ould you honestly tell me if you thought we were going to die tomorrow?” Gina asked as she and Max made dinner.

That is, if opening a can and giving them each a small portion of her old favorite, monkey stew, could be called making dinner.

They were rationing both their food and water, which seemed a little crazy. Unless, of course, the threat of that approaching tank was just a bluff.

“I don’t think we’re going to die tomorrow. I think this colonel’s going to come, and I’m going to negotiate with him, and we’re going to settle this peacefully.” Max went over to the giant bag of dried dog food. He opened it, sifted through it, all the way to the bottom, no doubt to see if a radio was hidden inside. But as Gina watched, he sniffed it. He even crunched on a piece.

He smiled, no doubt at the expression on her face. Held out a handful.

She shook her head. “No, thanks.”

“It’s not bad.”

“I’ll wait until it’s a necessity,” she said, but she moved towards him, drawn by his lingering smile, by the warmth in his eyes.

The ever-changing light from the security camera monitors played across his face. Aside from the flickering candle on the table, it was the only light in the room.

He was obviously exhausted. And distracted by the contents of Emilio’s closets, still spread out on the kitchen floor. She knew he was seriously unhappy with their current predicament. Being under siege was, by nature, a lack-of-control situation, and she knew Max well enough to know he found this maddening.

Gina was certain that even if she could talk him into skipping dinner and finding a room with a door and bed, he’d only sleep for a short time. He’d be up, just sitting—gingerly, because sitting hurt him worse than he was letting on—and staring at all the utterly useless things they’d found in those closets and cabinets.

He would sit and try to figure out what he’d missed. Or how he could use these relatively random household items to build a radio.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you avoided my question,” she told him.

“I answered it,” Max said, as she came close enough for him to take her in his arms, as he pulled her against him.

He was looking at her the way she’d always wanted him to look at her. As if he weren’t afraid to let her know that he loved her. It was wonderful—or it would have been, if only they weren’t surrounded by men with guns who wanted to kill them.

Gina looped her arms around his neck. She kissed him, unable to resist the temptation. His mouth was warm and sweet and no, she was not going to let him distract her this way.

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “The question was, would you honestly tell me. It requires a simple answer—yes or no.”

He kissed her again—longer this time, lazily. As if the army outside didn’t scare him to death.

Of course, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it only pissed him off. Maybe she was the only one who was terrified. Maybe he’d never been in a situation like this before—he was usually the one on the other side of the megaphone.

“Maybe we should forget about dinner,” Gina said breathlessly, “and just find a room with a door.”

She pulled away, ready to drag him into the hall, but he didn’t release her. “Yes, I’d tell you,” he said, as if he knew that part of her urgency came from her fear that this was their last night together, their last night on earth. “I promise. And no, I honestly don’t think we’re going to die.”

“We, you and me?” she asked. “Or we, all of us, including Jones—Grady. You know, old multiple-name-man, my best friend’s husband?”

He gave her another smile, but it faded far too quickly. “Grady Morant is why we’re here,” he finally told her. Again, not quite an answer.

“He’s a good person,” Gina said. “He may have done some bad things—”

“Very bad things,” he agreed.

“He had some very bad things done to him first,” she pointed out. “He was left to die—to rot in that prison where some really nasty people tortured him. For three years, Max. Did you know—”

“Yes,” Max said, “I do know.”

Molly had told her a little—just a bit—about Jones’s ordeal. Beatings, torture—both physical and psychological. It made Gina’s skin crawl just to think about it.

“Do you think that excuses the fact that he then went to work for Chai?” Max asked her now.

Gina didn’t hesitate. Chai had gotten Jones out of there, made the torture end. “Yes, I do.”

Max nodded. “It’s an interesting ethical debate.”

“It’s not an ethical debate.” Gina pulled away from him, stepping over piles of newspapers as she went back to the counter where their plates of food were sitting. “It’s a man’s life.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “Believe it or not, I like him, too. Which is saying something, because I didn’t at first. I’m just not as sure as you are about the free pass for his previous life of crime.”

“Please don’t give him to the colonel and this Nusantara guy.” Gina scraped the food they’d set aside for Molly and Jones onto the two other plates. It was more than obvious that they weren’t coming down. And in this heat, the food wouldn’t keep. Since they’d unplugged it, the refrigerator was only slightly cooler than room temperature. “If he says they’ll kill him, they’ll definitely kill him.”

