Once a Warrior (27 page)

He had no way of knowing, of course, that French was practically Cat’s mother tongue.

Clenching her teeth against a frisson of rage, she listened to him tell Loc to take her back to the hotel tonight and then see to it that she was on the first plane out of Saigon in the morning.

When the conversation ended, her compliant driver cut around the Tempest and, obviously assuming that she was right behind him, opened the passenger door for her.

“Mister . . . Cain.”  Still standing on the curb, she addressed him like a drill sergeant, with a
thousand-one
,
thousand-two
pause between the first and second words.

He turned. And saw her in a whole new light. The last rays of the sun struck her red hair and set it afire. Long auburn lashes curled over hazel eyes that sparkled with secret amusement, and a faint blush rode the high ridges of her cheekbones. Her parted lips were as full and soft as he had earlier bet they would be.

The need to cover those tantalizing lips with his own slammed through Cain. Everything in him prodded him to close the distance between them. To break his long self-imposed period of denial and satisfy the hunger that suddenly twisted his gut.

Savagely reminding himself that she was another man’s wife—at least until she was formally notified to the contrary—he tipped his head and drawled in a deceptively civil voice, “Yes, Mrs. Brown?”

Cat waited a beat, savoring the anticipation, before reiterating in French that, like it or not, he would be seeing her again. “
Au revoir
.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She awoke with a start at the hand that covered her mouth.

“Don’t scream, Mrs. Brown,” Cain warned her, his voice low and urgent in the night shadows.

Still dazed from awakening to find him in her room, Cat nodded to let him know she understood.

“Get dressed.”  He tossed a pair of black peasant’s pajamas at her, then crossed to the closet. “You’re leaving.”

She swept her sleep-tousled hair off her forehead and pushed herself up on her elbows. From this distance, her uninvited guest was a formidable silhouette of dark shadows, dimly illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the open louvered doors that she distinctly remembered closing before she went to bed. When he moved closer, carrying her sandals, the scent of soap that accompanied him told her that he’d showered since she’d left his house. She could also see that he was wearing a long-sleeve black T-shirt and a pair of button-front blue jeans with a knife sheathed at his belt and that familiar gun tucked into the waistband.

Which reminded her that she was wearing nothing but a thin white nightgown. She dropped her head back down on the pillow and pulled the sheet up to her chin. “I already told you, I’m not going anywhere until I—”

“Think again, Mrs. Brown.”  Cain contradicted her with a steely resolve that set her teeth on edge. “You’re leaving in five minutes, clothes or no clothes.”

Despite her bravado, Cat was beginning to feel that she was staring defeat in the face. “What’s going on?”

“This place is about to blow.”

Her jaw dropped in disbelief. “The hotel?”

“Saigon.”

“Oh, my God!”  Panicked now, she threw off the sheet and bounded out of bed. Then clutching the pajamas he’d thrown at her in front of her revealing nightgown, she backed into the bathroom.

“Leave the light off,” he said when she reached to switch it on.

Cat got dressed in the dark. She hadn’t thought to grab a dry bra and panties out of the bureau drawer, and the ones she’d hand-laundered earlier in the sink and hung over the shower rod were still damp. With time at a premium, she gritted her teeth and put them on. The thin cotton pajamas that Cain had brought for her were too short in the arms and legs, but they would simply have to do. 

When she came out, he was standing at the balcony doors, watching flares dropping like many moons of pale gold around Saigon.

“I talked to my parents this evening,” she said to his back.

He turned to face her, his brows pulled together in a scowl.

Cat cleared her throat, which ached from having cried herself to sleep after she’d hung up the telephone, and clasped her hands together in front of her. “The Air Force has officially changed Johnny’s status to a Presumed Finding of Death.”

Cain wasn’t surprised by her news, but he was staggered by his own visceral urge to go to her and comfort her. There was nothing prurient in his sudden desire. She just looked so fragile, standing there with tears glittering in her eyes and her milk-white wrists and ankles sticking out of those black pajamas, that he simply wanted to take her in his arms. Smooth back her hair and press his lips to her brow. Hold her and offer her his shoulder to cry on.

