Hannah laid the blanket out near the fire and took two plastic wineglasses from Rex’s backpack. “Look at all this. There’s got to be a romantic buried deep in that hard heart somewhere.”
He just winked at her as he uncorked the bottle. Wine burbled rich and red into the glasses, the fire cracked and shot sparks of bright orange high into the thin Alpine air.
The far-off indigo in the dome of sky was deepening as the blackness of space crept in for the night.
Hannah leaned back on the roll of sleeping bag propped against a rock and sipped her wine. There was no other sound. Just the pop and crack and whisper of flames. The air was tinged with wood smoke and the scent of old snow and ice. She could see the first star of the evening.
They ate in intimate silence, as if afraid to speak into words the turmoil of emotions each housed in their bodies. Hannah’s feelings were beyond the shape of simple words. They were too complex. Too big. What they both needed was time. Time to be with each other. Time to understand.
Time she didn’t have.
Time he would never have.
To speak now, at this perfect moment, would bring reality crashing in. She just wanted to savor it. Drink it in. While it lasted.
She lay back, her face turned up to the heavens pricked with pins of light. The moon was rising, an enormous, pale, luminous shape. It was monstrous, so close. She could make out the pocks and craters. It bathed the far-off glacial peaks in an eerie glow. Hannah felt like a speck in space and time. Insignificant.
She started as Rex leaned over and brushed a plump blackberry against her lips. She opened her mouth, took it in, crushing the wild ripe flavor between her teeth. His eyes spoke to her as he took a berry between his own lips, watching her as he crushed it in his mouth.
Then he leaned down above her. Pressed those berry-stained lips against hers. The taste of wine and wild ripe fruit, the scent of smoke, it made her senses swim. Her blood coursed warm through her veins.
His kiss was gentle, lingering, searching, questioning. It brought tears to her eyes. Sweet pain.
“Hannah?”
“Shh, Rex.” She raised two fingers to his lips. “Not now.”
He nodded, reached out, wiped the wetness from her cheeks and lay back beside her. Together they watched the heavens, fingers laced, fire spitting.
* * *
By the time they moved into the cabin, an Alpine wind was whistling softly through the flue of the woodstove and roiling black clouds had blocked the rising moon.
Rex stoked the fire and turned to face Hannah. Her hands were raised, untying her hair. She let it fall, soft and gold, down onto her shoulders.
She was an angel, teaching him to feel. To want. She made him yearn for things he’d never dreamed possible. Not for him.
She was wearing the large T-shirt he’d brought for her. The swell of her breasts pressed against the soft white fabric. She was kneeling on the sleeping bag he’d laid out on the floor in front of the woodstove, her legs sun-browned and bare beneath her.
Rex knelt down behind her. The glow of flames flickered and wavered against the cabin walls, making shadows dance. The wind moaned gently through the flue.
From behind he slid his hands up under the T-shirt. He stopped just under the swell of her breasts. He leaned forward, whispered into the fall of her hair. “How’s your rib, Hannah? You doing okay?”
She just nodded, leaned slightly into him.
“You were pretty tired coming back up the mountain.”
“I feel more rested now. It’s just so much has happened—”
He nuzzled against the smooth warmth of her neck. “I know.”
“Rex, there’s something I have to tell you. I—”
He slipped his hands, one over each breast feeling the soft, heavy weight of them. Her nipples reacted immediately to his touch, spitting hot fire to his groin.
He held her, whispered into her ear. “What did you want to tell me?”
She gave a small shiver. “Nothing. It can wait.” Her voice was thick, throaty. Aroused. It fueled the need growing tight against his clothing. His chest felt tight. Oh, how he needed this woman.
She reached, hands behind her back and found the buttons of his shorts. Her fumbling there took the blood from his head. All his heat settled into an almost painful throbbing desire between his thighs.
