Kiss Me While I Sleep

Rodrigo leafed through the other pages Blanc had sent him. He was interested in the Mansfield woman’s employment history with the American CIA; she was a hired killer, period. He wasn’t shocked that governments used such people; he would have been shocked if they didn’t. This was information he could use at a later date if he needed a particular favor from the American government, but nothing that would help him right now.

He was more interested in the information about her family: a mother and a sister. The mother, Elizabeth Mansfield, lived in Chicago; the younger sister, Diandra, lived with her husband and two children in Toledo, Ohio. If he couldn’t locate Liliane, he thought, he could use her family to flush her out of hiding. Then he read that she hadn’t been in contact with her family in years, and had to allow for the possibility that she might not care about their welfare.

The last page indicated what Blanc had told him, that his father’s murder had not been ordered by the Americans. She had acted alone, seeking vengeance for the deaths of her friends the Joubrans. The CIA had dispatched an operative to terminate the problem.

Terminate. That was a very good word, but he wanted to do the terminating himself. If possible, he would have that satisfaction. If not, he would accept with good grace that the Americans had handled the situation.

The very last paragraph made him sit up straight. The subject had fled to London using an alias, then evidently switched identities once again and returned to Paris. Search efforts were focusing there. The operative on location believed she was preparing for yet another strike against the Nervi organization.

Rodrigo felt as if he’d been electrified; every fine hair on his body lifted, and chills ran down his spine.

She had come back to Paris. She was here, within his reach. It was a bold move, and if not for M. Blanc, he would have been caught unawares. His personal security was as tight as he could humanly make it, but what about the Nervi holdings scattered around Europe? More particularly, what about the ones here in the Paris area? The security systems in place were good, yes, but where this woman was concerned, extra precautions were called for.

What was her most likely target? The answer came immediately to mind: Vincenzo’s laboratory. He knew it; the flash of intuition too strong to ignore. That was where her friends had struck, and gotten shot for their efforts. She would see it as poetic justice if she completed the job, perhaps setting a series of explosive charges and completely demolishing the laboratory complex.

Losing the projected profits from the influenza vaccine wouldn’t bankrupt him, but he was looking forward to that huge influx of cash. Money was the real power in the world, behind the kings and oil princes, the presidents and prime ministers, with each group trying to get more than the other. But even greater than the lost profits would be the insult, the loss of face. Another incident at the lab and the WHO would begin questioning the security, at best simply withdrawing the funding, at worst insisting on on-site inspections. He didn’t want anyone from the outside looking through the laboratory. Vincenzo could probably hide or disguise what he was doing, but any further delay would wreck their plans.

He couldn’t let her win. Aside from everything else, word would reach the streets that Rodrigo Nervi had been bested—and by a woman. He could perhaps keep it quiet for a time, but eventually someone would talk. Someone always talked.

This could not have happened at a worse time. He had just buried his father no more than a week before. As well as he knew what needed to be done, nevertheless he was aware that on some fronts there was still a lingering doubt that he could step into Salvatore’s shoes. And he himself had taken over a lot of the everyday work of Salvatore’s; he had no one in position to do the same for him.

He was in the middle of arranging a shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to Syria. There were opiates to funnel into various countries, arms deals to be made, in addition to all the legitimate work of running a multifaceted corporation. He had to attend board meetings.

But to apprehend Liliane Mansfield, he would make the time, if he had to clear his slate of everything else. By tomorrow morning, every employee of his in France would have a photograph of her. If she walked down the street, eventually someone would recognize her.

The security at the laboratory was common, at least on the outside. Fenced and gated—with one entrance in front and one in back, both manned by two guards—the lab itself was a series of connected buildings that were mostly windowless. The architecture was graceless, the buildings themselves constructed of ordinary red brick. The parking lot on the left contained about fifty vehicles.

Swain noted all of this on one drive-by. The Jaguar was kind of noticeable, so he couldn’t do an immediate repeat without the guards noticing. Instead he waited until the next day to do another drive-by, and in the meantime, he used all his contacts to locate the building specs so he could figure out how Lily was most likely to try to gain entrance. For the exterior grounds, security was pretty much what he could see: the fence, the gated entrances, the guards. At night, the grounds were patrolled by a guard with a leashed German shepherd, and the grounds were well-lit.

For obvious reasons, he thought she would try for a night entrance, despite the dog. The night lighting was good, but created shadows that provided concealment. There weren’t as many people around at night, plus people naturally got tired in the wee hours. She was an expert with a pistol, and could take out both the guard and the dog with well-placed sedation darts. Not instantaneously, true, and the guard might be able to yell or otherwise attract attention. Of course, she could also kill them; if she used a silencer, the guards at the gate wouldn’t hear a thing.

Swain didn’t like that thought. He wouldn’t bat an eyelash if she killed the guard, but it made him queasy to think about harming the dog. He was a sucker for dogs, even trained attack dogs. People were a different story; some of them just cried out for killing. He excluded most kids from that theory, lumping them in with dogs, though he’d met some kids he’d thought the world would be better off without. He was just glad his own kids hadn’t turned out to be jerks, because it would’ve been embarrassing.

He just hoped Lily didn’t shoot dogs. A lot of his natural sympathy for her would go down the drain if she did.

There was a nice little park across the street from the laboratory. On warm summer days, a lot of the employees from the nearby shops would find their way there to relax during their lunch breaks. There were a few hardy souls there even on a brisk November day, walking their dogs, reading; enough of them, in fact that one more man wouldn’t be noticeable.

The streets here were wider than in the older parts of Paris, but parking was still at a premium. Finally Swain found a parking space nearby, and walked to the park. He bought a cup of coffee and found himself a nice bench in the sun where he could watch the comings and goings at the lab, familiarize himself with the routine, maybe notice some security weakness he hadn’t already spotted. If he was lucky, Lily might choose today to do the same thing. There was no telling what garb she’d be wearing, or what color wig, so he might wander around and study the park-goers’ noses and mouths. He thought he’d recognize the shape of Lily’s mouth anywhere.

The laboratory complex looked ordinary enough; the external security was what one would expect at any manufacturing facility: a perimeter of fencing, limited access, uniformed guards at the gates. Anything more, such as twelve-foot concrete walls with barbed wire on the top, would only attract attention.

The sophisticated security, Lily thought, would be inside. Fingerprint scans or retinal scans for entry into the most restricted areas. Motion sensors. Laser beams. Sensors for broken glass, weight sensors, you name it. She needed to know exactly what was inside, and she might have to hire someone who could bypass those systems. She knew several people in the business, but she wanted to stay away from acquaintances. If the word had gone out that she was now persona non grata at the Agency, none of them would be inclined to help her. They might even actively work against her, dropping a word in interested ears about her location and intentions.

The neighborhood was an interesting mix of ethnic shops, trendy little boutiques—like there was ever any other kind—cafés, coffee shops, and cheap apartment housing. A small park gave the eye a break from the urban sprawl, though most of the trees had been denuded by approaching winter and the brisk wind made the limbs rattle like bones against each other.

She felt much better today, almost normal. Her legs had held up well on the brisk walk from the train, and she wasn’t breathless. Tomorrow, she thought, she would try a slow jog, but today she was content to walk.

She stopped in a coffee shop and bought a cup of strong black coffee, as well as a pastry with a buttery, flaky crust that almost melted in her mouth as soon as she took a bite. The park was just fifty meters distant, so she walked there and selected a bench in the sun, where she devoted herself to the sinful pastry and her coffee. When she was finished, she licked her fingers, then took a thin notebook from her tote, opened it in her lap, and bent her head over it. She pretended to be engrossed in what she was reading, but in reality her eyes were busy, her gaze moving from point to point, noting the people in the park and the placement of certain things.

There was a score of people in the little park; a young mother with an energetic toddler, an elderly man walking an elderly dog. Another man sat alone, sipping a cup of coffee and looking at his wrist watch several times, as if he was waiting, none too patiently, for someone to join him. Others walked among the trees: a young couple holding hands, two young men kicking a soccer ball back and forth as they went, people enjoying the sunny day.

Lily took a pen from her tote and drew a rough diagram of the park, marking the locations of benches, trees, shrubbery, the concrete trash receptacles, the small fountain in the middle. Then she flipped a page and did the same with the laboratory complex, marking where the doors were in relation to the gate, the windows. She would need to do the same for all four sides of the complex. This afternoon she would rent a motorbike and wait for Dr. Giordano to leave the complex, assuming he was even there, of course—she had no idea what hours he kept. She didn’t even know what model and make of car he drove. She was betting, however, that he would keep fairly regular hours, close to the national average. When he left, she would follow him home. Simple. His phone number might not be published, but old-fashioned methods still worked.

Again, she knew nothing about the man’s family life, or if he even had family here in Paris. He was her ace in the hole. He knew about the complex’s security and, as director, would have access to every part of it; what wasn’t certain was how easily he would divulge that information. She preferred not to use him, however, because once she grabbed him, she would have to move quickly, before anyone noticed he was missing. She would try to find out about the internal security methods by other means, try to get in without using Dr. Giordano. But she wanted to know where he lived sooner rather than later, just in case.

Lily was sharply aware of her shortcomings in this area. She’d never dealt with anything more than the most basic security systems. She wasn’t an expert in anything, except reading her target and getting close enough to execute the mission. The more she thought about this undertaking, the more she realized how uneven the odds were, but that didn’t lessen her determination. There was no perfect security system in the world; there was always someone who knew how to bypass it. She would find that someone, or she would learn how to do it herself.

The two young men were no longer kicking the soccer ball. Instead they were talking on a mobile phone as they looked at a sheet of paper, then at her.

Alarm skittered through her. She slid the notebook and pen back into her tote, then pretended to accidentally knock the tote to the ground beside her right leg. She bent down and, using the tote to hide her movements, slid her hand inside the top of her boot and pulled out her weapon.

She used the tote to keep the weapon concealed as she got to her feet, moving at an angle away from the two men. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She was accustomed to being the hunter, but this time she was the prey.

12

Lily sprinted, her sudden burst of speed catching them by surprise. She heard a shout, and instinctively dived to the ground a split second before the sharp, deep crack of a large-caliber pistol shattered the drone of everyday business. She rolled behind one of the concrete trash receptacles and came up on one knee.

She wasn’t fool enough to stick her head up, though most people weren’t all that accurate with a pistol. Instead she took a quick peek around the side and squeezed off a shot of her own. At that distance, some thirty or thirty-five meters, she wasn’t all that accurate herself; her bullet went into the ground just in front of the two men, kicking up a spray of dirt and sending both of them diving for cover.

She heard tires squealing, people screaming as they realized the sharp sounds were those of gunfire. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the young mother swoop down on her toddler and snatch him up as if he were a football, holding him under her arm as she scrambled for safety. The little boy squealed with joy, thinking it was a game. The old man stumbled and fell, losing his hold on the leash. The old dog, however, was long past making a dash for freedom, and it sat down on the grass.

Quickly she looked around for any threat coming at her from the rear, but all she saw was people running away, not toward her. Safe from that quarter, at least for right now, she looked around the other side of the receptacle and saw two uniformed guards running from the complex gate, weapons in their hands.

She squeezed off a shot at the guards and made them dive for the pavement, though again they were too far away for accuracy. She used a modified Beretta model 87, shooting .22-caliber long rifle bullets, with a ten-round clip. She had just used two rounds, and she hadn’t brought any extra ammo with her, because she hadn’t been expecting to use it. Fool! she berated herself. She didn’t know if these two guys were Agency or some of Rodrigo’s men, but she was betting on Agency, for them to have found her so fast. She should have been better prepared, instead of underestimating them and perhaps overestimating herself.

She snapped her attention back to the two soccer players. They both had weapons, and when she peeked around again, both fired off shots; one shot missed completely, and she heard glass shatter behind her, followed by more screams and the sudden shocked cries of someone who had been wounded. The other bullet struck the trash receptacle, sending a chunk of concrete into the air and peppering her face with stinging shards. She fired a shot herself—three—and checked the guards. They had both found cover, one behind a tree and the other behind a trash receptacle like the one she crouched behind.

They weren’t changing their position, so she turned back to the soccer players. The one to her left had moved even further to her left, hampering her aim at him, since she was right-handed and the concrete that protected her was to some extent also protecting him.

This was not good. There were four weapons to her one, therefore theoretically at least four times as much ammunition as she had. They could keep her pinned here until she ran out of ammo, or until the French police arrived—which should be any minute now, because even with the ringing in her ears from the gunfire, she could hear the sirens—and took care of her themselves.

Behind her, traffic had snarled as drivers stopped their cars and jumped out to hide behind them. Her only chance was to run for the cover of the cars and use them to hide her movements; she’d have to shortcut through a shop, probably, or hope someone came by on a bicycle, so she could relieve them of it. She didn’t think she could trust her ability to run for any distance.

The old man who had fallen was trying to get up and at the same time gather his trembling pet to him. “Stay down!” Lily yelled at him. He looked at her with terrified incomprehension on his face, his white hair wildly disordered. “Stay down!” she yelled again, making a downward motion with her hand.

Thank God, he finally understood, and flattened himself on the ground. His little dog crept to him and lay down by his head, getting as close to him as it could.

For a moment, time seemed frozen, the sharp smell of cordite seeming to hang over the park despite the chill breeze. She heard the two soccer players say something to each other, but she couldn’t make out the words.

From her right came the purr of a well-tuned, powerful engine. She glanced in that direction and saw a gray Jaguar jump the curb, heading straight toward her.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, almost deafening her. She had only a few seconds; she had to time her jump perfectly or the car would crush her. She gathered her legs under her, preparing to spring—

The driver spun the wheel and the Jaguar slid sideways between her and the soccer players, the tires slinging clots of dirt and grass as they tried to grab traction, the rear end of the car swinging around so that it ended up facing in the same direction from which it had come. The driver leaned over and thrust open the passenger door.

“Get in!” he yelled in English, and Lily dived into the front seat. Over her head came the deep boom of a large-caliber weapon, and the spent cartridge bounced off the seat into her face. She swatted the hot shell away.

He floored the accelerator and the Jaguar leaped forward. There were more shots, several of them, the cracks and booms of different caliber weapons overlapping. The driver’s side rear window splintered, and the driver ducked as glass sprayed behind him. “Shit!” He grinned, then swerved to miss a tree.

Lily had a dizzying image of a tangle of cars as they shot forward into the street. The driver spun the wheel again and the Jaguar once more swapped ends, throwing Lily onto the floorboard. She tried to grab the seat, the door handle, anything with which to anchor herself. The driver was laughing like a maniac as the car once more leaped a curb, fishtailed, then shot through a gap and briefly went airborne before coming down on the street with a hard thump that rattled her teeth and made the chassis groan. Lily gulped for air.

He slammed on the brakes, made a hard left turn, and accelerated out of it. The G-force pressed Lily into the floorboard, preventing her from climbing into the seat. She closed her eyes as squealing brakes sounded directly beside her door, but there was no collision. Instead he made a right turn, bumping along a very uneven surface; with the buildings looming so close on each side that she thought they were going to lose the side-view mirrors, Lily knew they must be in an alley. Dear God, she’d gotten into a car with a maniac.

At the end of the alley he slowed, stopped, then smoothly pulled out into traffic and measured his speed to that of the other cars around him, driving as sedately as any grandmother on Sunday morning.

But he was grinning, and he threw back his head on a full-throated laugh. “Damn, that was fun!”

He had both hands on the wheel, the big automatic lying on the seat beside him. This was likely the best chance she’d have. Lily stayed in the close confines of the floorboard. She fished around for her pistol, which she’d dropped when he was slinging her around as if she were on a carnival ride. She found it under the passenger seat and, with a smooth, economical motion, brought the weapon up and aimed it between his eyes. “Pull over and let me out,” she said.

He glanced at the pistol, then turned his attention back to the traffic. “Put that peashooter away before you piss me off. Hell, lady, I just saved your life!”

He had, which was why she hadn’t already shot him. “Thank you,” she said. “Now, pull over and let me out.”

The soccer players hadn’t been Agency; she’d heard them call to each other in Italian, so they were Rodrigo’s men. Which meant this man was maybe, probably, Agency. He was definitely American. She didn’t believe in coincidence, or at least not in massive coincidence, and for this man to show up just as she was pinned down, with driving skills like a professional and toting a Heckler and Koch nine millimeter that cost close to a thousand bucks . . . yeah, like he was anything else except Agency. Or more likely he was a contract agent, a hired killer just like herself.

She frowned. That didn’t make sense. If he was a contract agent sent to terminate her, then all he’d had to do was stay out of it and she would likely have been dead very shortly, and he wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. She would have tried to make a run for it, though how far she’d have gotten with four gunmen after her and her stamina more than a little questionable, she didn’t know. Her heart was still hammering, and to her dismay she was still trying to drag in air.

There was also the possibility that he was a lunatic. Considering how he’d been laughing, that was more than a little likely. Either way, she wanted out of this car.

“Don’t make me pull the trigger,” she said softly.

“wouldn’t think of it.” He glanced at her again, the corners of his eyes crinkling in another of those grins. “Just let me get farther away from the scene of the crime, okay? In case you didn’t notice, I was involved in that little fracas, too, and a Jag with a shot-out window is kind of noticeable. Shit. It’s a rental, too. American Express is gonna be pissed.”

Lily watched him, trying to get a read. He seemed genuinely unperturbed by the fact that she had a weapon trained on him. In fact, he seemed to think the entire situation was a lark. “Have you ever spent any time in a mental hospital?”

“What?” He laughed and shot her another of those quick glances.

She repeated the question.

“You’re serious. You think I’m a lunatic?”

“You were laughing like one, in a definitely non-funny situation.”

“One of my many faults, laughing. I’d been about to die of boredom, and here I was, sitting in a little park minding my own business, when a shoot-out starts behind me. It’s four against one, and the one is a blond woman. I’m bored, I’m horny, so I think maybe if I drive my Jag over there and get it shot up while I’m saving her life, I’ll get a little excitement and the blonde might jump my bones out of gratitude. So, what about it?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

Startled, Lily laughed. He looked remarkably silly, waggling his eyebrows like that.

He stopped waggling and winked at her. “You can get up in the seat now. You can hold the pistol on me from that position, too.”

“The way you drive, I may be safer on the floorboard.” But she hoisted herself into the seat, and didn’t buckle her seat belt because she would have had to put down the pistol in order to do it. She noticed he didn’t have his seat belt buckled, either.

“Nothing’s wrong with my driving. We’re alive, aren’t we? Not leaking from any new holes—well, maybe just a little.”

“You were hit?” she asked sharply, twisting toward him.

“No, just some glass cut the back of my neck. It’s minor.” He reached back and swiped his right hand across his neck. His fingers came away smeared with blood, but not a lot of it. “See?”

“Okay.” Smooth as silk, she reached out her left hand to confiscate the weapon lying beside his leg.

