Fear had a bitter, metallic taste, almost like blood.
It welled up in her throat, then spilled into her mouth until she couldn’t breathe around it.
Something was out there. Waiting. Watching. Something dark and terrifying. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t seem to make her arms and legs move. She was caught, she realized with horror.
Escape! She had to find a way to break free. Evil lurked just beyond her restraints.
“Please. Please no,” she whispered, then cried out just as the evil force reached out to pull her into the tight, suffocating embrace of death.
“Easy now. Everything’s all right.”
She shouldn’t have found his voice so soothing, any more than she should have found such comfort in his presence. Somehow she knew—as long as he was there, she was safe. No one could possibly touch her while Mason Keller was around to protect her….
The Interpreter
RaeAnne Thayne
RAEANNE THAYNE
lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several readers’ choice awards and a RITA® Award nomination by the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com, or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.
To the real Harry Withington and his beautiful wife, Jessie, for opening their home and their hearts to us.
And to Rose Robinson, for all the Tagalog help.
Many, many thanks!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
She was in a regular bloody mess.
Bound and gagged in the back of what she thought must be a rented lorry, Jane Withington bit the inside of both cheeks in a vain attempt to keep the panic at bay.
It didn’t work. Though she was gnawing hard enough to draw blood, savage fear still prowled in her chest, in her head, through her veins—doing a much better job of choking her than the dirty kerchief they had stuffed in her mouth.
How could she not panic? Any sane woman would, knowing she was on her way to certain death, all because she had never been any kind of a decent poker player.
She wouldn’t be in this mess if only she had selected a different Park City restaurant for dinner on her evening off from her duties as an interpreter at the International Trade Summit—if only she hadn’t been seated at the booth next to the quartet of men with the low, intense voices, one of whom she recognized, first by his voice and then when she confirmed her suspicions by a furtive look behind her on the pretext of dropping her serviette.
None of this would have happened if she had been able to sneak away without Simon Djami, the Vandelusian trade minister, seeing her—or if she wasn’t so damn brilliant with languages and didn’t know a word of Vandish, the obscure Southeast Asian dialect they were speaking.
But she did know Vandish. And she knew herself well enough to be certain she hadn’t been able to hide her shock and horror at what she heard them planning.
“All is in place,” one of the Vandish men had said, not even bothering to lower his voice.
“Ah, wonderful,” Simon Djami had said. “You have indeed pleased me, my friend. Months of preparation will result in this grand protest, all for the glory of Vandelusia. We will show them the people of Vandelusia are not puppets to be yanked about by godless, unclean western hands.”
“It is good you have bought the loyalty of your two FBI lapdogs. With their help we will have the nerve gas canister by Sunday night and will be ready to prepare the detonation device for Wednesday’s treaty signing.”
Nerve gas? Detonation devices? Good Lord, they were planning a terrorist attack.
The quite pleasant roast duckling she had been enjoying up to that point now congealed in her stomach in a big greasy ball. She had to get out of here, to warn someone!
It was just her bad luck that before she could frantically summon the waitress for her bill so she could escape, Djami walked past her on the way to the men’s room. Though she tried to hide behind the book she had brought to keep her company at dinner, she hadn’t moved quickly enough.
For one tiny instant, their gazes collided. As she looked into his cold eyes, she saw recognition flicker there—recognition of who she was and exactly what she must have overheard and understood.
She was likely the only person outside of those four men in the entire western United States who spoke Vandish, and in that cold gaze, she saw that her fate had been sealed.
Now, hours later, the lorry hit a deep bump suddenly and Jane gasped as the jarring movement smashed her against unforgiving metal. Her head connected with a crack and for an instant, pain and fear made her woozy. She blinked away the dizziness, then felt warmth trickle down her face. Was she bleeding? She had hit something sharp as she had been jostled against the lorry wall. A screw, perhaps?
She tried to rub her cheek against her shoulder but with her tightly bound hands behind her back, she didn’t have the range of motion necessary to staunch the dripping blood.
It seemed the last straw. The fear she had been trying so hard to contain growled and snapped at its leash.
She was utterly helpless in a crisis. Always had been. And this particular crisis was bound to paralyze her. All of this—the gag, the restraints, the awful fear—was too much like before, that terrible time she had fiercely tried to wipe from her memory, impossible though that task was.
Just as in her nightmares, she was fifteen again in a foreign country, in the midst of hostile, angry enemies, praying to whoever would listen to her pleas to extricate her. Then, as now, she was a pawn in a game much bigger than she was.
And then, just as now, she had been completely worthless, unable to focus on anything but the rampaging terror.
Oh, this was horrible. She wanted to curl up into a tight little ball and let the jostling of the lorry rock her to sleep. Dying would be so much less terrifying if she could only sleep through it.
Buck up, darling.
Though she knew it was only her imagination, she could suddenly hear her father’s voice in her ear, gruff and hearty and wonderful.
Be strong for me, Janie-girl. You know you’re clever enough to get yourself out of this.
She wasn’t strong, though, or particularly clever. Harry Withington had always been the brave one, the forceful one in their little family unit of two. She had so wanted to be like him, reckless and brash and