“He seems ready to make that sacrifice,” Max pointed out.

Gina handed him a plate and a fork. “He loves Molly.”

“That I believe,” Max said. “He’s willing to die for her.”

“That’s, like, butthead stupid,” Gina told him. “Dying for someone? You want to be a real hero? Figure out a way to save both the person you love and yourself. And then spend the rest of your life working your ass off to keep the relationship healthy. I mean, dying is easy. Living’s the real challenge.”

Max nodded, as they both ate the stew, right there, standing up. It was cold and a little greasy. “The dog food’s better,” he said, and she laughed.

“Yeah, I bet.” She licked her plate clean. “I was going to say, don’t ever die for me, but I changed my mind—I’m just going to say, don’t ever die.”

Max smiled. “I love you,” he told her, and this time he didn’t look quite so pained as he said it. As if he weren’t quite so appalled by the idea.

It was somewhat surreal.

“So what happened?” she asked him as he licked his plate clean, too. She hadn’t done it to be suggestive. It just seemed the best way to handle both the lack of food and water for cleaning. And yet when Max did it, all she could think about was... finding a room with a door. Green Bermuda shorts had never been so alluring. She cleared her throat. “I mean, between me leaving, and you deciding that you want to, you know, marry me. What changed?”

“I missed you,” he said.

Gina glanced at him as she wiped their plates and forks with a cloth. Her mother, the sterilization queen, would’ve been appalled, but then again, her mother had never been under siege. “That’s it? No near-death revelation, where Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and Elvis pushed you away from the light and told you, in three-part harmony, to go find me? I mean... how did you find me?”

Max’s smile widened, and if she pretended not to see the current of tension that was wrapped around him, she might almost believe that he would be happy to stand there, forever, just gazing at her.

“Why did I think I could live without you?” he wondered aloud.

Those were words she’d never thought she’d hear outside of her dreams. Her heart skipped a beat, and his smile made her go into freefall. God, she just could not get used to the way he was letting himself look at her.

“Well, yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling you for years.” Gina crossed her arms, leaned back against the counter. From where she was standing, she had an excellent view of that kitchen table. That, plus Max’s smile and his plate licking and his eyes and his hands and his mouth and his green shorts and his everything made it impossible for her not to think about sex. And it would just be too embarrassing if Molly or Jones came down here to find them going at it again. “How did you find me? Did Jones call you, or...?”

“No, actually.” Max leaned back against the counter, too, careful of his posterior, wincing slightly, but trying to hide it, of course. “I was... already in Hamburg.”

“That terrorist bombing,” Gina said. “I saw it on the news. The TV worked when we first got here—before the Army of Darkness out there shot down the sat-dish. That was why you were in Germany, right?”

“Sort of.” He paused for a very long time, then said, “They had your name on a casualty list of people killed in the attack.”

Gina stopped leaning back. “What?” she whispered, horrified.

“I went to Hamburg to identify your body,” Max told her in his dispassionately cool negotiator voice. But the look in his eyes, on his face was neither dispassionate nor cool. “It turned out this other woman had your passport. When you ditched it at the forgers, the terrorists responsible for the bombing picked it up and...”

Gina couldn’t breath. “I didn’t want Emilio to know which one of us was Molly,” she told him. She couldn’t believe this. “Max, my God, you actually thought I was dead?”

She saw the answer in his eyes as he nodded.

“It was a near-death revelation of a different kind. They had you out on this table and... I had to go into this room—a morgue, I guess, right at the airport and...” His voice shook. It actually shook. “Only it wasn’t you, so...”

But he’d thought it was. He’d been told... She moved toward him, and he pulled her into his arms. He just held her, tightly.

“For how long?” she whispered, and he understood.

“It was around twenty-four hours between the time I got the news and the time I found out it wasn’t you.” He forced a smile. “It was a very, very bad day.”

“I’m so sorry,” Gina said. But oh, God. “My parents?”

“They know you’re alive,” Max reassured her, touching her face, as if he still couldn’t quite believe she wasn’t dead.

She knew, somewhat, how he was feeling. She’d sat beside him, touching him, just content to be near him, for days on end in the hospital, after he’d almost died.

“Jules made sure they were kept informed as we went,” Max continued. “Until, you know, we lost cell phones.”

Jules.