She found her way through the buttons, slipped her hand into his shorts. He tried to speak. It came out a low groan. He stood to free himself of his clothing and then he bent to lift the T-shirt from her body.
The sight of her stole his breath.
She knelt, in front of the flickering warmth of the flames, in white panties, breasts bare, dusky nipples pointed. She looked up at him, her lids heavy with need over those leonine eyes.
He knelt slowly down behind her and ran his fingers from her neck firmly down the ridges of muscle that cradled her straight spine. She shivered under his hands, arching her back. He coaxed her to kneel forward on hands and knees. She took his lead, holding her chin high, hair splaying down her back. He slowly removed her panties, ran his hands over her, kneading, squeezing her full, soft, firm buttocks.
She moaned, arched farther, exposing the mound of rough gold curls between her legs.
The sight of her like that swallowed him in primal need.
He slid his hand over that mound protruding out from between her thighs and felt her heat. She moved against his hand, parted her knees wider, dipped her back farther, opening herself wider to him.
He stroked those engorged, swollen lips until she glistened with desire, until his fingers were slick with her need. Then he thrust his fingers deep into her. She pushed back, onto his hand. Her moan was feral. His need wild.
He took her like that. Mounted her. Rocked into her as she braced with her hands against the force of his thrusts, breasts bouncing in the flicking light.
The heat sang in his core as he plunged repeatedly into her. She threw her head back, arching her back, her hair a wild mane. And he heard her noise. Animal, as wave upon blinding wave crashed over them. The sound was deafening in his ears.
Sated, they lay together, in silence, as the flames in the woodstove slowly died to glimmering coals and the depth of night closed in. The wind was more plaintive now, a low wail. A loose board clacked intermittently against the Alpine hut. Through the little window, ripples skittered across the surface of the tarn.
Rex had a sense time had run out. Something between them had crested. He didn’t know what lay on the other side. He rolled onto his side and looked at her.
She smiled up at him. But he could see a sadness in her eyes.
He brushed her cheek with his hand. And he knew then that he wanted to come back here, to the White River Mountains, in the winter. He wanted to ski wild down the slopes with her, cut through fine powder as deep as his knees, to hear her laugh at the spray of fine crystals against her cheeks. He wanted to spend nights in deep snowbound backcountry huts. To make infinite love.
But there was the Bellona Channel. There was her safety.
Choices.
Scott had made a choice. He’d taken a wife and they’d borne a child, but Scott’s job had cost them their lives. He couldn’t take that road. Not after having seen what happened to Scott. Not after that letter he got threatening Hannah’s life in Marumba. He couldn’t have both, Bellona and Hannah.
Choices.
He lay on his back and looked up at the rafters of the wooden hut. For the first time ever, he thought about the possibility of leaving Bellona. A life-style change. He couldn’t do fieldwork forever. He’d have to face that sometime. Old injuries were acting up. And there were young guns bucking for a crack at his position.
This golden angel resting at his side had opened a door. Just a crack, but through it he glimpsed something. Something he had never dreamed possible. A life, a future with love.
But he needed time. To work it all out. Perhaps he could come back and spend time with her in the winter. They needed to bridge the pain of old wounds.
“Rex.” She sat suddenly up, sleeping bag pulled around her, voice still deliciously thick from passion.
“We need to talk, Rex.”
He lifted himself up onto one elbow and studied her face. Her lips were still stained from berries, swollen from his kisses.
“Yes. We need to talk.”
“This job you do. I have to ask, what can you tell me about it? What can I know?”
He knew this would come.
“I can’t talk about it, Hannah. I need you to understand that.”
Her eyes bored into his. “I don’t.”
He hesitated. “I work for a covert agency. You were right. The Bio Can thing is a cover, but I can’t go into specifics.”
She looked away.
“Hannah, it’s not just about me. Others depend on the secrecy, the loyalty of this organization I work for.”
“And you can’t even tell me what ‘this organization’ is called, after all we’ve been through, after the fate Amy suffered?”
