Shades of Gray Read Online Free PDF

statement should have made Sara at least more certain of her feelings. His own words, after all, were clear proof that she had been right to escape a man who could welcome terrorists and give them sanctuary in his country, accept payment for his hospitality from them, and then feel no compunction about what he had done two years later. But, oddly, his words only caused her to become even more confused.
    It just wasn’t
right
that Andres could do such a thing. And yet he had. He didn’t deny it. He made no excuses, offered no defense. In fact, his own words were a self-indictment. Yet Sara felt as if he were showing her an image that was somehow distorted, blurred; there was something wrong with the image, and she didn’t know what it was. Despite everything, she couldn’tquite believe he was as villainous as he seemed. But she didn’t trust even that mental wavering. There was still, in Sara, that young woman who had fallen in love with a complex, charismatic man—and had learned, at a high cost to herself, that her own judgment was tragically faulty.
    What was he?
What was he?
    “I don’t understand,” she said finally, hurting too much not to try to make sense of it all.
    “No, you don’t.” Andres’s almost gentle voice was in stark contrast to the stonelike expression on his face. “Because I am not playing the game according to the rules, am I? I should apologize, tell you it was all a mistake. That I was wrong to do what I did. You could forgive me for a mistake. Those are the rules. But this isn’t a game.
    “You want things simple, Sara. Either I am as black as I am painted—or I am not. But the truth is never simple. You could forgive me were I to convince you that I feel regret or remorse for what I did. You could forgive me, and perhaps we could build on that, you and I. But we would build on a lie, and I’ll have no lies between us.”
    Unsteadily she said, “What are you asking ofme? That I trust you blindly, accept on faith that you had a good reason to allow them here? To receive money from them? What
reason
could there possibly be, Andres?”
    “I did what I had to do,” he answered flatly. “The reasons aren’t important now. I gave them sanctuary. I won’t apologize for that, Sara. Not even to you.”
    After a moment she turned and walked away from him.
    “Well?” Lucio snapped out the question, frowning in annoyance at the sputtering lamp that barely illuminated the dank, dark cave.
    His lieutenant, a burly, bearded man named Sabin, sketched a brief, somewhat haphazard salute and reported stolidly, “She’s here. A small boat delivered her just a few hours ago. Impossible to get near her; Sereno had a cordon thrown up around the town, and snipers on the rooftops. He was taking no chances.”
    Lucio leaned back in his chair, his frown deepening. But there was neither surprise nordispleasure in his voice. “I always suspected Andres knew well how to guard a treasure,” he remarked. “Particularly if that treasure was coveted by another.”
    Sabin waited in silence, having learned, like all Lucio’s men, that their leader strongly disliked having his thoughts interrupted. In the flickering lamplight Lucio appeared both cruel and intelligent; in his case, appearances were not deceptive. His black eyes, unusually—and perhaps unnaturally—large and brilliant, were filled with cunning. His mouth, wide and mobile, was both sensual and cruel.
    He was shrewd in military matters, and commanded loyalty from his men by the sheer strength of his personality—and by fear. They were all afraid of him, Sabin included. But Sabin, like the other lieutenants who formed a barrier between Lucio and his army, was a man who knew nothing but war. When Sereno and Lucio had ended the last revolution and thus brought peace, men like Sabin had been left rudderless.
    Eventually, of course, most of those soldiers would have fit themselves into a peacetimemilitary. But in the interim they had been