leaving his arms bare had increased his visibility somewhat, but he judged that his darkly tanned arms weren’t nearly as likely to be spotted as her naked body. Even in the darkness of the room where they had been keeping her, he had been able to clearly make out the pale shimmer of her skin. Since none of her clothes had been in evidence, giving her his shirt was the only thing he could have done. She’d been shaking with cold—evidence of shock because the night was warm—and she likely would have gone into hysterics if he’d tried to take her out of there while she was stark naked. He had been prepared, if necessary, to knock her out. But she’d been a little trouper so far, not even screaming when he had suddenly loomed over her in the darkness. With his senses so acute, though, Zane could feel how fragile her control was, how tightly she was strung.
It was understandable. She had likely been raped, not once but many times, since she had been kidnapped. She might fall apart when the crisis was over and she was safe, but for now she was holding together. Her gutsiness made his heart clench with a mixture of tenderness and a lethal determination to protect her. His first priority was to get her out of Libya, not wreak vengeance on her kidnappers—but if any of the bastards happened to get in his way, so be it.
The dark maw of a stairwell yawned before him. The darkness was reassuring; it not only signaled the absence of a guard, it would shield him. Humans still clung to the primitive instincts of cave dwellers. If they were awake, they wanted the comfort of light around them, so they could see the approach of any enemies. Darkness was a weapon that torturers used to break the spirit of their captives, because it emphasized their helplessness, grated on their nerves. But he was a SEAL, and darkness was merely a circumstance he could use. He stepped carefully into the stairwell, keeping his back to the wall to avoid any crumbling edges of the stone. He was fairly certain the stairs were safe, otherwise the kidnappers wouldn’t have been using them, but he didn’t take chances. Like idiots, people stacked things on stair steps, blocking their own escape routes.
A faint lessening of the darkness just ahead told him that he was nearing the bottom of the steps. He paused while he was still within the protective shadow, listening for the slightest sound. There. He heard what he’d been searching for, the distant sound of voices, angry voices tripping over each other with curses and excuses. Though Zane spoke Arabic, he was too far away to make out what they were saying. It didn’t matter; he’d wanted to know their location, and now he did. Grimly, he stifled the urge to exact revenge on Miss Lovejoy’s behalf. His mission was to rescue her, not endanger her further.
There was a stairwell at each end of the building. Knowing now that the kidnappers were on the ground floor at the east end, Zane began making his way to the west staircase. He didn’t meet up with any guards; as he had hoped, they thought the rescue had been effected, so they didn’t see any point now in posting guards.
In his experience, perfect missions were few and far between, so rare that he could count on one hand the number of missions he’d been on where everything had gone like clockwork. He tried to be prepared for mechanical breakdowns, accidents, forces of nature, but there was no way to plan for the human factor. He didn’t know how the kidnappers had been alerted to the SEALs’ presence, but he had considered that possibility from the beginning and made an alternate plan in case something went wrong. Something had—exactly what, he would find out later; except for that brief communication with his men, telling them to withdraw and switch to the alternate plan, they had maintained radio silence.
Probably it was pure bad luck, some late-night citizen unexpectedly stumbling over one of his men. Things happened. So he had formulated plan B, his just-in-case plan, because as they had worked their way toward the building, he’d had an uneasy feeling. When his gut told him something, Zane listened. Bunny Withrock had once given him a narrow-eyed look and said, “Boss, you’re even spookier than the Spook.” But they trusted his instincts, to the point that mentally they had probably switched to plan B as soon as he’d voiced it, before he had even gone into the building.
With Miss Lovejoy to consider, he’d opted for safety. That was why he had gone in alone, through the window, after Spook’s reconnaissance had reported that the kidnappers had set guards at intervals throughout the first floor. There were no lights in any of the rooms on the fourth floor, where Miss Lovejoy was reportedly being held, so it was likely there was no guard actually in the room with her; a guard wouldn’t want to sit in the darkness.
The kidnappers had inadvertently pinpointed the room for him: only one window had been covered with curtains. When Zane had reached that room, he had carefully parted the heavy curtains to make certain they hadn’t shielded an interior light, but the room beyond had been totally dark. And Miss Lovejoy had been there, just as he had expected.
Now, ostensibly with nothing left to guard, the kidnappers all seemed to be grouped together. Zane cat-footed through the lower rooms until he reached the other staircase, then climbed silently upward. Thanks to Spooky, he knew of a fairly secure place to take Miss Lovejoy while they waited for another opportunity for extraction; all he had to do was get her there undetected. That meant he had to do it before dawn, because a half-naked, red-haired Western woman would definitely be noticeable in this Islamic country. He wouldn’t exactly blend in himself, despite his black hair and tanned skin, because of his dark cammies, web gear and weaponry. Most people noticed a man with camouflage paint on his face and an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
He reached the room where he’d left Miss Lovejoy and entered as quietly as he’d left. The room was empty. Alarm roared through him, every muscle tightening, and then he saw the small, dark hump on the floor and realized that she had curled up with the thin survival blanket over her. She wasn’t moving. Zane listened to the light, almost inaudible evenness of her breathing and realized she had gone to sleep. Again he felt that subtle inner clenching. She had been on edge and terrified for hours, obviously worn out but unable to sleep; the slight measure of security he’d been able to give her, consisting of his shirt, a blanket and a temporary, precarious hiding place, had been enough for her to rest. He hated to disturb her, but they had to move.
Gently he put his hand on her back, lightly rubbing, not shaking her awake but easing her into consciousness so she wouldn’t be alarmed. After a moment she began stirring under his touch, and he felt the moment when she woke, felt her instant of panic, then her quietly determined reach for control.
“We’re moving to someplace safer,” he whispered, removing his hand as soon as he saw she was alert. After what she had been through, she wouldn’t want to endure a man’s touch any more than necessary. The thought infuriated him, because his instinct was to comfort her; the women in his family, mother, sister and sisters-in-law, were adored and treasured by the men. He wanted to cradle Barrie Lovejoy against him, whisper promises to her that he would personally dismember every bastard who had hurt her, but he didn’t want to do anything that would undermine her fragile control. They didn’t have time for any comforting, anyway.
She clambered to her feet, still clutching the blanket around her. Zane reached for it, and her fingers tightened on the fabric, then slowly loosened. She didn’t have to explain her reluctance to release the protective cloth. Zane knew she was still both extrasensitive to cold and painfully embarrassed by her near nudity.
“Wear it this way,” he whispered, wrapping the blanket around her waist sarong-style so that it draped to her feet. He tied the ends securely over her left hipbone, then bent down to check that the fabric wasn’t too tight around her feet, so she would have sufficient freedom of movement if they had to run.
When he straightened, she touched his arm, then swiftly lifted her hand away, as if even that brief touch had been too much. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Watch me closely,” he instructed. “Obey my hand signals.” He explained the most basic signals to her, the raised clenched fist that meant “Stop!” and the open hand that meant merely “halt,” the signal to proceed and the