Rex felt sick. This woman had worked the world as a foreign correspondent. She was no babe in the international woods. He couldn’t lie to her. If he wanted to be with her, he’d have to trust her. Implicitly. But even then, he could be putting her life in danger, like Scott’s wife. Like Scott’s kid.
“You don’t trust me, is that it?”
“I trust you. God, woman, I care for you more than anything in the damned world.”
“Then why can’t you be open with me?”
“Because I can’t dammit! Because you’ve scrambled my radar. You’re taking me places I am unfamiliar with right now. I don’t know the boundaries. I need time.”
She reached out, grabbed the voluminous T-shirt, pulled it over her head. She wrapped her arms tight over her knees and stared into the dying embers. When she spoke, her voice was low, with an edge he hadn’t heard before. “Why’d you leave me that night, Rex?”
He reached forward to touch her. She shrugged him off. “Why?”
“I had to.”
“Your job?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” She faced him square, chin set in defiance, her eyes narrowed. “It’s been good, Rex. The sex.”
“Hannah. I want to be with you. Always.” The words came out of his mouth before his head had formed them. They came from his gut. But they were true. More true than anything he’d said in a long, long time.
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“You heard me. Be with me.”
She blew out a breath in frustration. “All these years, Rex, and you walk back into my life and tell me this.”
“I just need some time. To work things out.”
She was studying him, her eyes probing. “What about kids, Rex? What if we ever wanted children? Would you just get up and leave in the night because the job called? Would your children not see you for years?”
Rex Logan, Bellona agent, felt suddenly lost. Hollow. Afraid even. She was pushing his boundaries back into black uncharted territory. He’d seen it coming. Yet he felt himself instinctively closing up in defense.
“You see,” she said, moisture welling up in her gold eyes. “It can’t work. Ever. This job you do, it is your life, your family. There’s no room for more. Please don’t try and take any more from me.” Her lashes were wet with tears but her voice was determined.
She’d pushed him into a corner. He didn’t like that. It made him want to lash out. He was angry. With himself for getting them to this point. With her for having this power over him. She’d had that power the moment he’d first seen her in Marumba.
Now as he looked at her, amber in the fading firelight, he felt as if he was on the edge of losing her forever. She was slipping from his grasp.
Her eyes held his, glinting, waiting for him to speak.
He felt a tightening in his chest. Panic? It was something he never let in, yet here it was. He was afraid to lose her. Couldn’t lose her. Emotions he’d long learned to keep in check were seeping, simmering, bubbling to the surface. Like the molten core of a volcano finding its way to light.
“Hannah, I want more. You’ve shown me there is more. I’m prepared to make changes. But give me time to try and wrap things up, sort them out. I need to think about this. I need to see if I can make it work that we can be together.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Rex.”
“Christ, Hannah, I’m trying here. I want to be with you. Forever. I love you, damn it!”
She sat back, as shocked as he was at the words that had come from his lips. A fat tear slid down her cheek. She stared at him.
He reached and wiped it gently from her face. “I want to make it work,” he whispered. “Like I’ve wanted nothing before, Hannah. Help me make it work.”
She took his hands. “You mean it, don’t you?”
“I mean it.”
“Then you will tell me why you walked that night.”
“I had to.”
She sighed. Looked away. “And children?”
God, when she moved, she sure moved. She was covering years of ground here. He was thinking of just one step. One little step at a damn time.
Kids. He thought of Scott’s child, dead. He thought of himself as a boy. He had vowed he would never visit the same kind of lonely pain on a child. Yet the thought of her bearing his children was intoxicating. He hesitated before speaking. “Kids were never part of my plan.”
Something shuttered in her eyes.
“Hannah, I don’t know how to be a father.”
Something shifted in her features. She was closing him out, slipping from his fingers as he watched. He reached out. She gently pushed his hand away and lay back, silent, closing her eyes. Tears slid out from under her lids.
