself, most of all. I passed judgment on all of you. I thought I was better. I thought I was wrong to love you. Not because of me, but because of what I believed you to be, a common criminal. I was so damned smug, so damned self-deceiving. I'm not worth your love.”

“Yes, you are.” Brett grabbed her arms, shook her so
hard that her hat fell off and her hair tumbled around her shoulders. Her head dropped back and she was forced to look at him, be caught up in the limitless depths of his blue eyes once more. “I love you. God, Rachel, there's no time.” He pulled her close, set his mouth on hers and kissed her as though he'd never let her go.

Rachel tasted the salt of her tears on his lips, let his tongue enter her mouth, let him set the pace of a joining that was as close as they could come to another more intimate joining of hearts and bodies. She felt a slow burning heat start to melt the ice inside her, push back the stark, cold terror in her soul.

“I promised you new memories, Rachel. Let them start now. Let go of the past.” His hands tangled in her hair; he held her face still. He kissed her again, a kiss that went on and on, as if he could never get enough of her.
As if this kiss must last forever.
Fear clutched at her.

“I love you.” She whispered the words over and over again as his lips skimmed her cheeks, her eyelids, the bridge of her nose. “I love you. Stay with me.”

He groaned, then lowered his mouth to hers once more, and she kissed him back with a desperation born of knowing she might never see him again.
How could she find her way out of the darkness of her soul without his strength to guide her, without him beside her to help her accept and banish the past?

“Stay with me.”

“I can't. God, how I want to, but I can't.” He held her pressed so tightly against him she couldn't breathe. “I want to make love to you. Prove to you how beautiful you are to me, inside and out.”

“We need time, Brett.” She cradled his face between her hands. She could feel the hard line of his jaw beneath her fingertips, the tension in his neck and shoulders, as she let her hands slide down to rest above the strong, heavy beat of his heart. “But we don't have time, do we?”

“I set these plans in motion long before I met you. Khen Sa can't be allowed to get his heroin to market. We can't let him ruin any more lives.”

“Like Lonnie,” she said very softly.

“And countless others. We can bring Khen Sa to his knees if we get the heroin without giving up the gold. He's never brought his entire crop into one location before this. He's always been too wily for that.”

“Until you offered him more gold than he could refuse.”

“And now I have to make sure he ends up with no gold and no heroin.”

“Brett?” She rested her head against his chest, still shaken and weak in the knees but comforted by the beat of his heart beneath her cheek.

“What, love?” He stroked her shoulder, let his hard, strong palm rest against the softness of her throat.

“Brett, I'm scared.” She couldn't stop herself from voicing her fears. “I have a feel—”

“Colonel.”

Rachel lifted her head, turned within the protective circle of Brett's arm, toward the sound of Billy's voice. He was standing in the archway leading into the sheltered courtyard. Rachel rubbed her hand across her cheeks to wipe away the tears.

“What did you find?”

Billy crossed the small courtyard in three swift strides. He held out his hand. “This.” A small gray box rested on his palm. A tiny red light blinked steadily on its surface.

“Activated.” Brett frowned, letting his hands slide down her arms to her wrists. “Your brothers are looking for you.”

“Can you tell how long it will be before they find this place?” Rachel asked.

“No. And we can't stick around to find out.”

Brett let go of her wrists.
He was leaving her.
Just like that, going away, possibly to his death, and she would never know his touch again.

“I'm going with you,” she announced, bending down to retrieve her hat. She pushed her hair up under it and set it firmly on her head. She avoided looking directly at Brett or Billy. “I'll leave that thing on the temple steps with a note for Simon and Micah, telling them I'm safe with you.”

“You won't be safe with me.” Brett's voice was no longer that of a lover, of the man who had pulled her back from the edge of despair only minutes ago. “You're staying right here and greeting your brothers in person. That's an order.” He was a soldier, a leader, and he expected to be obeyed.

“I'm not being left behind.”

“I'm not taking you with me and have to worry about your safety, as well as my men's.”

“I can take care of myself.” She refused to be cowed by the blazing anger in his voice.

“You're not coming with us. For God's sake, Rachel, act like the intelligent woman you are and don't fight me
on this. Sit here in the sun and wait for your brothers to come and get you.” For one heart-stopping moment she saw his love and fear for her mirrored in his expression. Then a mask dropped into place and he was once more the soldier of fortune, the hardened warrior she neither knew nor understood.