Seducing the Accomplice (10 page)

“Come with me,” he said.

Starting to shake and feeling all the blood leave her head, Sadie walked with Calan toward the customs building. Glancing behind her, she saw that the other guard was searching their vehicle. Calan held the door for her and saw the guard searching their car rental, too. She shared a look with him and didn’t like the worry she caught, however brief it had been.

Inside the building, the man led them past a small but open room with a single counter. A woman stood behind it, absorbed in some kind of papers there, a man standing before her. She glanced up but didn’t pay them much attention.

Sadie watched Calan look around the room, along the ceiling, along the floor, behind the counter and at the woman. He took everything in.

The officer led them down a narrow, short hall to the first door on the right and then gestured for them to go inside.

“Is something wrong?” Calan asked before entering.

“Please wait here.”

“Why are we being detained?”

“I do not know. We were instructed to keep you here for police questioning.”

Police questioning.

Sadie felt faint.

Calan, however, didn’t miss a beat. His hand slipped under his short-sleeved shirt and pulled out his gun. Snatching a fistful of the man’s shirt, he pressed the barrel to his head and leaned close.

“Give the woman our passports,” he said, sounding calm.

With round, fearful eyes and rapid breaths, the man began sputtering unintelligible pleas.

“Quiet or I’ll pull this trigger.”

With a tremble to his hand, the man kept his eyes on Calan while he handed the passports to Sadie.

She took them, gaping at Calan. “What are you doing?”

“If we stay here, we’re dead.” Then to the man, “Walk to our car. If anyone gets in our way, tell them to stop or I’ll kill you.”

Did he really think this was going to work? They’d take a hostage and drive away? They’d never get across the border alive.

“Calan.”

“Be quiet, Sadie, and stay behind me. When we’re outside, I’m going to get you to the car. I want you to get in the backseat and keep low. I’ll do the rest.”

“Oh, my God.” She felt sick she was so scared.

“Do what I tell you, Sadie.” He must see her fear. “You can’t stay here. Do you understand me?”

Unsteadily, she nodded. She didn’t want to stay here.

“Walk behind me.”

He forced the man to walk back down the hall. They didn’t encounter anyone on the way, but when they reached the entrance, the woman behind the counter dropped a stack of papers and her eyes widened. The man she’d been helping had already gone.

“Tell her to put her hands up and don’t move. If she doesn’t do what you tell her, I’ll kill you.” He gave the man a yank. “Tell her in Italian so I can understand you.”

The man spoke rapidly in Italian. The woman raised her hands and didn’t move.

Sadie followed Calan through the front door, stark fear drying her mouth. The sun was dulled by a hazy sky. Their rental car wasn’t far away. Everything was surreal.

A border officer stopped short as he walked toward the building.

“Tell him what you told the woman.” He jabbed the man with the gun. “In Italian.”

The man complied.

The officer was slow to raise his hands and Sadie watched him search around. The booth officer hadn’t noticed them. But the armed officer searching their car did. He straightened as he closed the trunk.

“Tell him to get away from the car,” Calan ordered the man he held at gunpoint.

The man did as asked. The armed guard hesitated.

“Tell him to drop his gun or I’ll shoot you in the head.”

The man sounded terrified as he translated to the other man, who slowly dropped his gun to the ground. The man at gunpoint was sobbing now.

Calan said something to the officer in Italian. The man kicked his gun so that it slid over the dirty ground.

“Sadie, pick up the gun.”

Pulse charging full-out, she grabbed the gun. Crouching low, she moved closer to the car and with a shaky hand reached for the rear door handle. Her fingers slipped off the handle. She bit back an alarmed cry and gripped the handle again, fearfully searching for anyone who might shoot her. The door opened and she crawled into the backseat, dropping the gun on the floorboard and covering her head.

Calan slammed the door shut.

Slowly, she moved her hands down to the cushion of the seat and raised herself up a tiny bit. Peeking over the back of the seat, she saw the booth officer twist on his chair and see them. A couple in the car that had stopped at his window turned to look at them, too.

“Tell them all if they shoot at us or try to follow, I’ll kill you. I have nothing to lose and you know it.”

The man did as Calan said, having composed himself enough to raise his voice so the man in the booth could hear him.

Calan’s dangerous gaze must have convinced him not to argue. He spoke to the other men, who didn’t move.

“Good. Now get in and drive.”

