“You’re the reporter who was with my dad in Iraq.”
“Yes. And you’re Sam—”
“Samantha,” she said in a breathless rush.
Not Sammi June. Not anymore. Of course not. The little-girl name had gone the way of the freckles and ponytails. She was a grown-up woman now.
He accepted it with a solemn nod, and a peculiar quivering pressure behind his breastbone. “Samantha…”
Cory sat back, his hands grown sweaty on the keyboard. The same pressure was there in his chest now, and letting out a long, slow breath didn’t ease it much.
There’d been more to that day, of course. A lot more. He remembered every moment of it, every word, every look, every gesture.
She’d confided in him, for some reason, although his intuition told him she was a private person by nature. She’d told him about ordinary stuff—her life, about soccer and school, and her newly born dream of becoming a pilot, like her dad. And some not-so-ordinary stuff—what it had been like to lose her father as a little girl and get him back again as a grown woman. Amazingly, in the midst of her own emotional turmoil she’d asked about Cory, too, how it had been for him.
He hadn’t been able to hide his pain from her that day, not completely, though God knows he’d tried. Just the first of many times in his relationship with Samantha Bauer when his will had failed him….
He’d listened to her speak of adult loss with a child’s simplicity, and of a child’s heartbreak with an adult’s passion.
And he’d fallen in love with her. Right there, that day, in the White House rose garden.
He let out another breath as he once more hit the Save icon, then darkened the monitor. He’d had enough. Couldn’t do any more, not now.
Nor, he imagined, would he make another attempt any time soon. He should have known it was too soon. That it would still hurt too damn much.
Writing had always been his lifeline in difficult times. His medicine, his therapy, his healing balm, his anesthetic, better than a bottle of Scotch. He’d thought, he’d hoped…it would help get him through this. But it seemed there was no medicine on earth powerful enough to dull the pain of losing Samantha.
Chapter 1
The tiny airstrip simmered in the afternoon heat, denied out of functional necessity even the small solace of trees. To Cory Pearson’s eyes the ragged cluster of clapboard buildings with rusting tin roofs that apparently served as hangar and maintenance sheds as well as terminal and business offices seemed to have hunkered down beneath the pounding sun with the silent endurance of penned livestock.
The taxi driver who had brought them from Davao City cut off the elderly car’s engine—to keep it from overheating, Cory imagined—which of course rendered the air inside the cab unbreatheable within roughly three seconds. Feeling his breath catch in an instinctive effort to keep that awful heat out of his lungs, Cory hurriedly thrust a handful of bills at the driver across the back of the seat and opened his door. On the other side of the car, his best friend and favorite photographer, Tony Whitehall, hefted the cases containing his cameras onto his knees and did the same. Hot air rushed inside the car like the breath of a ravenous beast.
“God,” Tony said, the profanity halfhearted and forlorn.
“Beats a monsoon, or so I’m told,” Cory said cheerfully as he hooked the strap of his laptop carrier over his shoulder and climbed out of the car. “Hard to see how, but if we’re still here in a few weeks, I guess we’ll find out.”
Tony just grunted.
The two men waited in stoic silence while the driver—spare, wiry and apparently eternally cheerful—retrieved their bags from the trunk of the cab. Returning their nods and muttered thanks with more nodding and smiling—Cory’s tip had been generous—the driver climbed back behind the wheel and started up the engine with a rackety explosion of noise and exhaust. He drove off with a full-armed wave of farewell from his open window.
“You couldn’t have picked a hotter month to do this?” Tony inquired as they stood motionless and watched the taxi undulate and seem to hover above the ground in the distant shimmer of heat waves. Moving from the spot seemed almost too great a task; the heat sat on their shoulders like a burden.
“Believe me, it was a whole lot cooler when I started negotiations last November.” Cory bent and picked up his bag and Tony did the same, and the two men began walking slowly toward the uninviting-looking cluster of buildings. “When Fahad al-Rami finally gave me the go-ahead to do the interview, I didn’t argue. I said, ‘Tell me the time and place, and I’m there.’”
Tony paused and set his bag down long enough to fish an already damp handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans. “Yeah, well, I just hope we get something out of this—besides one hell of an interview, I mean.”
Cory glanced at him. “The hostages, you mean.” Tony, in the process of tying the handkerchief pirate-style around his shiny mahogany-colored head to protect it from the blazing sun, didn’t reply. Cory faced forward again, squinting even though the photosensitive lenses of his glasses had already adjusted to the glare. “Goes without saying. Not that I’m holding out much hope.”
Tony’s sunglasses flashed toward him briefly as he picked up his bag. “Why not? They’ve released other hostages.”
“For money. The Lundquists are missionaries—in most cases like this the churches back home are too poor to pay the ransom.”
“Then why the hell’d they take ’em?”
“Probably didn’t know who they were getting. Just scooped up a bunch of tourists from a seaside resort. The way I understand it, the Lundquists just happened to be vacationing there at the time.”
“Poor devils,” Tony said. Then, in a blunt tone and with a thrust of chin that might have been taken for callous if Cory hadn’t known him so well, he asked, “So, why keep them? They’ve had ’em for what, going on a year, now? Why not cut their losses? Turn ’em loose or kill ’em. One or the other.”
“I expect they’re hoping to get something for their trouble—leverage of one kind or another.” Cory pulled open a door marked Office and held it for Tony to squeeze through with his assortment of bags and cases. “Which is why I don’t hold out much hope for us securing the release of any hostages through this interview. It’s not like I have anything they want.”
Tony grunted as he nudged past him, then paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. “Other than the interview, you mean,” he said as he began lowering bags to the dusty linoleum floor.
“Hell,” Cory said with a grin as he let the door close behind him, “they had that for the asking.”
Tony took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket, then threw him a grin back. “A favorable interview. Maybe they’re figuring on holding the hostages over your head so you’ll make sure and show them and their cause to the world in a sympathetic light.”
It was a possibility that had already occurred to Cory, and another reason he didn’t entertain high hopes of bringing those hostages back with him. Not through negotiations, at any rate. As far as other means…he had some ideas
