The Siege Read online

Theia’s eyes flew open. Where was she? From the bright light spilling through the window, it was morning—somewhere. She was enfolded in a cloud of warmth, but the covers had been thrown off. She usually slept with the pet whale shark she’d purchased from the Georgia Aquarium, but the stuffed animal was nowhere in sight, and nothing about this room seemed familiar. Somebody’s arms were banded possessively across her breasts. Her legs were bare, but that someone was radiating intense body heat. She was wearing a T-shirt that smelled of oak and musk. She wiggled her backside gently and burrowed back to the body warmth into what felt like—a giant erection. WTF?

  She broke out of the embrace and swirled to face the man who had imprisoned her. Suddenly, she recalled agreeing to sleep in this bed, but not to—snatches of memory came tumbling back. Florence, Italy. Someone named Wade? And terrorists?

  She bolted up in the bed.

  “What is going on here?” Theia demanded, pointing an accusatory finger in Wade’s face.

  Wade surfaced from pseudo-sleep with a satisfied smile on his face.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Hey? Hey? Hay is for horses. What were you doing?”

  “I was asleep,” he said groggily, newly noting and appreciating Theia’s faint Southern accent. Interesting. “I could use some coffee. I’ll make us some.”

  “Hold on, there, mister. What were your arms doing on my breasts?”

  Wade look confused. “Your breasts? I must have been dreaming.”

  “Then how do you explain that giant boner I just came up against?”

  Wade flashed a sheepish grin. “I can’t.”

  Theia jumped out of bed. “What am I doing in your T-shirt?”

  “You didn’t have any clothes.”

  “And why is that? What exactly is going on here?”

  Wade sat up. “Don’t you remember? I loaned you a T-shirt when we were stuck in this room together. You were trying to get back to your room, but you were on the wrong floor.”

  Indignant, Theia rose to gather her clothes and shoes from the chair. “Well, I’m going back there.”

  Wade pulled her against his body. “Hold on, there, Slim. You’re not going anywhere. We have a situation here.”

  Theia reached for her cell phone and checked her messages. “My parents must have been calling all night.”

  “Do you remember anything about what happened last night?” Wade asked, holding her tighter as she wriggled against him, worried that she’d disintegrate into panic mode again; he’d barely gotten her calmed down last night, and now he was more worried that she’d leave his bed and his life forever.

  “Between us?”

  “I didn’t take any liberties, if that’s what you mean. Nothing happened between us, or I would have known about it.” Wade sounded disappointed.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Our hotel was surrounded by terrorists. It’s all over the news. They’ve already executed that sweet elderly couple on our tour, the ones celebrating their fiftieth anniversary, dammit, and they’re threatening to keep doing it. They may already have done it.”

  Theia shook. She slumped back against Wade’s hard body. “How awful.”

  He continued to hug her tight. “It’s going to be all right. I promise. I’ll protect you.”

  Theia scratched her head and removed Wade’s hands, which were wandering suspiciously close to her breasts again.

  She turned to face him. “And just how are you going to do that? Do you happen to have a gun on you? Or are you going to bash them over the head with your calculator?”

  “No, I don’t have a gun,” Wade answered evenly. “And actuaries don’t use calculators. We use computers, but I didn’t bring my computer on vacation with me. So I’m going to use my head. If I let you go, do you promise not to get hysterical or bolt?”

  Theia folded her arms defiantly. “I am not hysterical. And as for bolting, what choice do I have?” Wade released her slowly.

  She moved across the bed, grabbed her purse and clothes, and fled toward the bathroom, until she almost dropped to the floor in pain.

  “My ankle,” she cried out.

  “It still hurts? Didn’t the ice help? Do you need me to come over there?”