The man hesitated. Sadie saw his fear and wilted inside. This was so not her. She hated to see others suffer, even though she knew they’d be the ones facing death if they stayed.

“Drive,” Calan repeated. “If you do what I say and we get across this border, I’ll let you go.”

The man looked around at the handful of men who aimed weapons at them but hadn’t fired. Then he looked at Calan again.

“I have nothing to lose,” Calan repeated.

The man met his gaze and saw what Sadie saw—a man willing to do anything to get across the border and die doing it.

The man got into the car.

Moving to the other side of the backseat to make room for Calan, Sadie stayed low, wondering crazily if a bullet would hit her through one of the windows.

Calan sat in the backseat and returned the gun to the man’s head. The man’s eyes looked into the rearview mirror as he started the car and backed it away from the building. Men scurried in different positions, aiming guns. Two of them ran for a car, but a third stopped them, speaking urgently.

The officer drove past the border station booth, running over a wooden barricade blocking that lane. Sadie caught sight of the booth officer talking into a phone.

“Drive faster,” Calan shouted.

The man sped the car up. Calan kept glancing behind them.

“They’ll give us a little time, but they’ll follow,” he said to Sadie.

Great. Just what she needed to hear.

A few miles down the road, he told the driver to stop. He did.

“Get out.”

The driver opened the door and got out, stumbling a little. He looked afraid as he stood by the car with his hands raised.

Calan checked him for weapons and took his pistol, tucking it into the front of his pants.

“Lay down on the ground, face down.”

The man hesitated, but not for long. He did as ordered.

Calan got into the car and sped away. “Stay down.”

Did he think she wouldn’t?

He drove like a madman down the highway. Unbelievably, no one caught up to them. But how long of a reprieve did they have?

Chapter 7

S
adie stood before the rundown pension and marveled over the extent of disrepair. “Have you been here before?”

“No.” Sounding insulted over why she’d asked, he headed toward the chipping front door.

“Is that a broken window?” She pointed to the third level, where it looked like someone had thrown a rock through the glass.

He looked up there. “I’m sure there are other rooms.”

“Your friend Odie isn’t a very good travel coordinator. How did she find this place?”

“The same way she found the passport place,” he almost snapped.

He’d remained calm and patient until now. She’d gone at him most of the way here. After nearly being captured by nameless, faceless Albanian gangsters who had friends in Montenegro, she was getting low on tact.

“Did she find the airport you flew into, too?” The one where his pilot had been murdered? She didn’t say it because she didn’t think she had to remind him.

He turned an exasperated look on her.

“I’m just saying…”

“We’ll be safe here,” he said curtly.

She’d refrain from believing that until
after
they checked out. He opened the chipping, creaking door and let her in before him.

The interior didn’t disappoint. Sadie almost felt like whistling her acclaim. A stained rug might once have had a fancy mosaic pattern. She could barely make out the swirling grandeur of the blackened lines between shredding edges and ragged holes. The wood floor was missing pieces of planks and a layer of ground-in dirt covered them all. There were missing nails and nails that needed a hammer before someone cut their feet on them. On the wall, faded pictures hung in cluttered disarray.

A frail old man appeared through a filthy white door that didn’t shut all the way but banged loud once and bounced off the frame, staying open about an inch. He smiled to reveal a few missing front teeth. His wiry gray hair hadn’t seen a comb in a while and his dark skin was badly weathered.

Calan spoke to the man in Italian and soon he had a key.

“I feel safer already,” she quipped and was rewarded with another vexed look.

He led her up a narrow stairway to the third floor. At the top of the stairs, he slid the key into a dark brown door. This room faced the back of the pension, so it couldn’t be the room she’d seen from the front. She looked down the hall. Long rugs that were wrinkled and torn led to a window at the end, tall and filmy with sheer drapes that had once been white.

The last door on the right hung from one hinge. The room with a broken window.

Calan entered their room.

The worn, cracking and dirty tile floor was adorned with a round rug that was equally dirty and fraying badly around the edges. There were two twin-sized beds.

“Do you think the sheets are clean?” she asked.

Putting his duffel bag down, he ignored her and went to the window, parting the curtains.

Probably not.

“At least the glass isn’t broken,” she said, looking around the rest of the small room. There was no telephone and no television and…

“No bathroom?” She gaped at him.

“It’s downstairs.” He glanced back at her but returned to his study of whatever was outside the window. What was he looking for? More goons after the money he should have never taken?