Without looking down, he snapped his right hand around her wrist. “Uh-uh,” he said, all playfulness gone from his voice. “That’s mine.”

He was fast, amazingly so. In a flash the good-natured goofiness had vanished, replaced by a cool, hard look that said he meant business.

Oddly, she was reassured by this glimpse, as if now she was seeing the real man and knew what she had to deal with. She moved farther away from him, as close to the door as she could get, not because she was afraid of him but to make it more difficult for him to grab her weapon with one of those lightning moves. And maybe she was a little afraid of him; he was an unknown, and in her business what she didn’t know could get her killed. Fear was good; it kept her on her toes.

He rolled his eyes at her action. “Look, you don’t have to act like I’m psycho or something. I’ll let you out safe and sound, I promise—unless you shoot me, in which case we’ll crash into something and I can’t make any guarantees.”

“Who are you?” she asked in a flat tone.

“Lucas Swain, at your service. Most people just call me Swain. For some reason, Lucas never really caught on.”

“I didn’t mean your name. Who do you work for?”

“Myself. I’m not real good at the nine-to-five routine. I’d been in South America for ten years or so and things got kind of tense there, so I thought taking in the sights in Europe for a while would be a good idea.”

He was darkly tanned, she noticed. If she read between the lines, he was telling her he was either an adventurer, a mercenary, or a contract agent. She was still betting on the latter. But then why had he intervened? That was what made no sense. If his orders were to kill her, he could have done that when she first dived into the car if he hadn’t wanted to let Rodrigo’s goons do the deed for him.

“Whatever you’re involved in,” he said, “from the looks of it you’re outnumbered and could use some help. I’m available, I’m good, and I’m bored. So what was going on back there?”

Lily wasn’t an impulsive person, at least not in her work. She was careful, she did her homework, and she planned. But she’d already realized she’d need help in getting into the laboratory complex, and despite his unsettling good humor, Lucas Swain had proven himself to be skilled at a lot of things. She had been so alone these past few months that her solitude was a constant ache in her heart. There was something about this man that invited trust, something that eased the ache of loneliness.

She didn’t answer his question. Instead she said, “Are you any good with security systems?”

13

He pursed his lips, considering her question. “I know enough to get by, but I’m no expert. Depends on the actual system. I do, however, know some real experts who can tell me anything I need to know.” He paused. “Are you talking about doing something illegal?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. I’m feeling more cheerful by the minute.”

If he got any more cheerful, she thought, she’d have to shoot him to protect her own sanity.

He made another turn, looked around, then said thoughtfully, “Do you know where the hell we are?”

Lily turned sideways and swung her legs up in the seat, blocking any move he might make to grab her pistol, then dared a quick glance around. “Yes. At the next traffic signal turn right, then about a mile farther turn left. I’ll tell you when.”

“Where will we be then?”

“At the train station. That’s where you can let me out.”

“Aw, come on. We’ve been getting along so great. Don’t abandon me so soon. I had my hopes up we were going to be partners.”

“Without checking you out?” she asked incredulously.

“I guess that would be stupid.”

“No joke.” Ten minutes with an American and she found herself easily falling back into the vernacular, like putting on comfortable slippers. “Where are you staying? I’ll call you.”

“At the Bristol.” He took the right turn she’d indicated. “Room seven-twelve.”

She lifted her brows. “You rented a Jag, you stay at one of the most expensive hotels in Paris. Your day job must pay well.”

“All of my jobs have paid well, plus I had to have somewhere to park the Jag. Damn. Now I have to rent another car, and I can’t turn this one in yet or I’ll be busted when the damage is reported.”

She glanced back at the broken window, through which cold air was rushing. “Break it out the rest of the way and tell the rental company some punk broke it with a bat.”

“That’ll work, unless someone got the license number.”

“The way you were fishtailing?”

“There is that, but why take the chance? In France you’re assumed guilty unless you can prove otherwise. I’ll just try to stay out of the clutches of the gendarmes, thank you.”

“Your choice,” she said indifferently. “You’re the one who’ll be paying for two rental cars.”

“Don’t sound so sympathetic; I’ll start thinking you care.”

That quip pulled an unwilling smile from her. He didn’t take himself seriously; she didn’t know if that was an asset or a liability, but he was definitely amusing. He’d all but fallen into her lap just when she’d been trying to decide whom she should pull in to help her, so she’d have to be a fool to categorically turn him down. She would check him out, and if there was the slightest hint of Agency or untrustworthiness, then she would simply never contact him. He hadn’t acted as if he’d been hired to kill her; she was beginning to feel easy about that. As for whether or not he was any good, or reliable, that remained to be seen. She couldn’t call her normal source with the Agency and have him investigated, but she knew a couple of shady guys who could find out for her.

She used the short time left before they reached the train station to study him. He was a good-looking man, she noticed with faint surprise; when he’d been talking, that was what she’d paid attention to, not his face. He was tallish, around six-one or so, and lean. His hands were sinewy, long-fingered, ringless, with prominent veins and short, clean nails. His hair was short, brown with gray around his temples; his eyes were blue, much bluer than her own. Lips a bit thin, but well-shaped. Strong chin that stopped just short of being cleft. A noble nose, thin and high-bridged. Except for the gray in his hair, he looked younger than he probably was. She guessed his age to be close to her own, late thirties, possible early forties.

He was dressed the way millions of men on the Continent dressed, nothing that would make him stand out or shout “American,” no Levi’s or Nikes or a sweatshirt imprinted with his favorite professional football team. Instead he wore taupe slacks, a blue shirt, and a great black leather blazer. She envied him that blazer. And his Italian leather loafers were clean and shiny.

If he was newly arrived from South America, he’d adopted the style of the locals pretty fast.

“The next left,” she said as they neared the turn.

He’d also picked up the Parisian style of driving pretty fast, too; he drove with nerve, verve, and reckless abandon. As someone tried to cut him off, she saw that he’d also been fast to pick up some of the local gestures. He was smiling as he cut in front of the other car; a glint in his eyes that said he enjoyed the challenge of Parisian traffic. He was definitely a lunatic.

“How long have you been in Paris?” she asked.

“Three days. Why?”

“Pull over there.” She directed him to the curb in front of the train platform. “You already drive like a native.”

“When you swim with the sharks, you gotta show your teeth so they know you mean business.” He pulled to the curb. “It’s been a pleasure, Ms. . . . ?”

Lily didn’t leap into the opening. Instead she returned her pistol to its holster in her boot and continued the movement, opening the door and sliding out. She leaned in to look at him. “I’ll call you,” she said, then closed the door and strode away.

He wasn’t in a parking slot, so he couldn’t wait to see which train she got on; he had to pull away, and though he looked back, already her blond head was gone from view. He didn’t think she’d pulled a wig out of her pocket and clapped it on, so he assumed she had deliberately lost herself behind some taller passengers.

He could have pushed it, left the car where it was and followed her, but his gut told him that persistence right now wasn’t a smart idea. If he tried to follow her, she would bolt. Let her come to him.

She was going to check him out. Shit. He pulled out his cell phone and made an urgent call stateside so some computer geek could earn his salary and make sure no one could learn anything about Lucas Swain except for some highly edited, and mostly fabricated, details.

That taken care of, Swain put his mind to solving another less pressing problem: the Jag. That window needed to be replaced before he turned it in to the rental company, because he’d been serious about not wanting the French cops to know about him. It wasn’t good politics, and he also had to figure an organization like the Nervis’ would have informants everywhere it mattered, which certainly included the cops.

He loved the Jag, but it would have to go. It was just too damn noticeable. Maybe a Mercedes—no, still too noticeable. A French-made car, then, a Renault or something like that; though, come to think of it, he’d love to drive an Italian sports car. He had to think of the job first, damn it, and Lily might balk at running around with him if he was driving something flashy.

God, he’d almost choked on his coffee when he saw her walking casually into the park as if she weren’t being hunted all over Europe. He’d always been a lucky son of a bitch, and that luck was holding. Forget any fancy computer work, deductive reasoning, shit like that—all he’d had to do was sit down on a bench in a dinky park and she walked up before he’d been there fifteen minutes. Okay, so deductive reasoning had helped him pick out the laboratory complex as the place where she was most likely to show; he was still lucky.

He hadn’t been shot, either, which was damn lucky. Too bad about the Jag. Vinay would say he’d been hotdogging again, and the charge would be true. He liked a little excitement in his life. Vinay would also ask him what the hell he was thinking, playing games like this instead of doing the job he’d been sent to do, but he’d always been curious as well as lucky. He wanted to know what Lily was planning to do, what there was at that laboratory that was so interesting. Besides, she’d got the drop on him.

Strange, but he hadn’t been worried. Lily Mansfield was a hired assassin, and just because she hired out to the good guys didn’t make her any less dangerous. But she hadn’t wanted that old guy in the park to get hurt, and she hadn’t recklessly fired where innocent bystanders could have been hurt—unlike the soccer guys, who had done exactly that. Just because of that, he’d have been inclined to help her even if she hadn’t been his quarry.

He guessed he wouldn’t tell Vinay anything just yet, because Vinay might not understand his letting Lily go without getting any idea of how to get in touch with her again.

In betting that she’d call him in a day or so, he was trusting in human nature. He’d helped her, he’d made her laugh, and he hadn’t done anything threatening. He’d offered to help her further. He’d given her information about himself. The reason she hadn’t put down that damn pistol of hers was that she’d been expecting him to use his weapon on her, and by not even trying to, he’d muddied the waters of suspicion.

She was just good enough, just dangerous enough, that if he made a move too soon, he might end up with some extra ventilation holes, which would spoil his reputation for being lucky. And if he was wrong about her calling him, then he’d have to go back to the boring way of finding people: computers and deductive reasoning.

He spent the rest of the day locating someone who would replace the Jaguar’s side window, then renting another car. He started to get one of the ordinary little Renaults, but at the last moment decided on the Mégane Renault Sport, a hot little turbocharged number with a six-speed transmission. It wasn’t exactly a nondescript car, but he figured there might be another occasion when he needed speed and handling and he didn’t want to get caught a few horses short. The rental office had had a red one that really caught his eye, but he went with the silver. There was no sense in waving a red flag and shouting, “Here I am, look at me!”

He ended up back at the Bristol just as daylight faded completely. He was hungry, but he wasn’t in the mood for company, so he went up to his room and called room service. While he waited for his food to be delivered, he took off his shoes and jacket and flopped on the bed, where he lay staring at the ceiling—he’d done some good thinking while looking at that ceiling—and thinking about Lily Mansfield.

He’d recognized her immediately from the color photo in her file. No photograph, however, could have conveyed the energy and intensity that permeated every move she made. He liked her face, almost thin but strongly structured, with very high cheekbones, that proud nose, and Lord God Almighty, that mouth. Just looking at that mouth gave him a woody. Her eyes were like pieces of blue ice, but her mouth was tender and vulnerable and sexy and a lot of other things he could feel but couldn’t put into words.

He hadn’t been kidding when he told her he hoped she’d jump his bones. If she’d said the word, he’d have had her back here at the Bristol in record time.

He could remember exactly how she’d looked, what she was wearing: dark gray pants with black boots, a blue oxford-cloth shirt, and a dark blue pea jacket. He should probably also commit to memory that when she was wearing those boots, she was armed. Her hair was simply cut, just to her shoulders, and framed her face with long wisps. Even though the pea jacket had hidden most of her figure, from the length and build of her legs, he figured she was on the lean side. She had also looked a little frail, with bluish circles under her eyes, as if she’d been sick or wasn’t getting enough rest.

Having the hots for her wouldn’t make his job any easier; in fact, he felt a little sick at what he had to do. He’d finesse the rules, but he wouldn’t break them. Well, not much. He’d accomplish the job on his own timetable, and if there were a couple of detours along the way, so be it. It wouldn’t hurt to find out what was behind the Joubrans’ murders, who had hired them and why. The Nervis were scum, and if he could get some really nasty goods on them, so much the better.

That would buy him time with Lily. Too bad in the end he’d have to betray her.

14

“There was trouble yesterday,” Damone said softly from the library doorway. “Tell me what is happening.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Rodrigo said instead, rising to greet his brother. He’d been astonished when the guards had called to announce Damone’s arrival. The agreement was that they wouldn’t be together again until after their father’s murderer had been caught. Learning that Liliane Mansfield, alias Denise Morel, had killed Salvatore in revenge for the deaths of her friends, in no way abrogated that agreement. In fact, other than telling Damone the woman’s identity, Rodrigo hadn’t passed along any other information other than to say they were searching for her.

Damone wasn’t a weak man, but Rodrigo had always felt protective of his younger brother, first because he was younger, and second because Damone had never been in the trenches with their father the way Rodrigo had. Rodrigo knew the ways of urban and corporate warfare, while Damone knew the ways of stock markets and mutual funds.

“You have no one to help you the way you helped Papa,” Damone replied, sitting down in the chair Rodrigo had always used when Salvatore was alive. “It isn’t right that I should spend my time studying money markets and moving funds around when you’re shouldering the entire responsibility for operations.” He spread his hands. “I also receive news from both the Internet and print sources. The item I read early this morning wasn’t very informative, just a small mention of an incident at a park yesterday, of several people exchanging gunfire. None of the culprits were identified, other than two guards from a nearby laboratory who heard the shots and ran to help.” His intelligent dark eyes narrowed. “The name of the park was given.”

Rodrigo said, “But why are you here? The incident was handled.”

“Because this is the second incident at Vincenzo’s lab. Am I supposed to think that is coincidence? We are depending on the influx of profits from the influenza vaccine. There are several opportunities pending that I’ll have to let go by if the funds aren’t there. I want to know what’s going on.”

“A phone call wouldn’t have sufficed?”

“I can’t see your face over the phone,” Damone replied, and smiled. “You’re a talented liar, but I know you too well. I’ve watched you from the time we were small, looking up at Papa and denying we had done whatever thing had happened, though of course we were always guilty. If you lie to me in person, I’ll know it. So. I am capable of adding more than two digits together. There is an ongoing problem at Vincenzo’s laboratory, and in the middle of this, our father is murdered. Are the two connected?”

That was the problem with Damone, Rodrigo thought; he was too damned intelligent, and intuitive into the bargain. It annoyed Rodrigo that he’d never been able to successfully lie to his younger brother; everyone else in the world, yes, but not to Damone. And perhaps being protective of his younger brother had been good when they were seven and four, but they were both grown men now. That was a habit he should perhaps break.

“Yes,” he finally said. “They are.”

“How so?”

“The woman who killed Papa, Liliane Mansfield, was a close friend of the Joubrans, the couple who broke into the laboratory in August and destroyed a great portion of Vincenzo’s work.”

Damone rubbed his eyes as if he was tired, then pinched the bridge of his nose before lowering his hand. “So it was vengeance.”

“That part of it, yes.”

“And the other part?”

Rodrigo sighed. “I still don’t know who hired the Joubrans in the beginning. Whoever it is could well hire someone else to attack the laboratory again. We cannot afford another such delay. This woman who killed Papa wasn’t working for anyone at the time, I don’t think, but she could well be by now. My men spotted her at the park yesterday; she was surveilling the grounds of the complex. Whether she was hired or is doing this on her own, the result is the same. She will try to sabotage the vaccine.”

“Can she possibly know what the vaccine is?”

Rodrigo spread his hands. “There is always the possibility of betrayal from within, someone who works at the laboratory, in which case she would know. Supposedly mercenaries such as the Joubrans don’t work cheaply, so I’m investigating the financial circumstances of all the laboratory employees, to see if any of them had the means of hiring them.”

“What do you know about this woman?”

“She is an American, and she was a hired killer, a contract agent, for their CIA.”

Damone paled. “The Americans hired her?”

“Not to kill Papa, no. She did that on her own and, as you can imagine, they are very upset with her. They have, in fact, dispatched someone to ‘terminate the problem,’ I believe is the phrase that was used.”

“And in the meantime she is trying to devise a way to get inside the laboratory. How did she get away yesterday?”

“She has an accomplice, a man driving a Jaguar. He drove the car between her and my men, shielding her while he returned fire.”

“License plate?”

“No; the angle was wrong for my men to see it. There were witnesses, of course, but they were too busy cowering to take down a license number.”

“The most important question: Has she tried to harm you personally?”

“No.” Rodrigo blinked in surprise.

“Then it follows that I am in less danger than you. Therefore I will stay here, and you may delegate some of your duties to me. I will oversee the search for this woman, or any of your other problems if you would rather see to that yourself. Or we can work together on everything. I wish to be of help. He was my father, too.”

Rodrigo sighed, realizing he had been wrong to keep Damone away from everything; his brother was, after all, a Nervi. He must long for vengeance as deeply as did Rodrigo himself.

“There is another reason I want this matter taken care of,” Damone continued. “I am thinking of getting married.”

Astonished, Rodrigo stared at him in silence for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Married! When? You haven’t said anything about a special woman!”

Damone laughed, too, and color darkened his cheeks. “I don’t know when, because I haven’t asked her yet. But I think she will say yes. We have been seeing each other for over a year—”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Us included Salvatore, who would have been delighted that one of his sons intended to settle down and provide him with grandchildren.

“—but exclusively only in the past few months. I wanted to be certain before I said anything. She is Swiss, of a very good family; her father is a banker. Her name is Giselle.” His voice deepened when he said her name. “I have known from the very first that she is the one.”

“But she took longer, eh?” Rodrigo laughed again. “She didn’t take one look at your handsome face and decide you would make beautiful babies with her?”

“She knew that immediately, yes,” Damone said with cool confidence. “It was my ability to be a good husband that she doubted.”

“All Nervis make good husbands,” Rodrigo said, and it was true, if the wife didn’t mind the occasional mistress. Damone, though, would probably be faithful; he was just that type.

This happy news did explain why Damone was anxious to put this problem of Liliane Mansfield to rest. While it was true that wanting retribution was also part of it, he might well have been patient enough to let Rodrigo handle things had events in his personal life not spurred him to action.

Damone looked at Rodrigo’s desk and saw the photograph lying on it. Walking over, he turned the file around and studied the woman’s face. “She’s attractive,” he said. “Not pretty, but . . . attractive.”

He flipped through the rest of the file, reading rapidly. He looked up in astonishment. “This is the CIA’s file on her. How did you get it?”

“We have someone there on our payroll, of course. Also in Interpol, and Scotland Yard. It has, on occasion, been convenient to know certain things in advance.”

“The CIA calls here? You call them?”

“No, of course not; every call going in or out of there is logged and perhaps recorded. I have a private number for our Interpol contact, Georges Blanc, and he contacts the CIA or FBI through normal channels.”

“Have you thought of asking Blanc to get the mobile phone number of the person the CIA has sent to track Mansfield? The CIA doesn’t do this itself; it hires others to do the work, am I correct? I’m certain he or she would have a mobile, everyone does. Perhaps this person would be interested in making a considerable sum of money in addition to what the CIA pays, if certain information comes our way first.”

