Soldier's Redemption (22 page)

He’d changed a little in the hours they’d spent apart. He’d acquired a hat and a plaid jacket and a mustache, but it was him, in the flesh. It had taken every ounce of self-control she possessed not to reach out to him.

She wasn’t sure how involved her uncle was in this horrible ring Dasha and Ian were running. She wanted him to be an innocent victim, but she kept going over what Cole had told her of the past and the way her uncle had spoken when she questioned him. He’d been hiding something, she knew that; maybe she’d always known that.

As much as she wanted to blame Ian Banderas for everything, Ian had been a small boy thirty years before. He couldn’t have been responsible for destroying Cole’s family.

She wanted a chance to tell Cole she should have given him the opportunity to explain things better, she should have tried to keep an open mind and not been blinded by family loyalty and her own pride. Lovers worked things out and they helped each other. Despite the way he’d lied to her, she was finally able to admit that the depth of their feelings for each other was real. No man could fake what she’d seen in Cole’s eyes a few moments before, and no woman could deny what Skylar felt in her heart.

But he mustn’t try to help her until she found Malina, and she had no way of telling him that. Her gut said he was on this plane, but she could hardly parade around and look for him. She’d been told to keep quiet, answer only to the name Susan, and stay in her seat. She had the uneasy feeling there would be additional drugs: it was a ten-hour flight. But this time, come hell or high water, she wouldn’t take them. She fell asleep with that thought.

* * *

T
HANKS TO TIME CHANGES
, it was still the middle of the night when they landed. When going through customs, Cole strained to keep an eye out for Skylar. He cleared before her group and went into the waiting area where he took up a spot around a corner.

For an instant, he toyed around with alerting the authorities but abandoned it. Who would believe him? Besides, he had to trust Skylar’s motives for advancing this charade. There must be something important at stake, and he didn’t know what it was.

The group finally emerged from customs. Cole couldn’t take his gaze off Skylar. She looked pale and tired, but the sparkle was back in her eyes, and he could tell she was pretending to be as sleepy as everyone else. She kept with the group, but as she passed him, she glanced up, and Cole swore she mouthed the word, “Follow.”

After they had gone on by, Cole did just that. They went through baggage claims together and moved in a group outside where the sun was just beginning to rise.

The embassy woman began talking to the girls. Cole made a big deal out of looking like a perturbed commuter awaiting a ride. Eventually, a harried-looking man arrived. The embassy woman gave him a manila envelope bulging with papers and sent him back inside with the other girls as if to catch a new flight.

The woman hailed a cab, and Cole saw Skylar and her get into the cab. He got in the one right behind it and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Stay with the cab in front, but don’t be too obvious,” he said.

The driver got into the spirit of the thing and stayed a good distance behind. The ground was covered with snow, the tree limbs bare and black as they drove into the countryside. The burgeoning light lay low and heavy in the leaden sky.

It took well over two hours before the cab turned into the private estate of a huge house in a valley outside the city. The gates closed behind it. Cole got out of the cab and stood for a moment considering his options as his breath condensed around his face.

Prudence said to guard the gate and wait for what comes next. A normal guy might enlist the aid of the cops. But Cole, in his heart of hearts, was still a soldier, and sometimes a soldier had to take calculated risks.

He got back in the cab. “Drive me to the nearest town,” he said. “And hurry.”

* * *

T
HE WAY
D
ONALD
K
ESTER
looked Skylar up and down gave her the creeps. His patrician face was cold, his gaze calculating. He looked like he ate kittens for breakfast.

His wife, Esther, wasn’t much better. Prim, thin and with a beaked nose, she and her husband made a dandy pair. “This girl is a ragamuffin,” Esther said in clipped English.

“Mrs. Kester, please. She will clean up very pretty,” Dasha responded.

“Look at her hair. It appears to have been cut with a lawn mower.”

The man blinked as he raked Skylar’s body with his eyes. “We’ll take her. You can have the other one back.”

“Back?” Dasha said. “What do you mean, back? I thought you wanted two of them. I can’t take Malina back.”

