“What happened?”
“I was knocked unconscious and received a serious concussion when the building was destroyed. I had a broken clavicle. My shoulder and part of my arm were burned.”
“How did you get out?”
“I didn’t.” She looked away. “The soldiers found me the next morning.”
He felt the words like a whiplash across his belly. He imagined her lying among rubble, alone and badly injured, only to be discovered by hostile soldiers. “DeBruzkya’s men?”
She nodded. “I was conscious by then, but I was trapped beneath the rubble. I was weak and dehydrated.” A breath shuddered out of her. “At first the soldiers were cruel. They wouldn’t help me. They just stood there, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Taunting me.” She closed her eyes as if remembering, and the pain on her face was so vivid he had to look away.
“I didn’t know if they were going to kill me or help me,” she said. “I was lapsing in and out of lucidity. Then two young soldiers came with a stretcher and pulled me from the rubble.”
“Did they help you?” He didn’t want to think of how vulnerable or frightened she must have felt, being at the mercy of DeBruzkya’s soldiers. The dictator wasn’t known for merciful treatment of prisoners.
She risked a look at Robert, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. “They were decent for the most part. One of the older soldiers…touched me inappropriately. I couldn’t think of how to stop them, so I told them I knew DeBruzkya. The man in command stopped the others before things went too far.”
“My God, Lily.”
“They eventually took me to the hospital in Rajalla. A few days later, DeBruzkya showed up.”
Robert couldn’t stop looking at her, couldn’t imagine this fragile woman injured at and the hands of enemy soldiers or a brutal man like DeBruzkya. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure at first. I was very frightened. I mean, he’s been known to murder rebels on the spot. But to my surprise, he was very…human. He wished me well and told the doctors to make sure I was well taken care of. He sat with me several times, and we just…talked.”
“About what?”
“I had interviewed him about a year and a half ago for a series of articles I was working on, so we had been introduced before.”
“And you knew how to play him.”
She nodded. “That was when I told him I wanted to write his autobiography.”
The hairs at the back of Robert’s neck prickled. “What did he say?”
“He loved the idea immediately.”
“Lily…”
“We met several times in the coming weeks—”
“You really are crazy.”
“I always insisted we meet in public places. The café in Rajalla. The royal palace. He bought me dinner once.”
Because his heart was thrumming, Robert rose and paced to the hearth. The fire didn’t need another log, but he put one on anyway. He needed to move. Damn it, he couldn’t handle the thought of her manipulating such a dangerous, brutal man.
“One of the first things I realized about him is that he likes to talk. About himself. I’ve known things about him for months.”
“Like what?”
“He told me about the Gem of Power. I got the impression he wanted me to believe he actually believed in the legend. Of course, I didn’t, but I let him think so.”
“What else?”
“In a nutshell, he wants to rule all of Europe. And he feels very misunderstood.”
“That tends to happen to psychopaths.”
“He’s fanatical to be sure.” She paused as if searching for the correct words. “But he’s also very…charismatic. Not often, but when he wants something, he can be very persuasive.”
Robert cut her a sharp look. “What did he want from you?”
“The autobiography.”
He stared hard at her, knowing that wasn’t all, feeling it all the way to his bones. His hackles rose at the thought of her getting herself into such a dangerous situation all alone. “What else, Lily?”
Her eyes widened for an instant, then skittered away. She shrugged. “That’s it.”
Robert sensed there was more going on between her and Bruno DeBruzkya than she was telling him, but evidently she wasn’t ready to talk about it. He wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it. And he wondered how far she had been willing to go to get what she wanted.
“I contacted the American government several times looking for you, but I kept getting lost in the shuffle. But now you’re suddenly here….”
“I’m here on a humanitarian mission,” he said. “You know that.”
She didn’t say anything, and a little swirl of uneasiness went through him at the thought of her knowing more than she should. “You put yourself in terrible danger.” Not only herself, he thought, but her child. His child.
“I knew I was in over my head, but the opportunity was too good to let pass.”
“You were pregnant…”