Jane Godman - One Night With The Valkyrie

Maja was watching Adam’s face and she could tell Tarek’s admission had a powerful effect on him. His eyes darkened and a frown line pulled his brows together. She sensed he was trying not to express disbelief, and she was glad when he won his internal battle. She might not know much about these things, but if they were going to support Tarek, they had to show him that they believed him unconditionally.

“I don’t understand.” Maja looked from Tarek to Adam. “Who is this man?”

“The Reaper is a vicious murderer and one of the most feared terrorist masterminds in the world,” Adam said. “His network extends across the globe, but his headquarters are thought to be in this part of the world. I’m saying ‘thought to be’ because no one really knows anything about him. His true identity is carefully concealed. Armed forces have been hunting him for the last two years with no luck.”

While his words revealed a disgust for the man who could unleash that sort of terror on the world, they didn’t explain the sadness she had seen when he first heard Tarek’s words. Sensitivity wasn’t Maja’s strong point, and patience was not considered a virtue in the Valkyrie, but she decided to wait in case Adam had more to say. After about a minute, during which he appeared lost in thought, he spoke again.

“A bomb was planted in the office of my Boston newspaper headquarters after we published an article condemning the activities of his terrorist group. Luckily, a security guard saw a suspicious package and raised the alarm before it went off, so no one was killed. The building was destroyed.”

He smiled, and her heart gave a strange little leap. It was most perplexing, because there was no one she could go to for advice about that. She suspected there was nothing actually wrong with her heart, and that its erratic behavior was an Adam-related occurrence. Until now, she had never envied mortals. Their lives seemed short and drab. Now, she wondered if she might have been wrong. If she had been a mortal woman, she probably would have been able to ask someone about the unnerving effect Adam had on her. She could always ask him, of course. Maybe just not right now...

“And the heroic security guard is still alive, so he wasn’t picked up by one of your squad mates and transported to Valhalla.”

The words heralded a change in approach. They were a definite signal that he no longer viewed her as a figment of his imagination. Which meant he knew what had happened between them had been real. Real and devastating. The thought tipped her world slightly off balance. She had an uncomfortable feeling Adam knew exactly what she was thinking. How had it suddenly gotten so hard to breathe?

Tarek. He was the focus here. The only thing that mattered right now. Yes, she had a whole heap of other problems to deal with, but the child’s safety had to come first. She didn’t know any other children, but some new instinct, more powerful than anything she had learned in Valkyrie training, told her that. She turned back to the boy. “How do you know this man?”

“I don’t know him. I have never met him, but I heard my father talking about him on the phone.” Tarek clung to her hand. “I was supposed to be in bed, but I sneaked onto the landing and listened. I was frightened because my father was shouting and he sounded scared. He kept saying ‘you have to listen to me.’” He swallowed hard. “I don’t think they listened to him.”

“Do you know who he was talking to?” Adam asked.

“My father called him ‘sir.’ Only once, he said his name. Then, he called him ‘Shepherd.’ I remember everything he said because it scared me so much. He said the Reaper wasn’t one man, it was a con-sor-tium.” Tarek spoke the word carefully in the manner of one who had rehearsed it many times. Out of the corner of her eye, Maja saw Adam sit up a little straighter. “But he said one man was the brains behind it all. My father said he had two years’ worth of evidence on this guy. It was enough to bring him down. The next day—the day after my father made that phone call—they bombed the university where he worked and my father was killed. That was two weeks ago.”

Maja wrapped her arms around the trembling boy, holding him close. “Why would they come for you, Tarek? How did those men know you had this information?”

“I don’t know.” Tears filled his dark eyes. “You are the first people I have told.”

“It’s possible they were just taking no chances. Getting rid of any family members just to be sure,” Adam said. “But you definitely heard your father say the name of the man behind this corporation?” As Adam asked the question, Maja sensed he was reining in a feeling of urgency.

“It was an easy name to remember. It sounds like a name from a fairy tale,” Tarek said. “It was Knight Valentine.”

Adam’s reaction surprised Maja. Hissing out a breath, he got to his feet. Although it was clear he was still weak and in pain, he paced from one end of the small room to the other for several minutes, clearly lost in thought. That name meant something to him, and whatever the meaning was, she sensed it wasn’t good.

Maja, meanwhile, spoke softly to Tarek. Reassuring him that he had done the right thing in telling them everything, she promised they would make sure the Reaper would not be able to find him. Could she carry through that promise? She knew nothing of this world, and she was now an outcast from her own. In an act of rebellion so complete, she had ensured she could never return to Valhalla. That was just the start of her personal problems. Odin was famed for his vindictiveness. He was unlikely to let a rogue Valkyrie live in peace. Scratch that. He was unlikely to let a rogue Valkyrie live. And live where? All she knew was her warrior lifestyle, and she wasn’t human, so even if she might be able to hide from Odin, there was no place for her here in the mortal realm.

“I will get you out of here.” When Adam came back to his seat, his firm voice, together with Maja’s encouragement, seemed to boost Tarek’s confidence.

Even so, the boy raised troubled eyes to Maja’s face. “Will you stay with me?”

She lifted her own eyes to Adam’s, seeking confirmation. He nodded. “I’ll stay with you. We both will.”

Reassured, Tarek went off to find Edith, to organize food for Leo.

“How will we keep our promise?” Maja asked. “How will we get him out of here?”

Adam grinned. “I haven’t figured out the finer details. I’ll admit that getting a child, a Valkyrie—” the grin turned into a grimace “—and a dog out of a war-torn country is going to stretch my ingenuity. But I’ll think of something.”

* * *

Sitting at the kitchen table in the mission, they planned the operation long into the night. Edith had handed over the keys to her car without blinking. Much the way she had accepted the presence of a corset-clad, sword-wielding Norsewoman in the heart of Syria. Adam suspected that the Englishwoman’s life contained many interesting stories. Maja was just one more.

“You can’t fly out of Syria without a visa, and we don’t have time to obtain one for Tarek,” Edith said. She spread a map of the region on the table. Tracing various locations with her finger, she pointed out a route. “One by one, the surrounding countries have closed down their borders. You won’t be able to take Tarek across at any official points without the correct documentation, but if you have money, there are places where it can be done.”

“I have money.” Adam’s jacket might be torn and bloodied, but the concealed inner pocket still contained thousands of US dollars and his cell phone. He had a feeling that his best asset in the next few days was sitting at his right-hand side, studying the map in silence. A Valkyrie warrior who could use her invisibility to his advantage was going to be more useful than any amount of money when it came to getting Tarek out of this troubled land.