She raised her clenched fist. “I was so close. But I’m not going to get him, am I?”
“No, you’re not.” Robert’s jaw flexed. “It’s time for you to go home, Lily. It’s time for you and Jack to go back to the United States.”
“DeBruzkya will never let me leave,” she whispered. “I know him, Robert. He’s crazy and cruel and obsessive.”
Using a firm touch, Robert turned her to him. When she refused to look at him he put his fingers under her chin and forced her gaze to his. “I can get you out.”
“He has an entire army looking for us.” She squeezed her eyes close to lock in the tears, but they squeezed through her lashes. “He’ll kill you. I know it. He’ll kill you just to get at me.”
“DeBruzkya isn’t going to do anything.”
A sob escaped her when she thought of who else was vulnerable. “He’ll hurt Jack.”
“He’s not going to get near my son,” he said, his voice taking on a dangerous edge.
“DeBruzkya doesn’t care about you or Jack, Robert. The only reason he wants either of you is to get to me. I’m the one he wants.”
“Damn it, Lily, don’t go there.”
But Lily already had. She didn’t have a choice. She’d been fooling herself to believe she could outmaneuver a master. To actually believe she could bring down someone as diabolical and cunning as DeBruzkya. All she’d managed to do was put Robert and her son in danger.
“I’ve got to turn myself in,” she said after a moment.
“No.”
She tried to twist away from him, but his hands tightened on her biceps. “There’s no other way.”
“Listen to me.” Grasping her arms, he gave her a little shake. “You don’t have to sacrifice yourself to do this.”
“I’m not willing to risk Jack.” She looked into his eyes. “I’m not going to risk your getting hurt, either.”
“DeBruzkya will kill you!” he shouted.
“No, he won’t,” she said.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because he’s in love with me.”
His lips drew back in a snarl. “That doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say that? I’m the only person who can get close to him. I’m his weakness. How can you deny that using me isn’t the best way to get to him?”
“Because I love you!” he shouted. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you get yourself killed because you don’t have the good sense to know when you’re out of your league.”
Chapter 11
Robert stared at her, breathing as if he’d just run a mile, his heart pounding pure adrenaline. Lily stared back, her eyes wide with shock, her face as pale as death. All the while the words he’d just uttered ricocheted between them like a hollow-point slug.
I love you.
Shocked by what he’d said—deeply disturbed because he’d meant it—he gathered the tattered threads of his dignity and grappled to focus on the issue at hand. “What did he do to you that made you hate him so much?” he asked roughly.
His emotions shifted dangerously when she winced, and Robert realized he’d hit a nerve. A live nerve that jumped when prodded. She tried to twist away, but he held her gently, sensing she needed to talk but knowing the words wouldn’t come easily for her.
“Lily, it’s me. Come on. Talk to me,” he pressed.
Lily looked at him, her eyes stricken. “He…murdered someone I cared about very much. Her name was Alina,” she whispered.
“A child?”
“She was seven years old. An orphan in a village not far from Rajalla. Her mother had been killed by a land mine. Her father went to fight in the war, but he never came home. Alina was sent to the orphanage when she was five. I met her a year later when I was tutoring some of the kids.” She smiled, but he saw the pain in her eyes. “She had strawberry-blond hair, like mine.” She choked out a laugh. “As silly as it sounds, I think that’s what drew her to me. I started calling her Strawberry. My little Strawberry.”
Robert could feel the tremors moving through her. He loosened his grip, but she didn’t pull away. It was as if she needed his support just to stand as she remembered. “Tell me about her,” he said gently.
“She liked dolls. Plastic or porcelain or wooden, it didn’t matter. I bought her a Raggedy Ann at a tourist shop in a border town over in Holzberg. It was just a cheap, poorly sewn doll. But Strawberry didn’t care. In her eyes, that doll was made of gold. She loved her. Took Raggedy Ann everywhere.”
A breath shuddered out of her. “I tutored her two days a week. She wanted to learn English. So she could be a schoolteacher. She was so sweet. So innocent and smart and so undeserving of all the terrible things that had happened to her.”