“You don’t need to know. But Morrow’s here. In my headquarters.” He sighed. Lily felt the warm brush of his breath against her ear and shuddered. “Ah, Lillian, I’m going to do great things,” he said. “I need a wife with strength and courage and vision. You have all of those things.” His gaze swept down the front of her. “And so much more.”
Lily knew then that if she was going to get out of this alive, if she was going to save her son, she was going to have to use her head and not her emotions. She had to stop being afraid.
“You may not love me,” he whispered. “But I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted. You’ll learn to compromise.”
Lily thought about Robert and closed her eyes. “Love is…important to me,” she said, not wanting to sound too eager lest he realize she was playing him in a desperate attempt to buy time.
“Lillian.” He leaned toward her, brushed his lips across her temple. “I’ve dreamed of touching you like this for so long.” His hands trembled as they slid from her shoulders to brush the outsides of her breasts. “War can be a very lonely time for a man.”
She fought the rise of revulsion and endured the contact, trying desperately to think of a way out of this. “This is happening…too fast. I—I’ll have to think about it.” She looked at him and tried desperately to smile. “You understand that a woman likes to think about these things.”
For a moment she wasn’t sure if he was buying into it. She’d never been a good liar, even worse at hiding her emotions. She stared into his black eyes, terrified he would see the lie for what it was. That he would see right through her to the terror in her mind, the hatred in her heart.
Instead, he leaned forward and set his mouth against hers.
Chapter 16
Robert took out the first sentry with the miniaturized stun gun that doubled as a watch. One instant the young man was raising an ugly-looking Chinese-made SKS-47, the next he melted to the ground like a blob of gelatin.
“Thank you, Hatch,” Robert quietly muttered.
Glancing over his shoulder, he worked off his sweater and jeans, then quickly gathered the young soldier’s uniform and put it on. The trousers were too large, but he didn’t plan on running into anyone who might question the fit.
He found a set of nylon cuffs stowed in a pouch in the soldier’s belt and secured the man’s wrists to a steel bar on the window. He used his T-shirt for a gag, then picked up the gun and headed into the castle.
Robert had never been inside Veisweimar Castle, but he’d taken several minutes with his computer to pull up a set of blueprints that were stored on the ARIES database and put them to memory. He’d hoped to enter the behemoth structure on the south side, but sentries had been concentrated there, so he swam the moat and went in from the north. With the help of an aluminum grappling hook, he scaled the twelve-foot wall, then climbed a pine tree and entered through a second-level balcony.
His leg ached with breathtaking ferocity as he jogged down the dimly lit corridor, but Robert had long since grown used to the pain. Pain was tangible. He could deal with it. What he couldn’t deal with was the fear of not knowing where Lily was. Not knowing where Jack was. Not knowing what DeBruzkya had in mind for either of them.
Robert had seen the torture and the executions. If DeBruzkya somehow found out Lily was involved with the freedom fighters… He couldn’t finish the thought. Terror slashed through him with such force that his stride faltered. Panic warred with the need for a level head. Panting as much from the run as the adrenaline streaking through him, he reached the end of a corridor then looked down at the GPS tracking device in his hand. The device showed that he was right on top of the transmitter. He was close, but the device wasn’t sensitive enough to pinpoint her exact location. Left would take him to the main section of the castle where the kitchen and ballrooms were located. Right would take him into the basement that held the prison cells and interrogation rooms which, in Robert’s mind, translated as torture chambers. More important, the generator room was also located in the basement.
He took a right. The corridor was narrow and dim and very damp. He could see an arched entry at the end of the hall. He was halfway there when he heard the voices. Glancing around, he realized there were no alcoves or doorways for him to duck into. Two soldiers were coming up the stairs. He saw the tops of their heads, then they spotted him. Robert didn’t hesitate. Raising his hand, he greeted them in Rebelian, using the slang term for slow night.
They met at the top of the stairwell. Robert noticed one of the soldiers watching him intently and grinned. “Anyone got a smoke?”
The younger of the two immediately dug into his pocket and withdrew a small tin of brown cigarettes. Robert accepted one and put it to his lips. He’d never been a fan of tobacco, but leaned forward eagerly when the younger man struck a match.
“What’s your name?” the older man asked.
“Bane,” he said.
“You new?”
“First night on the job.”
“What are you doing down here?”
He smiled. “I was on my way to the nursery.”