  “No. It feels a lot better, but—” She winced in pain. “I must have landed the wrong way when I jumped out of bed.” She limped slowly to the bathroom, using the wall and the door for support. After she relieved herself, she studied her image in the mirror. Her hair was disheveled. Her makeup was smudged. It looked like she had—that they had—but that couldn’t be. She would have remembered that. All she had were the clothes she had worn on the excursion yesterday, and they were all wrinkled, nasty-looking, and smelly, but she had no choice but to wear them again. Then she shifted her attention to the bathroom. The bathroom was amazing.

  In fact, there were two bathrooms—one with a large rain shower head and the other with a hydro-massage bathtub for two and a private Jacuzzi. She could get used to this—premium vanity accessories and luxuriously fluffy, white, monogrammed towels. She showered with some fabulous Italian brand of shower gel and washed her hair under the rain shower, her tears mingling with the warm shower water while she shook, all the time worrying that a hooded terrorist would bang down the door and drag her naked body out, kicking and screaming. And do Lord knows what else to her.

  Toweling off the tears, she dried herself and slipped on a white robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, then sat at the vanity and began styling her hair with the hotel dryer. She had to compose herself before Wade saw her crying like a hysterical woman.

  When she came out of the bathroom, she listened to a series of frantic messages from her parents that ended with, “Who is Wade?” Then she dialed her parents’ number.

  “Mom, Dad, I listened to your messages. Everything is okay. I’m okay.”

  “Who is Wade?”

  “How did you hear about Wade?”

  “He answered your phone last night. We wanted to talk to you, but he didn’t want to wake you up.” She knew they were wondering how she ended up in a man’s bedroom in the middle of the night. She glanced over at Wade, who was sitting up on the bed. He must not have slept at all. He had monster-sized bags under his eyes. Even his bags had bags.

  “Wade is a man in my tour group. I was standing outside his room by mistake when my tour guide pushed me in here so I wouldn’t get caught in the hall.”

  “You spent the night in a stranger’s hotel room?”

  A stranger’s bed. Leave it to my mother to worry about where I slept in the middle of a terrorist siege.

  “He sounds older.”

  “He is,” Theia admitted.

  Then her mother asked the inevitable question. The question she had heard numerous times before.

  “Is he Greek?”

  “No, he’s not Greek.”

  And the expected follow-up. The one-two punch.

  “Is he Jewish, at least?”

  “Hardly.” The blond hair and blue eyes were a dead giveaway. “The furthest thing from.” Would it have made a difference, if she’d slept in the bed of a Jewish Greek stranger? Probably. It certainly would have made the lapse more palatable to her parents.

  “Mom, Dad, I think you’re missing the point. I’m not going to marry him. Terrorists have taken over the hotel, and I could have been killed. I could still be killed.”

  “We know,” said her mother anxiously. “It’s all over the news. They’ve threatened to kill another person. They’ve issued another ultimatum.”

  “Who are they?”

  “No one has taken credit yet, but their methods have ISIS written all over them,” her father interrupted. “The Italian authorities are stationed in the stairwells and outside the building, but they’re afraid if they breach the dining room, more hostages may be killed. They’re not sure if some of the terrorists might be holed up in other parts of the hotel. But Italian commandos are going through the hotel, room by room, to
root them out and evacuate the…survivors. The FBI has a team on standby. We can see flames and smoke coming out of the windows.”

  “They’ve told us to stay in our rooms,” Theia explained, sniffing the air for smoke.

  “Then listen to them,” her mother said. “But that didn’t work out so well in the London fire. People were told to stay in place, and that was the wrong advice.” That comment made Theia feel even worse. Now she was worried about Islamist terrorists possibly hiding out in a room down the hall and about a conflagration. “How long can this standoff last?”

  Wade was accessing the Internet on his phone. “The terror siege in Mumbai, India, in 2008, lasted two and a half days.”

  Theia frowned. “Do you have to be so literal? That was a figurative question.”

  “Please keep in touch,” her mother said. “I hate to hang up. Do you want us to stay on the phone with you?”

  “I’ll be okay,” Theia said. “I’m not alone.”