He didn’t know what to say. Hell, he didn’t know what he felt. He had no idea what had just happened. He lay back beside her, unspoken words hanging thick and heavy in the dark air. The loose slat of wood banged louder against the hut, insistent. The whine of the wind in the flue rose, plaintive, as the storm moved in.
* * *
She didn’t know how long she had lain awake, the black cold of night creeping in around her as the embers died a slow death. She had listened to his rhythmic breathing for what seemed like hours, wondering at his capacity to sleep. She must have fallen asleep herself, sometime close to dawn.
Now in the harsh dull gray light of morning, she knew she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her son. His son.
He didn’t want kids. There was no room in his life for her, let alone a ready-made family. She did not want her little boy to face the kind of rejection Rex himself had. And she did not want to live the life of her mother, waiting for a man she craved with every pore in her body, while he toyed around the world carrying secrets he’d never share.
She had to amputate herself from him. Now, while she still could. Before the cancer of this relationship consumed her. Then she had to work at rehabilitating herself—again. Except, this time she would never let him back in. This time she would be the one who walked away. For good.
He wasn’t there beside her when she woke, her eyes thick with dried tears. She lay now, stiff as the floorboards under her, the wind an insistent wail, the storm front closing in.
They would have to hurry and try to get the gondola back to the village before high winds shut it down.
She fumbled for her clothes, fingers cold, clumsy.
She stepped over the sleeping bag, reaching for the cabin door. The wind whipped it from her hand as she opened it, slicing splinters into her skin. It crashed back against the side of the hut.
He stood there in the bleak dawn, out on the edge of the cliff. His arms were fisted at his sides, feet astride. He faced the storm as it loomed, out on the horizon. He faced clouds broiling black, purple, puce. He stood, unflinching, as lightning cut sharp, jagged streaks through the sky. The thunder rumbled, echoed and reverberated through the peaks around them like the artillery of warring armies. His sleeves billowed against his strong arms in the wind, his hair a dark and disheveled mass.
The sight stopped Hannah dead.
He looked as if he were the god that had summoned the storm. Wild. Crazed.
He turned as she approached. His Arctic eyes cold, framed by dark lashes, as angry as the weather.
“Come.” He stepped down off the rocks and strode past her, making for the hut. He gathered their gear and stuffed it into his pack. “Hurry. Lifts will shut down any minute now.”
She pulled her fleece up against her neck as she followed him, trying to keep pace, stumbling over the small rocks in the path. The wind dropped as they rounded the peak and saw the gondola building below. There was some protection there. The lift was still running. For now.
The gondola doors closed on them, encapsulating their silence as the cab lurched from its moorings and began its descent down Powder Mountain. The storm was closing in fast now. Wind buffeted their glass cocoon. Thick drops of rain started to spit and flick sporadically against the windows.
“Rex.”
He looked at her, those Siberian husky eyes detached. He’d already closed her out. Just like that. Like before, in Marumba.
“I’ll go into the office today. Pack my bags.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
The gondola lurched, and she grasped at the railing for balance. Far-off black clouds glimmered as they were backlit by a burst of sheet lightning. A purple and orange tinge lit the dawn, an ominous hue preceding the storm.
“I must go.” She had to escape his charged presence.
“Not until I can be sure there’ll be no more attempts on your life. Then you can go.”
She had known he’d say that. Still it burned, the fact that he was prepared to let her go once his job was done. “All the staff will be at the office. I’ll be safe there. You can speak to Al if you like. He can call you on your cell if there’s something to worry about.”
Hannah had no intention of returning to the hotel once she packed her bags. Not ever. Danny would be home tomorrow. If she didn’t feel safe, the two of them could pack their car and head north until everything had blown over.
She would go back to the hotel now. She’d shower, pack her things and take everything to the office with her. She had to sever her ties. Now.
He was mulling over her proposal, deep furrows in his tanned brow. It made him, his anger, all the more awesome.