Intrigued by the idea, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it himself, Rodrigo stared at his brother in admiration. “Fresh eyes,” he murmured to himself. And Damone was a Nervi; some things were inborn. “You have a devious mind,” he said, and laughed. “Between the two of us, this woman has no chance.”

15

Frank Vinay always rose early, before dawn. Since the death of his wife, Dodie, fifteen years before, it had been increasingly difficult for him to find reasons not to work. He still missed her, dreadfully at times; at other times it felt more like a distant ache, as if something in his life wasn’t quite right. He’d never considered remarrying, because he thought it would be grossly unfair to a woman to marry her when he still loved his dead wife with all his heart and soul.

He wasn’t alone, anyway; he had Kaiser for company. The big German shepherd’s chosen sleeping place was in a corner of the kitchen—maybe the kitchen felt like home to him, since that was where he’d been kept as a puppy until he became accustomed to his new surroundings—and he rose from his bed, tail wagging, as soon as he heard Frank’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

Frank entered the kitchen and rubbed Kaiser behind the ears, murmuring silly things that he felt safe in saying because Kaiser never betrayed a secret. He gave the dog a treat, checked the water in the bowl, then switched on the coffeepot that Bridget, his housekeeper, had prepared the evening before. Frank himself had no domestic skills at all; it was a complete mystery to him how he could take water, coffee, and filter and concoct an undrinkable brew, while Bridget could use the same components to make a pot of coffee that was so good it almost made him weep. He’d watched her do it, tried to do the same things, and ended up with sludge. Accepting that any further efforts of his to make coffee would fit the definition of insanity, Frank had acknowledged defeat and saved himself from further humiliation.

Dodie had made things easy for him, and he still followed her guidelines. All his socks were black, so he wouldn’t have to worry about matching them. All his suits were neutral in color, his shirts either white or blue so they’d go with any suit, and his ties were likewise of the mix-and-match variety. He could pull out any item of clothing and be assured that it would go with anything else in his closet. He’d never win any awards for style, but at least he wouldn’t embarrass himself.

He’d tried to vacuum the house . . . once. He still wasn’t certain how he’d managed to explode the vacuum cleaner.

All in all, it was best to leave the domestic front to Bridget, while he concentrated on paperwork. That was what he did now, paperwork. He read, he digested facts, he gave his learned opinion—which was another phrase for “best guess”—to the director, who then gave it to the president, and he made decisions about operations based on what he’d read.

While the coffee was brewing, he turned off the outside security lights and let Kaiser out into the backyard to do a perimeter patrol and also take care of nature’s call. Kaiser was getting old, Frank realized as he watched his pet, but then so was he. Maybe both of them should think about retiring, so that Frank could read something besides intelligence reports and Kaiser could give up his guard duties and just be a companion.

Frank had been thinking about retiring for several years now. The only thing that held him back was the fact that John Medina wasn’t ready to come in from the field, and Frank couldn’t think of anyone else he wanted to see fill his shoes. Not that the position was his to bestow, but his choice would carry a lot of weight when the decision was made.

Maybe soon, Frank thought. Niema, John’s wife of the past two years, had commented rather testily to Frank that she wanted to get pregnant and she’d like for John to be there when she did. They had done a lot of operations together, but John’s current assignment was one in which she couldn’t participate, and the long separation was grating on both of them. Add that to the ticking of Niema’s biological clock, and Frank rather thought that John would finally be turning over his spurs to someone else.

Someone like Lucas Swain, perhaps, though Swain had spent a long time in the field, too, and his temperament was totally different from John’s. John was patience itself; Swain was the type who would prod a tiger with a stick, just to get some action going. John had trained from the time he was eighteen—in truth, even before that—to become as superlative at his job as he was. They needed someone young to replace him, someone who could stand up under the rigorous physical and mental discipline. Swain was a genius at getting results—though he usually got those results in surprising ways—but he was thirty-nine, not nineteen.

Kaiser trotted up to the back door, his tail wagging. Frank let the dog in and gave him another treat, then poured himself a cup of coffee and carried it into his library, where he sat down and began catching up on the news of the day. By that time his morning papers had been delivered and he read them while he sat at the table eating a bowl of cereal—he could manage that without Bridget’s aid—and drinking more coffee. Breakfast was followed by a shower and shave, and at seven-thirty on the dot he was heading out the door just as his driver pulled to the curb.

Frank had resisted being driven for a long time, preferring to take the wheel himself. But D.C. traffic was a nightmare, and driving tied up time he could devote to work, so he’d finally given in. His driver, Keenan, had been his regular driver for six years now, and they’d settled into a comfortable routine, like an old married couple. Frank rode up front—it made him nauseous to sit in back and read—but other than greeting each other, they never talked during the morning commute. The afternoon drive was different; that was when Frank had found out Keenan had six kids, that his wife, Trisha, was a concert pianist, and that his youngest child’s cooking experiment had almost burned down the house. With Keenan, Frank could talk about Dodie, about the good times they’d had together, and what it was like growing up before the advent of television.

“Morning, Mr. Vinay,” Keenan said, waiting until Frank was buckled in before pulling smoothly away from the curb.

“Good morning,” Frank absently replied, already absorbed in the report he was reading.

He glanced up occasionally, a precaution against getting carsick, but for the most part he was oblivious of the thick traffic as people in the hundreds of thousands poured into the capital for the day’s work.

They were in an intersection, in the right lane of two turn lanes making a left turn on a green arrow, hemmed in by vehicles directly ahead, behind, and to the left, when a screech of brakes to his right made him lift his head and search out the sound. Frank saw a white-paneled florist delivery truck barreling through the intersection, ignoring the double lanes of traffic turning left, with the flashing lights of a police car directly behind him. The grill of the truck loomed in his vision, heading directly toward him. He heard Keenan say, “Shit!” as he fought the wheel to angle the car to the left, into the line of traffic beside them. Then there was a bone-jarring crash, as if he’d been picked up and flung to the ground by a giant, his entire body assaulted all at once.

Keenan regained consciousness with the taste of blood in his mouth. Smoke seemed to fill the car, and what looked like an enormous condom spilled profanely from the steering wheel. There was a buzzing in his head, and every movement was such an effort that he couldn’t lift his head off his chest. He stared at the huge condom, wondering what in hell it was doing there. An irritating blare was sounding in his left ear, making his head feel as if it might explode, and there was some other noise that sounded like shouting.

For what seemed like forever Keenan stared blankly at the steering-wheel condom, though it was only a few moments. Awareness seeped back into him, and he realized that the condom was an air bag and the “smoke” was powder from the bag.

With an almost audible pop, reality snapped back into place.

The car was in the middle of a tangle of metal. To his left were two other cars, steam rising from the broken radiator of one. A panel truck of some kind was squashed against the right side. He remembered trying to turn the car so they wouldn’t be T-boned, then an impact harder than anything he’d ever imagined. The truck had been aimed right at Mr. Vinay’s passenger door—

Oh, my God.

“Mr. Vinay,” he croaked, the sound nothing like his own voice. He turned his head and stared at the director of operations. The entire right side of the car was smashed in, and Mr. Vinay lay in an impossible tangle of metal, seat, and man.

Someone finally silenced the maddening car horn, and in the sudden relative quiet he could hear a distant siren.

“Help!” he yelled, though again it was nothing more than a croak. He spat blood out of his mouth, drew a deep breath that hurt like hell, and tried again. “Help!”

“Just hold on, buddy,” someone called. A uniformed officer climbed over the hood of one of the vehicles on the left, but the two were so crunched together that he couldn’t get between them. Instead he got on his hands and knees on the hood and peered at Keenan’s face. “Help’s on the way, buddy. Are you hurt bad?”

“I need a phone,” Keenan gasped, realizing the cop couldn’t see their license plates. His cell phone was somewhere in the wreckage.

“Don’t worry about making any calls—”

“I need a damn phone!” Keenan repeated, his tone fierce. He fought for another breath. CIA people never identified themselves as working for the CIA, but this was an emergency. “The man beside me is the director of operations—”

He didn’t need to say more. The cop had worked in the capitol area a long time, and he didn’t ask, “What kind of operations?” Instead he whipped out his radio and barked a few terse words into it, then turned around and yelled, “Anyone have a cell phone?”

Silly question. Everyone did. In just a moment the cop was stretching out on the hood to hand Keenan a tiny flip-phone. Keenan reached out a shaky, bloodstained hand and took the phone. He punched in a few numbers, realized this wasn’t a secure phone, then mentally said, “Shit,” and punched the rest of them.

“Sir,” he said, fighting back the black edges of unconsciousness. He still had a job to do. “This is Keenan. The director and I have been in an accident and the director is severely injured. We’re at . . .” His voice trailed off. He had no idea where they were. He held the phone out to the cop. “Tell him where we are,” he said, and closed his eyes.

16

Even though her regular contacts were out of the question, over the years Lily had met a number of people of questionable character with unquestionable skills who, for the right amount of money, would dig up dirt on their mothers. She still had some money left but not a huge amount, so she hoped that “right” translated to “reasonable.”

If Swain checked out okay, that would help her financial situation, because he’d volunteered to work with her. If she had to hire someone, that would put a serious dent in her bank account. Of course, she had to remember that Swain had admitted he wasn’t an expert at security systems, but he said that he knew people who were. The big question was, would those people want to be paid? If they did, then she’d be better off hiring someone from the beginning, rather than wasting money having Swain investigated.

Unfortunately, that was something she wouldn’t know until it was too late to do anything about it. She wanted Swain to check out okay. She wanted to find out he hadn’t escaped from a psychiatric ward somewhere or, even more important, he hadn’t been hired by the CIA.

It was as she was going to an Internet café that she realized she’d made a tactical error in walking away from Swain the day before. If the CIA had hired him, Swain had now had the opportunity to call and have his file sanitized to fit whatever story he told. No matter what she or anyone else was able to find out about him, she couldn’t be certain the information was correct.

She stopped dead in her tracks. A woman bumped into her from behind and gave her a nasty look for stopping so abruptly. “Excusez-moi,” Lily said, detouring to a small bench so she could sit while she thought this out.

Damn it, there was so much about spy craft that she didn’t know; she was at a huge disadvantage here. There was now no point in investigating Swain; he either was or wasn’t CIA. She simply had to make up her mind to contact him or not.

The safest thing to do was not call him. He didn’t know where she lived, didn’t know what name she was using. But if he was CIA, then he had somehow figured out that she’d be after the Nervi laboratory complex and he had staked it out, waiting for her to appear. Either she abandoned her plan completely, or he’d eventually find her there again.

As far as the laboratory went, the circumstances there had become enormously complicated. Rodrigo had obviously found out who she really was and somehow gotten a photo of her sans disguise, otherwise the soccer players wouldn’t have recognized her so readily. The little fracas at the park would put him on double alert, and security at the complex had undoubtedly been doubled.

She needed help. There was no way now she could accomplish anything on her own. The way she saw it, she could either walk away and let Rodrigo Nervi continue to flourish, without making any more effort to find out what had been so important to Averill and Tina that it had cost them their lives, or she could cross her fingers for luck and accept Swain’s aid.

She wanted him to be on the level, she realized with a jolt. He seemed to get so much enjoyment out of life, and joy had been in short supply in her life for several long months. He’d made her laugh. He might not realize how long it had been since that had happened, but she did. The tiny human spark in her that grief hadn’t extinguished wanted to laugh again. She wanted to be happy again, and Swain radiated happiness like the sun. Okay, so he might be certifiable, but the hint of steel he’d shown when he stopped her from getting his weapon reassured her. If he could make her laugh, if she could find joy again, perhaps that alone was worth the risk of taking him as a partner.

There was also an element of physical attraction. That aspect took her a little by surprise, but she recognized the little flare of interest for what it was. She had to factor that into any decision she made concerning him, not let it cloud her mind. But did it make any difference if she wanted to accept his offer of help because he made her laugh or because she found him attractive? The fact was, the emotional need was greater than the physical. Besides, she doubted she would act on the physical attraction. She hadn’t had many lovers in her life, going through long periods of abstinence and not minding at all. Her last lover, Dmitri, had tried to kill her. That had been six years ago, and since then, trust had been a real issue for her.

So the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, since she had no way of reliably determining if he was CIA and her only alternative now was to walk away and do nothing else about the Nervis, did she call him because he was cute and made her laugh?

“What the hell. Why not?” she muttered, and gave a rueful laugh that earned her a startled glance from a passerby.

He was staying at the Bristol, in the Champs-Élysées. On impulse she went into a café and ordered a cup of coffee, then asked to look up a number in their telephone directory. She scribbled down the Bristol’s number, then finished her coffee and left.

She could have called and had him meet her somewhere, but instead she took the train, and was just up the street from the hotel when she stopped at a public phone and used her Télécarte phone card to call the hotel. If he was CIA and had all of his incoming calls traced, this would deny him not only her cell phone number but any hint of where she was staying.

She gave his room number to the clerk who answered, and Swain answered on the third ring—a sleepy “Yeah,” followed by a yawn. She felt a glow of pleasure at his accent, the pure American informality of his greeting.

“Can you meet me at Palais de l’Élysée in fifteen minutes?” she asked without identifying herself.

“Wha—? Where? Wait a minute.” She heard another jaw-cracking yawn; then he said unnecessarily, “I’ve been asleep. Is this who I think it is? Are you blond and blue-eyed?”

“And I tote a peashooter.”

“I’ll be there. Wait a minute. Where in hell is this place?” he asked.

“Just down the street. Ask the doorman.” She hung up, and positioned herself so she could watch the front door of the hotel. The palace was close enough that only a fool would drive instead of walk, but just distant enough that he wouldn’t be able to tarry and still make the fifteen-minute deadline. When he came out of the hotel, he would turn in the opposite direction from where she was positioned, and she could fall in behind him.

He was out the door in five minutes; if he’d made any calls, they had been on his cell phone as he walked down the hall, because otherwise he hadn’t had time. He stopped to speak to the doorman, nodded, then set off down the street. Or rather, he ambled down the street, a loose-hipped gait that made her wish she could see his butt while he walked. Unfortunately he was wearing that great leather blazer again, and it covered his rear.

Lily walked swiftly, the sound of her soft-soled boots covered by the traffic. No one was with Swain, and he wasn’t talking on the phone as he walked, so that was good. Maybe he really was on his own. She closed the distance between them, and with one long stride fell into step beside him. “Swain.”

He glanced at her. “Hi, there. I spotted you when I came out of the hotel. Any reason why we’re going to the Palais?”

Caught, she had to smile and shrug. “None at all. Let’s walk and talk.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the weather’s cold and the sun has almost set. Remember I told you I’ve been in South America? That means I’m used to warmth.” He shivered. “Let’s find a café and you can tell me what’s going on over a nice cup of hot coffee.”

She hesitated. Though she knew she was being paranoid, that Rodrigo couldn’t possibly have someone on his payroll in every shop and café in Paris, his influence was broad enough that she didn’t want to take the chance. “I don’t want to talk in public.”

“Okay, let’s go back to the hotel. My room is private, and it’s warm. And there’s room service. Or, if you’re afraid you can’t control yourself if you’re in the same room with me and a bed, we can get the car and drive aimlessly around Paris, burning gas that costs forty bucks a gallon.”

She rolled her eyes. “It does not. And it’s liters, not gallons.”

“I notice you didn’t deny the part about controlling yourself.” He wasn’t smirking, but it was close.

“I’ll manage,” she said drily. “The hotel it is.” If she was going to trust him, she might as well start now. Besides, seeing his hotel room without him having time to neaten it and put away things he didn’t want to be seen might be enlightening—not that he would have asked her back to his room if there was anything incriminating lying about anyway.

They retraced their steps, and when they reached the hotel, the impassive doorman opened the door for them. Swain led the way to the elevators, stepping aside to let her enter first.

He unlocked his door, and she stepped into a bright, cheerful room with two floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a courtyard. The walls were cream colored, the bed had a soft-blue-and-yellow spread, and to her relief there was a fairly spacious sitting area, with two chairs and a sofa arranged around a coffee table. The bed was made, but one of the pillows bore the imprint of his head and the spread was wrinkled where he’d been napping. His suitcase wasn’t in sight, so she assumed it was tucked away in the closet. Other than a water glass on the bedside table and the rumpled condition of the spread, the room was as neat as if no one was staying there.

“May I see your passport?” she asked as soon as he’d closed the door behind him.

He gave her a quizzical glance, but reached inside his coat. Lily tensed; she barely moved, but he caught her sudden tension and froze in the act of pulling out his hand. Very deliberately he reached up with his left hand and pulled his coat open so she could see that his right hand was filled with nothing more than his blue passport.

“Why do you want to see my passport?” he asked as he handed it over. “I thought you were going to check me out.”

She flipped open the cover, not bothering to check the photo, but instead looking at the entry stamps. He had indeed been in South America—all over it, in fact—and had returned to the States about a month ago. He’d been in France four days. “I didn’t bother,” she said briefly.

“Why the hell not?” He sounded indignant, as if she’d said he wasn’t worth checking out.

“Because I made a mistake in letting you go yesterday.”

“You let me go?” he asked, lifting his brows.

“Who had the gun on whom?” She mirrored his expression as she gave the passport back to him.

“You have a point.” He tucked the folder in his inside coat pocket, then shrugged out of the coat and tossed it across the bed. “Have a seat. How was letting me go a mistake?”

Lily sat on the sofa, which put a wall at her back. “Because if you’re CIA, or were hired by the CIA, that gave you time to have them sanitize whatever information on you is out there.”

He put his hands on his hips and glared at her. “If you know that, then what in hell are you doing here in my hotel room? My God, woman, I could be anyone!”

For some reason, his scolding struck her as funny, and she began to smile. If he’d been hired to kill her, would he be fussing about her not being careful enough?

“It’s not funny,” he groused. “If the CIA’s after you, you have to be on your toes. Are you a spy or something?”

She shook her head. “No. I killed someone they didn’t want killed.”

He didn’t blink an eye at the fact that she’d killed someone. Instead he picked up the room menu and tossed it into her lap. “Let’s order some food,” he said. “My stomach hasn’t adjusted to this time zone, either.”

Though it was very early for supper, Lily briefly glanced through the menu and made her choice, then listened as Swain phoned in the order. His French was passable, but no one would ever mistake him for a native speaker. He hung up the phone, then came to sit down in one of the blue-patterned chairs. Pulling up his right leg to prop his ankle on top of his left knee, he asked, “Who did you kill?”

“An Italian businessman-slash-hoodlum named Salvatore Nervi.”

“Did he need killing?”

“Oh, yes,” she said softly.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It wasn’t a sanctioned hit.”

“Sanctioned by whom?”

“The CIA.” Her tone was ironic.

