Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover

He wasn’t exactly rude, but she turned quickly back to the window in silence. She felt uneasy, and tried to banish the feeling. He was her husband now. She’d have to learn not to ruffle him. She leaned back, closed her eyes and convinced herself that she was worrying needlessly. Surely there were no dark secrets in his past.

Someone in the seat ahead of them rang for the stewardess, and Dani closed her eyes, thinking what a long flight this was going to be. They’d planned to stop over in Greenville and then decide who would move and who wouldn’t. He wanted to see where she lived, he’d said, to meet her friend Harriett and see the little bookshop she owned. She’d been flattered by his interest.

She had just closed her eyes when she heard a loud gasp and then a cry from nearby. Her eyes opened to see the stewardess being held roughly by a man in brown slacks and an open-necked white shirt. He had a foreign look, and his eyes were glazed with violence. At the stewardess’s neck he was holding a hypodermic syringe. Another man who had been sitting with him got calmly to his feet, walked around the man with the syringe and went into the cockpit.

There was a loud yell and the copilot appeared, took one look at what was happening and seemed to go white.

“Yes, he’s telling the truth, as near as I can tell,” the copilot called into the cockpit.

There was a buzz of conversation that was unintelligible, then the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker and Dutch stiffened, his dark gaze going slowly over the man with the syringe.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Hall.” The deep voice was deceptively calm. “The plane is being diverted to Cuba. Please keep calm, remain in your seats and do exactly as you’re told. Thank you.”

The unarmed man came out of the cockpit, twitching his thick mustache, and fumbled around with the intercom until he figured it out.

“We wish no one to be harmed,” he said. “The syringe my friend is holding to the neck of this lovely young lady is filled with hydrochloric acid.” Shocked murmurs went through the crowd, especially when the shorter, bald man took the syringe to one side and deliberately let one drop fall on the fabric of the seat. It smoldered and gave a vivid impression of the impact it would have on the stewardess’s neck. “So for the young lady’s sake, please keep calm,” he continued. “We will harm you only if you make it necessary.”

He hung up the intercom and went back into the cockpit. The man with the syringe tugged the petite blond stewardess along with him, ignoring the passengers. Apparently, he thought the threat of the syringe was enough to prevent any interference.

And it seemed he was right. The other passengers murmured uneasily among themselves.

“Professionals,” Dutch said quietly. “They must want to get out of the country pretty badly.”

Dani eyed him uncomfortably. “Who are they, do you think?”

“No idea,” he said.

“They wouldn’t really use that acid on her?” she asked, her voice soft with astonishment.

He turned and looked down at her, into gray eyes more innocent than any he’d ever seen. He frowned. “My God, of course they’d use it!”

Her oval face paled. She looked past him to where one of the men was barely visible, his arm still around the stewardess.

“Can’t the captain do something?” she said then.

“Sure.” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, clasping his lean, tough hands over his stomach. “He can do exactly what they tell him until they get off the plane. All they want is a free ride. Once they’ve had it, they’ll leave.”

She gnawed on her lower lip. “Aren’t you worried?” she asked.

“They aren’t holding the syringe to my neck.”

His indifference shocked her. She was terrified for the stewardess. Horrified, she forced her eyes back to her lap. For God’s sake, what kind of man had she married?

He closed his eyes again, ignoring her contemptuous stare. He regretted the need to shock her, but he needed time to think, and he couldn’t do it if she was talking. Now he had sufficient quiet to put together a plan. They wouldn’t hurt the girl if their demands were met. But glitches sometimes happened. In case one developed, he had to think of a way out. There were two men, but only one was armed. And obviously, they hadn’t been able to get anything metallic through the sensors. That was good. They might have a plastic knife or two between them, or a pocket knife like the one Dutch was carrying—a knife that had special uses. His was balanced and excellent for throwing. And he had few equals with a knife. He smiled.

Dani glanced at Dutch with mingled hurt and curiosity and rage. He was asleep, for heaven’s sake! In the middle of a hijacking, he was asleep! She sighed angrily. Well, what did she expect him to do? Leap up from the seat like one of the heroes in the books she read and deliver them all from the terrorists? Fat chance!

