Miss Impractical Pants (44 page)

Janek
appeared in the doorway, stopped short with a girlish yelp, and hid behind the broad shoulders of his brother, Stanislaus. “
I’m not understanding
! They have made themselves free!” He scattered a few projectile flakes of crusty ear-cereal as he vigorously shook his head.

Upon hearing this, Mensur scuffled through the
door,
skinny arms raised in pugilistic posture, frightening the chubby-cheeked boy out of hiding and into a flat-out run straight back to Katie’s unsuspecting arms.

“Marko!”
Janek shouted.

“Marko!
Come here to me immediately!” Mensur seethed, as Katie, eyes still covered and unsure who was protecting whom, held the boy tightly. Mensur’s slow, fiendish drawl caused her goose-
pimpled skin to try to crawl up the wall. The boy scrunched into a tiny ball and burrowed into her embrace.

Holding up a silencing hand to Mensur, Stanislaus spoke gently to Lucas. “Please, I don’t want trouble. I want only to help your Duchess.”

Katie cocked her head, trying to place why his voice seemed so familiar.

Lucas exhaled a low growl and squeezed his skull in frustration. “Please,” he said to Stanislaus, cutting the air with his tensely clawed hands. “She is not a duchess! For the hundredth time, I’m telling you all she is a bloody damned American.”

As if he could discern her nationality at a glance and put this issue to bed, Stanislaus peered around Lucas to catch a glimpse of the woman in question. He blinked his eyes,
then
dove in for another look.

“May I?” Stanislaus asked Lucas, gesturing toward Katie.

Lucas assented by taking one small step to the side, keeping his narrowed eyes on Mensur and Janek.

Stooping over Katie, Stanislaus gently pulled back the veil of her hair and exclaimed a shocked Slavic expletive. A genuinely pleased smile flaunted his abnormally bleached bright teeth.

“Hallo Katie, pretty lady!”

Katie jerked her blind eyes toward the sound of the familiar greeting.
Stanley Speedo?

“Stanley? Is that you?!?”

She released Marko with one hand and yanked without hesitation at the remaining tape on
her face.
“Oww-eee!
Son of a bi—
!”
Immediately conscious of the youth in her lap, she added, “bi—biscuit!”

Squinting against the prickling pain and the blazing sunlight like an unearthed mole, she searched for confirmation that the man’s face matched his old neighborly greeting. A wave of calm blanketed her as she took in the sight of his clothed figure, sans Speedo.

“Stanley, it really is you!” Katie cried. A feeble smile stole from her lips to her still-smarting eyes as she admired Stanley’s knee-length khaki shorts and respectable, though faded, vertical striped button-up. He took hold of her blood-encrusted hand.

Lucas,
Janek
, and Mensur stood gaping, wide-eyed, at the friendly reunion. Their stunned expressions in this improbable situation caused Katie to emit one of her untimely giggles.

“This is nothing to laugh about—this could be serious,” Stanley admonished, already unwrapping the blood-soaked blankets wrapping her thigh.

Swooping to his side, Lucas knelt down and assisted Stanley in removing the knot of blankets. Katie’s giggles were quickly halted by shoots of pain as the men poked about her leg.

“Bring me my bag,” Stanley ordered Mensur as he tore open the leg of Katie’s pajamas.

Katie peered into the satchel as Stanley extracted a sterile water bottle and puffy white gauze strips.

“Stanley, are you a doctor?” she asked, stunned by this revelation about her neighbor.

“Was.”
His face turned melancholy. “Gave it up after the wars—I could not bear to see any more brutality.” He dabbed at the spurting slice in her flesh. “This was no accident.” The statement was more of a question as he looked to Lucas for affirmation.

One deliberate shake of the head was the only answer needed to break Stanley’s pretense of composure.

“I’ll be back.” Handing Lucas a gauze compress, Stanley stalked away, shuttling Mensur and Janek out the door with him. The air hung heavy with the threat of Stanley’s livid tirade. Marko scurried back into hiding.

“Do I still have eyebrows?” Katie rubbed a knuckle along where her eyebrows should be.

Lucas, massaging the back of his neck with one hand and dabbing at her leg with the other, looked at her as if she’d grown horns, and shook his head. “What? Of course you still have eyebrows. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine…except I think I just tore my eyebrows off. You didn’t even look—seriously, do I have any eyebrows left?”

Setting the gauze on her leg and wiping his hands on his blood-stained man-pris, he scooted toward her. Gazing into her face, he seemed to be searching for something more than just eyebrows. Unsuccessfully, she tried looking anywhere other than into his smoldering eyes—and the bruised skin and bloody gashes surrounding them.

“Thanks for coming along to protect me,” she blurted.