He gave her a thoughtful glance. “You’re CIA?”

“Not exactly. I’m—I was a contract agent.”

“So you’ve put your killing ways behind you?”

“Let’s just say I doubt any more jobs will be coming my way.”

“You could hire out to someone else.”

She shook her head.

“No? Why not?”

“Because the only way I could do the job was if I thought it was right,” she said in a low tone. “Maybe it was naive, but I trusted my government in this. If it sent me out, then I had to believe the hit was righteous. I wouldn’t have that same trust with anyone else.”

“Not naive, but definitely idealistic.” His blue eyes were kind. “Don’t you trust them to overlook this Nervi thing?” he asked, and again she shook her head.

“I knew he was an asset. He passed information to them.”

“So why’d you kill him?”

“Because he had some of my friends killed. There’s a lot I don’t know, but—they were retired from the business, raising their daughter, being normal. For some reason they broke into the laboratory complex where we were yesterday—or I think they did—and he had them killed.” Her voice thickened. “Also their thirteen-year-old daughter, Zia. She was killed, too.”

Swain blew out a breath. “You have no idea why they broke in?”

“Like I said, I’m not even certain they did. But they crossed Salvatore somehow, and that’s the only thing I can find happening to any of the Nervi holdings that falls in that time frame. I think someone hired them to do it, but I don’t know who or why.”

“I don’t mean to sound callous, but they were pros. They had to know the risks.”

“Them, yes. If it was just them, I’d be angry, I’d miss them terribly, but I wouldn’t—I don’t know if I’d have gone after Salvatore. But Zia . . . no way could I let that go.” She cleared her throat, and the words seem to pour out of her. She hadn’t been able to talk about Zia to anyone since the murders, and now it was like water going over a spill gate. “I found Zia when she was just a few weeks old. She was starving, abandoned, almost dead. She was mine, she was my daughter even though I let Averill and Tina adopt her because there was no way I could take care of her or provide her with a stable home while I was off on a job. Salvatore killed my little girl.” Despite her best effort to hold them back, tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

“Hey,” he said in alarm. With the tears blurring her vision, she didn’t see him move, but suddenly he was beside her on the sofa, putting his arm around her and pulling her close so her head nestled in the curve of his shoulder. “I don’t blame you. I’d have killed the son of a bitch, too. He should have known you don’t touch the innocents.” He was rubbing her back, the motion comforting.

Lily let herself be held for a moment, closing her eyes as she savored his closeness, the heat of his body, the man-smell of his skin. She was starved for human contact, for the touch of someone who cared. He might not care, but he sympathized, and that was close enough.

Because she wanted to stay where she was just a little too much, she sat up out of his embrace and briskly rubbed her cheeks dry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to cry on your shoulder—literally.”

“You can use my shoulder anytime. So, you killed Salvatore Nervi. I assume the guys trying to kill you yesterday are after you because of that. Why are you still here? you’ve done what you set out to do.”

“Only part of it. I want to know why Averill and Tina did what they did, what was so important to them that they took the job when they’d been retired for so long. It had to be bad, and if it was bad enough for them to act, I want the whole world to know what that something is. I want the Nervi organization broken up, destroyed, made a pariah in the business world.”

“So you’re planning on breaking into that lab and seeing what you can find?”

She nodded. “I don’t have a firm plan on how to do it; I’ve just started gathering information.”

“You know the security had to be upgraded after your friends broke in.”

“I know, but I also know there’s no foolproof system. There’s always a weakness, if I can just find what it is.”

“You’re right about that. I’d say the first step is finding out who did the security work, then getting your hands on the specs.”

“Assuming they haven’t been destroyed.”

“Only an idiot would do that, when the system might need repair sometime. If Nervi was really smart, though, he would have the specs instead of letting the security company keep them.”

“He was smart, and suspicious enough that he probably thought of that.”

“Not quite suspicious enough, or he wouldn’t be dead,” Swain pointed out. “I’ve heard of Nervi, even though I’ve been in a different hemisphere for ten years. How did you get close enough to him to use that peashooter of yours?”

“I didn’t use it,” she replied. “I poisoned his wine, and almost killed myself in the bargain, because he insisted I taste it, too.”

“Holy shit. You knew it was poison and you still drank it? Your balls must be bigger than mine, because I wouldn’t have done it.”

“It was either that or let him storm out without drinking enough for me to be sure it would kill him. I’m okay, except for some damage to a heart valve, but I don’t think it’s serious.” Except, yesterday she’d been gasping for breath in his car, which wasn’t good. She hadn’t even been running, though she guessed being shot at would get the adrenaline flowing and speed up her heartbeat just as running would.

He was looking at her in astonishment, but before he said anything else, there was a knock on the door. “Good, the food’s here,” he said, getting up and going to the door. Lily slipped her hand into her boot, ready to act if the room service waiter made a wrong move, but he wheeled in the cart and set out the food with swift precision; Swain signed the ticket and the waiter let himself out.

“You can take your hand off the peashooter,” Swain said as he pulled two chairs up to the cart. “Why don’t you carry something with some stopping power?”

“My peashooter gets the job done.”

“Assuming you put the shot right where it counts. If you miss, someone’s gonna be pissed and still able to come after you.”

“I don’t miss,” she said mildly.

He glanced at her, then grinned. “Ever?”

“Never when it counts.”

News that the director of operations had been critically injured in a car accident didn’t send ripples through the intelligence community, it sent tsunamis. The first possibility to investigate was that the accident wasn’t an accident at all. There were more efficient ways to kill someone than an automobile accident, but still, the idea had to be considered. That suspicion was laid to rest after swift but thorough interviews with the cop who had been chasing the florist van for speeding through a red traffic light. The driver of the van, who was killed in the accident, had an outstanding warrant for unpaid speeding tickets.

The director was taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the security would be tighter, and rushed into surgery. Simultaneously, his house was secured, arrangements made for the director’s housekeeper, Bridget, to take care of Kaiser, and the deputy director stepped up to take Mr. Vinay’s place until, and if, he returned. The accident site was carefully combed for any sensitive papers, but Mr. Vinay was extremely careful about paperwork and nothing classified was found.

For long hours in surgery, his survival was very much in question. If Keenan hadn’t managed to angle the car slightly away just before the van collided with them, the director would have died on the spot. His right arm suffered two compound fractures, his collarbone was broken, five ribs were broken, and his right femur was broken. His heart and lungs were severely bruised, his right kidney ruptured. A shard of glass had pierced his throat like an arrow, and he had a concussion that had to be watched closely for signs of developing pressure in his skull. That he was alive at all was because the side air bag had deployed, shielding his head from part of the impact.

He survived the various surgeries needed to repair his broken body and was taken to SICU, where he was kept heavily sedated and closely monitored. The surgeons had done the best they could; the rest was up to Mr. Vinay.

17

M. Blanc wasn’t happy to hear from Rodrigo again so soon. “How may I be of service?” he asked somewhat stiffly. He disliked what he did anyway; to have to do it very often was salt in an open wound. He was at home, and receiving a call there made him feel as if he’d brought evil much too close to his loved ones.

“First, my brother, Damone, will be working with me,” Rodrigo said. “There may be times when he will call instead of me. I trust there will be no problem?”

“No, monsieur.”

“Excellent. This problem I asked your help with the other day. The report said that our friends in America had dispatched someone to handle it. I would like very much to contact this person.”

“Contact him?” Blanc echoed, suddenly uneasy. If Rodrigo met with the contract agent—at least Blanc assumed it was a contract agent, that was usually how a “problem” was handled—it was possible Rodrigo would say something that the contract agent would then carry back to his employers, and that wouldn’t do at all.

“Yes. I’d like his mobile phone number, if you please. I’m certain there is some way of contacting him. Do you know this person’s name?”

“Ah . . . no. I don’t believe it was listed in the report I received.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” Rodrigo snapped. “Or I wouldn’t ask, would I?”

He actually thought, Blanc realized, that he had been sent everything Blanc received. That wasn’t the case, however, and had never been. To minimize the damage he did, Blanc always removed important pieces of information. He knew that if he was found out, the Nervis would have him killed, but he’d become very skillful at balancing on that high wire. “If the information is available, I will get it,” he assured Rodrigo.

“I’ll be waiting for your call.”

Blanc checked the time and calculated the time in Washington. It was the middle of the workday there, perhaps his contact was even having lunch. After disconnecting the call from Rodrigo, he walked outside so no one—mainly his wife, who was an insatiably curious woman—could overhear, then punched in the required sequence of numbers.

“Yes.” The voice wasn’t as friendly as it was when Blanc caught him still at home, so he was probably where someone could hear his side of the conversation.

“In the matter I spoke to you about before, is it possible to have the mobile phone number of the person who was dispatched here?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

No questions, no hesitation. Perhaps there wouldn’t be a number, Blanc thought, walking back inside. The temperature had dropped with the sun, and he was shivering slightly, not having put on a coat.

“Who was that?” his wife asked.

“It was work,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. Sometimes he could talk about what he did, sometimes not, so although she clearly wanted to ask more questions, she did not.

“You could at least have put on a coat before going outside,” she scolded in a fond tone.

Less than two hours later Blanc’s mobile phone rang. Quickly he grabbed a pen, but couldn’t find a scrap of paper. “This wasn’t easy, buddy,” his contact said. “Something about different cell phone systems. I had to dig deep to find the number.” He read off the number, and Blanc scribbled it on his left palm.

“Thank you,” he said. After hanging up, he found some paper and wrote down the number, then washed his hands.

He should call Rodrigo Nervi immediately, he knew, but he didn’t. Instead he folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Perhaps he would call him tomorrow.

When Lily left his hotel room, Swain started to follow her back to her lair but decided against it. It wasn’t that he thought she would spot him; he knew she wouldn’t. She was good, but he was damn good. He didn’t follow her because it just didn’t feel right. It was crazy, but he wanted her to trust him. She had come to him, and that was a start. She had also given him her cell phone number, and he’d given her his. Funny how that felt the same as giving a friendship ring to a girlfriend in high school.

He hadn’t done what Vinay had told him to do. He kept putting it off, partly out of curiosity, partly because she was battling giants and needed all the help she could get, and partly because he was seriously interested in getting her into bed. She was playing a dangerous game with Rodrigo Nervi, and Swain was enough of a risk-taker to be intrigued and want to play, too. He was supposed to take her out of the equation, but instead he wanted to know what was going on in that lab. If he could find out, maybe Vinay wouldn’t demote him to desk jockey for not doing his job the first time he got close to Lily.

But all in all, he was enjoying himself. He was staying in a great hotel, driving a spitfire of a car, and eating French food. After some of the shit holes he’d stayed in during the past ten years, he needed some fun.

Lily was quite a challenge. She was wary and clever, with a streak of recklessness in her, and he never forgot that she was one of the best assassins working in Europe. Never mind that she’d had some pie-in-the-sky ideal about only making sanctioned hits until she’d gone after Salvatore Nervi; he was aware that he couldn’t afford a single misstep around her.

She was also sad, grieving for her friends and the young girl she’d thought of as her own. Swain thought of his own kids, and how he’d feel if one of them was murdered. No way would the murderer escape, or even make it to trial—no matter who it was. He was totally in sympathy with her on that score, not that it changed the final outcome.

He lay in bed that night and thought of her drinking the wine she knew was poisoned, just so Salvatore Nervi would continue drinking it. Damn, she’d skated close to the edge. From what she’d told him about the poison, how potent it was, he knew she’d had a very rough time and was probably still weak. There was no way she could get into that lab on her own, not in her shape, so that was probably why she’d called him. He didn’t care what her reason was; he was just glad she’d done it.

She was beginning to trust him. She’d cried in his arms, and he got the feeling she didn’t often let anyone get that close to her. She gave off a strong DO NOT TOUCH signal, but from what he could tell, that was more out of self-defense than coldness. She wasn’t a cold person at all, just wary.

Maybe he was crazy for being so attracted to her, but, hell, some male spiders willingly let their mates chew their heads off while they are going at it, so he figured he was ahead of the game in that respect: Lily hadn’t killed him yet.

He wanted to know what made her tick, what made her laugh. Yeah, he definitely wanted her to laugh. She looked as if she hadn’t had much fun lately, and a person should always have something to enjoy. He wanted her to relax and drop her guard around him, laugh and tease, make jokes, make love. He’d seen flashes of a dry sense of humor, and he wanted more.

He was well on his way to being obsessed, no doubt about it. He might lose his head yet, and die happy.

A gentleman wouldn’t plan the seduction of a woman he’d been sent to take down, but he’d never been a gentleman. He’d grown up a rowdy west Texas shit-kicker, refused to listen to adults who knew better and married Amy when they were both eighteen and fresh out of high school, was a father at nineteen, but he’d never quite got the hang of settling down. He’d never cheated on Amy, because she was a great girl, but he hadn’t exactly been there for her, either. Now that he was older, he was more responsible and felt ashamed of how he’d basically left her to raise their two kids by herself. The best he could say for himself was that he’d supported his family, even after the divorce.

Over the years he’d traveled a lot, become more sophisticated, but good manners and knowing how to order off a menu in three different languages didn’t make a gentleman. He was still rowdy, he still didn’t like rules, and he did like Lily Mansfield. He hadn’t often met women who could hold their own with him, but Lily could; her personality was as forceful as his. She decided what she was going to do and did it, come hell or high water. She had a steel backbone, but at the same time she had a real feminine warmth and tenderness. Finding out everything about her would take a man a lifetime. He didn’t have a lifetime, but he’d take what he could get. He was beginning to think that a few days with Lily would pack more of a punch than ten years with any other woman.

The big question was: What would he do afterward?

Blanc tensed when his phone rang early the next morning. “Who could that be?” his wife asked, annoyed that their breakfast was interrupted.

“It will be the office,” he said, and got up to take the phone outside. He punched the talk button and said, “This is Blanc.”

“Monsieur Blanc.” The voice was smooth and calm, one he had never heard before. “I am Damone Nervi. Do you have the number my brother requested?”

“No names,” Blanc said.

“Of course. This one time it seemed necessary, as we haven’t spoken before. Do you have the number?”

“Not yet. Evidently there is some difficulty—”

“Get it. Today.”

“There is a six-hour time difference. It will be afternoon at the earliest.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Blanc hung up and for a moment stood with his fists clenched. Damn the Nervis! This one spoke better French than the other one, he sounded smoother, but underneath they were all the same: barbarians.

He would have to give them the number, but he would try to impress upon Rodrigo that it would be ill-advised to call the CIA’s man, that it could easily result in both him and his contact being prosecuted. Perhaps not, perhaps the man the CIA had sent didn’t care about who hired him, but that wasn’t something Blanc felt confident about.

He went back inside and looked at his wife, her dark hair still tousled from bed, a robe cinched around her trim waist. She slept in flimsy, low-cut nighties because she knew he liked it, though in the winter she put an extra blanket on her side of the bed because she felt the cold. What if something happened to her? What if Rodrigo Nervi followed through on the threats that had been made years ago? He couldn’t bear it.

He would have to give them the number. He would stall as long as he could, but in the end he had no choice.

18

Swain had a brilliant idea in the middle of the night: instead of finding who had installed the Nervi security system, breaking into the office, and somehow getting the schematics, why not just use the resources at his fingertips? The boys—and girls—and their toys could find and access just about anything. If it was on a computer somewhere, and that computer was online, they could get it. It stood to reason that any security company Nervi used would be up to snuff on all the latest bells and whistles, which meant they were probably computerized. Password protected, yeah, but how tough was that? The hackers on the payroll in Langley would consider that no more worrisome than a mosquito bite.

Besides, that meant they’d have to do the work, and he wouldn’t. All in all, he thought it was a great idea. He was so pleased with it that he sat up and switched on the bedside lamp, plucked his cell phone from the charger, and called right then. Going through the security checks seemed to take longer than ever, but finally he was talking to someone who had some authority.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the woman said. She’d identified herself, but Swain had been preoccupied and hadn’t caught her name. “Things are in an uproar around here, though, so I don’t know when—wait a minute. This is listed as a holding of Salvatore Nervi, deceased, and now Rodrigo and Damone Nervi. They’re listed as assets. Why do you need the breakdown on their security system?”

“They may not be assets much longer,” Swain said. “The word is they’ve just received a shipment of weapons-grade plutonium.” That sounded ominous enough to stir some action.

“Have you generated a report on this?”

“Earlier today, but then no one got back to me—”

“That’s because of Mr. Vinay. I told you things were in an uproar.”

“What about Mr. Vinay?” Jesus, had Frank been replaced?

“You haven’t heard?”

Obviously not, or he wouldn’t have asked. “Heard what?”

“He was in a car accident this morning. He’s in critical condition at Bethesda. The DDO is taking over until and if he comes back. Word is the doctors aren’t optimistic.”

“Shit.” The news hit him like a blow to the solar plexus. He’d worked for Frank Vinay for years, and respected him as he did no one else in the pickle factory. Frank might dance through the daisies when he was dealing with politicians, but with the field officers under him, he’d never been anything but straight, and willing to stand up for them. In Washington, that was not only unusual but almost suicidal, careerwise. That Frank had not only survived but advanced in his job, first as DDO and now as director, was a testament to his worth—and his skill as a dancer.

“Anyway,” the woman said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Swain had to be satisfied with that, because he could imagine the uncertainty and jockeying for position that was going on across the pond. He knew the deputy director, Garvin Reed; Garvin was a good man, but he wasn’t Frank Vinay. Frank had forgotten more about spy craft than Reed had ever known, plus Frank was a genius at reading people and seeing layers, patterns, where no one else did.

Swain felt uneasy about his own status, as well. Frank’s solution for handling the Lily problem might not be the same as Garvin’s. Garvin’s view of the Nervis might not be the same as Frank’s. Swain felt as if his tether to the mother ship had been cut and he was drifting away; or, to use another metaphor, he had already been skating on thin ice by delaying the purpose of his mission, and now he could hear the ice cracking beneath him.

Fuck it. He’d keep to the same course until he was either jerked off the mission or told to alter it—not that he hadn’t already altered it, or at least delayed it, but no one knew that except him. When in doubt, plow ahead. Of course, the captain of the Titanic had probably had the same philosophy.

He didn’t sleep well the rest of the night, which made him crabby when he woke up the next morning. Until, and if, the computer geeks came through for him, he didn’t have anything to do, other than driving by the lab and mooning the guards. Since the weather was chilly, his ass would get cold, so mooning was out unless he was really provoked.

On impulse he grabbed his cell phone and dialed Lily’s cell number, just to see if she’d answer.

“Bonjour,” she said, making him wonder if perhaps she didn’t have Caller ID on her cell phone. He couldn’t imagine her not having it, but maybe she answered in French out of habit, or precaution.

“Hi, there. Have you had breakfast yet?”

“I’m still in bed, so no, I haven’t eaten.”

