Gayle Wilson - Midnight Remembered

“Okay…” she whispered, still watching the manhunt, “then first I’m going to take a hot bath.”

She heard a breath of sound beside her and recognized it as laughter. Her lips tilted in response, but this time she resisted the impulse to turn and look at him. Looking at Joshua Stone had proven too disruptive of her peace of mind during the weeks they’d spent together.

After all, he was her partner. A professional relationship. And so far it had been highly professional.

Despite her initial doubts that anyone could live up to the high regard in which Stone was held at the CIA, she had discovered that his reputation for ingenious planning and meticulous execution was well-deserved.

Partner. And nothing else, she reminded herself.

Even if there had been anything between them, now was not the time to allow herself to become distracted by it. Actually, she was determined that no one would ever know exactly how big a distraction Joshua Stone had been. Especially not Joshua Stone.

“Can’t say you don’t need a bath,” he said. “There is a certain primitive charm, however, in listening to your nightly efforts at hygiene. A real exercise in creativity.”

“Mine in making them or yours in listening?” she retorted.

Without warning, he moved closer. His concentration on the scene outside had intensified, in spite of the absurdity of the conversation they were having. And she had known all along that he had begun it to keep her mind off what was going on. Paige pressed back against the wall, allowing him greater access to the crack through which they had been keeping an eye on the search.

“All mine,” he said, his gaze still directed outside. Then he added, “And believe me, Daniels, I’m very creative.”

He was so near that she could feel his breath against her cheek. They had existed in this same kind of intimacy for weeks, compelled into physical proximity by the demands of the mission and by their living conditions. Despite that enforced closeness, things had never gotten anywhere near any other kind of intimacy.

At the beginning, if Josh Stone had attempted to initiate some sort of physical relationship, it would have made her uneasy. And she would have resisted. By now she was curious, to put it mildly, why things had never progressed beyond the easy camaraderie they shared. Stone’s notorious self-control? Or the fact that he didn’t find her desirable? She had to admit his lack of interest had piqued hers, despite her determination not to succumb to his reputed charms.

They had talked about everything under the sun in the long, cold evenings they had spent together. And she had been fascinated by the breadth of his knowledge on subjects ranging from rock and roll to Eastern mysticism. Not once, however, had the talk turned personal. Not until now.

She turned toward him again, at least as much as the close confines of their positions allowed. Josh was still focused on the soldiers outside, and the slant of late afternoon light coming in through the crack illuminated his face.

His skin had been darkened by the never-ceasing wind of this rugged, mountainous country. He hadn’t had a haircut in the four months they had been here. His hair’s natural curl was obvious as it had never been when he was able to keep it close-cropped, which was the way he preferred to wear it. And it was almost as dark as the hole they were cowering in, as black as the thick lashes that the shadowed those pale blue eyes.

His features, taken individually, weren’t extraordinary. Actually, they were harsh. Hard-bitten. His face was dominated by its bone structure: a Roman beak of a nose, high cheekbones, and a determined jaw. Tonight the shadow of several days’ growth of whiskers gave it a truly cutthroat aspect.

Joshua Stone was certainly capable of cutting a throat or two if he felt doing that would be in the best interests of his country. Perfectly capable, she thought, her eyes still examining that unusual combination of features.

They were not a satisfactory explanation of why this man had proven so compelling to her. Maybe it was the contradictions that fascinated her. His almost forbidding looks hid a reckless, devil-may-care personality. And those austere features included a mobile mouth that tilted into a smile at the slightest provocation. During the four brutal months they had spent in this devastated country, Josh had never lost his sense of humor or his patience. And she had sorely tried both.

He turned his head, meeting her eyes. “What is that you do every night?”

Think about you. “Sponge bath,” she said aloud.

“That’s my girl,” he said, turning back to the view through the crack. She watched the visible corner of his lips lift. “Sponge bath, huh?”

“I prefer not to become one of the great unwashed.”

“Implying I have?”

“Well…” she said, drawing the word out.

Suddenly his body, which was pressed against hers, tensed. Paige’s gaze flew back to the slit in the wall. One of the soldiers was coming toward them, his eyes sweeping the area in front of him, rifle held at the ready. She didn’t need the warning glance Josh shot her before he turned back to the crack.

Unconsciously, Paige held her breath as the soldier approached. Like most of his comrades, his boots were old and broken, his uniform a collection of mismatched garments, which had probably been purchased from Soviet military surplus long before the rebellion had broken out. None of which meant he wouldn’t know how to use the weapon he carried. Or wouldn’t be as willing to kill for his country as Joshua Stone would be.

As she would be? Paige wondered. She had gotten brave enough one night to confess to Josh that she’d have a real problem killing any of these people if they were forced to fight their way out of this beleaguered republic. After all, she had said, these aren’t the bad guys.

And she had not forgotten his answer: “Good guys or bad, if they shoot you, Daniels, you’ll be dead. Believe me, whatever you may feel about them, they won’t hesitate to kill you.”

She blocked the ongoing mental debate about what she would do in that worst-case scenario. It wouldn’t happen, she told herself, just as she had since they had begun this. She wouldn’t be faced with that decision. Not now. For all intents and purposes they were through, their mission complete. All they had to do was get to the border, which was less than five miles away, and wait for their contact to pick them up.

All they had to do. Those had been Josh’s words. And he didn’t seem to feel that the fact that those five miles were crawling with rebel forces searching for what they were trying to smuggle out of the country would make any difference.

The soldier shouted something over his shoulder. Despite her familiarity with the languages in the region and the crash course the CIA had given them in this specific one just before they’d left, she couldn’t understand the idiomatic dialect he was using. However, the sweeping gesture that urged the others to join him was universal.

She glanced at Josh again. Without looking her way, he held his semiautomatic up in one hand and pointed to it with the other. Only then did she realize she didn’t have her weapon out.

Pushing against Josh to let him know he had to give her some room, she unbuttoned the middle buttons of her parka and reached inside, her palm closing around the metallic weight of her own pistol. She held it for a second or two, and then she made herself pull it out. By that time there were two other soldiers converging toward their hiding place.

The building she and Josh had taken shelter in had once been some kind of government office. The top stories had been destroyed in one of the Russian air strikes, as had most of the rest of the village, with the exception of an old stone church, which was fairly intact. That had been the first place Josh had considered, but he had rejected it in favor of this one.