And that was what he’d planned all along; to tie her to him so completely that she could never break free, not until he was ready to let her go. And as the blackness of the Gemansk night closed around him, he wondered for the first time if that day would ever come.
Maggie sighed in her sleep, snuggling closer. Slowly, almost of their own volition, his arms moved around her, cradling her against him. And he realized with a flash of despair that he didn’t want to let her go, ever. Resting his chin against her silky mane of hair, he allowed himself a short, troubled sleep.
seventeen
Maggie sat in the doorway, fully dressed, her bare feet tucked under her, and watched the approach of dawn. It came silently at first, with an infinitesimal lightening of the eastern sky. Probably somewhere over Russia, she thought. Odd that a place she thought of as dark and shadowed would get the sunlight first. The sky began to swell with peach and pearly-gray and crimson stripes that reached into the darkness and banished the night. For once Maggie watched the blackness go with regret. With the darkness went the last of her illusions, the last of her comfort. Daylight would bring stark reality crashing in on her.
The birds came next. Starting with a quiet little chatter of noise overhead, it soon expanded into a full-blown symphony of sound as they called to each other through the trees. Maggie wondered if they were calling to their mates. Did those soft gray-brown Eastern European swallows mate for life?
A soft breeze began to pick up, rustling the trees and rumpling Maggie’s hair around her bleak face. It was as gentle as a lover’s caress, soft and warm and sweet. Maggie shivered, hugging her arms around her knees.
She knew he was awake, knew he was watching her as he lay perfectly still, his own clothes still a tangle on the floor beside the cot. She could sit there and wait, or she could run from what she couldn’t face. He’d stripped her of everything last night, her clothes, her pride, her defenses. She could deal with that—pride and defenses could be rebuilt, clothes were easy to put back on. But he’d done the worst thing possible—he’d stolen Mack away from her.
“It’s almost dawn.” Her voice was admirably cool and dispassionate in the stillness as she kept her gaze outward. “I’ll go find Tomas while you get dressed.” She rose in one fluid movement, keeping her back to him.
“Maggie.” His voice was deep, smooth, and rich—so unlike Mack’s cracked shell of a voice. “Look at me, Maggie.”
“Leave me alone, Randall,” she said gently, and she closed the door behind her as she ran out into the deserted, dawnlit street.
He watched her go through the gaping shell of the window, watched her race away from him as if a thousand devils were at her heels. And slowly, savagely he began to curse.
It was all much easier than anyone would have expected. Leopold’s cousin, Tomas, proved to be the dour member of the family. He was waiting for Maggie with a gloomy expression on his face, with forged papers in his back pocket, in a Mercedes pickup truck of prewar vintage. Maggie didn’t even want to consider which war.
The three of them rode for hours, crammed together in the front seat, sharing cheese and fresh bread and very strong coffee for breakfast as they bounced along toward the border. After one look at her shuttered, set expression, Randall had left her alone, keeping up a running conversation with the serious Tomas. Lost as she was in her own dark thoughts, Maggie didn’t even notice when they crossed the border into Austria and were finally safe from the long arm of the secret police.
It was still before noon when Tomas dropped them off at the train station with their original passports, complete with forged exit stamps. They made it to Vienna and on to the airport in less than an hour and were on a plane to New York by midafternoon. During all those hours, Maggie didn’t speak one unnecessary word to Randall and never once looked him in the eye.
He seemed content to let her be. His curious eyes were on her, but his conversation, too, was restricted to the essentials. He slept during the long flight back to New York, his long legs stretched out in the first-class seats. He slept while Maggie stared out the window, hollow-eyed, empty, for the seven-hour flight.
The massive sprawling bulk of JFK greeted her weary eyes, and a thousand memories hovered around her like angry bats, waiting to strike. So many times she’d stumbled wearily off a plane; so many times the huge airport had witnessed turning points in her life. There was the time Peter Wallace had met her, sending her off to see Mack Pulaski for the first time. And there was the time she and Mack ha
d flown in from Central America and been reduced to stripping off their clothes in public, courting arrest to keep them safe from one of Mack’s many pursuers.
It had bought them some time—two years, in fact—until those pursuers had caught up with him. She moved through customs in a fog, hating the memories that swept over her, hating the throbbing pain. From now on, she wasn’t going to fly into JFK anymore. If she couldn’t get an international flight to another local airport, she’d fly into Philadelphia and drive up. It might even have been worth the wait for the next flight from Vienna to Chicago.
But that would have meant more time in Randall’s company, and she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. She was desperate to get back to her apartment, away from him, away from everyone and everything but her memories of Mack. Somehow she had to get him back.
Randall caught up with her as she was heading toward the rows of waiting taxis. His hand was rough on her arm, exerting just enough pain to let her know his calm voice was a ruse. She still refused to meet his eyes, but stood, head down, waiting until he released her.
He made no move to do so. “Where are you going?”
“To my apartment. I need a good night’s sleep, Randall.”
“So do I.”
“I hope you get one,” she said in her most polite voice. “You won’t be getting one with me.”
“I know,” he said, and the double entendre sent a red flush into her pale face. She raised her head and focused on a point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. “All right, Maggie,” he said finally, his long fingers biting into her arm, “I’ll let you go this time. I have a few things to check on in the city anyway. I’ll make arrangements for us to fly to Chicago tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’d rather take care of it myself.”
“I’m sure you would. That, however, is not an option. I’ll give you some time to yourself, but tomorrow I’ll be at your apartment and you’d better be ready to go.” His voice was calm, unmoved, but through her numbness Maggie could feel the tension, the anger vibrating through him. “Understood?”
She considered fighting, she considered turning and taking the next flight to Chicago, but in the end the numbness and exhaustion won out. “Understood,” she muttered, dropping her eyes again. “May I leave now?”
“Snotty as ever,” he said, but there was an oddly gentle note in his voice. “Yes, you can leave now. I’m presuming you don’t wish to share a cab with me?”
“You’re presuming right,” she snapped. “What time tomorrow?”