He glanced at his watch: not quite six. He’d forgive her for being lazy. In fact, he was glad he’d caught her in bed because she sounded sleepy and soft, without the usual crispness to her voice. He wondered what she wore to bed, maybe a skinny little tank top and her panties, maybe nothing at all. She definitely wouldn’t wear something slinky and see-through. He tried to imagine her in a long nightgown or a sleep shirt, and couldn’t. He could, however, imagine her naked. He imagined it so well that his johnson perked up and began to swell, requiring a firm hand to keep it under control.

“What are you wearing?” His own voice came out slower and deeper than usual.

She laughed, a startled sound that seemed to burst out of her. “Is this an obscene phone call?”

“It could be. I think I feel some heavy breathing coming on. Tell me what you’re wearing.” He imagined her sitting up against the pillows, tucking the covers under her arms, pushing her tousled hair out of her face.

“A flannel granny gown.”

“Liar. You aren’t a granny-gown type of woman.”

“Did you call for any reason other than to wake me up and find out what I’m wearing?”

“I did, but I got sidetracked. C’mon, tell me.”

“I don’t do phone sex.” She sounded amused.

“Pretty please with sugar on top.”

She laughed again. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because my imagination is killing me. You sounded so sleepy when you answered, and I pictured you all soft and warm under the covers. Everything grew out of that.” He gave his erection a wry glance.

“You can stop imagining. I don’t sleep raw, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Then what are you wearing? I really need to know, so I can be accurate in my fantasies.”

“Pajamas.”

Damn, he’d forgotten about pajamas. “Shorty pajamas?” he asked hopefully.

“I switch to long ones in October, and back to short ones in April.”

She was bursting all of his bubbles. He pictured her in tailored pajamas, and the effect just wasn’t the same. He sighed. “You could have said you were bare-assed naked,” he groused. “What would it have hurt? I was having fun here.”

“Maybe a little too much,” she said drily.

“Not enough, though.” His erection was subsiding, a wasted effort.

“Sorry I couldn’t be more accommodating.”

“That’s okay. You can make it up to me in person.”

“You wish.”

“Honey, you don’t know how much I wish. Now, about why I called—”

She chuckled, and he felt a kind of squirrely feeling in the pit of his stomach. His insides were actually jumping around just because he’d made her laugh. Again.

“I don’t have anything to do today, and I’m bored. Why don’t we go to Disneyland?”

“What?” she asked blankly, as if he’d been speaking a foreign language.

“Disneyland. You know, the one right outside the city. I’ve never been to either one in the States. Have you been to this one?”

“Twice,” she said. “Tina and I took Zia twice. Averill wouldn’t go, because he didn’t like standing in lines.”

“It takes a real man to stand in lines.”

“And not bitch about it,” she added.

“And not bitch about it.” What else could he do but agree? “I have someone looking into the security system thing, but I’m not likely to find out anything today. I have time to kill, you have time to kill, so why should we stare at the walls when we can see Cinderella’s castle?”

“Sleeping Beauty, not Cinderella.”

“Whatever. Myself, I always thought Cinderella was prettier than Sleeping Beauty, because she was blond. I have a thing for blondes.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” She sounded as if she might laugh again.

“Look at it this way: Will anyone be looking for you in Disneyland?”

There was a small silence as she considered the real truth behind his proposal. He couldn’t tell her that he was restless and worried about Frank, and that he thought he’d go crazy if he had to sit around his hotel room all day. He wasn’t big on amusement parks, but it was something to do and they wouldn’t have to watch their backs. Nervi would never think to have people watching the entrances to Disneyland, because what idiot would stop in the middle of a deadly cat-and-mouse game to go ride Thunder Mountain?

“The weather is supposed to be sunny today. Let’s go,” he cajoled. “It’ll be fun. We can ride the teacups and get dizzy and puke.”

“It sounds marvelous, I can’t wait.” She was snickering and trying to control it, but he could hear the little gulping sounds she was making.

“Then you’ll go?”

She sighed. “Why not? It’s either a dumb idea or a brilliant one, and I’m not certain which.”

“Great. Why don’t you put on a hat and sunglasses and sneak over here, and we’ll have breakfast before we start out? I’ve been itching to let the hammer down on this little car I got to replace the Jag. It has two hundred and twenty-five horses, and I want to let at least two hundred of them run.”

“Ah-ha. Now I know why you called. You want to drive like a maniac with a woman along to watch you show off, and to make appropriate oohing and aahing noises.”

“Indulge me. I’ve been a little short on those kinds of noises lately.”

“I’ll try my best. I’ll be there around eight; if you get hungry before then, go ahead and order. I can eat later.”

Her two-hour time limit didn’t tell him squat about where she was. In two hours, she could get here from anywhere in the area. Hell, she could probably get here from Calais in that length of time. “I’ll wait for you. Tell me what you want and I’ll order it about twenty minutes before eight.”

All she wanted was a pastry and coffee, and he made a mental note to add some protein to the order. Just as she started to hang up he said, “By the way—”

She paused and said, “What?”

“In case you’re wondering, I do sleep naked.”

Lily closed her flip-top phone, stared at it, then flopped back on the pillows and burst into laughter. She didn’t know when she’d last been teased and flirted with so relentlessly, maybe never. It felt good; just as it felt good to laugh. She was alive, then, after all. She even felt a little guilty for laughing, because Zia would never laugh again.

She sobered on that thought, and the familiar pain squeezed her heart. The pain would never go away, she thought, but there would be times when perhaps she could forget for just a little while. Today, she would try to forget.

She got out of bed and stretched, then did the set of exercises she’d been doing every day in an effort to regain her strength. She was getting better, her stamina improved a bit every day. After thirty minutes of exercise she was damp with sweat but not breathless; the old ticker was holding up. She got into the shower without having to take off any clothes, because she slept nude. Lying to Swain had seemed like a good idea, plus it was fun.

Fun. There was that word again. It seemed to come up often in connection with him.

She hadn’t wondered before about whether he slept raw, but now her imagination supplied an image of him just waking up, stretching, his jaw dark with stubble. His skin smelled warm and musky, and his morning erection jutted up, demanding attention—

For a moment she could almost smell that warm man-scent, the memory so fresh and so specific she was briefly puzzled that she knew how he smelled. Then she remembered crying on his shoulder, with his arms around her. She must have subconsciously noticed his scent then, and her brain had filed the memory away for future reference.

She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to spend the day with him—at Disneyland, of all places. She hadn’t thought she would ever go back there. This past summer Zia hadn’t wanted to go; she was too old for that baby stuff, she’d said with the withering scorn only a thirteen-year-old could muster and completely ignoring the fact that most of the people who went to the amusement park were older than she.

There were always a lot of Americans there, too, which always surprised Lily, because she’d have thought if any American wanted to go to a Disney attraction, one of those back home would have been closer than Paris. She and Swain wouldn’t be noticed; they would be just two more Americans.

She blow-dried her hair, then found herself picking through her makeup bag for just the right items. She was primping for him, she thought with equal parts amusement and amazement—and she was enjoying it. She had always made herself up for her dates with Salvatore, but that had been more like applying a theater mask. This felt like a date, and she felt as nervous with excitement as she had in high school.

She had good skin, having never been a sun worshipper. She didn’t need a base, though she did need mascara if she didn’t want her lashes to look nonexistent. She had nice long lashes, but without mascara they were a light brown that made them almost invisible. She lined her eyes with a light touch, dusted on shadow, rubbed just a hint of a rose-hued liquid tint on her cheeks and more on her mouth. A dusting of transparent powder and a coat of ego-saving mascara finished the job.

Lily looked at herself in the mirror as she put on her earrings, tiny gold hoops that seemed appropriate for a day at the amusement park. She would never be really pretty, but on her good days she was more than passable. Today was a good day.

With luck, it would get better.

19

The closer they got to Disneyland, the more tense Lily became as her excitement began to fade and memories shoved their way back to the forefront. “Let’s not go to Disneyland,” she blurted.

He quirked his brows. “Why not?”

“Too many memories of Zia.”

“Are you going to avoid everything that reminds you of her?”

His tone was practical, nonchallenging. Lily stared out the window. “Not everything. Not forever. Just not . . . right now.”

“Okay. Where do you want to go instead?”

“I’m not certain I want to go anywhere. There should be something we can do other than wait for your friend to dig up something on the lab’s security system.”

“Other than driving back and forth in front of the lab and giving the guards a good look at this car, I can’t think of anything.”

Was the man incapable of picking out a car that wasn’t noticeable? Yes, this Renault was gray, just as the Jag had been, but the Mégane Renault Sport wasn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill car. At least he hadn’t got a red one.

“How many ways are there to get into a building?” she asked reasonably. “Doors and windows, obviously. You could also go in through a hole in the roof—”

“No one would notice you on top of the building with a chain saw?”

“—but that isn’t feasible,” she finished, giving him a dirty look. “How about from underneath? The complex has to be connected to the sewer system.”

He looked thoughtful. “That’s a possibility. I don’t like it, but it’s a possibility. In the movies it always looks like they’re splashing around in water, but when you think about what goes into sewers, I’ll bet they’re splashing around in something else.”

“Historic Paris is riddled with underground tunnels, but the lab is on the outskirts, so there probably isn’t a decent tunnel anywhere near there.”

“Just out of curiosity, in case we do end up in the sewer, what kind of laboratory is this? What do they do?”

“Medical research.”

“And how is their waste dumped? Is it treated first? All the nasty little critters killed?”

She sighed. Common sense said the waste would be treated before it was dumped into the sewer, in which case there wouldn’t be a direct connection between the complex and the sewer system. Instead, the waste material would go into some sort of holding tank where it was treated, and from there to the sewer. Common sense also said they didn’t want to come in contact with any of the raw sewage.

He said, “I vote we stay out of the sewer.”

“Agreed. Doors and windows are best. Or . . . we could find some big boxes and have ourselves shipped to the lab.” That idea came out of nowhere.

“Huh.” He considered the idea. “We’d have to find out if all packages and boxes are x-rayed or something, if they’re opened immediately, if they ever get large shipments—things like that. See, we wouldn’t want to come out of our boxes until late at night, at least after midnight, when there are fewer people around. Or does the lab operate on an around-the-clock basis?”

“I don’t know, but that’s something for us to check out. We’ll have to know anyway, even if we get the specs on the security system.”

“I’ll drive by tonight, check out how many cars are in the parking lot, try and get an idea of how many people work there at night. I’m sorry, I should have done that last night,” he apologized. “In the meantime, we have today. Disneyland’s out. Do we just turn around and go back to our respective rooms, where we spend the day being bored? What else is there to do? Now that you’ve been made, I wouldn’t advise walking around Paris, shopping.”

No, she didn’t want to go back to her little studio apartment. It didn’t even have the advantage of being old and interesting; it was just convenient and safe. “Let’s just drive. We can stop to have lunch when we get hungry.”

They kept driving east, and when they were well away from Paris and the heavy traffic, he picked a straight stretch of road and let the horses run. It had been a long time since Lily had gone fast just for the enjoyment of it, and she settled back in her seat, securely buckled in, while a pleasant sense of faint alarm made her pulse quicken. She felt like a teenager again, when she and seven or eight of her friends would cram into one car and bullet down the highway. It was a miracle all of them made it through high school alive.

“How did you get in this business?” he asked.

Startled, she looked at him. “You’re driving too fast to talk. Pay attention to the road.”

He grinned and let up on the gas pedal, and the needle dropped down to a hundred kph. “I can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said in mild protest.

“Neither of which requires much in the way of a brain. Talking and driving are different.”

He said thoughtfully, “For someone in this business who takes as many risks as you do, you aren’t really much of a risk-taker, are you?”

She watched the scenery zipping by. “I’m not a risk-taker at all, I don’t think. I plan carefully; I don’t take chances.”

“Who drank wine she knew was poisoned, taking the chance that the dose wasn’t lethal? Who is being hunted all over Paris but stays there anyway because she’s got a vendetta going?”

“These are unusual circumstances.” She didn’t mention the risk she had taken in deciding to trust him, but he was smart enough to figure out that one, too.

“Was it something unusual that got you started killing people?”

She was silent for a moment. “I don’t think of myself as a murderer,” she said quietly. “I’ve never harmed an innocent. I’ve made the sanctioned hits that I was hired by my country to make, and I don’t believe the decision was ever lightly made. I never thought so when I was young, but now I know there are people who are so inherently evil they don’t deserve to live. Hitler wasn’t a one-time phenomenon, you know. Look at Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Baby Doc, bin Laden. Can you say the world isn’t or wouldn’t be better off without them in it?”

“And hundreds of other tin-pot dictators, plus the drug lords, the perverts and pedophiles. I know. I agree. But had you already decided this when you made your first hit?”

“No. Eighteen-year-olds generally don’t get into heavy philosophy.”

“Eighteen. Man, that’s young.”

“I know. I think that’s why I was chosen. I used to look like such a rube,” she said, smiling a little. “All fresh-faced and innocent, not an ounce of sophistication to me, though at the time I thought I was cool and world-weary. I was even flattered that I was approached.”

He shook his head at such naivete. When she didn’t continue, he said, “Go on.”

“I came to their notice because I joined a shooting club. The boy I had a huge crush on at the time was an avid hunter and I wanted to impress him by being able to talk about different makes of weapons, caliber, range, all that stuff. But I turned out to be darn good; a pistol felt natural in my hand. Before long I was outshooting almost everyone else in the club. I don’t know where that came from,” she said, looking at her hands as if they held the answer. “My dad wasn’t a hunter, had never been in the military. My mother’s father was a lawyer, not at all an outdoorsman, and my other grandfather worked in a Ford factory in Detroit. He went fishing sometimes, but he never hunted that I knew of.”

“It’s just a particular blend of DNA, I guess. Maybe your dad wasn’t interested in hunting, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have found he had a natural talent for shooting. Hell, you could have gotten it from your mother.”

Lily blinked, then chuckled. “I never even thought of that. Mom’s a peacemaker, but personality doesn’t have anything to do with physical skill, does it?”

“Not that I ever noticed. Back to the shooting club.”

“There isn’t much to tell. Someone noticed how I shot, mentioned it to someone else, and one day a nice middle-aged man came to talk to me. First he told me about this person, a man, everything he’d done and the people he’d killed, and backed it up with newspaper clippings and copies of police reports, things like that. When I was properly horrified, the nice man offered me a lot of money. I was horrified all over again, told him no, but I couldn’t stop thinking about everything he’d told me. He must have known, because he called me two days later and I said yes, I’d do it. I was eighteen.”

She shrugged. “I went through a cram course on what to do, and like I said, I looked like such a wet-behind-the-ears baby that no one saw me as a threat. I got close to the guy with no trouble, did the job, walked away. I threw up for a week every time I thought about it. I had nightmares for longer than that.”

“But when the nice man offered you another job, you took it.”

“I took it. He told me what a service I’d done for my country with the first job, and the thing is, he wasn’t lying or manipulating me. He was sincere.”

“But was he right?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “He was. What I’ve done is illegal, I know that, and I have to live with what I am. But he was right, and what it comes down to is I was willing to do the dirty work. Someone has to do it, so why not me? After the first time I was already muddy anyway.”

Swain reached over and took her hand, raised it to his mouth, and pressed a gentle kiss on her fingers.

Lily blinked in astonishment, opened her mouth to say something, then shut it and stared wide-eyed out the window instead. Swain chuckled and laid her hand back in her lap, then for thirty exhilarating minutes devoted himself to driving as fast as he could.

They stopped for lunch at a small sidewalk café in the next town they came to. He asked for a table in the sun but out of the slight breeze, and they were quite comfortable sitting outside. She had a salad topped with grilled goat cheese, he had lamb chops, and they each had a glass of wine followed by strong coffee. As they lingered over the coffee she said, “What about you? What’s your story?”

“Nothing unusual. Wild west Texas boy who couldn’t settle down, which is a real shame because I got married and had two kids.”

Startled, she said, “You’re married?”

He shook his head. “Divorced. Amy—that’s my ex-wife—finally decided I was never going to settle down, and she got tired of raising the kids by herself while I was off in some other country doing things she didn’t want to know about. I don’t blame her. Hell, I’d have divorced me, too. Now that I’m older I know what an ass I was, and I could kick myself for missing my kids growing up. I can’t get those years back. Thank God, Amy did a good job with them . They turned out great, no thanks to me.”

He pulled out his wallet and fished out two small photographs, put them on the table in front of her. They were both high school graduation pictures, of a boy and a girl, and both of them looked a lot like the man sitting across from her. “My daughter Chrissy and my son Sam.”

“They’re good-looking kids.”

“Thank you,” he said with a grin. He knew very well they strongly resembled him. He picked up the photographs and studied them before putting them back in his wallet. “Chrissy was born when I was nineteen. I was way too young and too stupid to get married, much less have a baby, but being young and stupid means you don’t listen to people who know more than you. And if it comes to that, I’d do it over again, because I can’t imagine not having my kids.”

“Are you close to them now?”

“I doubt I’ll ever be as close to them as their mother is, because she’s way more important to them than I am. She was there when I wasn’t. They like me, they even love me because I’m their dad, but they don’t know me the way they know Amy. I was a lousy husband and father,” he said frankly. “Not abusive or lazy or anything like that, but just never at home. The best that can be said is that I always supported them.”

“That’s more than some men do.”

He muttered his opinion of those men, something that started with “stupid” and ended with “sons of bitches,” with several even more uncomplimentary words in between.

Lily was touched by the way he didn’t cut himself any slack. He’d made mistakes and with maturity he could both see them and regret them. As the years had passed he’d been able to appreciate all the things in his children’s lives that he’d missed out on, and he was grateful to his ex-wife for minimizing the damage he’d done to them with his absence.

“Are you thinking about settling down now, going home and living near your children? Is that why you left South America?”

“Nah, I left because I was ass-deep in alligators and they were all hungry.” He grinned. “I like a little excitement in my life, but sometimes a man needs to climb a tree and reassess the situation.”

“So what exactly do you do? For a living, I mean.”

“I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades. People want something to happen, they hire me to make it happen.”

There was a lot of room in that statement, she thought, but sensed he’d been as specific as he was willing to be. She was comfortable not knowing every detail of his life. She knew he loved his kids, that he walked on the shady side but had a conscience, liked fast cars, and made her laugh. And he was willing to help her. For now, that was enough.

After lunch they walked around for a while. He spotted a small chocolate shop and immediately developed a craving for chocolate, even though they’d just left the café. He bought a dozen pieces in different flavors, and as they walked around he alternately fed her and himself until the chocolate was gone. Somewhere along the way, he caught her hand and simply held it in his for the rest of their walk.

