Night Child, page 2
In a flash she knew that it was this secret fear at the bottom of her soul that drove her. This was why she worked so hard, why she had no life, why she danced.
She began to tremble.
"No! It can't be happening again! I won't let it!"
Her voice was choked with tears. She didn't even know what her words meant.
"No!" she cried.
She was frantic to escape this man who provoked such terror.
His hands were manacles of iron. She was powerless to move.
The old nameless fear was welling up.
Someone was shouting, shaking her. She heard her own voice, shrill and unrecognizable, louder than all the rest of the pandemonium.
Brutal fingers ground her windpipe into the bone, and she was silenced. She fell back, limp in the Arab's arms, and he bundled her up, running with her, carrying her outside into the smothering furnacelike heat of the desert.
Inside the cozy living room of a huge red-roofed mansion on one of the biggest ranching empires in all of Texas, Jeb Jackson was holding his fiery-haired baby son proudly in his arms. Jared made loud guzzling noises as he sucked voraciously at the rubber nipple.
"Don't feed him so fast," Megan instructed softly.
It was amazing how often it took the two of them to tend Jared properly. They were like a surgical team, hovering anxiously, ministering to the baby's slightest need as if these routine activities were of mammoth importance.
Jeb tried to pull the bottle away, but Jared only sucked all the harder with a frantic determination.
"Honey, he's a Jackson and a real Texan cowboy. He's not about to let a woman boss him."
"He's only six weeks old! Don't tell me he's already a lost cause—like his father!"
Male black eyes locked with defiant green ones, but as he studied his wife, Jeb's expression softened. This woman had filled his nights with passion, his days with excitement and happiness, and now she had given him a son. "He's old enough to go after what he wants." Jeb reached out and fingered a strand of Megan's red hair. It pleased him that it was the exact shade of his son's, just as it pleased him that every time she looked at him her face was transformed with love and gentleness.
Once she had fought him. Now she was his. Forever.
Across the room Jeb's parents, Mercedes and Wayne Jackson, were watching the news as they sipped cocktails. As always, Megan's brother, Kirk MacKay, stood apart from the others, wrapped in his own brooding silence, a lone wolf apart from the pack. Tall and swarthy, dressed in tight jeans and a black shirt that was slashed at the throat and hugged his lean body, he towered behind the older Jacksons. Every muscle in his body felt taut, caged in. He had accepted the dinner invitation only because Megan had begged him to.
Kirk turned his back on the television, bent his powerful body over the bar and poured himself a bourbon on the rocks. A brown hand restlessly swirled the crystal glass, but he did not bring it to his lips.
A young maid in a black-and-white uniform came into the vast room and cast slanting flirtatious eyes in his direction. Kirk looked up from his drink. He had danced with her at a country-and-western dance last weekend. He remembered her pressing her body into his; just as he remembered the hot invitation in her eyes. All his life women had chased him. He smiled faintly, cynically, and she blushed to the roots of her hair at his attention, barely managing to announce dinner in a tiny faltering voice before stumbling from the room.
Mercedes arose to switch off the television, but just as she did, the commentator started talking about the latest kidnapping in the Middle East. Mercedes' hand hovered on the button.
"Leave it on," Kirk commanded. His attention was caught, rapt, as was Mercedes'.
"And now our latest on the Dawn Hayden abduction in Ali Naid, tiny oil sheikhdom of Prince Ali Hufaz. Miss Hayden is a principal dancer for the New National Theater of Dance and Ballet in New York City, and at twenty-five, she is one of America's prima ballerinas. On the night before last, Miss Hayden had just finished the finale of the first act of The Sleeping Beauty for one of Prince Ali's gala charity events when seven gunmen interrupted her mesmerizing performance and attempted to assassinate Prince Ali. Though the attempt failed, one of the prince's top aides, Mussa Assad, suffered chest wounds and is in critical condition. Miss Hayden was kidnapped by the alleged leader of the band of terrorists as he was escaping. There has been no word of Miss Hayden in over thirty-six hours, and all efforts to locate her have failed thus far."