  “Please be careful, honey. We love you very much.”

  “I love you too.” Theia hung up the phone.

  “It says in this article that 195 people were killed and 295 wounded in the Mumbai attack,” Wade continued.

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better. I shouldn’t have slept last night.”

  “You were so exhausted, I don’t think you could have stayed awake if you wanted to.”

  “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  “I slept some this morning.”

  “What were you doing all night?”

  Wade flashed a lopsided smile and shrugged his shoulders. “Watching you.”

  He scrolled down. “In Mumbai, the terrorists attacked other spots in the city before they attacked the hotel. I wonder if there were any other attacks reported in Florence, or if this is just the first wave.”

  “I wonder how many of them there are,” Theia said.

  “I don’t know. There were about twelve in Mumbai.”

  Despite the drawn curtains, Theia could tell it was midmorning. She had an urge to look out the window.

  “Let me do it,” Wade said. He wandered over to the window and pulled the drapes. He opened the balcony doors.

  Theia heard the sound of explosions and a hail of gunfire outside the hotel. She jumped back. “Do you smell smoke?” she asked.

  Wade closed the balcony doors and sniffed. “Yes, but it’s coming from inside the hotel. There’s a fire.”

  Theia turned toward the hotel door. “I’ve got to get back to my room and get my documents. I have letters from my grandmother and grandfather, photos, and other papers. They’re priceless.”

  Wade pulled her back. “You’re not going anywhere until we’re given the all-clear.”

  “But my papers will burn up if I don’t get them,” Theia insisted.

  “Would you rather burn up or rescue your papers?”

  Theia cringed and turned around. “We could be burned alive, or we’ll have to jump. We’re on the fifth floor. We’ll never make it.”

  “If there’s a fire on our floor, we can sit in the bathtub and place some wet towels in the door opening until we’re rescued. I saw that somewhere in a movie.”

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Theia paced the room, agitated, limping as she walked, trying not to hyperventilate. Where was a paper bag when you needed one? Even if she had one she didn’t know if she’d breathe into it or barf in it.

  “No, we’re not,” Wade assured, voicing a certainty he didn’t feel. “This is a big hotel. I’m sure the authorities will have this situation under control. It’s just taking them time to get to us.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I didn’t come all the way over here on my honeymoon to die in Florence, Italy.”

  “Your honeymoon? You’re married? Where’s your wife?”

  “She didn’t come. This was supposed to be our honeymoon trip, but she backed out of the wedding at the last minute, so I came alone. The trip was already paid for. I think that’s why the tour director thought you were my wife. All the reservations were for two.”

  “Is that why you rated this fancy suite?”

  “It’s the honeymoon suite. I’m glad I had someone to share it with.”

  “How long were you engaged?”

  “About seven years.”

  “Seven years!”

  “Well, we were dating for seven years before I asked her to marry me.”

  Theia tried to hold back her laughter. “Seven years? No wonder she dumped you. She probably got tired of waiting. I don’t blame her.”

  “Marriage is for life. I had to be sure.”

  “Did you have to calculate the odds? Love doesn’t work that way. Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight? Are all actuaries that cautious?”

  “It’s a casualty of the job.”

  “You bring the concept of cautious to a whole new level. While I, on the other hand, throw caution to the wind and jump into bed with total strangers.”

  “I’m hardly a stranger. I’m Wade…and don’t you dare start singing. And you didn’t jump into bed with me. You hobbled. What about you? Have you ever been in love?”

  Theia hesitated. “Well, no.”

  “Why did you come on this trip?”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Italy. I’m a painter. All painters should go to Italy and study the great masters. My ya-ya gave me this trip before she died.”

  “Your ya-ya?”

  “My grandmother. Also, my family has a history in Greece. After the tour, I’m going to make a pilgrimage to Crete, where my grandparents came from.”