A hijacking. She sighed, nervously fingering her purse. She wondered how the poor stewardess felt. The woman was doing her best to stay calm, but it couldn’t have been easy. Knowing what was in that syringe, and how quickly it would work if she were injected with it…Dani shuddered at just the thought. In her innocence she’d never believed that there were such fiendish people sharing the world with her.

Dutch opened one eye and closed it again. Dani gave him an exasperated look and clasped her hands to still their trembling. The taller of the hijackers had something in his hand that looked suspiciously like a grenade, and as the plane grew closer to Cuba, he began to pace nervously.

The shorter hijacker, the bald one who was holding the stewardess prisoner, moved into view. He forced the stewardess into the front seat, which was just one ahead of Dutch and Dani, and sat beside her, with the syringe still at her throat.

He was tiring, Dutch mused. And the other one was getting a little panicky. His dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He’d bet his life that the grenade was plastic. How else could they have cleared airport security? One of the magazines on covert operations ran advertisements for the fakes—they were dirt cheap and, at a distance, realistic enough to fool a civilian. Which Dutch wasn’t.

He’d wait until the plane landed in Cuba. If they were granted asylum, fine. If not, he was going to put a monkey wrench into their act. He owed it to Dani, sitting so quiet and disillusioned beside him. She still believed in heroes, although God alone knew what she thought of him right now.

When the plane landed in Havana the shorter man stayed beside the stewardess while the taller one went into the cockpit. He stayed there only a few minutes, and then burst out the small doorway with wild eyes, cursing violently.

“What is it? What is it!” the smaller man demanded.

“They will not let us disembark! They will not give us asylum!” the taller man cried. He looked around wildly, clasping the forgotten grenade in his hands and ignoring the horrified looks and cries of the passengers. “What shall we do? They will give us fuel but not asylum. What shall we do? We cannot go back to Mexico!”

“Cuidado!” the older man cautioned sharply. “We will go to Miami. Then we will seek asylum from our backers overseas,” he said. “Tell them to fly to Miami.”

Now, that was interesting, Dutch thought as he watched the taller man hesitate and then go back into the cockpit. He had a hunch that the gentlemen with the stage props were Central American natives. But obviously they had no wish to be connected with any of the Central American countries. And that talk of comrades overseas sounded very familiar. As almost everyone knew, there were foreign interests at work all over Central America.

The taller man was back in a minute. “They are turning toward Miami,” he told his companion.

“Bueno!” The short man sounded relieved. “Come.”

He forced the stewardess to her feet and dragged her along with him as he urged the tall man toward the cockpit. “We will explain the demands the pilot is to present to the American authorities,” the short one murmured.

Dutch’s eyes opened. “How much courage do you have, Mrs. van Meer?” he asked Dani without turning his head. His voice was low enough that only she could hear it.

She tensed. What in the world did he mean? “I’m no coward,” she managed.

“What I have in mind could get you killed.”

Her heart leaped. “The stewardess!”

He looked down at her. His eyes were dark and quiet and his face was like so much granite. “That will depend on you. When we approach that airport I want you to distract the man with the syringe. Just distract him. Force him to move that syringe for just a fraction of a second.”

“Why do anything?” she asked softly. “You said that they’d leave—”

“Because they’re desperate now,” he said quietly. “And I have no doubt whatsoever that one of their demands is going to be for automatic weapons. Once they have those, we’ve lost any chance of escape.”

“The authorities won’t give them weapons,” she said.

“Once they’ve used that acid on a couple of people they will,” he said.

She shuddered again. She could taste her own fear, but Dutch seemed oddly confident. He also seemed to know what he was doing. She looked up into his eyes with returning faith. No, she told herself, she’d been reading him wrong. All that time he’d been quiet, he’d been thinking. And now she trusted him instinctively.

“You could be killed,” he repeated, hating the words even as he said them. How could he put her in danger? But how could he not take the chance? “There’s a risk. I won’t minimize it.”

She sighed. “Nobody would miss me, except maybe you and Harriett,” she said dryly.

He felt odd. She didn’t say it in a self-pitying way. It was just a simple statement of fact. Nobody gave a damn. He knew how that felt himself, because outside the group nobody cared about him, either. Except for Dani. And he cared about her, too. He was suddenly vulnerable because of her, he realized.