“Fine. I’ll take you to the office. You’re not to leave there. I’ll call you and let you know when I’m coming to pick you up. I’ll speak to Al.”
She’d be long gone before he could come and pick her up.
“Fine.”
Drops of rain the size of small marbles bombed into the earth and erupted into minute clouds of dust as they pulled into the village gondola station. The scent of rain clashing with soil was earthy, musky. It was still only the front end of what was yet to come. The sky was heavy, laden with its dark burden, waiting to burst and spill its sorrow.
White noise rushed in Hannah’s head as she pushed through the crowds in the village. There were people everywhere; they scampered for cover from the heavy drops. The weather was crashing in on their parade. Clowns and jugglers were packing up their bright red and yellow and orange sacks. Some acts continued under eves. Bongo drums beat. Her heart echoed the primal sound in her ribs as she hurried toward the hotel.
The large lobby was crowded with delegates coming in for the international conference. Suits, saris, turbans, a gaggle of tongues. She pushed wildly through them, knowing that Rex was struggling to keep up with her. She jabbed the elevator button, closing the doors before he could reach her.
She wasn’t sure what she was trying to achieve. She was running on blind instinct. From him. But she was held up at the hotel room door as she had to wait for him and his key card.
She averted her eyes from him as he opened the door and checked out the room before permitting her to enter.
She marched into her side of the suite, closed the door and made for the bathroom to turn on the shower.
She could hear his cell phone start to ring just as water spurted into the tub. Then all other sound was drowned out. She closed the door, finding comfort in the fog of steam that reached up and enveloped her.
* * *
“Logan, hey buddy.”
At the sound of Scott’s voice, Rex punched in the code to activate the scrambler installed in his cell phone. The red LED indicator showed voice encryption had been initiated. It was a sophisticated point-to-point system. Scott had a similar device on his end. Their communication was secure from eavesdroppers.
“Hey, Scott, any info for me?”
Scott knew Rex better than most people. When the agent’s wife and daughter were killed, he’d turned to Rex. They’d become close friends.
The two of them had worked on the Marumba mission. When Ken Mitchell had botched the raid and the lab had burned, the Plague Doctor had slipped back underground. A week later Scott and Rex each got hand-delivered letters from paid messengers with similar wording: “You will pay for crossing me. Your loved ones will die a most horrible, painful death.”
Rex had been in Ralundi, camping with Hannah when his message came in the dark of night. Their safari guide had accepted the letter from a Marumba local paid to deliver it. The local had slipped back into the night, and Rex had read the letter by the light of the campfire while Hannah slept in the tent. He had no doubt it had come from the Plague Doctor. And he did not underestimate the danger.
He’d made an immediate decision. Packed and left before dawn broke. No one would use Hannah to threaten him. If they thought she was his reject, she’d be useless to them. She’d be safe.
Scott had also received his letter in Marumba, the night before he was due to ship out. He had believed his wife and daughter were safe back in Toronto. But he was never to see them again. A few days later they died in an horrific car accident. Their vehicle went up in a ball of flames. No one was sure of the cause.
Scott had not been able to save his family. Rex had saved Hannah, but at a cost, to both of them.
He was only beginning to see the extent of that cost now.
“We’re still working on your requests, Rex. Should have a full report for you later in the day, but I wanted to get word to you immediately on Ken Mitchell.”
“What you got?”
“If the CIA is in White River for this conference, it’s not via Mitchell.”
“What?”
“He hasn’t worked for the CIA for about a year now.
My sources say old Kenny Mitchell went whacko after the Marumba lab fire.”
“Go on.”
“Well, it appears that after the fire, he took it real personal that he’d been responsible for sending the Plague Doctor into the underground to continue with his work. He became obsessed with finding him to the point of irrationality. They had to take Mitchell off that beat, but he still spent his days and nights trying to hunt the Plague Doctor down. Last year he was dismissed from the agency. Mental instability.”
