Darkness Chosen: Into The Shadow Part 12

She looked at the Madonna, and she suspected the truth. "What deal did the evil man make with the devil?"

Warlord stood with his back to her and stared into the basin. "One that d.a.m.ned his descendants to h.e.l.l."

"Are you a descendant of that evil man?"

"Youare a woman of good sense. You donat believe such a dumb story."

Shead seen the child, dead for a thousand years, open her eyes. Shead lived Warlordas memories. Shead heard Warlordas flesh sizzle when head held the icon. In a broken voice she said, "I donat know what I believe."

"It doesnat matter, anyway." He continued to stand with his hands in the water and his back to her. "Iam sending you away."

For a moment, his casual tone muted the impact of his words. Then she understood, and elation tore though her . . . followed by an inexplicable sense of loss. And why should she feel loss? This was the goal shead wanted, demanded, struggled toward achieving. She could go home knowing she had never yielded to his s.e.xual domination. Leaving now would allow her to keep her pride and integrity.

Yet still the loss was there.

And the fear, for she knew he would never let her go unless something was terribly, horribly wrong.

"Why? Whatas happened?" she asked.

"My raiding has p.i.s.sed off armies on both sides of the border, and they brought in an experienced mercenary troop to take me out and keep things under control. The Varinskis are well-known for their terror tactics. Itas too dangerous for you to stay."

Head brought this on himself, then. All right. "Iall need my boots and some clothes that fit me."

He turned to face her, and she was shocked to see him laughing. "Practical, prosaic Karen." Reaching under the table, he found a key, handed it to her, and pointed. "In that trunk."

She rose. "Iall get dressed."

He walked to the tent flap, lifted it, and listened. She could almost see him go on alert. "Hurry."

She didnat need to be told twice. She stripped off the robe and got into the clothes with swift efficiency. When at first he helped, she tried to shove him away, but it soon became clear that he had no lascivious intentions. He worked to place weapons on her body. He strapped a Glock around her chest and a knife up her sleeve, and he loaded her backpack with rounds of ammo and dried rations. He filled a canteen with water and placed it on her belt, and gave her a mult.i.tool that matched the one shead lost in the rock slide. He placed a compa.s.s and GPS in her pocket and, miracle of miracles, he hung her pa.s.sport around her neck.

Her pa.s.sport . . . shead thought it lost in the rockfall. "Where did you get that?"

"I stole it from your tent many, many weeks ago."

"You a.s.s," she mumbled, but right now she was grateful. Having her pa.s.sport would expedite her trip homea"and keep her from having to apply to her father for help.

As they worked, she knew he was listening to something outside. At first she heard nothing, the thick tapestries insulating her from the tumult outside. Slowly the clamor pierced the silence in the tent. The noise grew, growled, adding an edge to her haste.

When she had finished lacing her boots, he knelt in front of her. "Head for Kathmandu. Donat stop walking for eighteen hours. Donat trust anyone unless youare in the American emba.s.sy, and even then, be wary." He looked up, his eyes dark and serious. "No matter whata" survive."

"I will."

"I know." He went to the back of the tent and ripped the seam open.

Noise from the battle blasted into the tent. She heard screams, gunshots, growls of fury, and brutish war cries.

He flipped a section of the walk up and around, then laid it out across the gap. There was the bridge shead sought when she escaped before. "Remember everything I told you."

"I do."

"When you get back to the States, can you do one more thing for me?"

Call his mother, she supposed, and say rea.s.suring stuff. "Sure. Anything."

Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her. Kissed her deeply, swiftly, with the intent to brand himself on her.

She didnat want to, but she responded. She tasted him, knew him, absorbed him. And, yes, felt loss for a relationship and a man doomed from the start.

Pulling away, he looked into her eyes. "Somehow, someday, I will come for you. Watch for me." He kissed her again. Turned away. Ran toward the front of the tent. Pushed the tent flap open. The last thing she saw was Warlord leaping off the platform and into the melee, a pistol blazing in each hand.

He wasnat there to hear, but she answered anyway: "Iall do anything but that." Picking up her backpack, she walked across the bridge.

She didnat look back.

Chapter Thirteen.

Montana, five weeks later Karen stood in the doorway of her fatheras study. The heavy burgundy curtains were closed. The walnut-paneled walls were dark. A new elk head hung above the cold fireplace.

Pen in hand, Jackson Sonnet sat at his desk in a pool of light, a short, broad-shouldered, gray-haired man, scowling as he read the papers before him.

"Daddy?" Her voice broke a little.

He froze. Paused. Without looking up, without a note of welcome or relief or joy, he said, "Itas about time you got home."

Her breath caught on a bright shard of broken hope. Just this once, when he didnat know if she was alive or dead, shead hoped . . . She put down her bag.

It contained her pa.s.sport, her wallet, enough clothes to last a couple of days . . . and the mangled remains of her slave bracelets. When shead reached Timbuktu, shead had a jeweler cut them off. Head offered her a nice sum for the twenty-two-carat gold; shead refused. Because she could get a better price somewhere else, shead told herself. Because she might need the money . . . or because she wanted to cast the bracelets into the fires of Mount Doom, where they would return to the home of evil from whence they came.

She winced.

She might still be a little traumatized.

She advanced into the room. She wanted to fall on her fatheras neck and weep out her agony, but she knew better. No matter that shead vanished into the Himalayas; this was no different from all the other homecomings.

So she gave her report. "The mountain collapsed on the site. The rockfall filled the valley. The hotel canat be built."