“We have to share it?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I’ll just go outside.” A shrub had to be more sanitary than a toilet in this place.

Turning, he said, “It’s only for a couple of nights.”

“That’s too long for me.” She couldn’t help it. Last night still grated on her. Maybe that’s what made her so bratty right now. It was her defenses lashing out, clamoring for retaliation at the unfairness, even though the blame fell on her as much as him. He hadn’t forced her to do anything. She’d made her own decision. Another bad one, true to her track record, but hers all the same.

After a time, he sighed and moved closer to her. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

Did he know how that only sparked more rebellion in her? “What, being stuck together? There’s an easy solution to that.”

“We aren’t stuck together.”

“Could have fooled me.”

He had to know what she was eluding to. Last night. Having sex. Tonight was going to be a lot different. She was going to keep her distance. Not that she had to try very hard.

“I don’t feel stuck with you,” he said.

She put up her hands. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“Last night…” he hedged anyway. “I should have known better. I should have thought it through first. I didn’t mean to…”

Make her believe she was different? That she mattered more than she actually did? “I’d rather just let it go.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

Rejection came in so many forms, didn’t it? All she could do was stand there feeling the sting of his subtle but unmistakable retreat. He wished he’d never touched her.

“Neither was I,” she said simply. She never did when it mattered. “We both made a mistake.”

When his expression eased of tension, she knew she sounded convincing. She should be glad, but she wasn’t.

This was going to be such a long night.

After foregoing a shower in that awful bathroom—she’d gone and checked and discovered filth beyond comprehension and a toilet that was little more than a porcelain-rimmed hole in the ground—Sadie waited for Calan to finish looking out the window where he’d kept vigil on and off since they’d arrived last night. He’d also checked the hall and gone downstairs and outside in the front, checking the street.

Looking over his shoulder, seeing she was ready, he moved away from the window and stopped before her where she stood by the bed.

“You ready?” he asked.

“For what? More shootouts?”

After flashing a tolerant look, he reached into his duffel bag and dug out the pistol he’d taken from the border patrol officer.

She folded her arms. “Huh. Guess so.”

Removing the magazine, he checked inside and reinserted it into the gun, tugging it to make sure it was in place, ignoring her.

“What are you doing?”

“You need to learn how to shoot.”

She gaped at him while he stuffed the gun into the waist of his pants next to the other one and straightened his gray T-shirt over them.

“What makes you think I don’t know how to use one?”

“It was a little obvious.”

Was it?

“Let’s go.”

“No!” She folded her arms. “I don’t want to learn how to shoot a gun.”

He went to the door and waited, impatience brimming.

Sadie glowered at him. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re Adam Krahl.” With that, she marched past him, her elbow and shoulder bumping him on her way through the doorway. Stomping down the stairs, she felt an unreasonable rise of emotion. Why should some special ops man matter? He wasn’t even a legitimate special ops man. So they’d had promise-free sex one night. Every woman needed to know what that was like, didn’t they? So they knew what to avoid? Now she did and she would never do it again. Lesson learned.

If she ever learned from her mistakes. It wasn’t looking too good right now.

At the rental car, she stopped at the passenger door, waiting to hear the unlock mechanism, a lump in her throat. The fact that he wanted to teach her how to shoot a gun wasn’t what bothered her. And while the intensity of her feeling alarmed her, there was nothing she could do to stop them.

Calan’s tactical boots scuffing the gritty pavement told her he’d stopped behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see his somber face.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She faced the car. “Unlock the door.” He was no different than any other man she’d gotten herself involved with. It didn’t matter why they walked away, they just did. All she wanted to do was go home.

“Sadie…”

The sound of his voice only made her despair more. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he had. She looked down at her hand on the door handle.

He curled his fingers around her arm and pulled her so that she had to let go of the handle and turn.

Then his arm slid around her lower back. She put her hands on his chest, not having the desire to push him away. He was being too sweet.

“I don’t want to feel the way I do about you,” he said.

Expanding warmth thickened her pulse. They both wanted each other but there were too many complications. Neither of them could separate the reality of bad timing from this inexplicable attraction.

“It confuses me,” he added.

Because of his history. Because he felt guilty. Like he might be betraying Kate. She didn’t like that at all, but his honesty meant a lot.

“I don’t want to feel the way I do about you, either,” she said.

A small, lopsided grin lightened his mouth. “Then maybe I shouldn’t teach you how to shoot a gun.”