In a way the day felt strangely disconnected from reality, as if they were in a bubble. Instead of pitting her wits against Rodrigo’s, she was walking around a small town with nothing more pressing to do than window-shop. She had no worries here, no stress; a handsome man was holding her hand and probably planning to make a move on her before the day was over. She hadn’t yet decided if she was okay with that or not, but wasn’t worried about it. If she said no, he wouldn’t sulk. She didn’t think Swain had ever sulked in his life. He would simply shrug and move on to the next entertainment.

She had been under unremitting stress for months, and it was only now, when she could relax, that she realized what a mental toll it had taken. She didn’t want to think today, didn’t want to dredge up hurtful memories. She just wanted to be.

By the time they walked back to the car, the sun was low and the brisk day was turning cold as the temperature dropped. She reached to open the car door, but he caught her hand and gently tugged, turning her around, and in one smooth move he released her hand and cupped her face in both of his big warm hands, tilting her chin up as he lowered his mouth.

She didn’t say no. Instead Lily grasped his wrists and simply held him while he was holding her. His mouth was surprisingly gentle, the kiss tender rather than demanding. He tasted like chocolate.

She sensed that the kiss was an end unto itself, that he had no further agenda—not at this moment, anyway. She could kiss him in return and he wouldn’t try to tear off her clothes or pin her against the car. Leaning into him a little, she felt the warmth of his body, enjoyed the closeness. It was she who lightly teased him with her tongue, asking for more. He gave it, not plunging deep but teasing in return as they learned each other’s taste and feel, how their mouths fit together. Then he released her lips, smiled, and wiped his thumb across her mouth before opening the car door and letting her slide inside.

“Where to now?” he asked as he got in the car. “Back to Paris?”

“Yes,” she said, with obvious regret. The day had been a welcome escape, but it was almost at an end. She had decided something important, however: Swain couldn’t be CIA, in any capacity, because she was still alive. It was always a bonus if, at the end of a date, the guy didn’t kill you.

20

Late that afternoon, Georges Blanc received another call from Damone Nervi. He knew who was calling and his stomach tightened with dread. He was in his car, so he wasn’t in danger of being overheard, which was a small blessing and the only one he’d found so far in this situation. He pulled to the side of the road and answered the call.

Damone’s tone was very even. “I am a more reasonable man than my brother. I am not, however, one who can be safely ignored. Do you have the information I requested?”

“Yes, but—” Blanc hesitated, and took the plunge. “My advice, my hope, is that you do not use this number.”

“Why is that?”

To Blanc’s relief, Damone sounded more curious than angry. He took a deep breath. Maybe there was hope. “There is only one way you could get this number, and that is if someone in the American CIA gave it out. This man you want to call works for them. Do you think he won’t wonder how you came to have his mobile phone number? Do you think he is, perhaps, so stupid he cannot add two and two? The question you must ask yourself is if he is loyal to his employers, will he not report this to his superiors? And will they not investigate? If you use this number, monsieur, you may very well destroy both my contact and me.”

“I see.” The connection was silent for a moment as Damone considered all of the ramifications. After a moment he said, “Rodrigo is impatient; I think it’s best if he doesn’t know this. Sometimes his desire for action can outweigh prudence. I will tell him that this person was to rent a mobile phone here, and hasn’t contacted anyone yet.”

“Thank you, monsieur. Thank you.” Blanc closed his eyes in relief.

“But,” Damone said, “it now occurs to me that you owe me a favor.”

Blanc was reminded that, reasonable or not, Damone was still a Nervi, and therefore dangerous. Tension knotted his stomach again. What else could he do except agree? “Yes,” he said heavily.

“This is private. There’s something I want you to do for me, something you can never tell anyone. The lives of your children depend on it.”

Tears burned Blanc’s eyes and he rubbed them away. His heart was pounding so hard he thought he might faint. He had never made the error of underestimating the brutality of which the Nervis were capable. “I understand. What is it I am to do?”

They were near the hotel when Swain said, “Let me take you home. You shouldn’t have to take the Metro when you’re so much safer in a car no one recognizes.”

Lily hesitated, instinctively not wanting to disclose the location of her apartment. “I took the Metro this morning,” she pointed out. “The trains are faster, anyway.” She had put her hair up under a cloche and worn sunglasses, as he’d suggested, just in case Rodrigo had people watching the train stations. There were a lot of stations in Paris; covering them would require a lot of manpower, but of course Rodrigo wouldn’t have to supply the men. With his influence, he could have others do the job.

“Yeah, but this morning the sun was shining, and now it’s dark. The sunglasses will make you conspicuous.” He grinned. “Plus I want to check out your bed and make sure it’s big enough for me.”

She rolled her eyes. One kiss and he expected her to fall into bed with him? She enjoyed kissing him, but she had merely been charmed, not rendered stupid. “It isn’t,” she said, “so there’s no point in you seeing it.”

“That depends. Is it narrow, or short? If it’s just narrow that’s no problem, because we’ll be double-decker anyway. But if it’s a short bed, I’ll have to rethink my infatuation with you, because there’s something wrong with a woman who doesn’t buy a bed long enough for a man to stretch out his legs.”

“It’s both,” she said, trying to control a giggle. She hadn’t giggled since she was eighteen, but one was building in her throat. “Short and narrow. I bought it from a convent.”

“Nuns sell their beds?”

“They had a huge garage sale as a fund-raiser.”

He threw back his head and laughed, not at all put out by her refusal. All of his lines and proposals were so outrageous she thought he must be at least half-joking, though if she took him up on any of them, like most men he’d jump at the opportunity to have sex.

He’d distracted her from his original suggestion, but she hadn’t forgotten it. She had to weigh her natural caution about divulging the location of her apartment against the risk of taking the Metro. Sometimes she wouldn’t be able to avoid taking the train, but why push her luck if she didn’t have to? What it came down to was, who did she think was more of a danger to her, Swain or Rodrigo? No contest there. So far, Swain had been solidly on her side, even though he didn’t have a compelling reason for helping her other than boredom and wanting to sleep with her. “I live in Montmartre,” she said. “It’s out of your way.”

He shrugged. “So what?”

If he didn’t care, why should she? The safety factor was the only reason to let him drive her, because the trains were a much more convenient way of getting around Paris, but it was a big reason.

She gave him directions and settled back in her seat; let him worry about fighting the traffic. He did it with his usual verve, shouted insults, and assorted gestures. He got a little too much into the spirit of things, actually accelerating once when a group of tourists tried to cross a street in front of him. Because this was Paris, naturally the car beside him speeded up, too. They barreled down on a portly middle-aged woman, and Lily gasped in horror. The woman’s eyes bugged out as the two cars bore down on her.

“Shit!” Swain yelled. “You son of a bitch!” He swerved sharply toward the car beside them, and its panicked driver jerked the steering wheel to the left as he slammed on his brakes. Swain downshifted into a lower gear and shot into the gap between the pedestrian and the fishtailing car, even as the woman scrambled to get back on the curb.

Brakes were screeching behind them, and Lily twisted in her seat to see what sort of carnage they were leaving behind. The car that had tried to block them from getting into the left lane was turned sideways in the broad street, with other vehicles at various angles around it. Horns were blaring, and angry drivers were already jumping out of their cars waving their arms and shaking their fists. She didn’t see any bodies on the ground, so evidently all the pedestrians were safe.

“Let me out,” she said furiously. “It’ll be safer on the trains with Rodrigo’s men than riding in a car that you’re driving!”

“I had room to swerve around them until that asshole beside me speeded up,” he said in sheepish defense.

“Of course he speeded up!” she yelled. “This is Paris! He’d have died before he just let you cut in front of him.”

She sank back, breathing hard in her fury. A few minutes later she said, “I told you to let me out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I’ll be more careful. I promise.”

Since he showed no signs of slowing down to let her out, she supposed she’d have to stay in the car with the lunatic. Her only other option was to shoot him, and that was looking more attractive by the minute. That poor woman! If she’d had a bad heart, the fright might have killed her. She’d looked okay, though, because she had been one of the fist-shakers, stepping back into the street to glare at their taillights as they sped away from the mayhem Swain had caused.

After five minutes of careful driving and total silence in the car, Swain said, “Did you see her face?”

Lily burst out laughing. It was awful of her, she knew, but the image of the woman’s red, choleric face going bug-eyed with panic would stay with her forever. She tried to control herself, because what he’d done wasn’t funny at all and she didn’t want him to think he’d got away with it.

“I can’t believe you’re laughing,” he said in disapproval, though the corners of his mouth were twitching. “That’s cold.”

It was, even though he was teasing. She gulped, wiped her eyes, and with sheer willpower forced herself to stop laughing.

She made the mistake of looking at him. As though he’d been waiting for her to do just that, he bugged out his eyes at her in perfect imitation of the woman’s expression, and Lily went off into whoops again. She rocked against the constraint of her seat belt, holding her stomach. To punish him she punched him in the arm, but she was laughing so hard there wasn’t any force behind the blow.

He turned sharply, off the main boulevard, and by some miracle found a place to pull the car off the road. Lily stopped laughing. “What’s happening?” she asked in alarm, looking around for a threat even as she reached down to her ankle holster.

Swain turned off the engine and grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t need a weapon,” he said in a rough tone as he dragged her as far over the console as her seat belt would allow. He kissed her hungrily, fiercely, cupping the back of her head in his left hand while with his right he kneaded and stroked her breasts. After an initial squeak of surprise, Lily let herself sink against him. The gearshift was digging into her hip, one knee was awkwardly bent, and she didn’t care.

She hadn’t felt passion in so long that it took her by surprise, both his and her own. She hadn’t realized how starved she was, how much she’d wanted someone to hold her. Needing more, she opened her mouth for him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He made love the same way he drove, fast and with great enthusiasm. He barely paused at second base, then drove for third, slipping his hand between her legs and gently massaging. In sheer reflex she grabbed his wrist, but she couldn’t make herself push his hand away. He set the heel of his palm against the center seam of her pants and rocked it back and forth, and Lily went boneless.

Only the fact that they were in the car saved her. Her bent leg began cramping under her and with a gasp she pulled away from his mouth, clumsily trying to twist so she could straighten out her leg, hampered by the seat belt and his arms. She gave one hoarse cry of pain, then ground her teeth together.

“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply as he tried to right her in the seat. They flailed around, elbows banging steering wheel, console, and dashboard, getting in each other’s way and generally looking like idiots. Finally Lily managed to fight her way back into her seat and with a groan of relief stretched out her aching leg as far as she could. It wasn’t far enough; she released the seat latch and pushed the seat back as far as it would go.

Panting, she tried to catch her breath as she massaged her thigh. “Cramp,” she muttered in explanation. Her knotted muscles began to relax and the pain receded. “I’m too old to be making out in a sports car,” she said, heaving a sigh. Leaning her head back against the seat, she gave a tired laugh. “I hope no one videotaped that little comedy.”

He was still turned toward her, the streetlights illuminating his face. He was smiling, his expression strangely tender. “You think we could be blackmailed with it?”

“Oh, yeah. Think how our reputations would suffer. What brought that on, anyway?”

His smile turned wry. “Have I mentioned that I get turned on when you laugh?”

“No, I don’t believe you have. I’m sure I’d have remembered.” He was wrong; she had definitely needed her weapon. She should have shot him before letting him kiss her like that, because now she wasn’t sure she could get through a day without having more of his kisses.

She returned her seat to its original position and smoothed her hair. “If you try, do you think you can manage the rest of the trip without scaring any more pedestrians half to death, almost killing us, or making another detour to attack me? I’d like to get home before midnight.”

“You liked being attacked. Admit it.” He reached for her left hand and took it, lacing her fingers with his. “If it hadn’t been for that cramp in your leg, you’d have liked it a lot more.”

“We’ll never know now, will we?” she asked.

“Wanna bet?”

“No matter how much I liked it, I’m not sleeping with someone I met just a few days ago. Period. So don’t get your hopes up, or anything else for that matter.”

“Too late, on both accounts.”

She swallowed a laugh, sucking hard on the insides oher cheeks. He gently squeezed her hand, then released it and restarted the engine. A U-turn put them back on the main boulevard.

Montmartre used to be thick on the ground with artists of all descriptions, but a lot of the area had deteriorated since its salad days. There were narrow, twisting one-lane streets with a groove down the middle for water to run off, buildings crowded close on each side, and a lot of tourists in search of nightlife. Lily guided him through the maze and finally said, “There, the blue door. That’s my apartment building.”

He pulled up outside the door. There was no place to park the car without blocking the street, so there was no question of him coming upstairs with her. She leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, then his mouth. “Thank you for today. It’s been fun.”

“It was my pleasure. Tomorrow?”

She hesitated, then said, “Call me. We’ll see.” Perhaps his friend would come through with the information they needed about the lab’s security. Swain was just as likely to come up with yet another impractical invitation that would for some reason appeal to her, though she thought they’d be safer if she drove instead of him—and her driving skills were sadly rusty.

He watched until she was inside the building, then lightly tapped the horn before driving away. Lily climbed the stairs, taking them slower than she once would have, pleased that she was only a little out of breath when she reached her little apartment on the third floor. She let herself in and locked the door behind her, then heaved a big sigh.

Damn him. He was getting inside her defenses and they both knew it.

As soon as Swain picked his way out of the maze that was Montmartre and could pay attention to something other than where he was, he turned on his cell phone to check for messages. There weren’t any, so he called Langley as he drove, and asked for Director Vinay’s office; maybe his assistant was still at her desk, though the time there was pushing five o’clock. When he recognized her voice, he was relieved. “This is Lucas Swain. Can you tell me the director’s condition?” Then he held his breath, praying that Frank was still alive.

“He’s still in critical condition,” she said. She sounded shaken. “He doesn’t have any immediate family, just two nieces and a nephew who live in Oregon. I contacted them, but I don’t know if any of them will be able to come.”

“Do you know the prognosis?”

“The doctors are saying that if he makes it through twenty-four hours, his odds get better.”

“Will you mind if I call you again for an update?”

“Of course not. I don’t have to tell you that this is being kept very quiet, do I?”

“No, ma’am.”

He thanked her and hung up, then breathed a combined thank-you and prayer. He had succeeded in distracting both himself and Lily today, but the knowledge that Frank could die had stayed in the back of his mind, gnawing at him. He didn’t know what he might have done, if it hadn’t been for Lily. Just being with her, devoting himself to making her laugh, had given him something to focus on other than his worries.

It broke his heart to think of her as an eighteen-year-old, just the age his son Sam was now, being recruited to kill someone in cold blood. God, whoever had done that should be taken out and shot. That man had robbed her of a normal life when she was still too young to realize how high the cost would be to herself. He could see how she would have been the perfect weapon, young and fresh and largely innocent, but that didn’t make it right. If he ever got the man’s name from her—assuming she’d been given his correct name and not an alias—he’d make it a point to hunt the bastard down.

His cell phone rang. He frowned, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. Surely to God, Frank’s assistant wasn’t calling him to say that Frank had just died—

He grabbed the phone and glanced at the number showing in the window. It was a French number, and he wondered who in hell could be calling, because it wasn’t Lily—she’d have used her own cell phone—and no one else here had his number.

He flipped it open and cradled it between his jaw and shoulder as he pushed in the clutch and downshifted for a turn. “Yeah.”

A man said in a quiet, even tone, “There is a mole in your CIA headquarters feeding information to Rodrigo Nervi. I thought you should know.”

“Who is this?” Swain asked, stunned, but there was no answer. The call had been disconnected.

Swearing, he closed the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. A mole? Shit! He couldn’t doubt it, though, because otherwise how had the Frenchman gotten this number? And the caller had definitely been a Frenchman; he’d spoken in English, but the accent was French. Not Parisian, though; Swain’d picked up on the Parisian accent within a day.

A chill ran down his spine. Had everything he’d requested been fed straight to Rodrigo Nervi? If so, any action he and Lily took could be taking them straight into a trap.

21

Swain paced back and forth in his hotel room, his usual good-humored expression replaced by one that was cold and hard. No matter how he looked at it, he was literally on his own. The mole at Langley could be anyone: Frank’s assistant; Patrick Washington, whom Swain had liked so much that one time he’d talked to him; any of the analysts; the case officers—hell, even the DDO, Garvin Reed. The only person there Swain totally trusted was Frank Vinay, who was in critical condition and might not live. With this revelation from his mysterious caller, Swain had to consider that Frank’s automobile accident might not have been accidental, after all.

But if he had thought of that, then probably several thousand others at Langley had thought the same thing. What if the mole was conveniently placed to divert suspicion from the accident?

The thing was, though, auto accidents were tricky, definitely not the most reliable method of eliminating someone; people had been known to walk away from accidents that totaled their cars. On the other hand, if you killed someone and didn’t want anyone to know it was deliberate, you staged events to make it look like an accident. How well it was staged depended on the reliability of the parties involved, and the amount of money behind it.

But how could anyone stage an auto accident that would take out the DO? Logically, predicting where someone would be at any given moment in the D.C. traffic was impossible, what with the fender benders, mechanical troubles, and flat tires all over the city that delayed and diverted traffic to other routes. Add in the human factor, such as oversleeping, stopping for a latte—he didn’t see how it could be done, how anyone could time things so perfectly.

At any rate, surely to God, Frank’s driver hadn’t taken the same route to work every day. That was basic. Frank wouldn’t have allowed it.

So—logically, the accident had to be just what it seemed: an accident.

The result was the same. Whether or not Frank lived, he was out of commission, unreachable. Swain had been a field officer for a long time, but he’d been in the field, working with various insurgents and military groups in South America; he hadn’t actually spent much time in CIA headquarters. He didn’t know very many people there, and they didn’t know him. He’d always considered it a bonus that he was seldom at headquarters, but now that put him in a bind, because he had no one he knew well enough to trust.

So there would be no more help from Langley, no more requests for information. He tried to work the angles on what this meant to his particular situation. The way he saw it, he had two options: he could pull the plug on Lily right now and complete his stated mission, then hope to God that Frank lived so he could root out this damned mole—or he could stay here, work with Lily in cracking the Nervis’ security, and try to find out from this end who the mole was. Of the two, he preferred staying here. For one thing, he was already here, and no matter how good the security was at the Nervi complex, it wouldn’t be anything compared to the security at Langley.

Then there was Lily. She touched him and amused him and turned him on way more than he’d expected. Yeah, he’d found her attractive from the get-go, but the more time he spent with her, the better he knew her, the more intense the attraction became. He was getting in deeper with her than he’d ever planned, but it still wasn’t deep enough. He wanted more.

So he’d stay here and do the best he could to work things from this end, totally on his own. He’d been playing along with Lily’s scheme to break into the lab complex out of his own curiosity—that, and a strong desire to get into her pants—but now he needed to get serious about it. And he wasn’t totally alone; he had Lily, who was no novice, and he also had his unknown caller. Whoever he was, the man was well-placed enough to know what was going on, and by warning Swain he’d placed himself on the side of the angels.

