Iris Johansen - Across the River of Yesterday

"Because you look so damn beautiful, and you're talking like a cross between Sheena of the Jungle and a female James Bond." His eyes were glowing with warmth. "And because I'm so damn happy you're mine. I'd sure as hell hate to go up against-" He broke off as there was a sudden shout from the other room. "Right on time. Julio is to be congratulated." Then the rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire caused him to go tense. "I think we'd better get into position. I believe we may have a visitor at any moment." He crossed to the door and stepped to the side so that he would be behind the door when it swung open. "Come over here. I don't want you in the line of fire when Mendino barrels into the room."

"In just a second. I have one more thing to do." She set the blowgun and darts on the table beside her and ran over to the window. She drew back the curtains and struggled to open the window. It wouldn't budge!

"That's not a way out. It's fifteen stories down to the street and there's no fire escape."

"But I have to open it. Julio told me to do it."

"Well, Julio is going to be disappointed." Gideon put a dart into his blowgun. "This is a recently built hotel and the windows aren't constructed to open. The curse of an air-conditioned society is that fresh air is considered obsolete."

"Oh, damn, why didn't one of us think of this." Serena stopped tugging and looked wildly about the room. The desk chair! She rushed to the Louis XV desk and dragged its bowlegged chair back to the window.

"What are you doing?'

"I told you. Julio said I was to open the window. " She picked up the chair and swung it with all her strength against the glass. It shattered, spraying shards in a sparkling shower. "I'm opening the window."

"I see you are," he said dryly. "I wish I could get you to obey my orders with such enthusiasm. Now, will you come back over here behind the door?"

"As soon as I get rid of these pieces of glass." She was knocking the remaining slivers of glass out of the pane. "There, that should do it. It wasn't so difficult. I guess-"

A key was turning in the lock!

"Oh, Lord," she whispered, turning to face the door. "I guess he heard it."

"Of course, he heard," Gideon muttered. "It was louder than the damn machine-gun fire. Quick- drop to the floor."

There was no time. Mendino was standing in the doorway, his face flushed and very ugly. There was a pistol in his hand and it was pointed straight at her. The open door made a barrier between Gideon and the colonel. Move forward, she prayed silently to herself. But Mendino simply stood there, aiming at her. Oh dear, she had to do something.

"Don't just stand there," Serena cried frantically. "Can't you see? Gideon's going to fall. I tried to stop him, but he said it was our only chance. He was going to crawl along the ledge."

Mendino's expression was arrested and then confused as his gaze went to the broken window. He took two steps into the room. It wasn't enough, but one more step would do it.

Serena kept her gaze from straying toward Gideon. It wasn't terribly difficult. Mendino's pistol seemed to fill her entire field of vision. "It's so far down there. I'm afraid he might slip and-"

Mendino took another step forward.

There was a low, whistling noise and Mendino's eyes widened and then glazed over as a tiny silver needle embedded itself in his neck. He fell to the floor, unconscious.

Gideon stepped from behind the door. "Serena, I think I may break your neck," he said grimly. "Why the hell didn't you do what I told you? What if Mendino had remembered that there wasn't a ledge?"

"Isn't there? That was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. And Julio told me to-"

"Serena, this is too much." Dane stuck his head through the opening she'd provided in the window, his eyes dancing. "When you ordered me to help Julio, you didn't tell me I'd have to do windows. I don't mind vacuuming or a little dusting, but I never do windows."

"The hell you don't." It was Julio's voice from somewhere beyond the window, but he was outside Serena's line of vision. "Will you stop chatting and get them out here? The diversion Ross and my men are providing can't cover us much longer. We were only able to smuggle four men up on the service elevator. Besides, I'm getting a nosebleed out here."

Serena took a step closer to the window. A window washer's scaffold was hanging suspended by two slender metal cords like a fragile gondola over the street far below. Dane and Julio stood on the platform gazing at her with remarkably similar expressions-mischief, excitement, and tremendous joie de uivre. "Now I know why you told me to open the window, but you never mentioned what a challenge it would be."

Julio grinned sheepishly. "How was I to know? I'm just a naive plantation owner, a regular old country boy. Where I come from, windows open."

"This one opened too." Serena found herself smiling back at him. "With a little persuasion." She glanced over her shoulder at Gideon. "Julio and Dane are going to take us for a little ride."

Gideon threw down the blowgun and picked up the gun Mendino had dropped. "Get on the scaffold. I'll be right back." He turned toward the door. "I have a little unfinished business."

"Gideon!" Serena's protest was almost a scream, but he was gone. "Oh, damn, I'm going after him."

Julio shook his head. "You heard him. I told you Gideon could take care of himself, but if he has to worry about watching after you, it may add to the danger." He held out his hand. "Step into my parlor, milady."

"But they're still shooting!" Serena wavered indecisively and then took Julio's hand and let him pull her out onto the scaffold. "If he's not here in two minutes, I'm going after him."

"Would you know what was so important that Gideon had to go back?" Julio asked.

"I have an excellent idea," Serena said with a sigh. "That lieutenant and the captain… I told Gideon it didn't matter, but I don't think I got through to him. What a time for his protective instincts to surface."

Julio's expression was suddenly as hard and relentless as Gideon's had been. "They hurt you? I didn't think there was any chance they'd be so stupid or I'd never have let you come here." He smiled and it was a sharklike baring of teeth. "Stay with her, Dane. I think I'll go and see if I can lend Gideon a hand."

"Not you too?" Serena wailed. "Has everyone here lost his sense of proportion?"

"You stay with Serena," Dane growled. "She's my sister, dammit. I should be the one who gets to go after them."

"Look, no one hurt me. The search was humiliating and degrading, but I wasn't hurt. It's over-"

"Now it's over." Gideon stood at the window, the gun shoved into the waistband of his jeans. He took Dane's hand and climbed out on the scaffold. "Let's get out of here. Mendino's men are a little confused with only a corporal to give the orders, but they're still fighting."

"What happened to the captain and the lieutenant?" Julio asked with a grin.

"They're… indisposed."

"A permanent condition?"

"I don't think so." Gideon's smile had a touch of the tiger. "But definitely a painful one."

"Can we please leave now?" Serena asked, shaking her head. "And you told me you didn't have a macho image of yourself."

"There wasn't anything macho about it." Gideon slipped an arm about her waist and grabbed onto a metal cord as Dane and Julio began to hoist the fragile scaffold up with the pulley ropes. Serena shivered as a gust of wind playfully shook the scaffold as if it were a toy. She carefully avoided looking down at the street. She had always hated those outside glass elevators and this was even worse, with not even a protective wall around them. "It was revenge. You would have done the same, if it had been me."