“We no longer wish to support her,” the man said. “She cries all the time.”

“Is she good with your children?” Dasha asked.

Esther tilted her long head. “Shall we just be blunt? Our children are away at a boarding school most of the time. The girl is here to do my bidding and provide...entertainment...for my husband. She is slow with the housework and uncooperative in the bedroom.” She looked at Skylar again and sighed. “At least this one seems to have a little fire in her eyes.”

Dasha, assuming Skylar couldn’t understand a word of this, smiled as though to reassure her everything was fine.
You unmitigated bitch
were the words that sailed through Skylar’s mind as she returned the smile. “I’ll have to contact my partner,” Dasha continued. “I can’t possibly take her today. A new...situation...will have to be found. Tomorrow morning would be the soonest.”

“That’s acceptable,” the man interrupted. “Now, tell the girl to come with me. I’ll be right back to complete this transaction.”

Dasha switched languages and directed Skylar to follow the man. As he led her across the foyer, Skylar was afraid he’d try to grab her and she’d have to let him have it. She couldn’t let that happen; she had to find Malina. Then it was just a matter of applying a little Yankee ingenuity. Breaking a window, perhaps, appealing to the other servants, such as the guy who had ushered them in a short while ago. If Malina didn’t speak English, how could she plead her case with Americans? But Skylar was here now. Things would change—and soon, too.

“You’re a pretty little thing,” Mr. Kester said, turning to leer at her. He had to know she supposedly couldn’t understand him, but he continued anyway. “You’ll have to share a room tonight with that wretch, but she’ll be gone tomorrow and then you and I can get acquainted.”

Over my dead body,
Skylar whispered in her head.

He took her up a flight of stairs, then unlocked a door at the end of a hallway. With a none too gentle push, he sent her inside the room. “Welcome to your new home, Katerina,” he said as he shut the door and relocked it. Skylar listened to his retreating footsteps.

“Katerina?”

Skylar turned. A young version of Svetlana looked up at her from a chair across the room.

“You’re not Katerina,” the girl said, her voice falling.

“You must be Malina. I’ll explain everything.”

“Did you bring help?” Malina asked.

“I’m not positive,” Skylar said, “but either which way, I’ll get you out of here and soon, too.”

“Are you nuts? Take a look around you. There are no windows, and the only door is locked. I’m never allowed around the others without supervision. You’ve just become a prisoner, like me.”

* * *

H
E WASN’T POSITIVE SHE
was still in the house, but he had to proceed under the assumption she was. The day had gone on forever, but three hours before a lone woman had driven away in an old car so he assumed some of the help had left. Then about an hour ago, he’d seen the upstairs lights flicker off. The family should be asleep by now. Time to go to work.

“Are you sure you just want me to hang around out here?” Tyler asked.

“Yeah,” Cole replied. He’d called both his brothers from town. John was caught in the Midwest’s worst snowstorm of the century, but Tyler had actually been in New York, with his wife, Juliet, where they’d been enjoying a small vacation before the upcoming birth of their first child. He’d dropped everything and driven up here, arriving a little while ago. He was as big as Cole, about two years older, a good-looking guy partial to vests and jeans and boots as befitted a cattle rancher. Cole had spent the past thirty minutes bringing him up to speed with what was going on here and in Kanistan.

“I don’t like you going in there alone,” Tyler insisted.

“I need you out here,” Cole said. “If things go wrong, you’ll need to make them right. And if they go right, I need you to cover my ass. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, then I guess it’s time to call in reinforcements and let the dust settle where it may.”

“You’ve got an hour,” Tyler said.

“And if they do go wrong,” Cole added, “tell Skylar I love her and I’m sorry for everything.”

Tyler walked back to his truck, calling over his shoulder, “You can tell her that yourself.”

That was the plan, but everyone knew things didn’t always go according to plan.