It was obvious that Max was thinking about him, too. The muscle jumped in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

“Gina,” he said, pulling back even farther, taking her hands. “I know you said you love me. All of me and... Just last night I was talking to Jules and I told him that I was afraid of hurting you. That I didn’t want you to... have to live in my life, in my world, with all my... bullshit and... I can’t promise you that it won’t be awful. I can only promise you that I’ll try. You accused me, once, of not trying and...” He nodded. “You were right. But you also always said that I... didn’t talk to you, and...”

“I was wrong about that,” she said softly, lacing their fingers together.

“I talked to you more than I ever talked to anyone,” Max admitted. “I’m not, you know, like Jules. He could really... go. Really get pretty intensely personal, pretty quickly. I was sitting there last night, thinking, thank God he’s gay—otherwise the two of you would’ve run away together, years ago. I just... There are some things I can’t talk about very easily. So if that’s what you want—”

Gina had to laugh. “When I met Jules,” she told Max, “I was already in love with you. It didn’t matter if he was gay or straight or whatever. I love you. What I want is you. And please stop talking about Jules as if he’s dead. We don’t know that.”

Maybe not, but Max strongly suspected it. Gina could see that in his eyes.

“I’ve loved you for a long time, too,” he admitted. “Probably since you asked me if I was the janitor.” He laughed softly, shaking his head.

“What? When did I...?” She had no idea what he was talking about.

“It was one of the first things you said to me, over the radio, while you were on that hijacked plane,” Max told her. “I asked if you were okay, and you asked me if I was the airport janitor, because that was a really stupid question. Considering the circumstances.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I do,” he said. “I remember thinking that you were the most incredibly courageous woman on the planet. To do what you did. To survive what you survived, and then still be able to make jokes and... To not be afraid to live.” He paused. To forgive me for letting it happen.”

“You let it happen about as much as I did,” Gina told him. Please God, don’t let him start with this again.

“I know. But that didn’t keep me from wanting a do-over. There were things I could have done differently during the hijacking. Not should have done—it was a crapshoot, I know that. I knew it.” He looked down at their hands, fingers intertwined. “I wasted so much time running what-if scenarios in my head. What if I’d done this differently, what if I’d done that instead...”

“If you’d done any of it differently,” Gina pointed out, “I might’ve been killed, instead of—”

“I know,” Max said again. “I do know that. I did know it. Logically, rationally—it all made sense. But I just couldn’t let it go.” There were actually tears in his eyes. “And then...” He forced the words out. “Then I was told you were dead. Killed by a terrorist bomb in Hamburg.”

He swallowed. “I think, before that, I was just waiting for you to come back. I think I expected—that I counted on—you having the sense and, and... vision I guess, to shove your way back into my life someday. And suddenly, a bomb went off, and someday was gone. You were gone. Forever.”

“Oh, Max,” she breathed.

“And none of it mattered anymore,” he whispered. “None of it. What I should have done four years ago, what I could have done... The only thing that mattered was what I didn’t do last year, when I had the chance. Which was tell you how much I loved you, and to admit that I wanted you in my life—if you were crazy enough to put up with me.”

Gina couldn’t say a word because her heart was jammed so tightly in her throat. What she could do, and she did, was bring his hand to her lips and kiss him. His fingers, his palm. He cupped her cheek, and when she looked up at him, he had so much love in his eyes, it took her breath away.

Love, plus heat. Desire.

It embarrassed him a little, or maybe he thought it was inappropriate, because although he smiled, it was rueful and he looked away.

“You know, I love it when you look at me like that,” she whispered.

He met her eyes again and... Oh, yeah, it was definitely time to find a room. With a door. The bed was entirely optional.

Except...

“Oh, shoot,” Gina said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

But she didn’t get a chance, because the light from the security camera monitors flickered and then faded completely away.

“It’s the generator,” Jones reported, speaking softly because his wife was still sleeping in the other room. “We’re out of gas.”

He could see that Gina was relieved that this wasn’t something the army outside had attempted—some simultaneous attack on all of the security cameras at the exact same moment, in advance of some other far more violent and catastrophic nighttime assault.

“I don’t think they even knew we had security cameras.” Max used the binoculars to look out the second-story window at the army camped at the edge of the square.

Making a run for it under cover of darkness.

That was the most viable of the many options and suggestions they’d come up with today as they’d brainstormed ways either to escape, or get noticed by friends or allies.

Some of the ideas were silly, thanks to Molly, who, despite being upset with Jones was still trying to keep the mood upbeat.