“My pleasure.”
He made an exaggerated mockery of trying to find her eyebrows. “Good news,” he finally announced. “It looks like the little buggers are still there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m staring right at them. Don’t worry, they’re lovely.” He caressed his fingers tenderly across the war paint of
dried blood traversing her cheek. “How do you know that man, Stanley?”

“He’s my old neighbor from the States. I used to live in the condo below his.” Her gaze focused on the dusty ground. “Lucas, you can still get out of this. You should go. Stanley won’t let Mensur or Ernie Earwax hurt me.”

“Ernie Earwax?”

She shrugged. “Come on, it’s not like you couldn’t have noticed.”

He chuckled. “Rabbit, I’m not going to leave you. I…” He hesitated over his next words,
then
swallowed them down. “I just won’t.”

“Some lucky rabbit I turned out to be. I’ve had nothing but horrible luck since I left Colorado.”

“That’s not true! Who else could get grabbed by terrorists and find themselves held up in their former neighbor’s shed?”

Basking in the encouraging smile that brightened his whole face, she let herself be semi-consoled.

***

“God help me, Mensur, I wish I could run that knife right through you! That girl has done nothing, not even committed the crime of being nobility!”

Mensur sniffed in disbelief. “I read the article. I heard them call her ‘Duchess.’”

In a stampede of Slavic swear words, Stanley tackled Mensur to the ground like a bull pouncing on a chipmunk.

“Has our family not suffered enough? Has our country not suffered enough?” Bestowing Mensur with a spittle shower as he
roared, the purple-faced Stanley persisted. “When will you learn to think with your head and not your black heart? Listen to the girl—does she sound like her British companion? No, she does not.
Because she is American!”

“My grandparents and my father will have died in vain if I do nothing to stop our repression,” Mensur asserted.

Stanley
drooped
his head as if defeated. “No, they will have died in vain if we cannot find a peaceful resolution. Are you too young to remember the brutality and terror of the past?” He stepped off of the cowering weasel and bent over, pressing a hand against his racing heart.

Mensur lifted his chin in defiance. “The sacrifice of two of their countrymen will force the British government to help bring peace and equality to this country.”

Filling his barrel chest to maximum capacity, Stanley exploded.
“You stupid, stubborn boy!
The sacrifice of two innocent people will make us villains! Bloodshed is not the answer!”

“I will take my hostages and leave this house,” Mensur declared, unmoved.

“I know that girl—she is my friend.
My friend from America.
Why will you not understand that? You will not cause her any more harm.” Stanislaus pulled back his thick shoulders, in full force as the alpha male.

Spinning his back to his elder foe, Mensur faced his accomplice. “Janek, let’s go!”

Janek
shifted uncomfortably, not meeting Mensur’s eyes.

“
Janek
!”
Mensur ordered.

“Mensur…I…”
Janek
sputtered, glancing from Mensur to Stanley. “I cannot finish.” He hung his head. “I am not too young for to remember.”

Mensur gave a harsh, throaty cough and spit a chunk of green-tinged mucus on Janek’s shoes. Sprinting toward the Golf, he retrieved his bloody knife and a pocket-sized pistol and stole toward the shed.

Mensur sprinted toward the shed, spite and anarchy fueling his purpose. The two stocky brothers chased after him, but could not compete with his lanky strides. Huffing like locomotives, they failed the chase midway through the field.

“Lady!
Run!” Janek cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled the warning at the top volume.

“She can’t run, you numbskull!” Stanley said.

Somehow the brothers found the strength to muscle through the sensations of collapsing lungs and bursting spleens and pick up their pace, forcing their squat legs to work double time.

Screaming like an angry chimp, Mensur flung open the shed door. He cut wildly through the air with his dagger, simultaneously firing off three arbitrary rounds in all directions with his pistol. After several seconds of kamikaze attack mode, he paused.

The shed was empty.

***

Taking cover behind a tall wall of hay bales, Lucas palmed the tops of Katie’s and Marko’s heads and shoved them face down into the tall pasture grass, blanketing them with his body as the shots were fired.

“
Shhh
, lie still,” he commanded.

Katie marveled that Lucas was able to keep a steady voice; it was all she could do to keep her bones from shaking out of her skin. She could tell by the rough kisses he kept planting on her forehead that he wasn’t completely unfazed. When he had turned from the dirty window in the shed and scooped her and Marko off the floor, she’d
been frightened by the fierceness behind his eyes and his tightly clamped jaw. He’d taken off so swiftly across the field she hadn’t dared ask any questions. How had he known they were still in danger? She realized she’d probably have been shot dead by now if Lucas hadn’t argued his way into the back of Mensur’s trunk at the hotel. The thought turned her insides cold.

“Marko!”
Janek shrieked, still in running full pursuit toward the gunfire. Driven by rage, Mensur burst from the shed, leveled the pistol at Janek and fired. His cousin’s upper body reeled backward, but Janek did not break his pace.