The Phoenix Encounter Read Online Free PDF Page B

personnel. There was no way in hell he would ever tell her. The less she knew about him, the safer she would be.
    Because he wasn’t quite sure how to respond, he didn’t answer. Instead, he followed her to the hearth, keenly aware of her scent, that her essence filled not only the room, but the entire house. “I’m doing some missionary work for the French government.”
    She looked at him oddly, a student perplexed by a particularly difficult math equation. “I was supposed to meet someone here tonight, as well.”
    A sinking sensation swamped his gut. And suddenly he knew this was no coincidence. “Jacques brought me here.”
    Her knowing eyes met his. “Jacques is…with me. He’s part of the movement.”
    With me. Of all the words that stuck in his brain, he hated it that it was those two. He stared at her, torn between turning around and walking out and forgetting this had ever happened, and shaking her until she told him how it was that she was alive and he’d spent the last twenty-one months dying a slow death because he’d thought her gone.
    â€œThere’s got to be some kind of mistake,” he said.
    â€œThere’s no mistake.” She handed him one of the cups. “I don’t have any sugar. That’s one of the many things we no longer have in Rebelia.”
    Amazed that she could be thinking about sugar when his world had just been rocked off its foundation, he took the cup and sipped the strong, dark tea, trying desperately to rally his brain into a functioning mode.
    â€œI just can’t believe it’s you,” she said, sipping her tea. “This has been planned for months. We need your help.”
    â€œI’m here for information,” he said. “Not to help you.”
    Holding her cup between her slender hands, she looked at him through the rising steam. “I’m your contact. And if you want information from me, you’re going to have to earn it.”

Chapter 2
    H aving spent the last two years in a country decimated by civil war, hunger and indiscriminate violence, Lily thought she had endured every kind of shock a human being could endure. She’d seen things she couldn’t fathom. Things she refused to think of once the lights were out and she was alone in her bed. A few minutes earlier, she’d thought she could handle just about anything fate saw fit to throw her way.
    She’d been wrong.
    Not even the horrors of war had prepared her for seeing Robert again. She simply couldn’t believe he was standing in her living room, as warm and alive as the last time she’d seen him. The night she’d hurt him terribly and then watched as he’d been cut down by shrapnel.
    God in heaven, how was she going to handle this? How was she going to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left? Things that would change both their lives forever. The questions gnawed at her like voracious little beasts. Questions that terrified her more than the threat ofany bomb or soldier’s bayonet or stray bullet. Questions she had absolutely no idea how to answer.
    Standing next to the hearth, Robert regarded her with hard, suspicious eyes. He may look the same, she mused, but the last months had changed him. Made him hard. Maybe even bitter. She considered the bitterness in her own heart and wondered if the last months had been as hard for him as they had been for her. She didn’t see how.
    Still, the steely gaze that swept the length of her remained starkly familiar. The pull was still there, too, she realized, and a shiver rippled through her hard enough to make her hands shake. She endured his scrutiny with stoic silence, hoping he couldn’t hear the deafening rush of blood through her veins or see her shake.
    Refusing to be cowed, Lily stared at him, trying to keep her thoughts on the business at hand and failing miserably. He offered a commanding presence that unnerved her as