"You took five weeks to get around to telling me that?" He looked up, his eyes the light, piercing blue that had always, always terrified her as a child.

Shead thought long and hard about what to say to her father. He wouldnat care that shead suffered humiliation; he would see only that she suffered no crippling injury. So she decided on the truth, or at least the least revealing, least mortifying version of the truth. "I was kidnapped and held captive."

"By whom?"

"One of the warlords who populate the area." The Warlord . . . but she wasnat going into that. She ran her tongue around the tender inner flesh of her mouth, and for a brief second tasted the memory of his blood. On the edge of her mind a nightmare hovered, ready to be replayed.

She wasnat going to think about him. Ever.

"Before or after the rockfall?"

"He saved me, then kept me."

Jackson slammed his chair back so hard it hit the far wall.

Karen flinched.

Jackson came to his feet, his heavy hands clenched into fists. His voice low with contempt, he asked, "Do you expect me to believe that?"

"Yes. Why not? What do you think happened?"

"Youave been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with this guy because he had a black leather coat and a motorcycle."

"How did you know that?" How did he know anything about Warlord?

"You ran away with him and when he was tired of you, you come to me with this c.o.c.k-and -bull storya""

Where was he getting his information, with enough truth in it to make her look bad? "Dad. I canat believe you havenat sent someone to take pictures of the hotel site."

"I did," he admitted.

"Did you happen to notice the millions of tons of rock obliterating the base of the mountain? I didnat fake that rockfall." She was incredulous. "Not even you could be that paranoid."

Wrong thing to say. Definitely the wrong thing.

Jackson flushed an ugly red. His harsh voice rose. "Do you know how much that project cost me?"

"It almost cost you your daughter!"

"My daughter," he sneered. "Is that what you think?"

Then he looked surprised, as if someone else had spoken.

The silence in the room was profound, and she found herself listening to the rasp of her own breathing. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," he muttered.

"You mean, Iam not . . . your daughter?"

His gaze dropped, and he actually looked discomfited. "It doesnat matter."

"Of course." Her hands hung loosely at her sides, but her brain was racing. "That explains everything. The indifference, the impatience, the constant withholding of affection and approval . . . Iam not yours."

"What difference does it make? Iave had the trouble of raising you. Iave paid for your education. " His brief moment of remorse faded; he was working himself into a temper.

"Get mad." For the first time, she understood him. "Thatas the way you deal with everything that makes you look bad or feel uncomfortable."

"What man wouldnat get mad? A wife whoas out s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g while I work, and all I get out of it is a worthless child. If your mother had to leave me with a kid, why the h.e.l.l did it have to be a girl?"

Karen didnat care about his condemnation. She had to find out. . . . "Who was my father?"

"My best friend. Who the h.e.l.l else?"

She could almost taste Jacksonas bitterness. "Who was your best friend?"

"Dan Nighthorse. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Blackfoot Indian."

"I remember him." Barely. He was a shadowy figure hovering in the background of her mind; those early memories were mostly taken up with the recollection of her motheras hands, her motheras smile, her motheras eyes . . . her motheras death.

"He was always skulking around here, in between taking tourists into the mountains to live off the land and see the beautiful scenery. She loved to climb, was an expert, wanted us to go up into the hills to commune with nature, like a couple of hippies. Iave got no patience for that c.r.a.p."

"I know." Jackson might build hotels that catered to trekkers, but unless he could hunt, unless an animal died by his hand, he wasnat interested in camping.

"She nagged me, and finally I told her to stop bothering me and go with him." He looked up at the collection of antlers that lined his walls. "I canat believe she fell for his pile of bull."

A horrifying thought struck her. "Did you kill them?"

"Your parents? No, I didnat kill them, no matter how much they deserved it. I was working while they were out romping around in the wilderness, and a freak snowstorm set in. Your mother stepped off the G.o.dd.a.m.ned cliffa""

"I know." Karenas nightmares had always been of falling.

"Nighthorse broke his neck trying to rescue her, and she d.a.m.ned near froze before the Civil Air Patrol spotted her and brought her in. My father called me and told me to come home and say good-bye to my wife, and he informed me then what everybody else knewa" that theyad been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around behind my back for years."

"I remember Grandpa." A tall, big-bellied, nasty man who abused his son, ignored her, and sent the housekeeper fleeing.

"When I got to the hospital, they told me the internal bleeding couldnat be stopped. Like I cared." He stopped, cleared his throat. He was trembling with some great emotion.

Karen realized he suffered. From humiliation, she supposed.

"Abigail wanted my promise to raise you as if you were my own."

"You gave it to her?" Karen couldnat imagine her father yielding to pressure, not even from a dying woman.

"I gave it to her." He sneered again, but this time he was facing the mirror. "My father said I was a fool, and I was. But I loved her. Bet you didnat know that."

"You . . . loved her?"

"G.o.d only knows why. She wasnat good for anything. Couldnat keep the house tended. Couldnat keep the ranch going. She whined because I didnat spend enough time with her. She b.i.t.c.hed because I took my pleasures while I traveled. Then she cheated on me with my best friend."

"Imagine that." Everything inside Karen, all the parts that had been unsure, in wonder, seemed to grow strong. Her lungs breathed, her heart beat, her balance was so sure not even an earthquake could throw her off the earth. And all the emotional parts of her, the ones that held on to hope, fell away at the light that shone on her life. "What made you tell me this now? Why, when Iave done nothing but work for you, try to please you, perform when no other cana"why decide I betrayed you?"

"Phil told me."

"Phil?" She tried to comprehend. "Phil Chronies?"