The Complete Mackenzie Collection Read online

  He squatted half-naked, unconcernedly rubbing the damp handkerchief across his sweaty chest, lifting his arms to wash under them, exposing the smooth undersides and intriguing patches of hair. He was so fundamentally, elementally male, and so purely a warrior, that her breath strangled in her lungs as she watched him.

  The rush of warmth through her body told her that she was more female than she’d ever imagined.

  A little dazed, she sat back, resting against the wall. Absently she made certain the shirt tail preserved her modesty, but thoughts were tumbling through her mind, dizzyingly fast yet very clear.

  They weren’t out of danger yet.

  During the past twenty-four horrific hours, she hadn’t spent a lot of time wondering about the motive behind her kidnapping. She’d had too much to deal with as it was, the sheer terror, the confusion, the pain of the blows they’d given her.

  She’d been blindfolded much of the time, and disoriented. She’d been humiliated, stripped naked and roughly fondled, taunted with the prospect of rape, and yet they had stopped short of rape—for a reason. Sheer psychological torture had undoubtedly played a role, but most of all they’d had orders to save her for the man who was to arrive today.

  Who was he? He was the one behind her kidnapping; he had to be. But why?

  Ransom? When she thought about it now, coolly and clearly, she didn’t think so. Yes, her father was rich. Many a diplomat came from a moneyed background; it wasn’t unusual. But if money had been the motive, there were others who were richer, though perhaps she had been chosen specifically because it was well known that her father would beggar himself to keep her safe. Perhaps.

  But why would they have taken her out of the country? Wouldn’t they have wanted to keep her close by, to make the exchange for money easier? No, the very fact that they’d taken her out of the country meant they’d kidnapped her for another reason. Maybe they would have asked for money anyway; since they already had her, why not? But money wasn’t the primary object. So what was?

  She didn’t know, and since she didn’t know who the leader was, she had no way of guessing what he truly wanted.

  Not herself. She dismissed that notion out of hand. She wasn’t the object of obsession, because no man so obsessed with a woman that he was driven to such lengths would let his men maul her. Nor was she the type to inspire obsession, she thought wryly. Certainly none of the men she’d dated had shown any signs of obsessive behavior.

  So…there was something else, some piece of puzzle she was missing. Was it someone she knew? Something she’d read or seen?

  Nothing came to mind. She wasn’t involved in intrigue, though of course she knew which employees at the embassy were employed by the CIA. That was standard, nothing unusual. Her father often spoke privately with Art Sandefer and, lately, Mack Prewett, too. She’d often thought that Art was more bureaucrat than spy, though the intelligence in his tired gaze said he’d done his time in the field, too. She didn’t know about Mack Prewett. There was something restless and hard about him, something that made her uneasy.

  Her father said Mack was a good man. She wasn’t certain about that, but neither did he seem like a villain. Still, there had been that time a couple of weeks ago when she hadn’t known anyone was with her father and had breezily walked in without knocking. Her father had been handing a thick manila envelope to Mack; both of them had looked startled and uncomfortable, but her father wasn’t a diplomat for nothing. He’d efficiently smoothed over the slight awkwardness, and Mack had left the office almost immediately, taking the envelope with him. Barrie hadn’t asked any questions about it, because if it was CIA business, then it wasn’t her business.

  Now she wondered what had been in that envelope.

  That small incident was the only thing the slightest bit untoward that she could remember. Art Sandefer had once said that there was no such thing as coincidence, but could that moment be linked to her kidnapping? Could it be the cause of it? That was a reach.

  She didn’t know what was in the envelope, hadn’t shown any interest in it. But she had seen her father giving it to Mack Prewett. That meant…what?

  She felt as if she was feeling her way through a mental maze, taking wrong turns, stumbling into dead ends, then groping her way back to logic. Her father would never, in any way, do anything that would harm her. Therefore, that envelope had no significance—unless he was involved in something dangerous and wanted out. Her kidnapping made sense only if someone was using her as a weapon to make her father do something he didn’t want to do.

  She couldn’t accept the idea of her father doing anything traitorous—at least, not voluntarily. She wasn’t blind to his weaknesses. He was a bit of a snob, he didn’t at all like even the idea that someday she might fall in love and get married, he was protective to the point of smothering her. But he was an honorable man, and a truly patriotic man. It could be that the kidnappers were trying to force her father to do something, give them some information, perhaps, and he had resisted; she could be the means they were using to force him to do what they wanted.

  That felt logical. The envelope probably had nothing at all to do with her kidnapping, and Art Sandefer was wrong about coincidence.

  But what if he wasn’t?

  Then, despite her instincts about him, her father was involved in something he shouldn’t be. The thought made her sick to her stomach, but she had to face the possibility, had to think of every angle. She had to face it, then put it aside, because there was nothing she could do about it now.

  If the kidnappers had been going to use her as a weapon against her father, then they wouldn’t give up. If it had just been ransom, they would have thrown up their hands at her supposed escape and said the Arabic equivalent of, “Ah, to hell with it.”

  The leader hadn’t been here. She didn’t even know where “here” was; she’d had too much on her mind to ask questions about her geographic location.

  “Where are we?” she murmured, thinking she really should know.

  Zane lifted his eyebrows. He was sitting down, lounging against the wall at a right angle to her, having finished cleaning up, and she wondered how long she’d been lost in thought. “The waterfront district,” he said. “It’s a rough section of town.”

  “I meant, what town?” she clarified.

  Realization dawned in his crystal clear eyes. “Benghazi,” he said softly. “Libya.”

  Libya. Stunned, she absorbed the news, then went back to the mental path she’d been following.

  The leader had been flying in today. From where? Athens? If he’d been in contact with his men, he would know she’d somehow escaped. But if he had access to the embassy, and to her father, then he would also know that she hadn’t been returned to the embassy. Therefore, she would logically still be in Libya. Also logically, they would be actively searching for her.

  She looked at Zane again. His eyes were half-closed, he looked almost asleep. Because of the heat, he hadn’t put his T-shirt back on. But despite the drowsy look on his face, she sensed that he was vitally aware of everything going on around them, that he was merely letting his body rest while his mind remained on guard.

  After the humiliation and pain her guards had dealt her, Zane’s concern and consideration had been like a balm, soothing her, helping to heal her bruised emotions before she even had time to know how deep the damage went. Almost before she knew it, she had been responding to him as a woman does to a man, and somehow that was all right.

  He was the exact opposite of the thugs who had so delighted in humiliating her. Those thugs were probably searching all over the city for her, and until she was out of this country, the possibility existed that they would recapture her. And if they did, this time there would be no respite.

  No. It was intolerable. But if the unthinkable happened, she would be damned if she would give them the satisfaction they’d been anticipating. She would be damned if she would let them take her virginity.

  She had never thought of