Muriel Jensen - That Summer In Maine

Maggie was blond, though, and both women were dark-haired. He scanned the camp for some sign of her and the third man. He finally spotted them across the camp, sitting back to back. It looked as though they were talking.

He focused on the woman as closely as he could and saw long, disheveled hair the color of polished gold. The sun picked it out like a mirror and made a halo around it. He couldn’t see her face, just a pair of long legs bent at the knee in camel-colored pants.

He turned the glasses to the man she leaned against and saw that he was about her height, in a baseball cap and glasses also picked out by the sun. They were exhausted, judging by the way they leaned on each other.

It had been almost twenty hours since they’d been taken, and he could only imagine their weariness and fear. It was clearly visible in the woman pacing back and forth.

Instinct demanded that he run down the slope now, a full clip in his Glock. Reason, fortunately, dictated otherwise. Count men and weapons. Memorize positions. Rest and wait for darkness.

That was exactly the order passed on to him in broken English from the young captain lying prone beside him.

His eyes burned with the strain of keeping track of that spot of gold in the distance. Just as dusk turned to darkness, he watched one of the men in camouflage hook an arm into Maggie’s and help her to her feet. Then he did the same for the man. He led them to the fire and ladled them bowls of food.

Then it became too dark to see details. The campfire flickered in the blackness, and finally the moon appeared from behind a cloud to cast a frail light on the camp. He searched it for a glimpse of gold and spotted it near the tree where the two men had sat. He thought he saw the agitated young woman near her, but he couldn’t be sure.

The air crackled with tension as the order came to move down the slope. Duffy, focused on that glimpse of gold, stayed on the flank so that he could move out in an instant.

“I CAN NOT STAND IT another moment!” Celine whispered in heavily accented English. Her mouth trembled and her whole body shook. She’d been on the brink of hysteria since they’d been ambushed on the hiking trail in the park, and was now about to plunge over the edge.

“It’s going to be all right,” Maggie told her as she’d done a dozen times since this nightmare had begun.

But as the girl continued to whine, Maggie was distracted by something she couldn’t quite define, some subtle disturbance of air she felt rather than heard. She turned toward the rugged slope just beyond their camp, wondering if she was imagining things.

There was nothing to see in the pale moonlight, but she noticed that the leader, Eduard, had sensed something, too. His men seemed unaware of anything, but Baldy came up beside her. With the actor’s gift for feeling what couldn’t be seen, he asked under his breath, “What is it?”

Before she could answer, Eduard shouted something to his men as he shrugged the Uzi off his shoulder and aimed it toward the slope. Two of their captors came running toward the hostages and tried to round them up and lead them into the trees.

But Celine screamed, now clearly in a panic, and ran in the other direction.

One of the soldiers aimed his weapon at her and shouted something that was probably a command to stop.

Maggie, already in pursuit of her, doubted that she heard the order.

“Celine!” she shouted. “Get down!”

But Celine hadn’t heard her, either.

The order was issued again and punctuated with the sound of gunfire.

Maggie ran faster, so close to Celine that she could have touched her had her hands not been tied. Her only hope was to throw herself at the girl and knock her to the ground before a bullet did.

But before she could do that, something struck her from the side and knocked her off her feet. For a surprised instant she simply lay in the cool grass hearing the sounds of chaos in the camp. There were cries, gunfire, shouted commands. She heard Celine’s sobbing.

Then she became aware of the weight stifling her and struck backward with an elbow, certain the Basque gunman had caught them.

“Whoa! I…oof!” She flailed and kicked like a wild thing, the part of her mind not occupied with the struggle wondering why she was doing it when she didn’t care if she lived or died. Then she decided it was probably a matter of being able to decide for herself when and where she gave up.

Her foot had connected with flesh, and she took advantage of her opponent’s momentary surprise to scramble to her feet and run in the direction of Celine’s sobs.

But she didn’t get far. She was tackled around the ankles and went down with a thud. She turned with a scream of rage, flailing wildly in the dark, trying to sit up.

“Maggie!”

A flash exploded just as a hand shoved her back to the grass, and there was a grunt of pain as her attacker went down. Then another flash lit the night right beside her, and a man in camouflage fell across her body.

Even as the horror of the moment chilled her through, her brain was working on what was out of place here.

Then she realized what it was. The man she’d tried to fight off had called her Maggie in perfect, unaccented English. She also realized that the shot intended for her had caught him. God. Had she gotten one of their rescuers killed?

No. An instant later the body of the man who’d fallen across her was dragged off and she was turned onto her face as more gunfire rattled overhead. The man’s weight held her down, and she heard the deafening sound of his weapon and the thump of another body not too far away.

Then everything grew quiet.

“Monsieur March?” a voice with a rolling French accent whispered in the stillness. “You are well?”

“We’re fine,” he replied. “You?”

“Oui. But you were hit, no?”

“Yes. It’s just a scrape. Is the woman all right?”

“She has fainted.”

The man holding Maggie down said wryly, “If only I’d been that lucky.”

Maggie tried to turn, but the hand continued to hold her down. “Lie still,” the man commanded, “until we get the all-clear.”

“I’m sorry.” Maggie spoke into the grass. “But when a man tackles a woman to the ground she presumes she’s not going to like whatever he has planned.”

“My plans were to prevent you from getting shot,” he countered, then added on a note of amusement, “Unfortunately, you didn’t have the same plans for me.”

She sighed and dropped her forehead to the grass. “Again, I’m sorry. It was dark. You were running after me…”

“It’s all right. I’m fine.”

A shout came from the main part of the camp, and the man got to his feet, pulling her with him. “All clear, Maggie. Pretty soon you’ll be home.”

There was her name again, spoken in that familiar way. She stopped as he began to lead her to the main part of the camp, now well lit with flashlights and emergency flares. He had hold of her arm and stopped with her, a dark eyebrow raised in question.

She looked into dark-brown eyes, their expression curiously satisfied and relaxed considering what he’d just been through. His nose was strong and straight, his mouth half smiling, his chin a square line in an angular face. Short, dark-brown hair was ruffled by the night wind.

She shuddered as the cool air rippled through her light jacket. She had the oddest sense of familiarity without recognizing his features. “Do I know you?” she asked.

DUFFY COULDN’T BELIEVE how beautiful she still was. The teenager with whom he’d been infatuated was still visible in the smooth curve of her cheek, the youthful tilt of her nose, and the natural color of the long, straight hair he’d been able to pick out from a distance. But pain had worn away the sparkle he remembered in her dark-blue eyes. The ever-ready smile wasn’t there, either.