Free The Waiting Game by Unknown Page A

saw him lounging against the railing of the balcony next to hers. He had one foot propped on the lowest rung and his elbows planted on the top one. The shadows bid the expression on his face, but she was aware of a strange tension in the atmosphere between them.
    "I couldn’t sleep," Sara whispered. "I’ve been reading."
    "Phantom?"
    "Yes."
    "Learn anything?" he inquired sardonically.
    Sara half smiled. "Only that I think you’re going to have a very successful career as a writer of suspense novels. I couldn’t put it down, Adrian."
    "But did you learn anything?" he pressed softly.
    She wished she could see his face. "You know I started it out of curiosity, don’t you?"
    "Umm."
    "Well, I finished it because it was a very gripping tale. But I don’t think I learned much about you in the process." She paused, thinking. "No, that’s not true. I guess I did pick up a few things along the way."
    "Such as?"
    "You have a set of rather fundamental values, don’t you? You believe in integrity and justice. Things like honor and loyalty are important to you. If they weren’t you wouldn’t have been able to portray the hero’s emotional turmoil so well. You tore that poor man apart, Adrian. Halfway through the book I almost hated the writer for doing that to his protagonist. And then in the end, even though you pull together all the strands of the story and see that justice is done, you leave us wondering a little whether or not Phantom will survive emotionally."
    Even as she spoke Sara realized the truth of her own words. She had learned something about Adrian Saville by reading his manuscript, and what she had teamed was disturbing on some levels. This was not a man who would ever understand games, let alone a lighthearted approach to life. On other levels Sara was aware of a strong feeling of respect. There were so few men who knew what it meant to have a personal code of honor and integrity. Adrian must know or he would never have been able to create Phantom. On still another level of awareness Sara experienced a sensation of compassion. Adrian must have known what it felt like to hold yourself together by sheer willpower. She wondered what he’d gone through in order to comprehend the depths of that kind of struggle.
    "You wanted a miracle cure?" Adrian turned his head to look out toward the night-shrouded forest.
    "I like happy endings," Sara admitted with a soft smile.
    "I’m not sure there are any."
    Sara leaned sideways against the rail, the chilly breeze whipping the hem of her nightgown around her ankles. "Adrian, I swear, if you turn into one of those cynical New York-style writers I won’t read your next book."
    He looked at her then and she saw the flash of a genuine grin. "Maybe the trick is not to write endings.
    Just cut the story off after the main issues have been resolved and let everyone go their own way.
    Readers like you can assume it all ends happily."
    "You won’t be able to fool me," she warned. "I know a real happy ending when I see one."
    "I’ll work on it," he promised so quietly she could barely hear him.
    "Adrian?"
    "What is it, Sara?"
    "About the basic story line of Phantom …"
    "What about it?"
    "Where did you get the idea of the gold being hidden during the last days of the Vietnam war? It was very ingenious. And you made all the action so realistic."
    "I got the idea from your uncle. He told me the tale of the gold."
    "Really? It's a true story?"
    "It’s just a legend, of course. There are always a lot of tales and legends that come out of a situation like the last days of South Vietnam. Lowell told me the story one night about a year ago. Supposedly the gold was used by U.S. intelligence to buy information and finance certain clandestine operations.
    Your uncle told me privately that it’s far more likely the gold was a payoff from some big drug deals that were going on in the south. Vietnam was a hotbed for that kind of thing toward the end of the war.
    At any rate the last man to