“You buy this?”
“You mean do I think it was just the ploy of a double agent to get out from under the CIA? I don’t think so.”
“So what has Mitchell been up to in this past year, then.”
“That’s why I don’t think he was scamming. Mitchell was institutionalized late last fall. He was becoming a bit of a public hazard in his zeal. I think CIA brass was worried he might be a loose cannon with serious secrets to spill.”
Scott cleared his throat and continued. “According to my sources, Mitchell was raving to one of the shrinks at the institution about a young reporter up in Canada. He maintained this reporter and her friend had stumbled onto something at a spa in White River. Her friend worked at the spa and reportedly found a secret lab where a surgeon was working on some superpowerful biological agent.”
Now Scott had his attention. Rex paused, listened to make sure he could hear the shower in the next room before continuing. “If Mitchell was locked up in a nut house, how come he’s here in White River now?”
“Got out last month. They haven’t seen him since. Lost track of him.”
Rex blew air through his teeth. “I’m going to have to have a little talk with Mitchell and see if I can get into the White River Spa and take a look around myself.”
“Rex, Mitchell…he’s unstable. Could be dangerous.”
“Got it. But somehow I don’t think he was that loopy when he was talking about a reporter and her friend. Turns out a young reporter here, Amy Barnes, died early last fall. So did her friend, who worked at the local spa. He died only a day later. Somehow they’re connected. I’m really going to need that background information on the top two doctors at the spa, Gunter Schmidt and Gregor Vasilev. Looks like we’re in deep crap here.”
“I’m on it.”
The shower was still going. “Oh, and, Scott, I’ll be expecting some lab results from Vancouver sometime today. I’m going to courier a sample down there as soon as I hang up with you. The lab will phone the results in to Toronto.”
“Good enough.”
“Okay, thanks, buddy.” The shower was being turned off. “Speak to you later in the day.”
“Right. Say, have you seen the McGuire woman since you been there?”
Rex had told Scott Hannah was in White River. Scott knew how much it had cost Rex to walk out on her in Marumba.
“Been kinda tough to avoid her. She’s gotten herself right into the thick of this.”
“How so?”
“She was suspicious of the reporter’s death. She works at the same newspaper. She’s been digging around too much and it seems to have landed her in hot water…or should I say some very cold water.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“You know what I mean. I’ve seen nothing in this world that can mess with your brain like that hotshot foreign correspondent.”
Rex looked over at the closed door of Hannah’s room. “She’s not a foreign correspondent anymore. She quit.”
“Why?”
“Damned if I know. Nothing you need to worry your head over. I’m going to wrap this up and then I’m outta here.”
“You know, Rex, if I had to choose, if I had to do it over again, I’d choose my wife and child over anything. Hell, I’d work as a clerk in a gas station just to have them back.”
Rex was silent, taken aback by his colleague’s sudden candor.
“You there?”
“Yeah, still here. Sorry, Scott. I know what you’re saying. It’s just not for me.”
“You know, Killian is thinking of stepping down as Bellona board chair. There’s going to be an extra seat there. If you got on the board, you could call the shots instead of dodging bullets out in the field.”
Rex appreciated what Scott was trying to do. “I’m better in the field, buddy.” His head was starting to hurt. He rubbed the pain in his temple. “Never been one for a family, anyway.”
“Word is they’re naming you as candidate for the board, Rex. It’s an ace opportunity. You get to keep your Bio Can job and you get a shot at a normal life.”
“Normal life. It’s a farce.”
“That’s the cynic in you speaking. Hey, it worked for me. Until…”
“I’m sorry, buddy.”
Silence.
“Yeah, well, you take care of that McGuire woman. I’ll check in later today.”
Rex flipped his phone shut and slipped it into his pocket. His head felt thick. He walked over to the connecting door, turned the knob, pushed it open.
Hannah was gone.