They had boxes and boxes of copy paper. They could make thousands of paper airplanes with the message, “Help!” written on them and fly them out the windows.

Could they try to blast their way out of the tunnel? Maybe dig an alternative route to the surface? It seemed a long shot, worth going back in there and taking a look at the construction—which Jones had done only to come back out, thumbs down.

Two of them could create a diversion, while the other two took the Impala and crashed their way out of the garage.

At which point the Impala—and everyone in it—would be hit by hundreds of bullets.

That one—along with taking their chances with the far fewer number of soldiers lying in wait at the end of the escape tunnel—went into the bad idea file.

Molly had thought that they could sing karaoke. Emilio had a Best of Whitney Houston karaoke CD. Their renditions of I Will Always Love You, she insisted, would cause the troops to break rank and run away screaming.

Except the karaoke machine was powered by electricity, which they were trying to use only for the computer and the security monitors, considering—at the time—that the generator was almost out of gasoline.

Yeah, that was why it was a silly idea.

It did, however, generate a lot of desperately needed laughter.

At that point, Gina had suggested using some of their firepower to try to get attention. If they kept firing their weapons—either into the air or down into the street—maybe someone would come to investigate. Or mention to someone in the nearest American Embassy that a full-scale battle appeared to be taking place on Pulau Meda.

Or—better yet—they could fire their weapons in a rhythmic pattern.

Gina apparently had a friend who was a SEAL who’d set off explosives to blow in the pattern of “Shave and a Haircut”—bump bah-dah bump bump—in hopes that some of his buddies would hear it and find him.

They could do something here, she’d suggested, that would be undeniably identifiable as American. Such as “Take Me out to the Ball Game,” or “The Star-Spangled Banner” or “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” It would be like taking part in the world’s most violent percussion section.

Of course, SOS in Morse Code had less flair, but that could work, too.

Or maybe, Max had said, when the colonel arrived, they could surrender the disk with the info on the impending Jakarta American Embassy attack. He’d used the computer to insert a “we are here” message on the disk. With luck, it would get into the right hands.

But luck hadn’t been on their side so far, Jones pointed out. They were going to have to start thinking about ways to use him as a bargaining chip.

Molly had jumped on top of that, assuming he’d meant that Max should start thinking about surrendering Jones to the colonel. It was an option she wanted Max to promise he’d never consider.

Of course, Max wasn’t about to make any promises he couldn’t keep, so Molly had made her second dramatic exit of the day.

Jones had followed.

Furious with him, Molly had refused to talk. She had, however, taken him to bed where the sight of that bandage over her biopsy stitches put an additional weird spin on things.

Afterwards, she’d cried, which damn near broke his heart.

She’d fallen asleep just before sundown, holding tightly to him as if she were never going to let him go.

But now it was dark, and their most viable option—making a run for it under cover of darkness—was no longer a possibility.

Because someone out there was on top of the situation, and there was no darkness. Three jeeps had been moved into the square. Engines running, the vehicles’ bright headlights were aimed at the front of the house. They had their fog lights lit, too, which meant that shooting out the lights would require not just six well-aimed bullets, but twelve. Which was a crying shame.

Max had been keeping an eye on the security monitors, and he told Jones that someone down at the end of the escape tunnel had done something similar, although it had been hard to see if there was more than one jeep down there.

And as far as the security cameras went...

Now that they were gone, he and Max were going to have to use the old-fashioned method of keeping an eye on the army that had them surrounded.

“You want to take the first watch, or should I?” Jones asked him now.

Max was holding the binoculars, but he wasn’t looking through them anymore. He was staring at the wall, frowning slightly.

Okay. It was possible the man was starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep, so Jones decided for him. “I’ll take it first,” he said. “I’m not that tired.” He looked at Gina. “Make sure he really sleeps.”

But Max didn’t relinquish the binoculars. “Wait,” he said. “Whoa. I think I know how to get us out of here.” He looked at Gina. “All of us.”

Max turned back to Jones. And it was clear he wasn’t losing it. He may have been tired, but he was alert and completely, solidly there. “I need to get the commander back on the walkie-talkie,” he said. “Help me wake him up.”

“Molly. Mol.”

She awoke to find Gina gently shaking her, light from a candle making shadows dance around the room and across her somber face. Molly clutched the sheet to her, aware with a flash of fear that Jones was no longer beside her in the bed. “What’s wrong? Where’s Grady?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Gina reassured her. “He and Max are going to stir things up by shooting some of our guns. I didn’t want you to wake up to that sound and think we were under attack.”

