At the Edge of the Sun (Maggie Bennett 3)

“I don’t know. Our sources are pretty damned good at this point. The Children of God don’t like Flynn’s friends any more than we do—they’d have nothing to lose and everything to gain by screwing them. I’d guess that Flynn’s planning to fly to Rome from a pickup spot near the border. With us on his trail and Ian and Holly at the other end we should have him neatly trapped.”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”

“Nothing ever is.”

They rode on in silence. It was late morning and the rough dirt roads leading into the mountains of Lebanon were deserted. Mabib had promised to see the still-battling Holly and Ian off on the next flight out of Beirut, and now that they were separated from the other pair an uncomfortable silence had reigned between Maggie and Randall.

“So what makes you think we’re heading in the right direction? How do you know Mabib’s informant isn’t the same slug using Bud Willis’s name?”

Randall looked over at her in the bright sunlit morning. “Mabib knows who to trust in Lebanon,” he said slowly. “He wouldn’t still be alive if he didn’t. This isn’t the world’s most peaceful country, Maggie. You know that as well as I do. And like me you’ve learned who you can trust and who you can’t.”

That distant, closed look shuttered down over her face again, and he wanted to slap the steering wheel in frustration. As usual he banked down his reaction, keeping his own expression impassive.

“Have I?” she murmured. “I’m not sure about that.”

“You know better than to believe anything Bud Willis would tell you. Particularly if it was about me.”

She looked up then, her eyes wary. “What makes you think he told me anything about you?”

His smile was cynical. “Instincts, Maggie. We weren’t on the best of terms when we parted in Chicago, but you didn’t hate me. You hate me now.”

He waited for her to deny it. He was pushing her, goading her, hoping for some tiny bit of information, some explanation for the desolate expression in her eyes and the grim anger around her mouth.

But he should have known Maggie wouldn’t be pushed. “Randall, I’m tired,” she said, ignoring his statement. “If you don’t need me to keep watch I’m going to try to sleep. It’ll be hours before we reach the border, right?” She slouched down in the seat, closing her wonderful aquamarine eyes, clearly determined to ignore him.

“Hours,” he agreed with a touch of asperity. “Okay, Maggie. You can run away again. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face me.”

Her eyes flew open. “I’m not running.”

“Aren’t you? Then why won’t you answer a direct question?”

She open

ed her mouth, and he waited, patiently, a faint trace of hope stirring within him. But she shut it again, glaring at him, and slid back down on the seat. “Wake me when we’re getting close,” she snapped.

He considered pulling over to the side of the deserted road and shaking her. For a brief moment he indulged himself in fantasy, playing with the idea of shoving her into the back of the Bronco and forcing her to respond to him, to drop her defenses. It would be all too easy to do. He knew how to move her, knew what she reacted to, knew just what to do to make her helpless and quivering in response, where she’d deny him nothing, not her body, not her soul, not the answers he wanted.

But the idea of rape disgusted him, and that was the only way he’d get her pliant enough to accept him. No, it was going to have to wait. It sometimes seemed like he’d spent half his adult life waiting for Maggie Bennett. He was a man with limitless patience, but that patience was running out.

It was getting dark when Maggie awoke. Her entire body ached, her eyes were gritty from sleep and dust, and her mouth felt like fuzzy cotton. The damned Bronco went over another bump, and she bit back a moan of pain. She looked over at the man beside her, the man concentrating on driving over the narrow mountain track.

Lines of weariness bracketed his thin mouth, his eyes were dark and shadowed, and his strong, narrow hands held the steering wheel with deceptive ease. He was dressed in rough khakis, and above the open shirt she could see the cords of tension in his neck, betraying the calm, detached expression on his face.

He was driving very slowly, very expertly, somehow managing to keep the noisy engine of the Bronco at a relatively quiet level. “I was about to wake you,” he said, and his rich warm voice grated on her nerves even as it moved her. “We should be less than half a mile away.”

“Do we have any plan of action? Or are we just going to go blazing away like Rambo?” She pitched her own voice low to match his.

“I suppose it’s a possibility. We’ve got two Uzis, a Sten, and a couple of Colt handguns. What the scenario lacks in finesse it makes up for in effectiveness.”

Maggie nodded, adrenaline coursing through her, and for the time being all thought of Mack Pulaski left her. For the moment they were partners, she and Randall, counting on each other in a life-or-death situation, and there would be no room for doubts, for lack of trust, for a moment’s hesitation. “I think subtlety would be wasted on a man like Tim Flynn.”

“He won’t be alone, Maggie.”

“I imagine they’ll be into shooting first and asking questions later,” she said. “I’ll take one of the Uzis.”

“You ever shot one before?”

Maggie laughed, a wry sound on the hot dry air. “In a shooting range in Atlanta, Georgia,” she said. “They have them franchised all over the country for would-be soldiers of fortune and frustrated housewives. You go in, plop down twenty-five bucks and get to blast away.”