loosened the death grip she had around his neck. Whatever he was doing to save them, he could probably do it better if she didn’t cut off his air supply.
He was slipping even though he had both hands and feet braced on the side walls. But they had a slow, controlled descent; he was able to achieve at least that much. After the first few moments of sheer panic, she unfolded her legs from around his waist and stuck them out, hoping to take some of her weight off him and help to slow them even more. The less they slipped, the shorter their climb would be back to the opening once the rebels moved away.
She succeeded, but only marginally. They were still steadily going down.
At least they weren’t crashing. She concentrated on the spot of light that was getting closer and closer, coming from the next cover grid on the floor below them. An eternity passed before they reached it.
Hanging on to the cast-iron scrolls, Parker was able to halt their downward progress temporarily.
They listened, but could hear no voices from outside.
“Can we get out?” she whispered.
“Maybe.” He waited a beat. “Looks deserted out there. We still have to be careful. I’m sure they secured every floor.”
“They can’t have people in every hallway.” At least, she really hoped they couldn’t.
“They don’t. They’re set up in strategic control positions.” Parker pushed against the grid, his muscles flexing against her.
The metal didn’t budge.
“Want me to get your knife out of your pocket?” she offered, although his pocket was the last place she wanted to be moseying around.
“Screws are on the outside. Can’t get to them.” He made another attempt at rattling them loose without success. “The offer is tempting, but I’ll pass for now.”
She bit back a retort at his teasing. She could and would let things go. She had learned over the years. “What do we do now?”
“Get to the bottom and find another way up.” He didn’t seem too shaken by their situation.
She, on the other hand, was going nuts in the confines of the tight space. “What is this place?” Her muscles tensed further as they began sliding again.
“The building used to belong to some nobleman back in the day. This is where the servants pulled up the buckets of coal from the basement for the tile stoves that heated his parlors.”
“And you know this how?”
He couldn’t shrug in their precarious situation, but made some small movement that gave the same effect.
Their shoes scraped on the walls that were less than three feet from each other, but the old coal dust muted the sound. She let go with one hand again and tried to find support. Carrying their combined weight had to be difficult even for a man as strong as Parker.
“I think I can do this on my own.” She’d seen rock-climbing done at the gym before, how those climbers supported their weight with nothing but the tips of their fingers and toes.
“We came from the second floor. With the twenty-foot ceilings these old palaces have, the drop to the basement could be fifty feet or more,” he said. “You stay where you are. If you slip, you die.”
She was perfectly clear on the hundred and one ways she could die in their given situation. She was trying hard not to think of them, thank you very much. “What can I do to make this easier?”
“Stop moving.”
She stilled and kept silent for a while before she realized she could probably move her lips.
“How did you get in here? Don’t tell me it’s for a story.”
“I quit that job. I work for the government now.”
He always had been dark and mysterious, something that had drawn her to him at the beginning of their relationship but had ended up driving a wedge between them eventually. Mysterious was fine in a sexy stranger. But when you were trying to build a life with someone, there were things you needed to know. There had come a time when she had realized that he was never going to let her in fully.
“You’re a marine?” The U.S. embassy was protected by marines. She had expected them to come after her eventually. But Parker wasn’t part of that team. He was probably too old for enlistment at this stage. She thought the age limit was twenty-eight. He was four years older than her, which made him thirty-six.
“Something like that,” he said, and in typical Parker fashion, wouldn’t elaborate.
She had a few guesses as to why. So her ex was some kind of special commando. “Something like” a marine. A picture was beginning to take shape in her mind. “Did you know I was here?”
She made sure to hold her elbows in, and her knees, although that wasn’t an easy task since her legs were wrapped around his waist for support. She couldn’t hold herself up by her arms alone any longer. On second thought, her brilliant idea of going down on her own might have been overly optimistic.
She tried hard not to think of the countless times her legs had been wrapped around his waist from the other side. Slow breath in. Slow breath out. The stifling air of the stupid coal chute seemed unbearably hot.
“I’ve been briefed,” he was saying.
He? What about the rest of the commando team? And in that moment, she knew without a doubt that there were no others. The embassy wasn’t being liberated. She was. Through some crazy plan, he was here to rescue her, and they were about to leave all those other people behind.
As if she would ever agree to anything as insane as that.
They were just reaching the landing, had to get down on their hands and knees to crawl out, touching each other way more in the process than she was comfortable with. He had always had an instant, mind-melting effect on her. There should be a vaccination against men like him, something that would give the recipient immunity. She’d be first in line at the clinic.
A dim security light burned somewhere, enough to see that they were both black, covered in hundred-year-old soot. He looked like some Greek hero, sculpted from black marble instead of white. She glanced down at her own clothes, stifling a sigh. She looked like an Old West horse thief, tarred and waiting to be feathered.
“Come on, we don’t have much time.” He moved forward, gun in hand. “I came in through the roof, but we’ll see if there’s a way out through here. Maybe some connection to the neighboring building. Like a secret emergency tunnel for the embassy staff.”
She thought of Anna, who had risked her life to melt the cuffs off her, and the kitchen staff who’d risked their lives to conceal her identity. She thought of Tanya and the two small children, and Ambassador Vasilievits, who had been separated from the others by the rebels.
“Did anyone make it out of the building?”
“No,” Parker said without turning around.
He was a dozen feet ahead before he realized that she