Her relief was short-lived as the ripping sound of automatic gunfire exploded around them. Even though Molly was expecting it, it made her jump. And it still made her crazily anxious. What a terrible noise. She grabbed for Gina’s hand, and they sat there, just holding onto each other, trying not to flinch.

She knew that Gina hated the sound, too.

But Max and Grady were sending an SOS—she recognized the pattern.

Gina caught her questioning look and nodded. “Two birds with one stone,” she shouted over the racket.

There was silence then. Just for a moment, and then Max and Jones repeated the entire sequence.

Molly could only imagine how loud it would have been with the door open.

“What’s going on?” she asked Gina when, once again, the sudden silence seemed to ring around them.

“Max is going to try to negotiate again with the commanding officer,” Gina told her. “You know that information he found on Emilio’s backup disks about the attack on the embassy?”

The American embassy. In Jakarta. Molly nodded.

“He’s not going to hand over the information on disk,” Gina told her, “and pray it gets into the hands of someone who’ll be able to decode his ‘send help’ message. Instead, he’s simply telling the CO that we have information about an impending terrorist attack. If the commander wants the details, he’s going to have to bring in American authorities to help negotiate our little standoff here.”

Dear Lord.

“Once we get the Americans involved, then hopefully this shoot-on- sight-even-if-we-surrender thing disappears,” Gina continued. “Grady’ll be arrested, sure, but he’ll be in American custody. Which is way better than dead.”

Molly nodded. It was.

“Basically, Max is giving this CO a choice,” Gina told her. “If he hands Grady over to the Americans, Nusantara and his mystery colonel are going to be pissed, right? But if he sits on this info about a terrorist attack and the embassy is hit...”

“Innocent people could die,” Molly said. She hated this.

“Yeah,” Gina agreed. “That’s what Max wants him to be thinking. As well as the fact that his knowing about it in advance, yet doing nothing, will get out. The interpreter will know, as well as his aides... People will find out, and fingers’ll be pointed. They always are. And they could well point at the colonel and Nusantara, too. That’s what Max is telling this guy, right now—to contact Nusantara and tell him this. As far as damage control goes, he’s going to have to make a choice. What could hurt Nusantara’s political career more? Accusations of murder from a nonrepu-table felon or the fact that his private agenda kept him from stopping a terrorist attack?”

Nonreputable felon.

Gina had always been good at reading Molly’s mind. “You know that I don’t think that’s what Jones is, right?” she said. “I’m just trying to make it sound as if—”

As if on cue, Jones stuck his head in the door. “We’re too late,” he said flatly. “The attack on the embassy went down yesterday.”

“There’s gas in the Impala,” Jones pointed out.

Molly looked at him. “But who’s going into the garage to get it?”

“Look, Mol—”

“Don’t ‘Look, Mol,’ me!” she shot back at him. “You told me yourself that the garage isn’t reinforced. It’s dangerous just to open that door. If someone goes out there...”

“Guys,” Max said mildly, as he ran the binoculars over the surrounding army. They were settling back in, going back to sleep.

“I was just saying,” Jones said. “There’s gas in the Impala, and we need gas to power up the generator...”

They were all up in the second-story front room, down on the floor, out of range of the window. All except for Max, who was standing off to the side, over by the door.

During the last negotiation session, Jones had gone into the bathroom and taken the mirror off the medicine cabinet. He’d managed to set it up so they could use it to see out the window—while sitting safely out of range of a sniper’s bullets.

“If we could get the computer up and running,” Jones continued now, “maybe we’ll find something else on one of those disks.”

“Maybe I should be the one to get the gas,” Molly said.

Damn. If Max had four perpetrators completely surrounded, he wouldn’t be sitting back and taking a nap.

He’d have them on the radio, talking. He’d be keeping them awake and jumpy. Keeping the noise level up to a pretty continuous racket, either by blasting cacophonic music or other jarring sounds through loudspeakers, or with repeated and random small arms fire.

This mutual slumber time was ridiculous.

Unless, of course, there really was a tank on its way.

“What, you’re going to siphon the gas from the car...?” Jones asked.

“I do know how to do it.” Molly sounded insulted that he should think otherwise.