Thanks to the handy-dandy little cell-phone feature that listed incoming calls, Swain had the guy’s number, both literally and figuratively. A person almost couldn’t make a move today without leaving an electronic or paper footprint somewhere. Sometimes that was a blessing, sometimes a curse, depending on whether you were searching or hiding.

It was possible the guy even knew the name of the mole, but Swain doubted it. Otherwise, why give him a generic heads-up? If it had mattered enough for him to warn Swain, then he’d have given the name if he’d had it.

But you never knew how much information anyone had that they didn’t know they had, bits and pieces they simply hadn’t put together yet into a cohesive whole. The only way to find out was by asking.

He didn’t want to call his unknown informant back using his cell phone, on the off chance that the guy didn’t want to talk to him and wouldn’t answer after seeing his phone number listed as incoming. Likewise, he didn’t want this guy to know he was staying at the Bristol; just seemed safer that way. He’d bought a telephone card the day he’d arrived in France, figuring he’d never use it but wanting to have it just in case his cell phone batteries died unexpectedly or something. Leaving the hotel, he walked down Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, bypassing the first public phone for one farther down the street.

He was smiling as he dialed the number, but this smile was totally lacking in humor. It was more like the smile of a shark as it closed in on lunch. He glanced at his wristwatch as he listened to the phone ringing: 1:43 AM. Good. He was probably getting the guy out of bed, which is what he deserved for hanging up the way he had.

“Yes?”

The tone was wary, but Swain recognized the voice. “Hi there,” he said cheerfully, in English. “I didn’t disturb anyone, did I? don’t hang up, now. Play along and all you’ll get is a phone call. Hang up on me and you’ll get a visit.”

There was a pause. “What do you want?” Unlike Swain, the guy on the other end spoke in French; Swain was glad he knew enough of the language to get by.

“Nothing much. I just want to know everything you know.”

“One moment, please.” Swain heard the man speaking quietly to someone, a woman. Though it was difficult to tell what he was saying with the phone away from his mouth, Swain thought he caught something about “taking the call downstairs.”

Ah. So he was at home.

Then the man returned to the phone, saying briskly, “Yes, what may I do for you?”

Smoke screen for the wife’s sake, Swain thought. “You can give me a name, for starters.”

“The mole’s?” He must be out of earshot of his wife, because the guy had switched to English.

“Definitely, but I was thinking of yours.”

The man paused again. “It would be better if you do not know.”

“Better for you, yes, but I’m not worried about making things better for you.”

“But I am, monsieur.” Firmness there now; the man wasn’t a milquetoast. “I am risking my life and the lives of my family. Rodrigo Nervi is not one to take betrayal lightly.”

“You work for him?”

“No. Not in that sense.”

“I’m feeling a little dense, here. Either he pays you or he doesn’t. Which is it?”

“If I give him certain information, monsieur, he does not kill my family. Yes, he pays me; the money further incriminates me, yes?” Bitterness entered the quiet voice. “It is an insurance that I will not talk.”

“I see.” Swain eased off on the smart-ass tough-guy act—or at least he racheted down his behavior—though, it came so naturally to him, it probably wasn’t an act. “Something puzzles me. How did Nervi even know I was here, that he would be asking about me? I assume that’s how my name came up, and how you got my phone number.”

“He was searching for the identity of one of your contract agents. I believe it was a facial-recognition computer program that identified her. The mole accessed her file, and there was a notation that you had been dispatched to handle the problem she caused.”

“How did he know she was a contract agent?”

“He did not. He was exploring several different means of identifying her.”

So that was how Rodrigo had acquired a photo of Lily without the disguise she had used when she was with Salvatore. He knew what Lily looked like, and he knew her real name. Swain asked, “Does Nervi know my name?”

“I cannot say. I am the conduit between the CIA and Nervi, but I haven’t given your name to him. He did ask for a way to contact you.”

“In God’s name, why?”

“To offer you a deal, I believe. A lot of money in exchange for any information you have about the whereabouts of the woman he is seeking.”

“What made him think I would take the deal?”

“You are for hire, yes?”

“No,” Swain said briefly.

“You are not a contract agent?”

“No.” He didn’t say more. If the CIA had sent him, and he wasn’t a contract agent, then there was only one other category for him: field officer. He suspected this guy was bright enough to figure it out.

“Ah.” There was the sound of a sharply drawn breath. “Then I have made the correct decision.”

“Which is?”

“I did not give him your phone number.”

“Even though your family is in danger?”

“I have a cover. There is another Nervi, a younger brother, Damone, who is . . . not quite in the family mold. He is intelligent, and reasonable. When I pointed out the inherent dangers in contacting someone who worked for the CIA, that this person would realize the only way Rodrigo could have his telephone number was if someone with the CIA had given it to him—moreover, this person could be very loyal to his country—Damone saw the wisdom of what I was saying. He said he would report to Rodrigo that the CIA person—that is yourself, of course—had rented a mobile here and had not yet contacted headquarters, so there was no current number available.”

That made sense, even though the explanation was a tad convoluted. Rodrigo likely didn’t know that field officers, when outside their own country, would use either secure international cell phones or satellite phones.

Another piece also fit neatly into this little piece. For information to be routed from the CIA through this man to Rodrigo Nervi, then the man Swain was talking to had to be in a position to request such sensitive information—and have quite a lot to lose if anyone found out. “What are you?” he asked. “Interpol?”

He heard a quick intake of breath and triumphantly thought, Bingo! Got it in one. Looked as if Salvatore Nervi had poked his fingers into a lot of pies that he shouldn’t have.

“So what you’re doing,” he said, “is getting back at Nervi without endangering your family. You can’t overtly refuse to do anything he asks, can you?”

“I have children, monsieur. Perhaps you don’t understand—”

“I have two of my own, so, yes, I understand perfectly.”

“He would kill them without hesitation if I don’t cooperate. In this matter with his brother, I did not refuse a request; his brother made a decision concerning it.”

“But since you had my number anyway, you thought you’d put it to good use by making an anonymous call to warn me of the mole.”

“Oui. An investigation prompted by an internal suspicion is far different from one instigated from outside, no?”

“Agreed.” This guy wanted the mole caught; he wanted that contact closed off. He must be feeling guilty about the information he’d passed along over the years and was trying to somewhat atone. “How much damage have you done?”

“To national security, very little, monsieur. When asked I must provide at least a soupçon of reliable information, but always I have removed more sensitive items.”

Swain accepted that. After all, the guy had a conscience or he wouldn’t have called him with a warning. “Do you know the mole’s name?”

“No, we have never used names. He does not know mine, either. By that I mean our real names. We have identifiers, of course.”

“Then how does he get information to you? I assume he sends it through channels, so anything that is faxed or scanned would have to be sent to your attention.”

“I set up a fictitious identity on my home computer for those things that must be sent electronically, which is most things. Only rarely is anything faxed. Such a thing could be traced, of course—assuming one knew what to look for. I can access the account from my . . . the word escapes me. The small hand-computer in which one puts one’s appointments—”

“PDA,” Swain said.

“Oui. The PDA.” Said with a French accent, it was pei d’ay.

“The number you use to contact him—”

“It is a mobile number, I believe, as I am always able to reach him on it.”

“Have you had the number traced?”

“We do not investigate, monsieur; we coordinate.”

Swain was well aware that Interpol’s constitution directly prohibited the organization from conducting its own investigations. His guy had just confirmed that he was indeed Interpol, not that Swain had doubted it.

“I am certain the mobile phone would be registered under a false name,” the Frenchman continued. “That would be easy for him to do, I think.”

“A snap of the fingers,” Swain agreed, pinching the bridge of his nose. A fake driver’s license was easy to come by, especially for people in their line of work. Lily had used three sets of identification running from Rodrigo. For someone who worked at Langley, how hard could it be?

He tried to think of the various means available for nabbing this guy. “How often are you in contact?”

“Sometimes not for months. Twice in the past few days.”

“So a third contact so soon would be unusual?”

“Very unusual. But would he be suspicious? Perhaps, perhaps not. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking, monsieur, that you’re between a rock and a hard place and would like to get out. Am I right?”

“A rock and a—? Ah, I understand. I would like that very much.”

“What I need is a recording of your next conversation with him. Turn off the recorder while you’re talking, if you want. The content of the conversation isn’t important, just his voice.”

“You will get a voiceprint.”

“Yeah. I’ll also need the recorder you use. Then all I have to do is find a match.” Voiceprint analysis was fairly exact; that and facial-recognition programs had been used to differentiate Saddam Hussein from his doubles. A voice was a product of the structure of each individual’s throat, nasal passages, and mouth, and hard to fake. Even impressionists couldn’t exactly match a voice. Variables came in with the differences between microphones, recorders, audio feed, and so on. By having the same recorder, he took that variable out of the equation.

“I am willing to do this,” the Frenchman said. “It is a danger to me and my loved ones, but I think the risk is manageable, with your cooperation.”

“Thank you,” Swain said sincerely. “Are you willing to go a step further, and perhaps remove the threat from existence?”

There was a very long pause; then he said, “How would you do this?”

“You have contacts you trust?”

“But of course.”

“Someone who could maybe find out the specs of the security system at a certain complex?”

“Specs . . . ?”

“Blueprint. Technical details.”

“I assume this complex belongs to the Nervi organization?”

“It does.” Swain gave him the name of the laboratory, and the address.

“I will see what I can do.”

22

Lily smiled when her cell phone rang the next morning. Expecting another half-humorous half-serious obscene call from Swain, she didn’t check the number of the incoming call before she answered. Just to jerk his chain, she changed her voice to a deep, almost masculine tone, and barked an impatient, “Hello!” into the phone.

“Mademoiselle Mansfield?” The voice she heard wasn’t Swain’s; it was one that had been electronically altered so the voice was distorted, and the words sounded as if they were coming out of a drum.

Lily went cold with shock and without thinking she started to disconnect the call, but calm reason reasserted itself. Just because someone had her cell phone number didn’t mean he knew where to locate her. The phone was registered in her real name; the apartment and everything connected to it was in Claudia Weber’s name. It was, in fact, reassuring that the caller had referred to her as “Mansfield”; her Claudia persona was still secure.

Who had access to this phone number? It was her private cell phone, one she used only for personal business. Tina and Averill had had the number, of course, and Zia; Swain had it. Who else? Once she’d had a large circle of acquaintances, but that had practically been pre­cell phone; since the day she’d found Zia, the circle had grown smaller and smaller as she devoted herself to the baby, and smaller still after the debacle with Dmitri. She couldn’t think of anyone now who had this number other than Swain.

“Mademoiselle Mansfield?” the distorted voice asked again.

“Yes?” Lily replied, forcing herself to sound calm. “How did you get this number?”

He didn’t answer, instead saying in French, “You do not know me, but I knew your friends, the Joubrans.”

The words sounded strange, above and beyond the distortion that disguised the voice, as if the speaker had difficulty talking. She tensed even more at the mention of her friends. “Who are you?”

“Forgive me, but that must remain private.”

“Why?”

“It is safer.”

“Safer for whom?” she asked drily.

“Both of us.”

Okay, she could go with that. “Why did you call?”

“It is I who hired your friends to destroy the laboratory. I never intended for what happened, to happen. No one was supposed to die.”

Shocked once more, Lily groped behind her for a chair, sank down onto it. She had wanted answers, and without warning they were dropping into her lap. The phrase “never look a gift horse in the mouth” warred with “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” So which was the caller, figuratively, a horse or a Greek?

“Why did you hire them?” she finally asked. “More to the point, why are you calling me?”

“Your friends succeeded in their mission—temporarily. Unfortunately, research has resumed, and it must be stopped. You have reason to want to succeed: revenge. That is why you killed Salvatore Nervi. Therefore, I would like to hire you to complete the mission.”

A cold sweat trickled down her spine. How did he know she’d killed Salvatore? She licked suddenly dry lips, but didn’t explore that avenue. Instead she focused on the rest of his statement. This man wanted to hire her to do what she planned to do anyway. The irony of it almost made her laugh, except she felt more bitter than amused. “What exactly is this mission?”

“There is a virus, an avian influenza virus. Dr. Giordano has altered it so it may be passed from human to human, to create a pandemic and therefore a huge demand for the vaccine he has also developed. People do not have a resistance to this virus; mankind has not encountered it before. To create even greater panic, Dr. Giordano has somehow specifically engineered this virus to cause the greatest harm to children, who do not have immune systems as fully developed as adults. Millions will die, mademoiselle. It will be a pandemic greater than the one in 1918, which is believed to have killed between twenty and fifty million people.“

. . . Cause the greatest harm to children. Zia. Lily felt sick that she had been right, that it was something concerning Zia that had spurred Averill and Tina to the act that had eventually resulted in their deaths. In trying to protect Zia, they had caused her death. She wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, at the ultimate irony. She clenched her fist, fighting for control, fighting to contain the fury and pain that rose into her throat like lava.

“The virus has been perfected. As soon as the vaccine is ready, packages will be delivered worldwide to the largest cities in the world, where human contact is greatest. The influenza will spread rapidly. By the time there is worldwide panic, thousands, perhaps millions, will have died. Then Dr. Giordano will announce that he has developed a vaccine for avian influenza, and the Nervi organization will be able to name its price for it. They will make an enormous fortune.”

Yes, they would. It was classic. Control the supply, then create a demand for it. De Beers did it with diamonds; by carefully limiting the diamonds available on the market, they kept the price artificially high. Diamonds weren’t rare at all, but the supply was controlled. It was roughly the same situation with crude oil and OPEC, except in the case of oil, the world had created its own demand.

“How do you know all this?” she asked angrily. “Why haven’t you told the authorities?”

There was a pause; then the distorted voice said, “Salvatore Nervi had many political connections, people in high positions who owed him many favors. This same laboratory is developing the vaccine against the virus, so the virus’s existence there is explained. There is no proof that would outweigh his influence. That is why I was forced to hire professionals.”

Unfortunately, that was true; there were many influential politicians who had set up housekeeping in Salvatore’s pocket, making him all but untouchable.

It was also true that she had no idea whom she was talking to, if he was on the level, or if Rodrigo had found her cell phone number and was using this as a ruse to draw her out. She would have to be a fool to take everything this man said at face value.

“Will you do it?” he asked.

“How can I say yes when I don’t know who you are? How can I possibly trust you?”

“I understand the difficulty, but I have no solution.”

“I am not the only person you could hire.”

“No, but your motivation is greater, perhaps, and also you are here now. I do not have to waste time looking for someone else.”

“Tina Joubran was an expert with security systems. I am not.”

“You do not need to be. It was I who provided the Joubrans with the details of the security system in place at the laboratory.”

“It would have been changed after the incident in August.”

“Yes, it was. I have acquired that information, also.”

“If you know all of this, you must work at the laboratory. You could destroy the virus yourself.”

“There are reasons why I could not.”

Again she caught some strange difficulty in his speech, and abruptly she wondered if perhaps the speaker was handicapped in some fashion.

“I will pay you one million American dollars to do this.”

Lily rubbed her forehead. That was wrong, the amount was way too much. Her inner alarm bells began ringing.

When she didn’t say anything, the man continued, “There is one other thing. Dr. Giordano must also be killed. If he lives, he will replicate his success with some other virus. Everything must be destroyed: the doctor, his research papers, computer files, the virus. Everything. That is a mistake I made the first time, not being thorough.”

Abruptly one million dollars didn’t seem so far out of line. Everything he had said so far was reasonable and answered many of the questions she’d had, but innate caution held her back. There had to be some way she could safeguard herself in case this was a trap, but this entire conversation had taken her unawares and she hadn’t been able to properly marshal her thoughts. She needed to think everything out before she made a decision.

“I can’t give you an answer now,” she said. “I have several things to consider.”

“I understand. This could be a trap. You are wise to consider all possibilities, and yet time is a factor. I believe the job I have offered you is a goal you have in any case, one that you have a greater chance of attaining with my help. The longer you wait, the greater the odds that Rodrigo Nervi will locate you. He is intelligent and ruthless, and money is no object. He has people all over Paris, all over Europe, in shops and police departments. Given enough time, he will find you. With the money I will pay you, you will have the means to effectively disappear.”

He was right. A million dollars would improve her situation beyond all measure. Yet she still couldn’t jump at the offer, couldn’t ignore the possibility that the bait might blind her to the trap.

“Consider these things. I will call you again tomorrow. I must have your answer then, or pursue other avenues.”

The connection was broken. Automatically Lily checked her incoming call log for the number, but she wasn’t surprised to see that the information had been blocked; a man who had a million dollars available to hire a saboteur would also be able to afford layers of security.

But would someone that wealthy work at the laboratory? Not likely. So how did he have this information? How could he get the schematics of the security system?

Who he was, and how he got his information, was all-important. He could be a partner in Salvatore’s scheme who got cold feet when he thought about all the innocents who would die—though in Lily’s experience, people like the Nervis and their ilk simply didn’t care who or how many died, so long as they achieved their aim.

Or had the caller been Rodrigo Nervi himself, telling her the truth about what was going on in order to draw her into a trap? He was intelligent enough, bold enough, to conceive and enact such a plot, to make it realistic down to the last detail, such as telling her he wanted her to kill Dr. Giordano.

Rodrigo Nervi also had the means to acquire her cell phone number, which for the sake of privacy she had not had listed in the Pages Blanches.

Her fingers were trembling as she punched in Swain’s number.

On the third ring she heard his sleepy, “Good morning, sexy.”

“Something has happened,” she said in a tense voice, ignoring his greeting. “I need to see you.”

“Do you want me to pick you up, or do you want to come here?” He sounded instantly alert.

“Pick me up,” she said; her caller’s warning about Rodrigo having people everywhere had made her nervous. She had known that, had felt safe riding the trains by covering her hair and wearing sunglasses, yet having been tracked down so easily by someone who evidently knew everything made her nervous. Most Parisians used the train service, because traffic was such a nightmare. Having people watch the trains for someone of her description was a no-brainer.

“Depending on the traffic, I’ll be there in . . . oh, anywhere between an hour and two days.”

“Call when you get close and I’ll meet you on the street,” she said, and disconnected without responding to his joke.

She showered and dressed, in her usual pants and boots. A peek out the window showed a sunny sky, thank goodness, so she wouldn’t look odd wearing sunglasses. She pinned up her hair so she could cover it with a hat, then sat down at the small eating table and meticulously checked her weapon, then put extra ammunition in her bag. That call had definitely spooked her, something that didn’t often happen.

“I’m five minutes away,” Swain announced an hour and fifteen minutes later.

“I’ll be waiting,” Lily replied. She put on her coat and hat, then slipped on her sunglasses, grabbed her bag, and hurried downstairs. She could hear the sound of a powerful car engine prowling up the narrow, winding street at a reckless speed, then the silver car rocketed into view and screeched to a halt directly in front of her. It was moving again almost before she got the door closed.

