Secret Agent Sam

She jerked a look over at Tony. “How long have you two known each other, anyway?”

He straightened abruptly, as if the question had taken him by surprise. “Me? Oh…’ bout four years, I guess, maybe more. I was his-” he coughed, belatedly and almost comically embarrassed “-um…his best man. At his… uh…you know…wedding.”

One good thing about this new shocker, Sam supposed, for once the mention of Cory’s marriage brought not even a twinge of pain or a sizzle of anger. She brushed it aside with only an impatient gesture. “He ever tell you about his family?”

His exotic golden eyes regarded her thoughtfully from under short straight lashes. “Not much, no.” He paused, then added, “I know he doesn’t have one.”

“But he did,” she said in a low voice, hunched and intent. “Right? He had a mother and father, brothers and sisters… Did he ever tell you about them?”

He shifted, fiddling with his camera, lifting it to peer one-eyed through the viewfinder then lowering it again to his lap. He looked over at her, still squinting a little. “I know his parents both died. After that he went into the system. Wasn’t kind to him, I know that. He doesn’t like to talk about it much.”

“No kidding.” She paused, then asked, “What happened to his mom and dad? How did they die? Was it some kind of accident?”

He didn’t answer at first. He studied his feet, rocking himself a little. Then he took a deep breath. “Look, you wanna know the truth? I’ve wondered about it myself. Used to, anyway. Don’t guess I’d be human if I didn’t. Hey, I work in the news media-it’s all right there, the information, you know? What I’m saying is, if I wanted to find out, I probably could. I just figure…it’s not my place to do that. It’s not something I need to know. Guys don’t have this need to share their innermost feelings. If he wants to tell me, he will. If he doesn’t, fine. He’s my friend, he’s gonna be my friend no matter what.” He paused…shifted his gaze to the cloud-shrouded mountains. “You, though…that’s a different thing. I don’t know…between a man and a woman, if they plan on being together, seems to me like there shouldn’t be any secrets. So, maybe it’s something you need to know. Maybe it’s something he needs to tell you.”

Her throat felt dry, as though it might tear if she swallowed. Instead, she gave a huff of scratchy laughter. “If they plan on being together. That’s not gonna happen.”

He turned his head to look at her along one shoulder. “Why do you say that? Anybody can see you two’ve got feelings for each other.” He snorted. “He’s sure got feelings for you.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam said acidly. “This from the guy who was best man at his, ‘uh, wedding.’ To somebody else?”

He reared back, holding up a hand. “Whoa, that-okay, that was a bad thing he did, I’ll grant you that.” He darted a look over one shoulder and lowered his voice to a mutter. “I gotta tell you, though-he’d kill me if he knew I was telling you this-the night before the wedding? I could tell something was wrong. I even asked him if he was getting cold feet-you know, kidding around-and he looked at me like…I don’t know, but I’ve seen that exact same look on the faces of convicted felons right after the judge passes sentence, just before the guard fastens on the handcuffs and leads them away. This…oh-Lord-what-have-I-done look, you know? But he just said, No, everything was fine. Then he went and got blasted. Drunk,” he added when Sam stared blankly at him.

“Drunk? Cory?” She gave her head a hard little shake of disbelief. “He doesn’t get drunk. I’ve never seen him drink more than a couple of beers before in my life.”

Tony nodded. “My point exactly. I’d had my doubts before, but that’s when I knew it wasn’t right. She wasn’t the one.”

She rubbed at her throat; the ache there was becoming intolerable. “Then why did he do it?” she whispered. “Why did he marry her?”

He gave her a long hard look and finally said, “Can’t you figure it out? You’re a smart lady-put two and two together.” He held up a finger. “He doesn’t have a family.” A second finger joined the first. “He wants one.” Another finger. “Time is slipping by.” A fourth finger. “You aren’t available, but someone comes along at just the right time, and she is available.” The fingers clenched into a fist. “Bingo-end of story.”