A color photograph of the dancer flashed across the screen. She was dark, slim, graceful, with the long-necked, ethereal beauty so common to ballerinas. Her pale face was a delicate oval. High black brows winged above enormous shining dark eyes. Her smile radiated warmth. She had an unruly mane of thick, ebony hair that cascaded over her shoulders in wrinkled waves. Even in that still picture, there was something wild, something vitally, irrepressibly and eagerly alive about her, something undisciplined and unruly that had no place in the face of a classical dancer. Hers was no polished, emotionless cameo. She was a maverick, and it showed.
Kirk found himself unaccountably drawn to the girl. There was a haunting vulnerability about her. He wondered where she was, what was happening to her.
He slammed his glass on the gleaming bar, and everyone turned to look at him. He flushed darkly. "Sorry."
They knew too well his dislike of kidnappings and terrorism, respected his privacy and turned their attention back to the television.
Acid chewed a bitter path through him as he thought of that slim pale woman brutalized and murdered by rough terrorist bandits. Kirk's green eyes, so like his sister's, hardened. It was better not to think of the girl. With an effort, he forced himself to relax. It wasn't as if he knew her, as if he could do something about her, as if it was his fault— this time.
"Too bad they got her," he muttered grimly. "She's probably dead by now. If she's lucky." He bolted his bourbon and poured another.
"Dear God!" Mercedes bit into her knuckles. A former dancer herself in her youth, she was always interested in any story however remotely connected to the ballet world. She had been following this one closely.
"Damn fool idiot!" Kirk muttered. "Girls like her don't have any business over there in the first place. Prince Ali is a brutal and total dictator, and many factions in his country have sworn to kill him."
As the news story unfolded, only Mercedes and Kirk remained to watch. There were more photographs of the girl and a clipping of her dancing Ondine.
Transfixed Mercedes watched. "Her dancing isn't perfect, but it is wonderful. Really beautiful. I once knew someone else, who danced Ondine almost exactly like that! My sister Anna..." Mercedes shivered and moved closer to the television set. Unconsciously her hand had lifted to her heart. "No..." Her voice was low, strangled. "It can't be..."
Kirk rushed to her side. Mercedes was as white as if she'd seen a ghost. He looked back at the swirling dancer. There was a strange sensation of impending doom in the center of his gut.
An enlargement of a pendant Dawn Hayden always wore blazed across the television screen. It was a tiny golden sun.
Mercedes' eyes widened. She made a little sound, and Kirk was suddenly afraid she was having a heart attack. She gripped Kirk's hand as she studied the pendant and whispered, "Julia! My baby!" Her wild eyes pierced Kirk's, but she wasn't seeing him. "Julia's alive!" she murmured faintly. "She's alive! They didn't kill her!"
Jeb and Wayne came running just as she collapsed in Kirk's arms crying, "Julia, Julia... Kirk, you have to save her. You have to!"
His face gray with alarm, Wayne tried to pull his wife from Kirk and cradle her in his arms. "Darling. Julia was kidnapped twenty years ago. She's dead. She has to be—"
Mercedes grasped Kirk's lapels and struggled to hang on to him. "No.. .that's her... A mother knows. The Longoria necklace... It's the same."
Wayne was smoothing the waves of her hair. "A coincidence, my darling."
"It's exactly the same as the one she was wearing the day she was lost."
Wayne lifted his worried gaze to Kirk, but Kirk was no longer aware of either of them. His immense muscled body was bent low over the television. He was listening to the commentator, avidly studying the pictures of the ballerina.
That tingling feeling was back in his gut, and Kirk had learned early in his career never to ignore it. Again and again it had proved to be the heartstring of his destiny. In his business, a man lived or died by hunches, by some inner sixth sense that had nothing to do with reason.
Kirk's mind reeled. Julia! Was it possible? After all these years?
Julia Jackson, Wayne's and Mercedes' only daughter, had only been five when she was kidnapped.
