The Heaven Trilogy (149 page)

“The other one. Or are there two others?” Again that grin.

Shannon bent slowly and withdrew the Arkansas Slider from an ankle sheath. He threw it aside. It landed on the bowie and clanked.

“Turn around slowly.”

Shannon glanced about the perimeter, his mind racing for alternatives, but they came slow just now. He turned as Abdullah asked. If he could coax the man into arm’s reach, he could kill him without risking the woman. Quickly, before the butcher had time to know he’d been outwitted. Or slowly to give him time to feel his death.

“Turn around.”

When Shannon turned back, Abdullah was kicking Tanya in the ribs.

Shannon flinched.

“Back!” Abdullah screamed. Spittle frothed on his lips. Bulging veins wrapped his taut neck.

“I told you to move slowly. Next time I will put a bullet in her thigh.”

The Arab was quick. Very quick. He had anticipated—possibly even provoked— the reaction from Shannon and snapped back with amazing speed. Like a snake.

Tanya stirred on the next kick to her midsection. She moaned and pushed herself to her knees. A thin trail of dried blood stained her temple.

Kill him, Shannon. Kill them both. Kill them all.

He hated the thought.

Tanya stood and faced Abdullah. She hadn’t seen Shannon yet. The priest still knelt, between them, eyes closed.

“Turn and greet your visitor.” Abdullah grinned with childish pleasure at his cleverness.

Tanya turned. Very slowly. As if she were in a dream.

Their eyes met. Hers were blue and round, the eyes he remembered from the pool. Her lips sprang open. The same lips that had kissed him, dripping wet on the rocks. Something had changed in her face since he’d left her here. He saw more there than a cry for help. Actually, it wasn’t a cry for help at all.

Shannon’s heart stopped beating for a few long moments. She was pulling him back to the pool and he wanted to go.

The Arab stepped to the side and smiled at them. “You are reunited, yes?” He shoved a coil of fishing string at Tanya. “Hogtie him! Do you know what a hogtie is?”

She shook her head.

“Of course not. It’s a tie for pigs.” He jerked his pistol toward Shannon. “Tie him.”

Shannon looked at Abdullah and saw that his eyes danced with fire.

He looked back at Tanya. She walked toward him, holding his eyes with her own. She stared at him like a child looking upon a magician performing an illusion—with utter awe. As if the last eight years were nothing more than one of her vivid dreams, and she was looking at him for the first time after finally waking.

A slight smile lifted the corners of her lips.

“Shannon,” she said, and her soft voice echoed through his mind.

“Shut up!” Abdullah screamed. His voice rang about the perimeter and a flock of startled parrots took flight with screeches of protest. Abdullah kept his gun trained on her, sidestepping to match her pace.

“Did I tell you to talk to him? No, I told you to tie him!” He made a crazy circular motion with his free hand. “Tie his hands behind his back, to his ankles.”

Stunned, Shannon watched her approach. She was hardly hearing the Arab—he knew that now. He had studied a hundred men under extreme trauma, more often than not trauma provoked by him. And he knew this: Tanya was barely aware of the man to her right. She was thoroughly engrossed with
him
, with Shannon.

The realization made him dizzy.

She had reached him and was gazing up at his face now. She lowered her eyes to his neck, his shoulders, his chest, studying each muscle as though for the first time. Tenderly, like a lover.

“Tie him!”

A voice was screaming in Shannon’s mind, way back where his ears could barely hear it, but his mind was bending over in pain.

“Tie my hands behind my back and then to my ankles when I kneel down,” Shannon said, his voice trembling. He suddenly wanted to cry. As he had cried just a few minutes earlier. What was happening to him?

Tanya.

Sula.
Both names took hold of his thoughts, warring for dominance.

He was no longer thinking as clearly as he had a week ago.

Tanya pulled her eyes from him, still smiling softly. She slid around him and took his hands in hers. Spikes of heat ripped up his bones and he felt his fingertips quiver.

She was touching them gently; feeling his fingers, his palms. She ran her fingers down his arms. She was speaking to him with her tender touch. His heart raced.

Tie me, Tanya. Please, just tie me.