Sam swallowed hard. Her eyes burned. She whispered, “I don’t care. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have done it. Couldn’t have done it.”

As far as she was concerned that was a fact, irrefutable, inescapable. And intolerable. Which didn’t keep her from trying to escape it anyway, as she plunged off the porch and headed blindly for the village.

She had no destination in mind to begin with, just that overwhelming desire to flee from thoughts and emotions she didn’t want to face, but after the first heedless steps, she decided she might as well make for the crude latrine the women had led her to earlier. On that trip she’d satisfied herself that their “custodian,” the terrorist spokesman, was telling the truth when he claimed al-Rami wasn’t in the camp. She was fairly certain the hostages wouldn’t be, either-other than the hut the three of them were inhabiting, there simply wasn’t a structure that could have held them. Not one with a door, anyway.

Tonight. He said, “We go to al-Rami tonight.” That’s what I have to concentrate on, she told herself. The job. And she was getting close…so very close.

She almost ran headlong into the phalanx of armed men that popped up out of the jumble of vegetation and overgrown huts to block her way, the so-called “spokesman” at their center with his trusty rifle at the ready. Behind them, Sam caught glimpses of several women waiting with heads shyly bowed, arms full of baskets of food and bundles of familiar-looking shoes and clothing.

She tried to explain, in her best Tagalog, that she was only going to the latrine, but the spokesman adamantly refused to let her pass.

“Go back now,” he barked in his choppy English, which he seemed incapable of speaking without using his weapon for emphasis. “Eat first. Then put on cloths. We go when is dark.”

“Gosh, I was getting to kind of like this outfit,” Sam said to the man as she was plodding back to the hut, reverting to English herself. “You don’t suppose I could keep it, do you? Like those complimentary hotel bathrobes?”

The gunman, stone-faced, didn’t answer. She shrugged and grinned at Tony, who was sitting on the porch where she’d left him, his camera discreetly lowered. She told herself her heart didn’t quicken its tempo when she saw Cory there, too, standing with his arms folded on his chest as if waiting for her, like a stern papa confronting a child caught coming in past curfew.

She resisted the temptation to stick her tongue out at him, and instead gave her head a breezy toss and said, “Hey, look who I found.” Ignoring Cory, she plopped down on the edge of the porch beside Tony and nudged him with her elbow. “Cheer up, guys, they brought your pants back.” And she laughed as he clutched belatedly at the edges of his sarong and tried without success to bring them together over his knees.

Laughing…smiling…making jokes…all to hide the fact that her heart was racing and she was helpless to control it. That her whole body seemed to be singing in response to Cory’s nearness, nerve endings lifting to him the way skin and hair react to static electricity, with sparks zapping and crackling at the slightest touch. Sparks…that could cause devastating explosions, if conditions were right.

She laughed and smiled and joked with Tony because she had no wish to deal with the jumble of emotions and memories and hurt feelings and fears that were her thoughts just then. As a pilot she knew better than to try to fly through that kind of turbulence.

That night’s trek seemed almost a replay of the first. Cory even wondered at times if they might be traversing some of the same territory they’d covered the night before, their guides using darkness as a substitute for blindfolds as they led them in circles to confuse them. In any case, he was determined not to let his own impatience and inner turmoil distract him from experiencing and mentally recording the adventure, and his eyes and ears-not to mention his imagination-were busy as he scrambled in the wake of his escort, dodging branches and trying not to trip over the tangle underfoot.

In different circumstances, he thought, the jungle by moonlight might have seemed an enchanted place, with silvery shafts stabbing through breaks in the canopy like ghostly fingers reaching for something in the shadows clumped below. It wasn’t quiet. Small jungle creatures confused by the half light rustled in the undergrowth and twittered in the branches high above their heads as they kept their nervous vigil against the predators that stalked them by moonlight. It was a hunter’s night; every now and then a desperate shriek from an unlucky victim shattered