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CHAPTER 3
The mid-morning sunlightpeeked through the cottony, slow-moving clouds that drifted about a thousand feet above Aguas Calientes. Tension ran through Daria as she looked around her recently rented second floor apartment. It sat halfway up the long asphalt hill in the small, but very crowded tourist town. It was on the side where the volcanic hot springs were located. She wiped her damp palms down the sides of her green cargo pants, glad to be in a place that had some heat to stave off the cool dampness outside.
She tugged at her bra, wanting to take it off from beneath her long-sleeved cream-colored top. She hated bras and never wore one when out on an op. But this one was different. She didn’t want men ogling her breasts as she walked and they just naturally moved and bounced beneath the material covering them. Not that she had huge breasts, she was small there, matching the slender, model-like body she’d been born with. Still, Daria detested the tightness of the bra around her torso, lamenting the whole situation. It was just another way to control her body in one more way and she really hated the idea completely. Her body belonged to her. In the end, she got rid of the bra and said to hell with it. She’d be wearing her jacket, anyway. Her freed breasts would remain hidden from the sight of males.
Looking at the watch on her wrist, Daria saw that she had to meet Nik Morozov at the settlement’s only Catholic church, at the other end of town, in thirty minutes. Not that the town was all that large. It would take her five minutes to walk down the hill and over to the plaza at the other end of it. The people who lived here were mostly Quechua Indians, with a few rich Peruvians from Lima scattered in, owners of the many shops that lined both sides of the only concrete road in the area. She wiped her brow, standing in the small living room with its rectangular coffee table set between a black leather couch and a dark-blue fabric sofa chair. The furniture had seen better days, no question, but the place was clean and she spied no cockroaches, which is what Daria cared most about. As a sniper, she lay for hours unmoving while anything and everything in the area crawled over and around her as if she were part of the natural landscape. She had a special hate for cockroaches, smart bastards that they were. They seemed to know that she hated them, and delighted in running up and down her arms or getting up her trouser cuffs, and racing up and down inside her pant legs. They knew what they were doing. They knew she would not move to crush them.
She hoped she had memorized everything that was needed for her to pose as a botanist and, frankly, was glad for the distraction. She’d even slept without screaming and waking everyone up around her on the American Airlines flight from Miami, Florida to Lima, Peru. Being on this mission was a way to shove all the horror and emotions far down inside her where she wouldn’t be bothered by them. At least, not for a little while, Daria hoped. The month of May in Peru was the beginning of their winter. It was supposed to be drier, but it had rained on the trip from Cusco along the Inca railroad line to this little town two hours out from the major city. It had kept raining when she’d disembarked and had two boys carry her luggage from the station, across a violent, dangerous river channel and then up the opposite bank and into the town. Her clothes were still damp even though she’d worn a rainproof nylon jacket, her trousers getting especially soaked. Alex Kazak had warned her she’d be wet or at least damp all the time, no matter what season it was. The ancient radiator heat was warming up the equally damp rooms of the apartment, and was beginning to dry out her trousers. It was the high humidity that made Daria feel like her lungs were slightly clogged. She was used to the dry, desert climes of Afghanistan and Syria.
Her heart stuttered when she thought of Nik Morozov, and her upcoming meeting with him. Lauren and Alex had invited her over for dinner two nights before she’d left for Lima and they’d tried to give her a verbal picture of the man. He sounded really nice. A reasonable, honorable man who just happened to live and work with murderous thieves. Alex had told her many stories of he and Nik working together and how they had both delivered their fair share of babies over the years, a high for both of them. Lauren had nothing but good things to say about Nik, too. Hehadhelped capture and kidnap her, but later, as she’d pleaded with him, and then, after Nik found out that she knew Alex, he had released her. Nik then risked his own life to get Lauren back to the safety of the Army Special Forces team that was trying to find and rescue her.
After having heard all the stories, and seeing the photos of him that Alex had brought out, Daria wondered how someone like Morozov managed to hang on and continue to live in such a brutal environment. She understood it was his loyalty to his brother Dan that was his motivation, but still… it was a lot to ask of any human being for that long a time. It showed that Nik, when dealt a bad hand, remained responsible and did the right things for the right reasons. He was so much like Alex in some ways and that stilled a lot of Daria’s worries and anxieties about working with him.