But the don’t-touch-me vibes she was giving off warned him that that would be a big mistake on his part, so he scotched the idea and asked her gruffly, “They found the plane then?”

“No, but they talked to another pilot in Johnny’s squadron, and his report led them to assume—”  

“Sometimes that’s all they have to go on.”     

“‘Presumed’ . . . ‘assumed’ . . .” Her voice was breath and blood and heartache as she quoted the wishy-washy words her father had read to her over the phone. “How can they just leave people in limbo like that?”   

He could have told her how. First they dropped the bomb, and then they dropped the ball. Instead, he regarded her with piercing intensity. “I take you’re not going home.”  

         She lifted her chin determinedly. “Not until I get some answers.”

A mortar in the night sky lit up the room, revealing the adamant line of her full lips and the angry jut of his clean-shaven jaw.

“Let’s go,” he said harshly.

She dug in her heels. “What about my clothes and—”

“Kim will collect your things in the morning and keep them for you.”

Cat glanced over her shoulder, out the open doors, when gunfire erupted in the street below. “How long are we going to be gone?”

“Ever heard of Lot’s wife?” Cain taunted as he took a step toward her.    

She turned her head back and looked up at him. He tilted his head and looked down at her. They stood so close she could feel his body heat, could smell his spicy after-shave mingled with a tantalizing hint of male musk, and she suddenly sensed that she was facing a far more devastating danger than any that could be found on the streets of Saigon. Only sheer determination kept her from backing down.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Someplace where you’ll be safe.” 

“I’ll go on one condition.”  She held his gaze until he looked away. Taking that as a concession, she stated her terms. “That you’ll promise to tell me why Johnny wanted me to get in touch with you.”  

Knowing that she was going to regret it, knowing somehow that he would too, he reluctantly agreed. “You win, Mrs. Brown.”

“Cat.”

“What?”

“My name is Catherine, but everyone calls me—”

An orange fireball outside illuminated the room’s interior with a hellish glow.

He grabbed her hand and yanked her toward the door. “Let’s go, goddammit.”

“Wait!”  She pulled free of his grasp and backstepped to the bureau.

“Now what?”

“I need my purse.”

Cain ground his teeth in frustration, wondering if he was going to have to resort to dragging her out of the friggin’ hotel by her waterfall of red hair. “Peasant women don’t carry purses.”

“This one does.”  Cat snatched up her bag and hooked the strap over her shoulder and across her breasts so that she was wearing it like a bandolier. Properly armed, she caught his hand again. “Lead the way.”

Brandishing the .45 and hugging the wall, he led her down the back stairs of the hotel. When they reached a side door, he jerked to a halt. Cautiously he poked his head out and surveyed the immediate area.

“Keep your head down,” he warned her. “There could be snipers on the roofs.”  All but crushing the bones in her hand, he made a dash for the curb.  

She put on the brakes and gaped at the vicious-looking motorcycle that was parked there. “Surely you don’t expect me to ride—” 

An explosion ripped through the night, changing her mind about their mode of transportation.

Numb with shock, Cat swung her leg over the padded seat. When she was situated, Cain climbed on in front of her. He reached behind him and took her hands in his, then folded them together just above his waist and pressed them against him.  

“Hold on tight!” he shouted at her above the revving of the engine and the riot of gunfire.

She glued her front to his back and splayed her hands wide over his stomach, feeling oddly comforted when her fingers brushed the hard barrel of the gun he’d tucked back into his waistband.

The cycle bucked and shot forward.

Rockets and mortar fire shook the city as they rounded a corner and sped up the street. Buildings went by in a blur and people spilled out of houses, bars and hotels, crying and screaming at the top of their lungs. A three-wheeled Lambretta taxi, abandoned by its driver and filled with TNT, went up in a million lethal pieces. The eggbeater rhythm of American helicopters added to the noise and confusion as they swept down, guns blazing, like giant metal dragonflies.     