The girl's coloring was right, and she was the right age. She was a great dancer. Mercedes had been one of the best in the world before she'd given up her career to marry Wayne. Anna Montez, Mercedes' sister, had been a renowned ballerina. It could all be coincidence, and yet Kirk believed in coincidences and in things like a mother's intuition.
Mercedes was not a hysterical woman.
Until this moment, he had always believed Julia was dead. It was his fault she had been lost. He had been teaching her to ride at the Jackson stables when the men had come and taken her. He'd only been fifteen, but he'd fought like a demon to save her. In the end, they had beaten him senseless, and yet for a time the police had considered Kirk an accomplice and even gone so far as to lock him up.
The Jackson tragedy had haunted Kirk all his life. He had blamed himself. He had joined the marines to run away from the guilt, to make himself so tough he could handle himself in any situation. He'd even been in the CIA for a while. Since he'd come back to the ranch, he had rescued dozens of kidnap victims both at home and abroad, and every time he'd saved someone, it had been Julia he was saving. Only it hadn't been her, and the nightmares had always come back to haunt him.
It was his fault she had been lost. His fault.
The line of Kirk's lips was taut and white as he regarded another clip of Dawn Hayden dancing. His green eyes were slitted. In the golden lamplight his mother's Comanche blood showed in the high cheekbones that were highlighted where the skin stretched tightly over his hawk nose and beneath the hollows of his eyes. His was a harsh face, its dark handsomeness aged beyond his thirty-five years by the bitter experiences of his life.
If that girl wasn't Dawn Hayden, if there was even a chance she really was Julia Jackson, he had to go after her.
Damn! He didn't want to go. He must be getting soft. Lately life had almost been pleasant, now that Megan had settled down into a happy marriage with Jeb, now that he had his nephew Jared to be interested in. Kirk had had enough of the Middle East and its brutality to last him forever.
Images and impressions bombarded him. Latticed windows, goats, camel's thorn, women swathed in black, sandstorms, winding crowded streets, bazaars, thick black coffee, perfect blue skies above the golden petrified geometry of the desert. Always there was the dry scorching heat, the grit of sand in his mouth, his eyes, his nose. And the danger.
And camels. He hated those foul-natured, humpbacked miscreations.
Ali Naid! He hated the country as well. It was a country simmering on the verge of revolution, a nation filled with different factions of medieval-minded fanatics, all of whom hated each other with warlike ferocity, although they hated Westerners even more fiercely. It would be suicide to go in there alone.
Suicide to go up against a band of armed terrorists.
* * *
Two
A man's high-pitched wail rent the silence. It was followed by rifle bursts hitting something soft, then ricocheting against stone. Afterward silence filled the well-dark blackness with suffocating nothingness.
The stench of death and decay rose from the mattress and made Dawn's empty stomach give a dry heave. Terrified, she jumped off her filthy pallet and listened to the silence. Dear Lord! Let this be a nightmare! Let me wake up!
But as her torn nails dug into the mud wall, and she swallowed queasily and felt her tongue rub against the grit in her mouth, she knew this grim reality was no nightmare. Her injured right ankle was twice the size of her other one, and the pain every time she limped was excruciating. How many times had she awakened with the same fervent prayer on her parched lips? Always there was only this dank, putrid cell with its filthy pallet and windowless walls.
She licked her chapped lips. Her hand went to her throat, and she touched her medallion. She longed for water. In her sleep she even dreamed of it, but her jailer never brought water. Instead he brought the most awful coffee she had ever tasted. It was so strong, it tore her insides apart, but she drank it anyway because it was liquid and she was dying of thirst. Once he had brought her a hot, sweet bottled drink, and she had guzzled it greedily until every drop was gone.
She stared into the utter blackness and imagined that it must be the middle of the night. She had lost count of the days and nights. All she knew was that it wasn't as hot now as it was sometimes, especially during the day when the cell was most like an oven and a grayish brightness seeped in through the cracks in the door.