Max looked at the jeeps, with their headlights blazing. He judged the distance, tried to do the math. Twelve lights. How long would it take, from the moment of that very first shot? Twelve shots, divided by two shooters...

“We can help, you know,” Molly implored Jones, and Max as well. “Gina and I. It’s not as if we’re... we’re... sacks of potatoes, just sitting here waiting to be rescued by the menfolk. We have skills, too. I happen to have been taught to siphon gas in a third-world country by a nun with a lot of rage issues after losing funding. She could probably even teach you a thing or two about black market scamming.”

But what if they had three shooters...

“How are you at target shooting?” Max interrupted her.

Molly blinked at him. “You mean, with a gun?”

“With a rifle,” he said.

She shook her head. “Use of killing-sticks is not one of my skills. I am really good, though, at popping balloons with a dart. Oh, yes, and annoying my husband. I’m really good at that.”

“Gina?” Max asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Sorry,” Gina said.

“You don’t annoy me,” Jones told Molly. “You terrify me. Come on, you need to go back to bed. You’re practically falling over. How can you make jokes when...”

As Jones and Molly argued their way out of the room, Gina inched closer. She sat on the floor beneath the windows, her back against the wall.

Using her foot, she dragged over the pillow that Max had been using earlier, putting it beside her—a silent invitation to come and sit. “What are you thinking?”

Max shook his head. “That we could shoot out the lights, but it won’t work. There’s too many of them. I’m good, but I’m no Alyssa Locke.” He glanced down at her. “She’s a sharpshooter. Did you know that?”

Of course she did. Alyssa had helped with the takedown of the hijacked plane. She was one of the snipers who took out the terrorists in the cockpit, where Gina was being held.

Gina was intimately acquainted with Alyssa’s deadly accuracy with a rifle.

Her eyebrows were raised. “You bring up your former girlfriend, because...?”

Max shrugged, looking out through the binoculars again. “We could use a marksman. I’m decent, but... Although, even Alyssa would take too long—twelve shots? Even if she could do it relatively quickly, once the lights went out—after all that noise? Sneaking past the troops is one thing when they’re sleeping. Wide awake... That would be a challenge. Maybe we could dress in Emilio’s clothes, try to make it look as if we’re all in uniform, try to blend in...” He shook his head, handing the binoculars to her. She was closer to the floor, and his entire leg was starting to stiffen up. “There’s got to be a way out of here, but that’s not it.”

Gingerly, he lowered himself down beside her, onto the pillow. “I guess we’re on first watch,” he said from between clenched teeth as he tried to find the right balance of pillow and air.

“I’m sorry I can’t shoot like Alyssa Locke,” Gina said. She sounded far more annoyed than sorry. Annoyed with him for bringing her up.

Jealous, even.

Good. Better she was jealous than scared to death about the coming dawn.

Max reached over and took her by the chin, turning her so that she faced him. She had such beautiful skin, so soft. He leaned close.

Kissed her.

She resisted—for about a tenth of a second. Many, many tenths of seconds later, he was the one who finally pulled back.

First watch meant watch—which meant his eyes needed to be open. He used the mirror to look out the window. Everything was exactly the same. No movement, no change.

“God, I hate that you can do that,” Gina said after she’d caught her breath. “You’re just too good at kissing. It should be illegal. You get me all pissed off by talking about your old girlfriend and then you’re like, kiss me, and I’m all no, no, yes, yes, yes.”

“She wasn’t really my girlfriend,” Max told Gina. “Alyssa. I loved her, yeah, but I didn’t really love her. Not the way I love you. I was attracted to her, but it wasn’t... And I stayed away, because she was working for me. You know, bad policy to sleep with subordinates? Anyway, I knew I had to keep some distance, and I did. It just wasn’t that big a deal for me.

“But when I tried to stay away from you...” He laughed. “Any other woman in the world, I could walk away from. But not you.”

“Well, yeah,” Gina said, her annoyance visibly fading. “Because I chased after you.”

“No,” Max said. “It was more than that. You know that couples counselor we visited?” He glanced at her.

Gina nodded. “Rita.”