“Too late.” She smiled through her emotions. Let him worry about what she’d do with a gun. He didn’t have to know she’d never shoot one after today.

Sadie walked beside Calan along the street. He’d parked the rental in a parking lot not far from here. And now he kept looking behind them as they walked along the downtown street. Turning a corner, they walked some more. When they headed for a rougher part of town, she looked at him.

“I thought you were going to teach me how to shoot.”

“I am. But first we need a new car. I don’t want to be seen in the rental.”

Neither did she.

He searched their surroundings. A car pulled to the side of the road and a man got out and headed for a small market, slipping his keys into his coat pocket. Calan took hold of her hand and tugged her with him after the man. Inside the market, Sadie wondered what he was doing as he stopped to inspect some cheese when the man did. Turning from the display, Calan bumped into him.

“Scusi,”
he said.

The man looked momentarily annoyed but returned his attention to the cheese as Calan turned away, taking Sadie’s hand again.

Outside, he headed for the man’s car. Only then did she realize he’d taken the man’s keys. Plucked them right out of the man’s pocket without him even knowing.

“Get in.”

“You’re going to steal it?”

“Get in, Sadie.”

She looked around to make sure no one noticed them and got in. Either she was getting used to this or his confession about not wanting to feel something for her was confusing her the way it did him. She wasn’t even all that scared. As long as no one was dying in front of her…

Tirana faded from her passenger window and an open, shrubby landscape took its place. The mountainous background was breathtaking under a clear blue sky.

“Did Odie find us a shooting range or something?” she couldn’t resist asking.

This time he smiled a little at her sarcasm. “No. I didn’t need Odie for this one. We’ll just go somewhere out of town. I know a place.”

As soon as he said it, he slowed and turned onto a dirt road that wound its way up a mountain. At a clearing among a forest of pine trees, he finally stopped.

Picking up a box of ammunition from the backseat, he opened the car door and got out. Following him away from their stolen car, Sadie saw him remove the also stolen gun from his waist.

He extended the gun to her.

“Is it loaded?”

“Of course it is. Just take it.” He picked up her hand with his free one and placed the handle in her palm.

She had to curl her fingers around the handle to keep from dropping it as he pulled his hand away.

He pointed to a lever. “This will release the magazine.” He did it for her and the magazine popped free of the handle.

“Can’t I just fire it if I have to?”

“Take it out.”

She pulled the magazine from the gun and saw bullets inside. They reminded her of what she’d seen yesterday.

“Put it back in.”

She looked up at him and then shoved the magazine back into the gun, venting her frustration.

“You check it by giving it a tug.” He moved closer and showed her with his fingers rubbing against hers, but she felt the firmness of the magazine.

“It’s full but you can get one more cartridge in the pistol.”

How could he tell?

“This is called the slide.” He pulled the top of the gun back and she saw a cartridge appear in the opening, making room for one more in the magazine.

“Ah,” she murmured.

When he released the slide, he pressed the magazine release and it snapped loose. She removed it.

He took it from her and bent to open the box of ammunition that he’d put on the ground and took out a cartridge.

“You load the magazine rim first. Like this.” He showed her and then removed the bullet to hand it to her along with the gun.

She tried to push the bullet cartridge into the magazine, but it was stiff and difficult with her small fingers. He’d made it look so easy. Her fingers slipped.

“Hold it like this,” he said, moving around her and placing the gun back in her hands.

She looked up and over her shoulder at him. He was all business now. He wanted her to learn how to shoot and that was all that mattered. He didn’t care about her klutziness.

“Use both hands and keep the barrel down.”

Warmth edged its way through her core. He was a good teacher. Patient.

“Here.” He handed her a cartridge.

She took it and worked once again to insert it into the gun. Calan waited until she finally maneuvered the cartridge inside.

“Good. Now put the magazine back into the gun.”

Smiling her triumph, she did as he asked. “I’m not going to shoot anyone, you know.”

He moved around to her backside. “The key to this is lining these two rear sights with the front sight.” He guided her arm so she raised it. “You aim the front sight so that it’s centered between the rear sights. And you adjust your aim if it’s windy.”

She angled her head to look up at him. “I adjust my aim?” She doubted she’d ever get good enough at this to have to remember that.

“I just want you to be able to hit someone before they hit you.”

Put that way, she faced the trunk of a tree about a hundred feet away and made a gallant effort to aim well. She pulled the trigger and the pistol kicked back hard, forcing her hands up and making her bump into Calan.