She guessed his line of thought. “You’re thinking about the stones and us, and the parchment Father Domingo had. Afraid we’re doing the witch’s bidding?”

“I don’t believe in destiny,” he said. “But people can be manipulated into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t.”

She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “Fate and destiny don’t have to be an evil thing. Where would I be, if you hadn’t come into my life?”

He studied her. So much in his world was darkness, but somehow she was like the light. The flickering glow from the fire bathed her face, laying shadows and mystery across her skin. A strand of dark hair had fallen across her eyes.

Hawker reached out to put it back behind her ear. He didn’t pull his hand away, and she didn’t ask him to. Instead he ran the tips of his fingers down the side of her face, softly brushing her cheek. She turned toward it, then looked back up at him as he leaned in and kissed her.

She kissed him back, pressing her lips into his. He could taste the wine on her tongue, feel the warmth of her breath in his mouth.

They kissed hard, then parted, looking into each other’s eyes for a second. He laced his fingers through her hair, placing his hand behind her neck, and cradled the back of her head. She closed her eyes and moved toward him again.

In a moment they were sitting on a stone bench with no backrest, facing each other, their legs straddling the bench. They were hidden in an alcove in a quiet alleyway. She kissed him again and rubbed her face against his, the soft skin of her cheek moving across his, the smell of her hair and the perfume of the night around them adding to the intoxication.

Holding her mesmerized him. It wasn’t as if he’d been waiting for her; there’d been plenty of women in various places. They had been comfort on hard nights, a chance to forget the hell that life sometimes was. But this was different. It felt like breathing again after drowning, a chance to rediscover what made life worth living.

He pulled her close, his fingers tracing the smooth curve of her neck, sliding down to the top of her back, to the top button on her dress. He opened it.

She traced a finger across his chest, leaning in and kissing him again. His hand slid down the side of her neck, across her shoulder, and down the smooth skin of her back. And then he stopped.

He pulled back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at him. Her hair was a mess, her eyes half open.

He moved his hand to her back, just above her bra strap. But the movement was different, clinical, searching.

She seemed amused. “Having some trouble back there, sailor?”

“Have you had surgery recently?” he asked.

“No,” she said, slightly aggravated. “Why?”

“Because you have a fresh scar, between your shoulder blade and your spine. And there’s something solid underneath the skin.”

A minute later they were back in the guest room. Danielle slid the top half of the cotton dress past her shoulders and leaned forward in front of the light. Suddenly she remembered the pain in her back after regaining consciousness in Hong Kong. She remembered the bright room that she’d thought had been an interrogation room.

Could it have been an operating room? Could they have implanted something in her?

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m guessing it’s some kind of tracking device,” he said. “Probably short range, but able to be picked up by remote sensors, like LoJack.”

Now it made sense. Of course they had given her boots back; of course they’d allowed her to escape. They knew what she was looking for and they realized she would find it more quickly than they would. Kang wanted her loose. He probably wanted Yuri with her, because of what he could do.

“This is how they found us on the water,” she said.

“Probably,” he said.

“And you thought you heard a plane earlier,” she said.

“It could have been anything.”

“But you know it’s not,” she said.

She stood up holding the dress against her chest to prevent it from falling.

She turned, trying to see the scar in the mirror, but it was in a place that was almost impossible to reach or even to see clearly. That had been done on purpose, so she’d never know it was there.

“How deep is it?” she asked, thinking she would have felt a lot more discomfort if they had cut into the underlying muscle.

She felt his fingers pressing for the edges. “It’s just under the skin.”

“Subcutaneous,” she said. That made things easier.

“What do you want me to do?”

She looked dead at him. “I want you to get a knife and cut the damn thing out of me.”

“Are you insane?” he asked. “Does this seem like a sterile environment to you?”

“We can account for that,” she said, knowing they had strong antibiotics on hand.

“Okay, fine,” he said, “but I’m not a surgeon and I’ve been drinking for three hours.”

She fixed her gaze on him. “I’m not asking you to take my gall bladder out. It’s nothing more than a big splinter. You just have to cut the skin and pull it out.”

Hawker did not look pleased by the thought but he seemed to realize there was no other choice. “Fine,” he said. “Lie down.”

She took off the borrowed dress and laid a towel on the bed, wrapping another one around her waist. A second later Hawker was back with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and Danielle’s first-aid kit.

He pulled out the Zithromax she’d been giving McCarter and handed her two pills, which she gulped down with a large glass of water.

“This is going to hurt,” he said.

She almost laughed. “Not as bad as I’m going to hurt you, if you don’t hurry up and get it over with.”

She watched as he pulled the scalpel from the kit. Using the rubbing alcohol, he sterilized it repeatedly and then put it down without letting the tip of the blade touch anything.

She folded her arms up around the pillow and closed her eyes, trying to focus on anything but the cut that was about to come. She could feel Hawker’s hands against her bare skin. They were warm and strong, and they felt heavy against her back. His leg pressed tight against her thigh and the feeling of his body over the top of her was distracting in an intimate way.

A sudden touch of cold brushed her back; an ice cube to numb the skin. She drew in a sharp breath and held it. Several droplets of water ran across her shoulder blade. One trickled to the side, curving over her body and down toward her hips, clinging to her skin until it trailed across her stomach.

The chill brought on goose bumps and she found herself holding her breath. She wanted to tell him to wait. To turn over and pull him close to her and to make love to him before all this would be done. But they’d run out of time to enjoy life.

“I’m ready,” she said.

She felt his hand pressing heavy on her shoulder, holding it still, and then the edge of the scalpel cutting a shallow line in her skin. She tensed, fighting the instinct to cry out in pain.

CHAPTER 59

Back in her own clothes, with her shoulder bandaged but still bleeding, Danielle hiked to the church with Hawker by her side. She carried the pack with the stone in it. Hawker carried the first-aid kit, with McCarter’s antibiotics.

As they walked, she tried to bottle up the waves of emotion running through her, pushing aside the feeling of having Hawker hold her and kiss her. She needed her wits about her now; she needed to be a professional again.

The tiny object buried under her skin turned out to be a radioactive pellet, an isotope that with the right equipment could be sensed from a distance. The fact that it wasn’t a transmitter made sense. If Kang knew about the stones, he knew that a small microtransmitter would not operate long in their presence. But the pellet was a simple solution. Danielle guessed and hoped it was a low-grade isotope, with a short half-life and capable of little damage, but she didn’t know.