  “Crete? You mean the home of the Minotaur, that monster with a human body and a bull’s head that lived in the labyrinth? The creature that could only be satisfied with regular sacrifices of seven young men and seven maidens? The beast that was slain by Theseus?”

  “I’m impressed. You know your Greek mythology.”

  “I have a photographic memory,” Wade quipped.

  “The Palace of Knossos is Crete’s must-see historical attraction,” said Theia.

  “Right now, I’m not concerned about sightseeing. This situation is too unpredictable. Me, I want to get home as soon as possible,” Wade said.

  “If we make it out of here, you mean.”

  “When we make it out of here.”

  Another explosion rocked the hotel. It seemed to come from a lower floor. Theia jumped into Wade’s arms, and he held her. “They’re just hand grenades,” Wade said. “It means the good guys are fighting back. Everything is going to be okay.”

  “Are you always so sure of yourself?”

  “I’m only about eighty percent sure.”

  “I don’t like those odds.”

  A few minutes passed. Theia’s breath came in uneven spurts. “Wade, I’m terrified.”

  “So am I, but we’ll be okay as long as we stay locked in our room.”

  “If they find me, they’re going to kill me,” Theia whispered against Wade’s chest.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m Jewish. I didn’t wear my Jewish star necklace. I feel ashamed that I didn’t bring it. It belonged to my grandmother, but my mother warned me against wearing it, and she’s right. I know it isn’t safe to be a Jew in Europe—or anywhere, really.”

  Wade kissed her lightly on the top of her head. “It won’t come to that. These extremists are equal opportunity killers. They hate everyone: Americans, Christians, and Jews.”

  “Especially Jews. But Europe has been anti-Semitic over the ages. I just thought things were different in Italy—the cradle of the Renaissance, and all that.” She paused and emitted a nervous laugh. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”

  “I remember the time I did some consulting in Argentina.”

  “That’s where many of the SS officers went after the war, to escape,” Theia noted suspiciously.

  “Right. So I met a lot of Germans who said they fough
t on the Eastern Front against the Russians during the war. Apparently the only Germans who fought on the Western Front were three old grandmothers with pitchforks.”

  “You’re just making that up to keep my mind off what’s happening.”

  “No, no, it’s true.”

  “You can’t really understand unless you’re Jewish.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Even if the police knock on the door, I’m not coming out until I’m sure who it is.”

  “I think that’s a wise course of action.”

  Wade walked Theia over to the bed. “You’re shaking. And your face is pale. Sit down for a while. Try to relax. I’ll get you a soda and some candy from the mini-bar, to keep up your strength.”

  “T-Thanks.”

  Wade grabbed two bottles of soda and some snacks and brought them over to the bedside table. “There’s an electric kettle with a selection of teas and infusions, and a Nespresso coffeemaker.”

  Then he picked up the binder with information about the Palazzo Dei Fiori.

  “I’m going to get familiar with the layout of the hotel, in case we need to escape,” said Wade. “It says here we’re only a block from the Florence Cathedral, the Piazza Signoria, the Uffizi Gallery, and the Ponte Vecchio. And they have a private observation deck overlooking the Florence Cathedral, with a 360-degree view of Florence.”

  “Right. What they fail to mention are the terrorists who are probably up there right now, scoping out the place.”

  Wade frowned in concentration while he studied an architectural sketch of the hotel. A few minutes later, he smiled.

  “Theia, look at this.” He pointed to a drawing in the notebook. “We’re here, in the honeymoon suite. Now look at this schematic here that highlights the fire exits. Our suite is unique in that it’s a corner unit and faces both the cathedral and a back street. There’s a fire escape, a physical ladder leading from the balcony of the second window in the living room onto the street, here.”

  Theia rubbed her neck. “Are you proposing that we walk out onto the fire escape and five stories down to the street?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “But we’d be exposed to anyone, if we leave our room. You can see from the television that the outside of the hotel is all over the news. All eyes are on the hotel. If we climb down, we’d be sitting ducks for the terrorists on the street.”