She wrapped the string around his wrists loosely, still touching his hands lightly, tracing his palms. She cinched her knots and he knelt. She knelt behind him and passed the line under his ankles.

He could feel her hot breath on his shoulders as she worked, leaning over him. The heavy aroma of flowers—gardenias—caressed his nostrils and he trembled once.

What’s happening to me?

Kill her, Shannon! Kill her, you spineless worm!

He let his head loll to one side. Stillness settled over the clearing. Even the wind seemed to pause. Tanya’s chin approached and then lightly touched his back, and his flesh quivered at her nearness.

A lump swelled in his throat, and for a terrible moment he thought he might burst into tears. For no reason at all.

Dear Tanya, what have I done to you? I am so sorry.

Kill her! Kill—
“Shannon,” she whispered.

He froze.

She whispered it again, barely audible yet tender. “Shannon. I love you.” Her breath played over his shoulder, and he could smell it. Musky and sweet. Gardenias.

The last of his control left when the scent of her reached his lungs. She was breathing love into him. He went limp—all but his heart, which was slamming against his chest desperately.

And then she was done with her tying.

“Step away from him,” Abdullah said.

Tanya did not move. Maybe she hadn’t heard him.

Abdullah shrieked this time. “Get back!”

Tanya stood slowly and stepped aside. Abdullah swept in and yanked the ties tight. Shannon bit his lip against the pain and gathered his senses. Any illusion he’d harbored of freeing himself from Tanya’s loose bonds fell away.

Abdullah jumped back and cackled like a hyena. “There, you pig. You won’t be so difficult to kill now, will you?”

He grabbed Tanya and shoved her back toward the center of the clearing. She stumbled forward and spun to him, flashing a vicious glare. For a second, Shannon thought she might yell at Abdullah. But the moment passed and she returned her gaze to him.

Abdullah stood halfway between them and stepped back to study his victims. He spread his legs and grinned wide.

He licked the spittle from his lips and shifted the gun to his left hand and then back to his right. “Well, well.” He glanced at his watch. “We have time. Do you know what I have done, assassin?”

Tanya was staring at Shannon again, oblivious of Abdullah. Her figure distorted in the tears that hung in his eyes.

“I have detonated a nuclear device in your country, gringo. And another is set to go off soon. It’s on a countdown that will end in less than an hour. A countdown that can only be stopped by me now.”

Shannon stared at the man without expression.

“I have the power, and the world can do nothing.” He tapped his temple. “The only code to stop it is locked in my mind.”

“Shannon.” It was Tanya, speaking in that soft, milky voice again. “Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

Abdullah jerked his head toward her. “Shut up!”

Shannon blinked the mist from his eyes, feeling as though he might crumble from the insanity of her words.

Tanya ignored Abdullah. “I know some things now, Shannon. I know that I was made to love you. I know that you need me to love you. I know that I always have loved you, and that I love you desperately now.”

Abdullah took three leaping steps to her and brought a heavy hand across her bare cheek. The air resounded with the sound of flesh smacking flesh.

Crack!

Heat flared up Shannon’s neck. He grunted and jerked against the bindings in sudden rage. Tanya’s face turned a bright red. But her smile didn’t waver.

“Leave her alone!” Shannon screamed. “You touch her and I’ll rip your heart out!”

Pain shot down his spine and his head swam, and he knew now that it was Sula’s doing. He closed his eyes against the agony.

“Shannon.” She was speaking again and her words flowed like a balm flows. “Shannon, do you remember when we used to swim together, in the pool?”

He opened his eyes.

The Arab stood, dumbstruck.

Shannon remembered.

“Do you remember how I fell into your arms? And how you kissed my lips?”

Her deep blue eyes held him.

The Arab spun his head to Shannon, off balance now.

Tanya ignored him. “Do you know that it was for today that we loved each other then? It was beyond us, Shannon. Our parents—they died for this day.”

The words made no sense to him, but her eyes and her lips and her voice— they all crashed in on him at once. Her breath seemed to flow to him again.

She was loving him with an intensity he did not know could possibly exist. The blood drained from his head, and he let her words wash over him.

Something she had said made Abdullah step back.

“We’re a part of God’s plan, Shannon. You are. Like Rahab. God’s trump card.”