And the truth? She was so moved by Alex and Lauren’s heart-centered sincerity that frankly, Nik sounded like a dream hero concocted from their wildest imaginations. Daria honestly didn’t know what to expect when they met inside the church during the noontime Mass. She supposed that Korsak and his men would never set foot inside a church, given the brutality of their dark souls. It was a safe place to meet for the first time. Daria wondered if Nik was Catholic; it would explain why he wanted to meet there. Soon, she would know.
Nik sat inthe back-most row of pews, away from the two large, heavy wooden doors, swung open to invite people in for the Mass. Quechua Indians were silently filing in, taking blessed water from the bowl near the door and making the sign of the cross before moving up the polished cream stone aisle toward the dark wooden pews, where the priest stood nearby to greet them. Nik tried to tame his expectations and concern. Would Daria show up on time? Or not? If she was an operator, she would, unless she was dead. Just as the hand on his watch hit noon, he saw her enter.
It felt as if someone had stolen the air out of his lungs. His eyes widened slightly as she entered, hands stuffed into the pockets of her down jacket, looking for him. His heart beat rapidly in his chest as their eyes briefly met, held, and then their gazes drifted apart. She was artful, Nik decided, as she continued to look around as if she were a curious tourist. She, like all the others, dipped her fingers into the marble-cut bowl and made the sign of the cross. Trying to breathe normally, Nik watched her move with the grace of an animal. Her eyes. Even in the poor light of this church, he could see they were a golden brown, reminding him of a shade browner than a lion’s large, amber eyes. His gaze missed nothing. Her nose was clean and straight, nostrils slightly flared. That mouth of hers sent his lower body into a spasm of sudden, molten desire and it surprised the hell out of him. Nik had met plenty of pretty young women but had never had this kind of reaction to any of them.
But Daria McClusky, or whoever she really was, brought back to mind for him the best of the feminine attributes a woman could have at her disposal. Her hair was set in a single, long black braid and her skin was a golden color, making him wonder how many hours she had spent out in the sun. Her face was oval, with a slightly stubborn chin. His gaze flicked back to her wide mouth and those full lips that were now a bit pursed.
Their eyes met again. Nik looked down to his right, as if to tell her to come and sit near him.
She did.
His nostrils widened and, as he caught her subtle scent of oranges, he wondered if it was from the shampoo she used on her luxurious black hair that gleamed with blue highlights among its strong, silken strands. Her long, thick lashes were incredible frames for those gold eyes of hers that held such intelligence, that missed nothing. She might look like a tourista to everyone else, but to Nik, no. He saw far deeper into Daria.
As she scooted over a bit more his way to allow two other Quechua women to come and sit in the same pew, he moved away from her an equal amount in order to give her some room and allow her to become comfortable in his presence. Nik saw her lean forward and pick up a hymnal written in Spanish, holding it between her graceful, long fingers. No matter what she did, it was like being in the presence of a ballerina. His lower body tightened. What an unexpected reaction to her!
Nik drew in a ragged breath, trying to still his rebelling body. He hadn’t known what to expect when meeting this woman, but it certainly was not what was happening with his physical body right now. It wasn’t her fault. If only he could stop picking up the unique, feminine scent that was her. Nik had always had an acute sense of smell. Dan had often accused him of being a Ukrainian wolf in disguise, what with his exceptional hearing, smell and vision. Daria smelled so damned good that his body was going into its own silent kind of celebration. She was less than three feet away from him and he could feel the heat of her body in the cold, damp church.
The doors closed and the sound echoed, as if in a cavern. Like a prison door shutting forever kind of sound. The church had been built sometime during the 1700’s by the marauding Spanish, all out of gray stone. The pews were crowded with Indians, but the first rows were reserved for the white-skinned rich Peruvians exclusively from Lima. The priest began his litany in Latin. Nik wondered how many of the Indians, who only spoke their own Quechua language, understood anything he was saying. Most Indians knew pigeon Spanish and no English. They held on strongly to their tribal customs.
