The Stealth Commandos Trilogy Read Free Page B

of jungle fungi and lichens for your wound. When you didn’t respond, he lit candles and prayed to the saints.”
    “Nothing like a fallback plan,” Chase said dryly.
    “Don’t be so quick to scoff. You’re alive.” She hesitated, fingering the collar of her sweater uneasily. “He offered to help me, too, since I had no papers and no way to prove I was an American citizen. As a priest, he had access to certain kinds of documentation.”
    “What kinds of documentation?”
    She answered immediately, afraid if she hesitated she might never get the words out. “In this case, a certificado matrimonio —a marriage certificate,” she said, watching his reaction. “With an American as my husband, I would automatically get citizenship. If we were stopped by the military—or even by the rebels—there was a far better chance they wouldn’t detain me if I was your wife. Without the papers I had no identity, no country. They could have held me indefinitely—”
    “My wife?” he echoed softly.
    Annie took some hope from the thoughtful way he said the words. “Yes, the priest insisted we take the vows. In Costa Brava priests are authorized to perform civil ceremonies, and he wouldn’t give us the papers without one.
    “So you’re saying that I married you?”
    He was rubbing his thumb along the wooden butt of the gun, and Annie could tell he still didn’t believe her. Or perhaps he actually didn’t remember. He’d been ill, delirious. “I know it sounds crazy,” she admitted. “But it was only a formality, a means to an end. We both understood that.”
    “Maybe you understood it, lady,” he said, his voice going cold. “But as far as I’m concerned, it never happened. The only vow I ever took was at the age of eight, when my father and mother tried to kill each other with the broken whiskey bottles they’d just emptied. Damn shame they didn’t.”
    His eyes cut into her like the shards of glass he spoke of. “That was the day I vowed to die unmarried,” he added quietly. “So tell me, Annie Wells, why would I break that vow for you?”
    From across the room, Shadow, the collie, made a pleading sound in his throat, as if he could sense his master’s turmoil.
    Annie shuddered involuntarily. She had no idea how to respond to what Chase had just told her. “I don’t know why you did it,” was all she could manage to get out. “Maybe you were grateful.”
    “Grateful for what?”
    Her chest felt full and tight. She wanted to tell him it was because she was the one who had kept him from dying. It was she beside him when the fever spiked and sent him into convulsions; it was she holding him. How could he forget?
    “The priest gave you the medicine,” she said at last. “But someone had to be there, night and day, until the fever broke.” She averted her eyes, knowing she couldn’t go into the details of that ordeal now. She was too emotionally shaken to describe the things she’d had to do.
    Fatigue overtook her then. She let her head fall back and closed her eyes. It was agony being in the same room with him again after so many years. His nearness was dragging her back to a time when her feelings for him were raw and sweet and powerful. She’d been in love with him once, the way only a terrified young girl can fall in love with a man who risks his own life to save hers. Perhaps it was hero worship, but it was achingly real to her then. And it had nearly destroyed her when she thought he’d left her behind, escaped to freedom and safety without her. Not knowing whether to love or hate him, she did the only thing she could do, wait ... wait for him to come back for her.
    Now, as she forced herself to open her eyes, look up at him, meet his wary gaze, she wondered how she could have been so tragically naive. He hadn’t come back for her. He’d obviously never intended to. A wave of bitterness swept through her as she tried to push the painful memories out of her mind. If she’d been harboring