Shannon’s mind spun in wild circles.

“Those bonds of love have never been broken. Tell me that you love me, Shannon. Please, tell me.”

The pressure on his chest felt like a dam set to burst. Tears ran down his cheeks. Blood roared through his ears, and his face twisted in anguish.

“I love you desperately, Shannon.”

I love you, Tanya.

A ball of anguish rolled up his chest, swelling as it rose.

Kill her—
“No!”

The pain roared in his ears, and for a moment he thought he was passing out. Tears spilled from his eyes and his face contorted in agony.

“Nooooo!” He let the cry run out and he gasped. “No, you sick spineless worm. I
love
her!” Sobs robbed his breath. He sucked in a lungful of air, tilted his head back, and screamed full throated at the sky.

“I love her!”

His cry echoed, silencing the jungle.

And then the ball of pain ripped up through his skull. His muscles tensed in a seizure and then released him. He groaned and sagged to a huddle.

For an endless moment, the world was blank to him. The river stopped rushing by, the ground no longer pressed into his knees, the breeze seemed to freeze. And then slowly his mind began to crawl out of its hole.

“ . . . when I say something, I mean what I say!” The Arab was screaming and his face was red. Shannon turned to Tanya beyond him.

Tanya? He felt oddly as though he had stepped into a new world. Or out of one.

Tanya! What was she doing? She was smiling at him.

He began to sob softly. “I . . . I love you, Tanya,” he said. He knelt there lost, like a child. “I love you. I love you so much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up!” Abdullah screamed.

She began to cry. “Shh . . . no, don’t cry, Shannon. We’re together again. It’s okay now. Everything will be okay now.”

“Tanya,” he sobbed. The forest echoed with his cry. “Oh, God!” he wailed. “Forgive me. I’ve been so wrong. Oh, God, help me!”

And what have you done, Shannon? What have you gone and done?
Panic skirted through his mind.
I’ve got to stop— Boom!

The gunshot echoed through the trees and Shannon snapped his eyes open. Father Petrus lay on his side, blood leaking from a head wound.
Oh, dear God, what have I done?

Tanya was crying.

“Shut up!” Abdullah said as his face twisted with rage, and he leapt for Shannon. A knife glistened in his right hand. He slashed forcefully, slicing Shannon’s chest to the ribs.

Shannon sat back to his haunches. His head swam.

The Arab trembled from head to foot. His eyes shone black and eager. He stood like a rabid dog over a rabbit. He reached down and cut again—across Shannon’s shoulder.

Shannon moaned. Nausea swept through his gut. He looked at Tanya, pleading. Not for her help. For her love.

“I love you, Tanya
,
” he said.

Tears streamed silently down her face as she mouthed her answer.
I love you, Shannon.

The Arab slashed again, spittle flying from his lips. The blade flashed across Shannon’s chest, forming a cross of sorts. He brought his arm back for another thrust.

“Sula!” Tanya’s voice cut across the clearing.

The Arab spun, arm still cocked. Shannon’s mind was only half here, at the river. The other half was thinking that he had to stop something. Something only he could stop.

Tanya was staring at Abdullah. She’d called him
Sula
. The corners of her mouth slowly rose. “I know you. We’ve met. Remember? You’re called Sula and it means death.”

Yes, death. Known as Sula to some. Lucifer to others. They were the same. Abdullah was frozen, holding the gun in his left hand and the knife now dripping with blood in his right. His face went white.

Tanya stood with her arms at her side, a new boldness in her posture. “And how are you stopped, Sula?”

The Arab slogged forward three steps. He stared dumbstruck at Tanya.

“You know that I can’t let you kill him,” Tanya said softly.

The world began to slow down. Things were going topsy-turvy. He had to stop something. Something much worse than this. And she was going to make sure that he did it.

Abdullah shook like a leaf now. Somehow this strange encounter between him and Tanya had flipped a switch.

Tanya spread her arms, still barely smiling. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

Shannon screamed then. “Abdullah! Take me! Leave her.” He strained against the line, feeling it cut into his flesh. Blood from his chest and shoulder wounds ran down his belly.

The Arab looked at him, his facial muscles quivering. He held the gun at his side.