Worse, he had to sit here for forty-five minutes and say nothing to Daria and vice versa. The church was only being used as a way to meet one another. Korsak would laugh, but accept his excuse to leave the team because often, Nikdidgo to church. It gave him nearly an hour of being alone and away from them. He prayed for the women his team had raped, and the men Korsak had killed, and the children the Russians had beaten to force their fathers to carry cocaine up that godforsaken mountain to the Highlands. Nik had lost track of how many times he’d found himself kneeling, his head buried between his crossed arms, hot tears rolling down his cheeks as he sat in this church. He believed in the power of prayer for others. It was the only thing that kept him sane at times in this deadly dance with Korsak.
Just having Daria next to him was calming in another way. This shook Nik. He was always usually tense. On guard. Alert. But right now? He felt PEACE. As if… that waspossible? The feeling of coming home? To her? He gave himself an internal shake. What the hell was going on here between them? Was this some kind of magic? Insanity? Wishful thinking on his part because he’d been so damned alone for so long? He hadn’t touched a woman in five years. His life in Peru hadn’t allowed him any real time to get to know a woman like he needed to in order to pursue an intimate, ongoing relationship with one.
Nik never saw women as sex objects like Korsak and his men did. They were a nameless body to be used by these men, as far as they were concerned. They did not see them as human beings. They were a set of breasts and a vagina, that’s all. Women were to be used by the men to pleasure themselves, but never to receive pleasure back in return. Nik had had three meaningful relationships in his life and each stood out in his heart. Those three women had each given their heart to him as he’d given his heart to them. Each had been a fair, wonderful exchange. But this woman sitting quietly beside him, her face so incredibly serene, was unforgettable to him.
Nik closed his eyes momentarily, her profile burnt into his brain, branded into his skittering heart that was thumping like a wild, living thing in his chest. Automatically, his medic hand pressed against his jacket, above his heart. Her scent encircled him as if it were the rarest and most delicate of all the orchid fragrances he’d ever inhaled. It wasHER. Not the shampoo she used on her hair, nor any perfume she’d sprayed on her skin, but that subtle scent of alluring spice that was just her. Nik swore he could feel her heart beating, the palpitations, the urgency with which it moved within her. She sat like a small buddha who was at one with the world and everything in it. Her lips parted slightly, dressed up with a soft pink glistening lipstick that merely emphasized her slightly fuller lower lip. Nik closed his eyes again, visualizing how good her mouth might feel against his. How lush her lips would be. Daria would open to him like an orchid spreading its petals to the world for the first time. She smelled like the orchids he would pass by in the jungle. That scent of heavy, sensual fragrance entering his nostrils, now moving deep into his lungs, reminded him of all the beauty that existed in this world between a man and a woman. He did not belong in the world he lived in now. Daria’s scent was like a drugging heaven, and reawaken hope within him on every possible level.
Crazy!What was going on with him? Was he finally having that long-overdue nervous breakdown from all the unrelenting stress of being a CIA mole? Trying to stay one step ahead of the darkly intelligent Korsak? Or was it HER?Daria.He played her name over and over again in his mind, catching the nuances of all the vowels and consonants of it, a melody that kept on singing to his heart, his soul, bringing him fully to bright, burning life. He knew Daria was a Ukrainian name. Was it her real name? He hoped so, because it fit her so well. It suited her. She was a symbolic island of calm to Nik, soothing the tightness in all his muscles. She soothed his worry and the constant anxiety that haunted him, and he felt all that burden dissolving more and more with every slow, shallow breath she took. Out of the corner of his eye, Nik watched the slow rise and fall of her jacket. There was such serenity surrounding Daria. How could that be? How could an agent appear to be so relaxed and utterly trusting?
Did Daria sense him? Trust him in particular? Did she have more intel on him, perhaps knew him much more intimately than he’d realized? And that was why she could sit next to him and be the island of tranquility that he so desperately sought? The one that had always been out of reach until now.Just now…He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling suddenly unsure of his feelings toward her. This was an undercover operation. They were supposed to pose as lovers discovering one another for the first time. But what was real? What was not? Her breathing, slow and cadenced, flowed through him, pouring coolness on the flames of anxiety and danger that always threatened him. He had a thousand questions for her.
