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“Don’t knock it. It’s better than Miroslav Wadjowska’s interrogation room,” he said, moving across the room on silent feet.
A small, errant shudder twisted through her body. “You’re right,” she said. “Anything’s better than that.”
She moved away from his too-observant eyes to stare out the window. She wanted to keep her bruised face out of his sight, but the moonlight illuminated it with cruel clarity.
She heard a sudden, quick intake of breath, and then Randall was beside her, his hand on her chin, gently holding her face up in the bright moonlight. “What happened to your face?” His voice was rough; his own face was in the shadows.
“I look like hell, don’t I?” she said with a sigh, touching her cheek gingerly. “I wasn’t properly deferential to my captor.”
He was very close; she could feel his breath on her face, and she remembered the hardness of his body as it had covered her minutes earlier, remembered her own response. And she felt it happening all over again. His hands touched her face lightly, a benediction at odds with the hard and unyielding Randall she had once thought she knew.
“No,” he said, “you don’t look like hell.” He leaned down, and his lips feathered the scrape across her cheekbone. “You look”—his mouth danced across her bruised chin—“absolutely beautiful”—he gently brushed her eyelids—“and more than I can resist right now. I’m sorry.” The words were as soft as his mouth on her swollen lips. Slowly, gently he brushed his mouth back and forth across hers, and she stood mesmerized, motionless, her entire soul concentrated on the feel of his mouth on hers.
This was madness. They were on the run in a country that wasn’t known for its record in human rights; the secret police were within screaming distance; and all she could think about was his mouth on hers. Her mouth opened in response to the gentle pressure of his, and his tongue slipped inside, tasting, soothing, inciting, until she crossed the inches of darkness that separated them and moved into his arms, into the shelter of his body that was no shelter at all.
A sound ripped through her absorption—the scrape of a boot on a rough surface, a voice calling across the fields in a guttural, incomprehensible language. Randall’s hand replaced his mouth across hers, his long fingers stifling any sound she might have made as his body pressed hers against the wall, holding her still.
It must be the secret police, but how did they know? They couldn’t have seen them jump from the car. But Maggie couldn’t bother with her questions now, because one voice was very close—and with a shiver of fear, she recognized it as Wadjowska’s.
Randall had recognized it, too—she could tell by the sudden stillness, the tension vibrating through his body. Slowly his hand moved away from her mouth, slowly he edged them both toward the closet. His firm hands gave Maggie no chance to resist. The flimsy closet door creaked open into the room. Inside there was velvet-thick darkness.
It was a big closet, an endless, pitch-black closet full of demons, and there was no way in hell that she was going to step inside it, into that dark tomb that would smother the last bit of breath from her. She struggled for a moment, a silent, terrified fight that Randall subdued with no difficulty at all. In moments, she was slammed up against his panting body, a prisoner in his merciless arms.
“You have no choice,” he whispered. “If you don’t move now, he’ll find us and kill us.”
She stopped her useless struggle. Even through her terror, she knew he was right, knew that even if death and darkness lay in that closet, it was still not as certain as the death that awaited them out in the moonlit street. She had no choice at all.
He must have felt the fight leave her body. His iron grip relaxed, and carefully he drew her into the closet. There was barely room for the two of them. She had to press up against his body as he shut the door a
fter them, shutting the darkness around them, the silent black darkness of death and madness.
She was shivering and shaking all over; a cold sweat ran down her spine. Her teeth clamped down on her cut lip to drown the scream that fought to break free, and every muscle, every tendon, every nerve in her body was stretched taut.
Then Randall’s arms moved around her, gentle and comforting. His warmth surrounded her, his hands kneaded her back with strong, soothing strokes, and his lips pressed against her forehead.
Slowly she began to release the panic, slowly she let go of the tension that held her rigid in Randall’s arms. The small, icy core of her began to melt, to melt and flow over him. His mouth moved from her temple down the side of her face to catch her upturned lips.
It was a kiss like no other she had ever received from him. It asked nothing, it gave her everything—hope and comfort and healing when the darkness threatened to suffocate her. She could feel unexpected tears in her eyes and felt their sting as they flowed down her bruised face. She shut her eyes, giving herself up to it, giving herself up to Randall.
When his mouth released her, she sank against him and pressed her cheek against the rough texture of his shirt, ignoring the pain of salty tears and bruised skin, feeling oddly content for the moment.
“Mister!” The word was a hiss of sound filtering into the room. “Hey, mister! Are you here? It’s Leopold.”
Without releasing his hold on her, Randall pushed the door open. The moonlit room was dazzling in its brightness after the coffinlike depths of the closet. Maggie drank it in like pure spring water, feeling it flow through her veins and bringing her strength and resilience back. With it came presence of mind. She stepped out of the closet and Randall’s arms with only a small, desperate pang of regret.
“Where are they?” Randall’s voice was clipped, indifferent. The moments in the closet might never have happened.
Leopold laughed. “Me, I have been very clever. The two flunkies have gone chasing after my cousin Tomas. Miroslav is thrashing about in the graveyard, chasing ghosts. He’s looking for you, my friend. Do you wish him to find you?”
Randall nodded, a short, satisfied nod. “Can you lead him toward the bridge?”
“I can lead him anywhere,” Leopold boasted. “You’ll be waiting?”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He disappeared into the night, and Randall turned to the silently watching Maggie, his face blank once more. “Is it a waste of breath to tell you to wait here?”
“Even that question is a waste of breath,” she said.
