Caught Before Dawn
Jiyeon had no choice but to admit it. Louis thought of her as someone special. She could sneer all she liked—doll, toy, whatever name she reached for to cut herself down and lie to her own heart—and still there were things he could not hide. Each time they lay together, his hands moved over her with a tenderness he never quite managed to disguise, and his eyes gave the rest away. Whenever that vast, inescapable feeling showed a little more of itself, she felt like a child who had lost the path home.
She knew Major Louis Kane. From his side she had watched him wage his wars, look after his men, and bring the refugees to order. That was why she could not bring herself to deny it. Why, even at the end, she had never quite been able to kill the hope.
The thought of the picture coming together frightened her. The path he had chosen in order to protect her, and every plan she had laid to protect her younger sister—she did not know whether she could bear them once they locked into a single shape.
Whatever reasons he might have, whatever excuses, the man had taken her body by force and kept her confined. Forgiveness and understanding had no place between them.
Even so, they moved like lovers aching for each other. Where they touched, they fit too well, as if they had been made one body. A bright, aching pleasure lingered everywhere he passed. At last the man spilled his lust across her stomach.
Jiyeon stared, blank, at the muscles drawing hard, the knot between his brows, the groan that slipped out of him low. Louis Kane had a way of bewitching a person. That, she had no choice but to admit.
When he had failed to come to the cell, a bitterness had crept into a corner of her heart alongside the sense of danger.
She had turned away from it, guilty, as if the feeling were a crime.
"You wanted to kill me?"
Louis asked it with a thread of laughter in his voice, his eyes on the toothbrush that had fallen beside the bed. He rose, wiped her clean with the blanket, and wiped himself as well, though he was still hard. It was the first time he had gotten up after only a single round.
He had tomorrow on his mind. And he was shielding her from the ones who had her under a wiretap.
"And here I thought you were the one trying to kill me, Major."
Jiyeon murmured it. Only now did the strength drain out of her, exhaustion rolling in behind. She had eaten nothing for nearly three days. And in the midst of that, she had climaxed.
"If that had been easy, I wouldn't have done any of this."
He answered in a voice gone flat with disillusion, then dug through a pocket of his uniform and tossed her a piece of bread.
"It's not poisoned."
Dry. Blunt. In that, Jiyeon saw the old superior she had once idolized, and a sudden heat surged up through one side of her heart.
Jiyeon did not sleep. After Louis left, she searched the room with care and found the small bug stuck beneath the table—but she did not peel it free. It had almost certainly been planted by the female soldier who brought her meals.
She lay straight on the bed. Before leaving the room, Louis had pressed a small electronic watch into her hand, and she checked it every ten minutes, watching the numerals burn a dim, murky green.
The moment the display read that hour exactly, Jiyeon stood before the door.
The one who opened the cell was Second Lieutenant Thomas. She had seen him more than once at Major Louis Kane's side—his aide.
The corridor was dark, and Thomas carried not even a small flashlight. He had judged it safer to move in the dark. They exchanged no greeting and set off at once.
Jiyeon weighed how far Second Lieutenant Thomas could be trusted. She supposed he was taking the same measure of her.
Thomas's massive, bear-like frame was rigid with tension, and a faint smell of sweat clung to him. They moved quickly. The cell where she had been held sat in an annex well removed from battalion headquarters. Jiyeon did not ask where they were going. Instead she swept the ground around them, working to grasp the situation as it stood.
The building was empty enough that not a single patrol showed itself. Even for a remote annex, it was rare for a place to be this deserted. It made sense, though, if—as his note had said—the entire 5th Battalion had marched out for Sector 12 at four in the morning.
When they came up from the basement and reached the annex's first floor, Thomas pulled a bag from a locker beside the guard station and pressed it into her arms. It was heavy.
"We proceed directly to Guard Post 7. We have approximately five minutes of leeway."
Jiyeon nodded, and at once the two of them matched their stride and ran. Guard Post 7 was not far from the annex. Set just beneath the ridge, it was the most isolated sector of all, and the brutal mountain terrain sealing off its rear meant no one spared it much thought for security.
They pressed along the wall and covered the ground quickly. Out of the dark, the post took shape ahead of them. No soldier stood guard. There was only a man keeping watch at its side—and that man was Major Louis Kane.
The moment her eyes met those dark blue ones, relief went through her. To feel safe at the sight of the man who had locked her away—there was no escaping the contradiction.
"No one encountered en route. Current time, 0445. Moving quickly, estimated arrival at the objective around 0510."
Thomas delivered the report the instant they linked up. Dawn seemed to be breaking; a blue early light was beginning to lift the dark, though it was still dim beside Guard Post 7.
"We move now. Lieutenant Jiyeon Yu."
The low voice called to her. When she looked at him, he asked, evenly:
"Any discomfort? We'll be on the mountain trail for the next thirty minutes."
The tone was as rigid as when he issued orders. But Jiyeon read the worry folded inside it. He knew perfectly well she had gone days without food.
She meant to tell him to put away a concern that did not suit him. The words never left her.
A hard light struck the three of them. The instant she recognized it as a flashlight beam, Jiyeon moved to set herself for a fight.
Click. A heavy snick of metal. They had been found. Jiyeon knew it on instinct.
As her eyes adjusted to the glare, Derek Smith came into view, rifle loaded and trained on them. Sweat poured down his face, and a grotesque smile stretched across the whole of it.
"Wondered where you were scurrying off to like rats in the dead of night. Didn't realize the Major had a hobby of smuggling spies out."
Behind him stood a man who looked to be one of his own, flashlight and rifle in hand, shaking so hard it was pitiful.
"...Captain Smith. Weren't you at the departure ceremony?"
Louis's voice was so calm that Jiyeon almost felt as if they had merely stepped out for a walk. Derek's face flushed, as if he sensed his arrival had posed no threat at all.
Jiyeon counted it a small mercy that the one who had followed the Major was Derek Smith. If the higher-ups had ever made a worse personnel decision, it was the existence of that captain.
Hadn't they said he was a corps staff officer's son? Of every parachute hire headquarters had posted in—officers appointed by family connection rather than merit—Derek Smith was the most worthless of the lot.
Just as his record had proved so very helpful to any number of rebel operations, she prayed the bastard would grow careless today and blunder again.
Jiyeon scanned the ground with sharp eyes, hunting for even the smallest opening.
"Cut the bullshit. I'm handing you over to command so they can interrogate you properly. Caught in the act smuggling a spy—no slithering out of this one like an eel, is there? That slick face of yours always pissed me off."
The growl in his voice carried rage enough to pull a trigger at any second. For once, his temper left her uneasy. She had to find a way out of this without provoking him.