Halfway through the Mass, they all stood. Nik watched her unwind like a lithe jaguar awakening from a long nap. Daria clasped her lovely, long hands together in front of her, reciting the words of the priest in a breathless, hushed Latin that his wolf ears picked up, absorbed, and consumed like the beggar he really was. And never once, did she look over up at him, her eyes straight ahead, her expression focused on the ceremony echoing around the massive stone church. And yet, Nik stared down at her, helpless not to do so. He saw the tiny black strands of hair that had been crinkled by the thick, heavy humidity, saw them curling around her high cheekbones and the long, tight braid that lay over the right shoulder of her nylon jacket.
His gaze fell to her lips and his entire lower body flexed and he groaned inwardly. Surprised, Nik had never felt such lust, such a driving need for a woman as he felt right now. Her lips beckoned. Incredibly beautiful in their shape. Their fullness, and the way the corners where they met curved upward, inspired his fevered imagination. He was reminded of the Madonna, St. Mary, whose statue was to his left, holding the Christ child. He looked at Daria’s classic features and saw the Madonna in her. He wondered if she already had children? Married happily to a man who appreciated her as much as he did right now? His gaze drifted downward to where her hands were relaxed and clasped across her softly rounded belly.
No, she had never been pregnant. From his years of training as a medic, he knew a woman’s body quite well. He’d delivered more than enough babies down here in South America to know the difference, seen too many young bodies changed by the child growing within their bellies. After a woman had a child, her shape subtly changed. Her hips flared a little wider. Her belly grew a little more stretched and pearlescent and, even from his brief glance over at her, he could see that Daria had never carried a child. And, for a moment, Nik fantasized that she was carryinghischild. Their baby. He’d seen the glow of pregnancy on the faces of many Quechua Indian women and it was beautiful, and yet, indescribable. To him, growing up in the Catholic religion as he had, he always thought of that glow as Madonna-like, something so sacred, so sublimely radiant and magical. And Nik saw it time and again. Pregnancy made a woman luminous from the inside out. And it was the most sacred of moments a woman would ever experience. He’d felt blessed, literally even, to help bring over fifty babies into the world over the last five years. To hold the slippery child coming out of one of those women’s exhausted bodies, to be the first human to touch and welcome that child into the world, was akin to a miracle. Nik could never give adequate words to that sacred, miraculous moment. He could only feel the waves of emotions flowing strongly through him as he worked with the pregnant woman. Then see her baby crown from her straining body, and have the child slide into his awaiting, gloved hands.
Only, this time, it wasn’t the birth of a child he was coaxing out into the world. No, right now, with Daria, this was a symbolic birth of a different nature, Nik dimly realized, trying to quantify it, to understand it. But he couldn’t because it was birthing right now between him and this agent. Daria made him feel as if he could finally surrender his tattered soul to her after five long, hard years. He could collapse into her arms and Nik knew intuitively that she had the strength to not only hold him, but to slide her arms around him, rock him and allow him to sob out all the horrors that were alive and prowling around within him on a daily basis. Only that kind of very special rebirth could take away all that dirtiness built up inside him: the terror, the disgust and revulsion at all he’d seen. Only holding a newborn, clearing the fluid out of its tiny nostrils, cutting the cord and then cleaning the tyke off, bundling her or him into an awaiting soft, warm alpaca or llama blanket of welcome, had ever made him feel clean once more. Worthy to continue to live.
Daria was a dream-spinner. Someone who, by her mere presence, could give a dying man hope that there was something better than the life that he was quickly losing his grasp upon. Something worth fighting for. Something worth giving one’s life for, if necessary. Her energy, her aura, whatever anyone wanted to call it, was touching, infusing and healing him. Ukrainians were great believers in mysticism, in the magic of life. In the mystery of the unseen that truly did exist. Nik might have grown up Catholic, but his mother had imbued him with the mysteries of the world through Ukrainian folklore, and had taught him that those too were just as sacred, as profound, and as transforming, as sitting in a church pew and praying.
Nik had no idea what to do or say as the Indians silently filed out of the church, the Mass having just concluded. If this was what heaven felt like, he didn’t want to ever leave it. Or her.
CHAPTER 4