Max nodded, too. “After you left the room, she asked me what I was so afraid of.” He glanced at her again. She was definitely no longer annoyed. In fact, she looked downright stunned that he’d brought this up.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that and... I’m not trying to make excuses, but... In my world,” he told her quietly, “it doesn’t pay to love something or someone that much. It’s too... risky. You love it, you’ll lose it. So there you were—scaring me to death. Being with you seemed wrong for all kinds of reasons, so I built those reasons up, in my head, into huge problems—so I could pretend that the biggest problem wasn’t really me being terrified. And then, there was Alyssa—beautiful and smart. Strong enough to deal with all my bullshit. And best of all I loved her, but I didn’t love her too much. I knew I could live without her.

“I asked her to marry me because I thought it would keep me away from you,” Max confessed. “Because I was afraid of how much I loved you.” He cleared his throat. God, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when he would have done anything to keep Gina from knowing the truth. And now here he sat, just blurting it out. “I just wanted you to know that.”

They sat in silence for several moments.

“Feel free to kiss me,” Gina said. “Any time you have the urge.”

He had to laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be on watch.”

“Watching what?” she said. “They’re not going to move until that tank arrives.”

“Still,” he said.

“Have you ever tried making love with your eyes open the entire time?” Gina asked.

He looked at her.

“What?” she said. “I’m just making conversation.”

“Right.” Max glanced at her again, and she gave him that smile. That promise-filled, next-stop-heaven little smile, and he knew that she knew he was actually thinking about...

“Ow,” he said, knowing that there was only one way to put on the brakes. “My leg’s really hurting.”

“All right,” Gina said. “You win. I mean, I could say I’ll kiss it and make it better, but I won’t.”

Yeah, okay. Max nodded. “Good plan. To not. You know, say that.”

He wanted to laugh. It was so screwed up—this feeling of total contentment.

They were in serious trouble here. If that tank wasn’t just a bluff—and his gut was telling him it wasn’t—he was going to have to consider throwing Grady Morant to the wolves.

If he did that, Gina would never forgive him.

They sat in silence for about twelve seconds this time.

“Can I tell you a funny story?” Gina asked. She didn’t wait for him to say yes or no. “It’s about, well... You know the whole age-issue thing?”

“The age-issue thing,” Max repeated. “Are you sure this is a funny story?”

“Does it still bother you?” she asked. “Being a little bit older than me? And it’s more funny weird than funny ha-ha.”

“Twenty years isn’t exactly ‘a little bit,’ ” he said.

“Tell that to a paleontologist,” she countered.

Okay, he’d give her that one. “Just tell me the story.”

“Once upon a time, when Jones first came to Kenya,” Gina said, “I didn’t know who he was. Molly didn’t tell me, and he came to our tent for tea, and... Maybe this isn’t even a funny weird story. Maybe it’s more of an ‘I’m an asshole’ story, because I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was there because he was all hot for me. It never occurred to me—it never even crossed my narrow little mind—that he might’ve been crushing on Molly. And she’s only maybe ten years older than he is. I remember sitting there after I figured it out, and thinking, shoot. People do make assumptions based on age. Max wasn’t just being crazy.” She smiled at him. “Or at least not crazier than usual. I guess... I just wanted to apologize for mocking you all those times.”

“It’s okay,” Max said. “I just keep reminding myself that love doesn’t always stop to do the math.” He looked at her. “I’m trying to talk myself into that. How’d I sound? Convincing?”

“That was pretty good.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Gina spoke again. “Maybe I could get a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m not his daughter, I’m his wife.’ ”

Max nodded as he laughed. “Yet still you mock me.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Because I really don’t care what other people think, and I don’t think you should either.”

He watched the night, reflected in that mirror. “So, was that wife comment a roundabout way of telling me that you’ll marry me?”

“Hang on.” Gina took the binoculars and crawled over to the door. Standing up, she looked out the window, adjusting the lenses. “I’m just making sure we’re not going to be interrupted again,” she explained.

“You were going to tell me something important,” Max remembered.

“Yeah, and it’s kind of weird and complicated,” she said.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked.

Gina was clearly surprised. “How did you...? That’s kind of part of it, but I don’t really know if...” She crawled back into the room, sat down beside him again. “I don’t know for sure, but yeah, I guess I could be.”

Max nodded. Don’t be jealous, don’t be jealous. “Don’t get mad, but when I was trying to find you, I searched your hotel and... There was a receipt from the clinic where you had that pregnancy test.”

Now she was looking at him funny. “I meant I could be pregnant because when we, you know, in the kitchen...? Hot sex, no birth control?”

“But... You had a pregnancy test. In Germany.”

“I didn’t have a test because I thought was pregnant,” Gina told him. “I knew I wasn’t pregnant.”