“What’s up?” Swain asked, without any of the usual teasing in his voice. He wore sunglasses, too, and the way he handled the car was fast but businesslike, with no goofing around.

“I had a call on my cell phone,” she said as she buckled up. “I haven’t given the number to anyone but you, so I answered without checking the number. It wouldn’t have done me any good, anyway, because it was blocked. The voice was electronically disguised, but it was a man, and he offered me a million dollars—American—to destroy the Nervi lab and kill the doctor in charge.”

“Go on,” he said, downshifting through a sharp curve.

She spelled out the rest of it for him, including every detail she could remember. When she got to the part about the avian influenza virus, he very softly said, “Son of a bitch,” then listened to the rest without comment.

When she was finished, he said, “How long did you talk?”

“Five minutes or so. Maybe a little longer.”

“Long enough to triangulate your position, then. Not an exact location, but the general area. If it was Nervi, he could blanket the area with people showing your photograph, and eventually he’d get a hit.”

“I haven’t made any acquaintances here. The apartment is sublet from someone who’s out of the country.”

“That helps, but your eyes are very distinctive. You must be part husky. Anyone who sees you will remember those eyes.”

“Thanks,” she said drily.

“I think you need to get what you need from the apartment, and stay with me instead. Definitely until he calls back. If it is Nervi and he does get another triangulation on your phone, it will be in a totally different district and that will throw him off.”

“So he’ll think I’m moving around, not staying in any one place.”

“With luck. It’s possible interference from the hotel itself would prevent anyone from locking on to the signal. Big buildings really screw up the electronics.”

Stay with him. It was a sound plan; they would be together, she wouldn’t have to check in, and who would look for her in a luxury hotel?

There were several pluses to the plan, and only one minus that she could see. Silly of her to get hung up on it, but she was still reluctant to be intimate with him and she wasn’t naive enough to think it wouldn’t happen if they were sleeping in the same room. There were bigger things here to worry about than whether they would have sex, yet still she hesitated.

He gave her a hard, clear look that said he was reading her mind, but he didn’t jump in to reassure her he’d keep his hands to himself and not try to take advantage of the situation. Of course he’d take advantage. That was a given.

“All right,” she said.

He didn’t gloat, didn’t even smile. He just said, “Good. Now run through all that about the influenza virus again. I actually know someone in Atlanta who can tell me whether or not this is all feasible, before we rush in to save the world from some half-baked scheme that wouldn’t work anyway.”

She repeated everything she remembered while he worked his way through the narrow streets back to her apartment. Pulling up to the curb, he said, “You want to drive around for a few minutes while I go up and check that no one’s in your apartment?”

Lily tapped the side of her boot. “Thank you, but I can do it.”

“I’ll be circling as best I can, given nothing seems to be laid out in a block. And while I’m circling, I’ll be making that call.”

“Sounds good to me.” She climbed the stairs she had descended not half an hour before. When she’d left, she had pulled out a hair, wet it, and stuck it across the door and doorframe just an inch above the floor. The blond hair was as invisible as fishing line against the wood. She bent down close to look, and breathed a sigh of relief. The hair was still there. The apartment was safe. Unlocking the door, she went in and hurried around gathering her clothes and toiletries, everything she thought she would need. God only knew when or even if she’d ever be able to return for the rest of her things.

23

There were some old friends whose telephone numbers remained with you forever. Micah Sumner wasn’t one of them, however, so while Lily was in her apartment gathering her clothes, Swain was trying to negotiate the narrow streets, shift gears, and punch in what felt like an endless series of numbers as he waded through the electronic mire required to reach information in the States, all at the same time. Then he didn’t have anything to write the number down on, much less the fourth hand he needed to do it with, so when the computerized voice asked if he would like to be connected, he muttered, “Shit, yes,” then pressed the number that corresponded to “Shit, yes.”

By the fifth ring, Swain was beginning to doubt anyone was going to answer. But on the sixth one, there was some fumbling and a sleep-fogged voice said, “Yeah, hello.”

“Micah, this is Lucas Swain.”

“Well, son of a bitch.” There was the sound of a huge yawn. “haven’t heard from you in a coon’s age. Wish I wasn’t hearing from you right now, either. Do you know what fucking time it is?”

Swain looked at his watch. “Let’s see; it’s nine AM here, so that would make it . . . three AM, right?”

“Bastard.” That was said around another yawn. “Okay, why’d you wake me up? This had better be good.”

“I don’t know if it is or not.” Swain cradled the phone between his jaw and shoulder as he changed gears. “What do you know about avian influenza?”

“Bird flu? You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“Nope, I’m serious as a heart attack. Is bird flu dangerous?”

“Not to wild fowl, but it is to domesticated birds. Remember seeing on the news several years back . . . 1997, I think . . . where there was an outbreak of bird flu in Hong Kong and they killed almost two million chickens to get rid of it?”

“Television was kind of hard to come by where I was. So it kills birds?”

“Yeah. Not a hundred percent of them, but enough. The problem is, sometimes the virus mutates and is transmitted from birds to humans.”

“Is that more dangerous than regular flu?”

“Way more. If it’s a virus the human body hasn’t seen before, then there’s no immune system resistance to it and you get sick as hell. Then you either die or you don’t.”

“That’s comforting.”

“We’ve been lucky so far. We’ve had a few mutations that allow bird-to-human infection, but none of the avian influenza viruses have made the magic leap that allows for human-to-human transmission. Like I said, so far. We’re way overdue for a recombinant virus to hit us hard, but the avian flu that’s been hitting Hong Kong doesn’t look like a recombinant; it looks like a true avian virus. But it’s infecting people, too. If it mutates that little bit needed for human-to-human infection, then we’re in big trouble, because we’d have even less resistance to it than we would have to a recombinant virus that we’d seen at least a part of before.”

“What about vaccines for it?” Swain drove around a curve and there was Lily’s apartment building, but she wasn’t standing on the street with all her worldly goods around her, so he drove past it to make another convoluted loop.

“We wouldn’t have one. New viruses hit hard and fast; vaccines take months to test, to get them out to the general populace. By the time we could get an effective vaccine against an avian virus, a lot of people will have died. It’s even harder to get one for avian influenza than it is for regular influenza viruses, because vaccines are cultured in eggs and—guess what—avian influenza will kill the eggs.”

“Is this something the CDC is really worried about?”

“You’re kidding, right? Flu kills a hell of a lot more people than the exotics that get all the sexy press, like the hemorrhagic fevers.”

“So if some lab or something developed the vaccine ahead of time, then let the virus loose, they could make some serious money?”

“Hey, wait a minute.” All sleepiness had fled Micah’s tone. “Swain, are you telling me what I think you’re telling me? That’s a possible scenario?”

“I’ve just heard about it; I haven’t checked it out yet. I don’t know if there’s anything to it. I wanted to see if it’s feasible first.”

“Feasible? It’s brilliant, but it’s a fucking nightmare. We’ve dodged the bullet the past few years, only regular influenza viruses have made the rounds, but we’re holding our breaths and trying to get a reliable method of producing the vaccine before one of these damn bugs turns on us. Worldwide, even with antiviral drugs and medications to treat the complications, millions would die.”

“Would it hit kids hardest?”

“Sure. Kids don’t have the fully-developed immune system adults have. They haven’t been exposed to as many bugs.”

“Thanks, Micah, that’s what I needed to know.” It wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear, but at least now he knew what he was dealing with.

“Don’t hang up! Swain, is something like that going on? You have to tell me, man, you can’t let us get caught flat-footed by something like this.”

“I won’t.” He hoped; he’d have to take some fail-safe precautions. “It’s just a rumor, nothing concrete. Flu season has already started, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s looking like a normal season so far. But if you find out there’s some bastard looking to make a fortune with a virus like this, we need to know.”

“You’ll be the first,” Swain lied. “I’ll call you next week and let you know what’s going on, good or bad.” He would call, but Micah probably wouldn’t be the first.

“Even at three fucking AM,” Micah groused.

“You got it. Thanks, pal.”

Swain disconnected, then dropped the phone in his pocket. Damn. Okay, so this scheme Lily’s caller had told her about was not only feasible, but a real problem. Swain tried to think of alternate means of handling it. He couldn’t call Langley because Frank was out of commission, there was a fucking mole in place who was feeding information to Rodrigo Nervi, and he had no idea whom he could trust. If Frank was there . . . well, one phone call and the whole damn laboratory complex would be toast tomorrow morning, but Frank wasn’t there, so Swain had to turn it into toast himself. Somehow.

He could have given Micah the particulars, but what could the CDC do? Nothing more than alert the World Health Organization. Even if the WHO had the place raided without someone in the local police structure tipping off Nervi first, yeah, they’d find the virus, but the Nervi lab was working on a vaccine for the virus, so of course the virus would have to be there for testing, et cetera. It was a neat scheme, logically explaining away the smoking gun. He had to admire it.

He made it back to the apartment building, and this time Lily was there, carrying two carpet bags and with a familiar-looking tote hanging on her shoulder. He grinned as he looked fondly at the tote bag. Without it, he might never have found her.

He got out to stow the bags for her. They were on the heavy side, and he noticed she was a little breathless, which reminded him she’d said the poison had done some damage to a heart valve. He tended not to remember that, because she was such a capable person, but the fact was that only about two weeks had passed since she’d killed Salvatore Nervi and almost died herself. Even if the damage to her heart was minimal, there was no way she could have fully recovered her strength in such a short length of time.

He studied her as he opened the car door for her. Her lips weren’t blue, and her unpainted fingernails were pink. She was getting enough oxygen. She’d been rushing around, up and down three flights of stairs, so of course she was breathless. He would be, too. Relieved, he stopped her as she was about to get into the car. She looked up with a questioning expression, and he kissed her.

Her mouth was soft, and she leaned into him with such easy acceptance that his heartbeat kicked into a gallop. The street was no place for how he wanted to kiss her, however, so he contented himself with that brief taste. She smiled, one of those completely feminine smiles that left a man feeling drunk and confused and happy all at the same time, then slid into the seat and pulled the car door shut.

“Shit,” he said as he got in the driver’s seat. “I’m probably gonna have to dump this car.”

“Because I could have been seen getting into it?”

“Yeah. Though we probably look like a couple going away on vacation, it’s better not to take the chance. Now what will I get?”

“Maybe something a little less noticeable, like a red Lamborghini?” That wasn’t fair, since the Mégane Renault wasn’t in any way in the same class with a Lamborghini, but it was still a noticeable car.

He chuckled at the dig. “So I like good cars. Sue me.”

“Did you get in touch with your friend in the States?”

“Yeah, but he was bitchy about the time difference. The bad news is, not only is this virus thing feasible, it’s the CDC’s worst nightmare.”

“What’s the good news?”

“There isn’t any. Except Nervi isn’t going to release the virus until the vaccine is available, because of course he wants to be the first one innoculated, right? And it takes months to develop a vaccine. Since your friends did some damage to the program in August and presumably the mad doctor had to start over, I think we’re safe in thinking they aren’t going to release the virus during this flu season. They’ll wait until next year.”

She blew out a relieved breath. “That makes sense to me.” She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking. I didn’t know about the virus before, but now . . . This isn’t something we have to do alone. Even though I’m not in good standing with the CIA right now, I could still use a pay phone and call my former contact there, let him know what’s going on. They could handle something on this magnitude much better than just the two of us can.”

Swain almost jumped out of his skin. “For God’s sake, don’t do that!” Her reasoning was sound, but she didn’t know about the mole and he couldn’t tell her without blowing the whistle on himself.

“Why not?” Her tone was more curious than anything else, but he could feel that pale blue gaze boring into him like lasers. She could cut steel with that look.

He didn’t have a good reason on the tip of his tongue, and for a split second he thought the whole thing was going to blow up in his face, but then he had a flash of genius. He could pretty much tell her everything essential, without giving anything away. It was all in how he phrased it. “You know Nervi has contacts and influence there.”

“He’s an asset, an informer, but—”

“But he’s also a very wealthy man. What are the odds someone there is on his payroll?” It was a simple explanation, and a true one. He was just leaving out a few details.

She turned back in her seat and scowled. “It’s good odds. Salvatore was thorough, and Rodrigo is even more so. So we don’t dare go to anyone, do we?”

“No one I’ve been able to think of, that he wouldn’t have someone there on his payroll. Not the French police, not Interpol . . .” He let his voice trail off and shrugged. “I guess we have to save the world ourselves.”

“I don’t want to save the world,” she said grumpily. “I like things on a smaller scale. I want it to be personal.”

He had to laugh, because he knew what she meant. As much as she’d wanted to bring down the Nervi organization before, now they had to do it.

The job was much tougher than he’d imagined at the beginning. With a virus like that having to be contained, the security would be on a par with that at the CDC in Atlanta. Getting in would require more than just having information about the security system; they would need inside help. Just how they got that help was going to be a bitch.

“We may have to take the chance that the guy who called you is on the up and up,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re screwed.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” she said, surprising him. Sometimes it was scary the way their brains seemed to work the same way and at the same pace. “The security in place because of the virus will be layered, and the virus itself kept in strict quarantine. We need someone inside.”

“You’ll have to meet with him. That’s the only way we can know it isn’t Rodrigo Nervi. If it is Rodrigo, he’ll jump at the chance to have you come to him. He doesn’t know about me—well, he might have an idea after the shoot-out the other day, but he doesn’t know what I look like or anything—so I can watch your back.”

She gave a grim smile. “If it is Rodrigo, he’ll have so many men watching that you won’t be able to do a thing about it. But I agree, that’s the only way. I’ll have to do it. But if it’s Rodrigo and they grab me, do me a favor and kill me. Don’t let them take me alive, because I expect Rodrigo will want to have some fun and games with me before he kills me. I’d just as soon skip that part.”

Swain’s stomach knotted at the thought of Nervi getting his hands on her. There were hard decisions he had to make, but that wasn’t one of them. “I won’t let that happen,” he said quietly.

“Thanks.” Her smile turned a little brighter, as if he’d given her a gift, and his stomach knotted even tighter.

Neither of them had eaten yet that morning, so with Lily’s sunglasses and hat in place they stopped at a sidewalk café and had brioches and coffee. He watched her eat, his heart thudding as he wondered if this was the last day he’d have with her. He’d thought he could put if off longer, but circumstances were piling up on them. If her mystery caller was Rodrigo Nervi, there was no way they could know until the meeting, and then it would be too late.

He wished there was some other way they could do it, but there wasn’t. The meeting had to take place. She had to accept the guy’s proposal when he called tomorrow, set up a meeting, and be there. Then . . . the caller would either turn out to be Nervi, or someone else. God, he prayed it was someone else. He wanted more than one more day with her. He wanted more than one night.

He himself had gone into every job knowing it might be his last, that when you worked with violent people sometimes the violence turned on you. Lily was the same; she had put herself in the front lines and accepted the odds. That didn’t make it any easier, knowing she was there by choice.

But if Nervi and his goons were the ones who showed up and he lost Lily, he swore to God the bastard would pay. Big time.

24

Swain turned in his Mégane and, at Lily’s insistence, got a little blue four-cylinder Fiat from a different rental company. “No!” he moaned in horror when she told him what she wanted him to get. “Let’s get a Mercedes instead. There are a lot of Mercedes around.” He brightened. “I know. Let’s get a Porsche. We might need the horses. Or a BMW. Both of those sound good.”

“Fiat,” she said.

“Gesundheit.”

Her lips twitched, but she managed not to laugh. “You don’t want anything noticeable.”

“Yes, I do,” he said stubbornly. “It doesn’t matter who notices me because no one knows who I am. If I were looking for someone, I’d look at people who were driving Fiats, because that’s what you get if you don’t want to be noticed.”

Using that same theory, she had put on a bright red wig as a disguise, so he actually made sense. But by now the amusement value was so great she wanted to see him drive one of the smaller Fiats for at least a day, just to hear how creative he could get with his complaining.

“You started out driving a Jaguar, then today you picked me up in a Mégane—if anyone saw us—so anyone looking for you would already know you like fast cars. A Fiat would be the last thing anyone would look for.”

“No joke,” he grumbled.

“A Fiat’s a good car. We can get a Stilo three-door; it’s fairly sporty—”

“Meaning, I can pedal it at ten miles an hour instead of five?”

She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, so ridiculous was the mental picture she had of him on a tricycle, his long legs folded up around his ears while he pedaled like mad.

He was sulking so much he wouldn’t even approach the rental counter until she turned around and hissed, “Do you want me to put it on my credit card? Rodrigo would know about it before the hour’s up.”

“My credit card might expire from embarrassment at having something like this charged to it,” he snapped, but then he squared his shoulders and stepped up like a man. He didn’t flinch even when the car was brought around and the features pointed out. The Fiat Stilo was a quick little car, with nice acceleration, but she could tell he judged it woefully short on horsepower.

He put her bags in the back while Lily got in the passenger seat and buckled the seat belt. Swain slid the driver’s seat back before he got in, making room for his legs.

He turned the key and started the engine. “It has a navigation system,” Lily pointed out.

“I don’t need a navigation system. I can read a map.” He put the car in gear, then made a high-pitched whining noise through his nose as he accelerated. Unfortunately, the noise exactly matched the pitch of the engine noise, and Lily lost her battle not to laugh. She tried to hide it, pinching her nose and turning her head to look out the window, but he saw her heaving shoulders and said sourly, “I’m glad someone thinks this is funny. I’m staying at the Bristol; don’t you think someone there might think it’s odd that I’m driving a Fiat instead of something flashier?”

“You’re such a car snob. A lot of people rent cars that have good gas mileage. It’s a smart thing to do.”

“Unless they might have to make a quick getaway and they’re being chased by cars with bigger engines.” His expression was grim. “I think I’ve been emasculated. I probably won’t be able to get a hard-on while I’m driving this.”

“Don’t worry,” she soothed. “If you can’t, I’ll let you get whatever kind of car you want tomorrow.”

Like magic his expression lightened and he started to grin, only to have the grin morph into a grimace of acute pain as he realized the choice she’d just given him. “Ah, shit,” he groaned. “That’s diabolical. You’re going to hell for thinking of something that evil.”

She gave him an innocent look and lifted one shoulder in a gesture that said, “So?” He was the one who had taken the issue down the sexual path; if he didn’t like where he’d ended up, it was his own fault.

She was amazed that she could be so entertained, considering what they were up against, but it was as if by tacit agreement they had decided to have today just for themselves, because today might be all they had. She had known some contract agents who, because of the nature of their work, lived totally in the moment. She never had, but today she saw the appeal of not worrying about tomorrow. There was a poignancy that hit home as she watched his expressions, an acknowledgment of what could be between them if she had the chance to let it grow. He made her feel soft inside, and warm with an affection that held so much promise it was almost frightening. She could love him, she thought. She might already, just a little bit, for his sense of humor and sheer joie de vivre that lifted her own spirits from the depths. She had needed to laugh, and he’d given her that.