Chapter Seventeen

Cole’s foray into the nearest sporting-goods store had resulted in snow camouflage gear, a spotting scope, good boots, rope, a grappling hook, a lethal-looking hunting knife and a few other supplies that he wore strapped to his body. He’d spent the afternoon preparing his gear and scouting the layout.

The grappling hook sailed over a spot in the wall where the mortar between the rocks had crumpled, making it a good place to scramble up the face. He dropped down inside the property for the second time that day, taking the major impact on his right leg to spare his left knee, but the pain still jolted him as he hit. For a second, he lay in the snow, chiding the sorry mess he’d become, then got back to business.

He knew from a daylight excursion he’d made a few hours earlier that the power lines to the alarm system ran to a locked outbuilding near the fence, and he made his way for that now, the limp more pronounced than before. He’d asked around in town, and it appeared that during the winter the only residents were the couple who owned the place and a few servants. No one seemed to know anything about young, foreign-speaking women.

He couldn’t think about Skylar. Not yet. He had no idea what she was up to, and if he let it, doubt crept in that she was even still here.

The lock on the outbuilding was no match for bolt cutters. Once inside, he kept the lights off, using a small, bright beam to find the control box. It was an old unit, hardly state-of-the-art, one Cole had experience with from military duty. It wasn’t long before the alarm was disabled, and he was on his way to what he knew from watching the house through his scope for most of the day was the kitchen.

The lock on that door gave in easily, and he entered silently. He could hear a TV on nearby and followed the sound to a small room beyond the kitchen where a man of about fifty sat in a chair facing the TV. Four empty cans of beer beside him and an open one in his hand helped explain the snoring.

Cole shook the guy’s shoulder making sure the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the blade of the hunting knife. “Not a peep,” Cole said.

The guy shook his head vehemently as he lost control of the open can and beer spilled in his lap.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone or steal anything. Who are you?”

It appeared the guy had to work saliva into his mouth before he could mumble, “I’m just the handyman. What do you want?”

“I’m looking for the foreign girl.”

“She doesn’t speak any English. They keep her locked in her room upstairs when she isn’t working.”

She was here!
“Which room?”

“End of the hall.”

“Where’s the cook’s room?”

“She doesn’t stay here at night.”

She must have been the woman he saw driving away a couple hours ago. Cole took out a roll of duct tape. “I’m going to make sure you don’t raise the household.”

“Just don’t hurt me.”

A few minutes later, Cole left the gagged man taped to the sofa and started toward the stairs. The hall split in two directions at the top and he paused. Something about the paintings on the wall and the fresh flowers on a table in the left passage suggested it led to the owners’ suite so he turned left. He had no intention of alerting anyone else he was in the house. All he wanted was Skylar.

The lock at the end of the hall was a little harder to pick than he’d anticipated, and doing it while holding the flashlight between his teeth made it tedious work. He was worried about the time. No matter what these people were guilty of when it came to importing and mistreating illegal workers, he’d broken into their home and threatened their servant with a knife. If Tyler called the police, guess who would be going to jail first?

The lock finally clicked, and it sounded to Cole’s sensitive ears like a bomb exploding. He eased the door open as an innocent scream of surprise could awaken the wrong people just as a warning could. “Skylar?” he said into the dark, hesitant to flash the light that it would blind and frighten her.

“Cole?”

He risked the light then and took in the room with one glance. It looked like a windowless cell of some kind with twin beds, each occupied, one by a sleeping girl in the process of waking up and one by Skylar, who sat atop the bedspread, fully clothed, holding a sharpened pencil as though it were a weapon. She dropped the pencil and rose to her feet, her gaze fastened to his. He approached her in a daze.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, touching her chopped black hair and then her cheek.

“I am now,” she said, her voice shaking.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have lied to you. I never expected I would fall in love with you—”

She stilled him with her lips, as soft as velvet, her fragrance as sensual and memorable as always. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I should have worked with you. You almost got killed because of me.”

He closed his eyes for a second, and that’s when he noticed the girl in the other bed was talking a mile a minute, frantic, her voice too loud. He pulled away from Skylar. “Who is she?”