The words stuck in his throat. He could not place the significance of the change in her eye color, but the detail spun crazily through his mind. She was now clearly a dead ringer for someone he knew. Problem was, his mind had misplaced the identity. For three days her image had whispered to him; now it had tired of its suggestions and it began to wail. You know this person! You really do know her! Another assassin? CIA? The warning bells blared through his skull.

Then she called him. “Shannon?” she said. As if it was a question.

The way she said his name, “Shannon,” threw a face up in his mind. It was Tanya’s face. His legs went weak. But it had to be the wrong face, because this could not be Tanya. Tanya was dead.

She said it again. “Shannon?”

Heat surged up his neck and burned at his ears. He dropped his hand and swallowed, feeling that if he did not sit, he might fall. “Yes?” he answered, sounding like a child, he thought.

She wavered and what color remained in her face drained. “You—you’re Shannon? Shannon Richterson?”

This time he barely heard the question because a notion was growing like a weed in his head. Sherry had known the jungle too well for an American. Her eyes were bright blue. Could it possibly be?

“Tanya?” he said.

Two large tears fell from each of her blue eyes and her lips quivered. Then Shannon knew that he was looking at Tanya Vandervan.

Alive.

His heart lifted to his throat and the room shifted out of focus.

Tanya was alive!

TANYA FELT the tears fall down her cheek. She grabbed at the chair beside her. It was either that or fall.

It was Shannon! “Tanya?” The voice soared in from a thousand memories and she suddenly wanted to throw her arms around him and flee all at once. Casius. The assassin! Shannon? This man who had dragged her through the jungle on a mission of death was really Shannon. After all these years. How was it possible?

“Yes,” she answered. “What’s happening?” The question echoed through the room. It was him! She stepped to the bed as if on a cloud and sat down, numb.

Shannon wavered on his feet. “I . . . I thought you were dead,” he said. She could see small pools of tears in the wells of his eyes.

“They told me that you were killed,” she said and swallowed against the stubborn lump in her throat.

“I came to the mission and saw the bodies. I . . . I thought you were dead.” He backed up a step and ran into the wall. She saw his Adam’s apple bob. He was hardly in control of himself, she realized.

“How did you . . . get out?”

“I . . . I killed some of them and escaped over the cliffs,” he said. “What . . .”