Drake Sisters 03 - Oceans of Fire

warm.”
    “We’ll have to take the torch because we don’t have a flashlight,” Abigail said. “Come on, Joley, just a little bit more and we’ll be warm.”
    Joley followed her sister to the entrance to the stairs. “You want me to go up that?” The steps were cut into the cliff itself, very narrow and steep, winding upward into the rock. It was dark and the overhead ceiling dripped in places and hung ominously low in others. She stepped back, shaking her head. “I’ll face the hotshot hit man.”
    Abigail put her arm around Joley. “I know you don’t like closed-in places, but the stairs should connect at some point with Kate’s underground stair system and lead us to the basement of the old mill.”
    “Abbey can lead the way and I’ll be right behind you.” Aleksandr reassured Joley. “I will sing you a Russian song.” He laughed softly. “A lullaby, it’s all I know how to sing.”
    Joley took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m really not a chicken most of the time. I just have this Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    problem with confined spaces.”
    “No one thinks you’re a chicken, Joley,” Abigail said. “Let’s just get it over with. Hannah and Elle would have called Jonas and he’ll be losing his mind out over the cliffs thinking we’re dead or drowned.”
    She started up the steep stone stairs, holding the torch with Joley’s fist clenched in the hem of her wet shirt.
    “If he calls search and rescue I’ll be mortified,” Joley said. “Can you imagine the tabloids? They’d have a field day.”
    “He won’t call them until Hannah or Elle gives the word. They know we’re alive,” Abigail told her.
    “Sasha, are you going to sing or not?”
    He cleared his throat. “I was only encouraging your sister. I’m not really going to sing in front of her.”
    “Now would be a good time, Aleksandr,” Joley said.
    He sighed. “I’ll do it, but you must never tell anyone.”
    Abigail steeled herself for the sound of his voice when he sang. Years earlier, when she lay in his arms late at night, he had sung to her in his rich, wonderful voice. He always sang in his own language and she had never been able to resist him when he sang to her. The song was a traditional Cossack lullaby and she knew he was singing it deliberately to remind her. His voice seemed to vibrate through her body and touch every nerve ending until tears burned behind her eyelids and she had to blink rapidly to clear her vision.
    “I understand a few of the words,” Joley said. “Something about ‘sleep my baby, my beautiful baby,’
    but then you use that word, the one you called Abbey. Baushki-bau . What does that mean?”
    “There is no translation. It is an endearment. I often call her my beautiful baby as well, but she objects.”
    Abigail shook her head, not wanting to hear him. Not wanting to feel or remember what it had been like to be with him. To be held by him. He had always been so protective… And that had been the biggest illusion of all.
    “You have a beautiful voice. You should have been a singer,” Joley said, astonished. “I’d love to sing something with you.”
    “It is enough that I will be able to sing our children to sleep.”
    Abigail clenched her fist around the torch. There would be no children with her. How many times had they talked about having children together? He wanted a big family because he’d never had one of his own. No siblings, no relatives. He would say he wanted five children of each sex and she would laugh and shake her head, trying to get him to settle for a much more reasonable number.
    She had to change the subject, get him talking about something that didn’t have any underlying personal meaning. He needed to go away where she couldn’t breathe him in, feel him skin to skin against her body so vividly. “Tell us more about what happened to the necklace.“
    Joley tightened her fist in Abbey’s shirt, a silent communication of understanding. She might tease Abigail, but right now, she could feel her sister’s pain and she wanted to take it away. Whatever had Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    happened between Aleksandr and Abigail had been terrible and Joley’s heart went out to both of them.
    For a moment, she wished that she had Libby’s gift of healing so she could cure whatever wounds lay between the couple.
    “After their execution, the bodies of the