Midnight Remembered

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.

This particular building had collapsed inward, spilling structural debris from the top floors into the basement. The subfloor of the bottom story had been left partially intact, however, and it was under that part, sheltered against one of the outside walls, that they were hiding. The foundation had cracked as the building came crashing down, and they were looking out through a narrow separation that had opened up between the subfloor and the stones of the cellar.

They had had to crawl through a maze of fallen beams, broken boards and plaster to get into this corner. At the time, she had been relieved because it had seemed incredibly safe. Directly over their heads, the subfloor sloped toward the center of the basement, leaving just enough room for her to stand upright and be able to look out. Josh, who was taller by a good five or six inches, had to stoop to see out of the crack.

Two other soldiers had now joined the one outside. There could be no doubt that their attention was on this structure. One of them walked forward, stepping up onto the boards directly above her and Josh. Paige ducked her head, closing her eyes as a rain of dirt and broken mortar showered down on them.

The soldier’s boots echoed across the wooden floor above. He was making his way slowly because of the treacherous angle at which the boards inclined and the danger that the damaged floor might collapse under his weight. Which wouldn’t be a good thing for him or for them, Paige thought.

If he did make it across, on the far side of the cellar, clearly visible, was the set of steps they had climbed down this afternoon. The top ones had been exposed by the shattered floor joists, and from there the path she and Josh had taken across the debris-strewn basement wouldn’t be hard to follow. Their footprints would be obvious in the dust that had filtered down after the building’s collapse.

She felt Josh shift so that he was facing the opposite direction, looking behind them now. His movements had been painstakingly careful and almost noiseless, so as not to draw the attention of the soldiers outside. He was trying to get into a defensive position if the one who was in the building found them.

If that happened, Josh would be counting on her to take out the others before they could come inside. And then he would expect her to prevent the soldiers on the other side of the square from joining in the fray. Moving as quietly as Josh had, she raised her weapon, training the muzzle on the two men waiting outside.

Above their heads, the footsteps stopped. Paige didn’t know if that was because the soldier had found the broken beams too dangerous to cross or because he had spotted the cellar steps.

She heard him call out something to the others. One of the words had been stairs, she knew, but she didn’t get much of the rest. Under the assault of adrenaline, her mind seemed numb, focused only on the two men outside, who were her responsibility.

She put her left hand around the stock of the pistol, steeling herself to pull the trigger. That’s all she had to do. Point and squeeze. Don’t think. Just point it and keep squeezing until it’s over.

As the two began to move forward, she could hear the other soldier behind her now, much closer than he had been before. He must be at least part of the way down the steps, and unconsciously, she tightened her grip on the gun.

And then, suddenly, the two outside began looking over their shoulders. Shifting her gaze to that direction, she watched a military transport pull into the village square. The sound of its engine finally reached her ears, a few seconds after the men outside had become aware of it.

The truck seemed as dated as the rebels’ weapons, but given its olive drab color, there was no doubt what it was. Or, after a moment, why it was here. There were distant shouts, and the troops who had been searching the rubble began to trot toward the truck and clamber up onto the open bed. One of the soldiers standing outside the building where she and Josh were hiding turned back and called to their companion.

There was an exchange of shouts. Holding her breath again, Paige listened as the searcher’s footsteps began to retrace his route over the broken boards above their heads. The dust dislodged by his passage this time was less than before.

Then the soldier jumped off the subfloor right in front of the crack. Paige flinched involuntarily with the thud his combat boots made when they hit the ground.

As the three began to walk toward the truck, one of the others threw an affectionate arm around the shoulders of the man who had been in the process of descending into the basement. Consoling him? And then, laughing at something he said in response, the three began to jog toward the truck.

Neither she nor Josh said anything until the rebel forces were all aboard. As soon as they were, the transport began to move, lumbering out onto the main street with a belch of smoke from the exhaust and an ominous grinding of gears. As the sound of its laboring engine faded into the twilight, silence descended over the remains of what had once been a thriving community.

“Close call,” she said. Her heart was beginning to slow, beating in her chest rather than crowding her throat.

“The very best kind,” Josh said softly, his eyes still scanning the deserted village.

Looking for what? she wondered. Someone left behind to secure this place? To see if anything suspicious popped up after the rest of the unit departed?

The two of them wouldn’t show themselves, of course. Not until he was sure there was no one there. The Joshua Stone she had come to know in these four months took nothing for granted.

“What does that mean?” she asked, willing her voice to steadiness. “The ‘best’ kind. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t a ‘good’ close call.”

He turned, his eyes examining her features, which she imagined showed the strain of the last few minutes. “A good close call is one you survive, Daniels. A little danger gets the juices flowing. Keeps you young,” he said.

Paige felt as if she had aged ten years while she’d been waiting for the soldier to discover them. “You, maybe,” she said. “I don’t think danger has that same effect on me.”

“So what effect does it have on you?”

She hesitated a moment, and then she said truthfully, “It makes me glad to be alive.”

“And makes you appreciate life in a way you don’t think about too often,” he suggested.

He was right, of course. She was very glad to be alive. She wasn’t sure, however, if that equated to feeling more alive. Or to feeling younger. As for those flowing juices, there didn’t seem to be enough moisture in her body to work up a good spit. Her mouth was dry, hands trembling. Only with that observation did she realize that she was still holding her weapon.

“Think it’s safe to put this away?” she asked, lifting the pistol as she glanced up to find Josh’s eyes were on her face. They were again illuminated by the light which filtered in through the crack. For the first time since she’d known him, their blue seemed dark. Mysterious and unfathomable.