Cat’s head was buzzing and her mouth had gone dry. She’d never been on a motorcycle before, and there was something utterly terrifying about having only those two wheels between her and the macadam that sped past beneath her. Convinced that she was going to die before the night was over, she closed her eyes and said a silent but sincere “Act of Contrition.”

When she opened her eyes, she saw an American armored personnel carrier rolling relentlessly toward them.  

Cain saw it, too. He veered to the right and cut through a cemetery. But it seemed that even the dead weren’t allowed to rest in peace in Saigon. As the cycle corkscrewed past tombstones inscribed “
Mort Pour La France,
” it ran a gauntlet of machine-gun fire being exchanged between Vietnamese marines positioned on one side of the graveyard and Communist guerrillas dug in on the other.  

A stray bullet shattered the glass that had previously been one of the bike’s rearview mirrors.

They zipped out of the cemetery through an open side gate and onto a street where a small squad of Viet Cong was hoisting their blue and red and gold starred flag on a light pole, sniping at passing vehicles and holding a group of panic-stricken refugees at gunpoint.

“Hang on!” Cain yelled back at her.

Cat held her breath and hung on for dear life as he opened the cycle’s motor to full throttle and flew by them all like an angry hornet. The hot wind whipped her hair about her face, making her wish she had a scarf, and the steady vibration of the motor thrummed up through her thighs and belly and breasts. Behind her, she could hear blood-curdling yells and gunshots popping as the surprised Viet Cong opened fire on them. Her ears rang and her heart pounded in her throat at the realization that her back was exposed to their bullets.     

But they were either terribly poor shots or their bullets were no match for a target that was moving at warp speed.  

“You all right?”  Cain turned left, toward the river and away from the incoming fighter-bombers swooping low to deliver their deadly cargoes of high explosive on insurgents and innocents alike. 

Too wilted to even ask where they were going, Cat laid her cheek against his back and nodded her head.

For all the chaos in the city, it was business as usual at the Port of Saigon. Ammunition dumps and fuel depots ranged far and wide. Jeeps and tractors raised a lot of dust. Stevedores, many of them female, carried bags of grain on their shoulders off a freighter. The trucks at the bottom of the gangplank would then cart them to the American bases in the field.

Cain slowed down as they approached the port. When he finally braked in front of a huge metal warehouse, Cat raised her head. And blinked twice when she saw a big sign tacked over its open double doors that said
THINK RICE
.

“There’s no white potatoes over here,” he explained after he cut the engine. “So they’re trying a mind over matter strategy with our troops.”

Her knees almost buckled beneath her when she climbed off the padded seat, and she needed a moment to get back both her breath and her bearings.

Cain didn’t give it to her. Before she had time to regain her equilibrium, he clamped onto her wrist and towed her into the cavernous, floodlighted warehouse. Cat felt dwarfed by mountains of bags of cement and fertilizer and pyramids of boxes containing everything from roto blades for helicopters to cases of Seven Up. Beyond a pile of jukeboxes, a forklift truck stacked crates full of ammunition for pistols and submachine guns. 

As if there wasn’t already enough noise to wake the dead, someone had cranked a radio up to full volume and Ruth Brown was complaining in her black-and-blues voice, “
Mama, he treats
your daughter mean
.”

Halfway through the warehouse, Cain reached into an open box with
WASHINGTON STATE
stamped on the side and picked up a couple of delicious-looking red apples. When they finally came to a stop in the back, he let go of her wrist. Then he took a bite out of one apple and held the other out to Cat.

She refused with a shake of her head. “You stole them.”

“Sure did,” he admitted, and took another bite.  

“But they’re supposed to go to our front-line troops.”

“Not if rear-echelon bastards like Howard can divert ’em.”

            She gazed at him in mute astonishment for several seconds. “Are you telling me that our officers are stealing food from—”

“And they call
me
a thief.”  He tossed the core of he apple he’d scarfed down into an overflowing trashcan, then passed the one he’d taken for her under her nose, tempting her with its sweet-tart scent. “Think of it as the one that Howard won’t get.”     

In a complete reversal of the transaction in the Garden of Eden, Cat took the apple from Cain. Then she bit into it. And found that it was as delicious as it looked.