Okay, he was really tired, but this definitely didn’t make sense. Max knew he should be relieved, but he was too confused. “So why’d you have the test?” he asked her.

“You really thought I was pregnant?” she asked, realization dawning. “You thought...? God, Max, who’d you think the father was?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It didn’t matter. I mean, unless you still loved him, which it seemed as if you didn’t, so...”

“God,” she said again. She turned to look at him. “How many people have you slept with since I left for Kenya?”

Was she serious? “You mean you couldn’t tell from the kitchen table thing?” he asked.

“Zero?” she asked. “Because I just spent over a year with absolutely zero sex, which would make my pregnancy pretty special. And for the record, the kitchen table thing rocked. I hope we don’t have to go without sex for another year before we can do that again.”

He had to laugh. She totally cracked him up. “It was over pretty quick,” he pointed out.

“I love quick,” Gina said. “And come on, I’m getting jealous here. Was it zero sex last year for you, too?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I love you, you weren’t there—what was I going to do?”

“Are you actually embarrassed,” she asked, “because you weren’t some kind of man-ho and—”

“No,” Max said. “I’m embarrassed that it took me an entire fucking year and a half and the worst scare of my life to figure out that I can’t live without you.”

Gina’s eyes were shining—she looked amazingly happy, considering they were surrounded by an army of people who wanted to kill them.

“Actually,” she said, “it took you an entire non-fucking year and a half. Here’s the deal with the pregnancy test, okay? When Molly found out she was pregnant but that she might have breast cancer, I did some research, because I knew that Grady was flipping out. He really wants her to have the full treatment—chemo, radiation—as soon as possible, which she can’t do until after she has the baby. Unless she terminates the pregnancy.

“I read about something called a ‘gestational carrier,’ where a third party, me for example, would carry the baby to term for the parents. It’s different from being a traditional surrogate, because the baby—both the egg and sperm—would be Molly and Grady’s. I’d just provide the uterus and, well, nine months of my life. At first I thought they could take the baby out of Molly and, you know, just transplant it, but that’s not possible. Maybe someday they’ll have that technology...

“Still, one of the things that was freaking Molly out about the idea of chemo and radiation was that afterwards, she might not be able to have a baby,” Gina continued. “The whole process might send her into early menopause or God knows what. Anyway, I wanted to give her as many options as possible, so I offered to be her gestational carrier—if she ever wants or needs one. I just thought it would lighten her burden, even just a little, if she knew I’d be there to help if... God forbid, you know?

“Pregnancy tests are necessary for gestational carriers, along with a clean bill of health. Makes sense, right? So I went to the clinic when Molly did, had a checkup, got the ball rolling. Although, while I was there, the doctor told me it was a little early. They recommend cancer patients wait a certain number of years after they’re clean, before having children.”

Gina took a deep breath. “So. I made Molly a promise. Which means there’s a chance that in a couple of years we’ll have to add the lines, ‘and she’s pregnant with her best friend Molly’s baby’ to that funky T-shirt I’m going to be wearing.”

Max didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He managed to do neither. “I’m good with that,” he said. “And by the way, I think I love you now more than ever.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. Now she was the one trying not to cry. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure,” he said. He couldn’t imagine the question that was coming. Knowing Gina, it was bound to be a good one.

“Did you ask me to marry you only because you thought I was pregnant?” she asked. “With someone else’s child?”

Oh, shit.

Max knew he had to tell her the truth.

“No,” he said. “I asked you because I love you.” He paused. “And because I thought you might be pregnant with someone else’s child, and I didn’t want you to have to deal with that all alone. And because it really didn’t matter who the someone else was, but I kind of hoped that it was someone that you liked at least a little, rather than someone that you didn’t like at all. And I also hoped that, either way, you would know the only thing that really mattered to me was that you were safe and alive and in my life.”

She was silent several long moments. But then she spoke. “Good answer,” she said. “If we die tomorrow—”

“We’re not going to die tomorrow,” Max told her.

“Yeah, but if we do,” she said, and he knew she believed it was a real possibility, “at least we had tonight.”

She used her toe to push the door, and it closed with a click.

She gave him the binoculars. Along with her trademark smile.

“Gina,” he said.

“Shhh. I have to check your bandage,” she said, her fingers unfastening his pants. “I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

And Max discovered that keeping his eyes open was, indeed, something of a challenge.