Always - Iris Johansen [60]
“Lisa, come back here.” Clancy’s voice was harsh with strain.
If she could keep between them, Martin wouldn’t be able to hurt him. “Let’s leave now, Martin. Before they discover you’re here and catch you.”
“I’m touched by your concern.” There was an ugly twist to Martin’s lips. “I might even believe you, if I didn’t remember how you tried to hand me over to your lover on Paradise Cay.”
“Lisa had no part in that. The entire trap was solely my responsibility,” Clancy said.
Martin’s eyes wandered down Lisa’s body to the slight swell of her abdomen. “I guess the kid she’s carrying is solely your responsibility, too. I heard she was pregnant. We’ve been keeping a very close watch on both of you since you arrived in Sedikhan. I’d say both the betrayal and the kid were joint projects, Donahue.”
“Martin, Clancy was only doing his job.” Lisa moistened her dry lips.
But Martin wasn’t listening. His eyes were narrowed with malice on Clancy’s taut face. “No, I’ve changed my mind. The betrayal may have been a dual effort, but not the pregnancy. She used you, Donahue. Lisa is one of these women who can never love a man as much as she does a child. I found that out. She doesn’t want you. She doesn’t love you. She only wants that child you’ve put in her body.”
Clancy’s lips flattened to a thin line of pain. “I know that. I’ve accepted it. It doesn’t matter.”
Lisa felt a tearing agony within her. Oh, God, he really believed that! She could see it in his face. “Clancy, I—”
“Get in the car, Lisa,” Martin ordered. “You drive. I’ll sit beside you with this clever little toy pressed against your side and your lover will sit in the back in isolated splendor. That will give him time to think of all the very unpleasant things I’m going to do to you once we get across the border.”
“Please, Martin, leave Clancy here. It will be much safer for you.”
“The hell it will,” Clancy said with icy menace. “If he took you and left me here, I’d cross into Said Ababa with a task force, and to hell with the border. Let’s go, Baldwin.”
“I had no intention of leaving you, Donahue.” Martin gestured with the pistol. “Move, Lis—What the hell!”
A canary-yellow helicopter had suddenly swooped around the side of the hangar, barely twenty feet above the ground, and was almost on top of them. The tornado stirred by the blades whipped Martin’s hat from his head and sent it flying.
Lisa caught a glimpse of a flaming-auburn head in the cockpit. Kira! The helicopter dipped even lower and zeroed in on Martin’s frozen figure.
“That pilot is crazy,” he screamed, his eyes on the helicopter. “He’s going to crash right into us!”
“Get down,” Clancy muttered as he brushed by her. Then he’d reached Martin, his hand chopping down on his gun arm with lethal efficiency. Martin gave a cry of agony just as the helicopter pulled up and skimmed over their heads by a scant few feet. Another karate chop to the neck and Martin fell unconscious at Clancy’s feet.
“Are you all right?” Clancy turned to her in concern. “I told you to get down, damn it.”
“Everything happened too fast,” Lisa said dazedly. She looked at Martin’s still body sprawled on the tarmac. It had been like a nightmare where nothing was real. Except the terror. That had been very real, she thought with a shiver. “What will happen to him?”
“I decided a long time ago that when we caught him we’d send him back to the U.S. and let them deal with him.” He smiled grimly. “Of course, we’ll have to give them a little help. Their justice system is too lenient for my taste. I’ll send an investigating team into the United States that will turn up and document every illegal act he’s ever committed, every damned one of them since he was in the second grade. That will put him away for a long, long time.” He frowned. “But first we’ll have to interrogate him to find out who their man in the palace is, as well as where the other terrorists are located who crossed the border into Sedikhan.