Everyone but Dawn was sleeping on the roof to escape the heat, but she had been locked in a cellar that was hot and still, and so dark that she sometimes felt the darkness lying like a heavy crushing weight on her chest.
Outside she heard a sound. As she listened she could distinguish the shuffling of heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, moving down the hall, the fumbling for the right key. She knew all the familiar sounds of him by heart.
The handsome Arab with the daggerlike nose and cold black eyes was coming. A scream bubbled up her dry throat.
The door opened. He set his flickering oil lamp down beside her food and seized her. She was blinded momentarily by the light. Black shadows danced eerily against the squat walls.
"Shut up, pretty American girl, or my men will come."
Her scream froze in her throat as the odd menace in his low tone sank in. Aslam always came. Only him. Suddenly she knew why.
When she quieted he let her go, shrugged and turned to leave.
"Let me out. Let me walk outside at least. I can't stand it in here."
He ignored her and unlocked the door again to go.
"Don't leave me in the dark. Please. No..." Dawn cried. He continued to ignore her, but in desperation, she pounced on him, grabbing his back.
He whirled around, his face distorted and savage. "I think you stupid, pretty American girl." His rough hands bit bruisingly into her forearms. He pulled out a pistol and shoved it against her head. She heard the trigger click.
His hands were shaking. Her face went as white as paste. In the flickering light, her eyes were as immense and dark as glimmering, hand-blown English marbles. Against her ear he murmured something in Arabic and began to laugh. As he reached to extinguish the lamp her fear mushroomed. All her life she had been terrified of two things—the dark and horses.
Now in the darkness he was laughing at her. "Tomorrow, you will die... like the others."
For years she had run from the real world. She had danced, the beauty she created on stage the only reality she wanted. In one shattering moment, her world had become too real.
So, this brute was not so different from his men. He was going to kill her. Tomorrow. Strangely, just knowing what her fate was to be made her fear lessen. A desolate, numbing peace settled upon her.
He towered between her and the open door, her only avenue to freedom. She considered her chances of getting past him, and they seemed infinitesimal.
But he was going to kill her, anyway.
As a dancer, she knew all about human bodies, their strengths, their frailties. In a single leap she jammed her good foot hard onto his instep. He pitched sideways. Her nails found his eyes, her knee his crotch.
He doubled over with a groan, and she picked up the lamp and banged him over the head. Then she broke free and hobbled down the hall on her injured ankle.
She was running up the stairs when a tall shadowy figure loomed out of a corner. A hand coiled from the darkness, and she was caught and knocked breathless against the tallest, hardest male body she'd ever felt. Her breasts were pressed against corded chest muscle; her thighs ground against his.
Her first captor had been big, but he seemed as nothing compared to this man. A rough, callused hand covered her soft mouth and strangled her scream.
As he pushed her deeper into the darkness, she felt the terror tugging at her, making her markedly conscious of how slight and fragile her body was compared to his. He jammed her against the wall with his powerful torso and twisted her face so that a single bar of moonlight from a high, narrow window slanted across it.
Though he brought his face close to hers, she couldn't see him. His hard features were shrouded in darkness, but she could feel his gaze burning across her face, studying her, no doubt assessing her charms. Was he going to take her for himself? Or share her with the rest of his friends on the roof? Suddenly the four walls of her cell seemed a paradise when she thought of being used by this brutal stranger and his cohorts.
Rough fingers trailed the length of her throat. He lifted the medallion and held it for a long moment. Then he sifted through her hair, holding it to the light as well. During this intense inspection of her face and necklace and hair, she could feel her heart pounding, her breasts pushing against his chest. He was holding her so intimately that it was impossible not to know the exact moment when his maleness reacted to the feminine nearness of her helpless body. Panicking, she twisted, and her body rubbed itself even more tightly against him in that most intimate of places. She felt the warmth of him, the size of him. Too late, she froze.
She could feel his lips curl in mockery at her modesty. Some taunting guttural sound came from his throat. He let her hair fall like a veil over her shoulder.
