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The ferry terminal, in the center of town, was blessed with a cafeteria and a newsstand. She had to force herself to eat the food Killian bought for them, but Mahmoud had no qualms, devouring everything in sight. She had no idea where he’d pack it all in his slender body, but that wasn’t her problem. She drank her tea and nibbled at the fruit and rolls, waiting for Killian to return. Something wasn’t right. There were too many heavily armed police with trained dogs wandering around, not to mention a number of camera crews. Isobel ducked her head as an earnest Spanish reporter stood in front of them and rattled off information into the camera. Too fast for her to translate; she really needed to work on her languages. The news crew moved on, and she ducked her head further when she felt the curious eyes of the police checking them out.
A moment later a newspaper was dropped in front of her and Killian took the chair beside her. “Trouble.” he said.
She looked at the paper. There was a grainy photograph of their abandoned airplane, presumably with the dead pilot still inside, and another of what appeared to be wreckage. Terroristas! The headline was in screaming red.
She handed the paper back to him. “What’s happening?”
“We’re fine, if we play it cool. Someone bombed the ferry terminal in Bilbao. I expect they were looking for us, trying to slow us down. In the meantime, security is heightened all over the country, and they’re on the lookout for Basque separatists. Our nice nuclear family should have no problem—I’ve got our paperwork and tickets. Mahmoud there is a war orphan we’re taking to England for rehabilitation and an adoptive family. You and I are aide workers helping out.”
She took a breath. “The bombing at Bilbao couldn’t have anything to do with us. No one knew we were headed there.”
“No one but your office.”
“I told you, Peter’s trustworthy.”
“No one’s trustworthy.” Killian took her cup of tepid Earl Grey and drained it. “Madsen might not be the mole. Things just might not be as secure as you thought they were. Do you have anyone new in the office?”
“Just Taka’s cousin,” she said reluctantly. “I haven’t met him as yet, but Taka’s among the best we have. I have complete faith in anyone he’d recommend.”
“But you haven’t met the guy.”
“So you can’t be certain.”
“I’ll ask Peter—”
“You won’t ask anybody anything. We’re not going to have any problem getting on the ferry, and once we’re at sea no one’s going to bother us. In the meantime, why don’t you give me your PDA.”
“What PDA?”
“The one you’re keeping in your bra. Maybe someone else wouldn’t notice, but I happen to have a particular interest in your breasts. Give it to me.”
He sighed. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Do what?”
He moved so fast even she didn’t see it coming. He rose, hauling her out of her seat, into his arms, and his mouth came down on hers, the shock of it both elemental and shattering. He shoved his hand down her shirt, cupping her breast, his long fingers fishing the tiny PDA into his palm, as the crowded cafeteria erupted into spontaneous applause.
Isobel tried to fight him, but he was bigger and stronger than she was. And he knew all the moves she normally would have made, forestalling her, so that it looked as if she was pawing at him back, in the throes of a passion that couldn’t be denied.
Then he released her, and she sank back down in her chair, pale, shaken, her shirt half-open, as the enthusiastic cheers continued. Killian made a mocking bow in the direction of the crowd, and sat beside her. There was no sign of the PDA.
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered.
“You enjoyed it, princess.” he drawled. “Don’t pretend you didn’t.”
She wasn’t going to grace that with a response. Her entire body felt suddenly electrified, fragile, ready to explode. What did you do with it?”
“I tucked it down my pants. Feel free to search for it at your leisure.”
She turned away from him, trying to control her rapid breathing. She wasn’t going to do this. Wasn’t going to go there. She was strong, cold, an automaton, decades removed from the stupid girl who’d fallen in love with a murderer. But the longer she was with him, the more that fool returned, and she could taste him on her mouth now. And it was good.
Apparently he didn’t expect an answer. “We can board now. We’re not sailing for an hour, but I figure the sooner we get past customs the better. Are you ready?”
Mahmoud had been ignoring them, still shoveling food in his face, and he finished by reaching out and taking the last sweet roll on Isobel’s plate. Even if his command of English was practically nonexistent he understood Killian’s tone of voice, and he rose, tucking it inside his ragged clothing. There was nothing she could do but follow. And when Killian’s back was turned, when no one from their appreciative audience was watching, she rubbed her hand against her mouth, to wipe the feel of him away.
It didn’t work.
So he shouldn’t have kissed her. He knew that, had known going in that he needed to keep his hands off her until he’d finished his mission. And then he could have her. Assuming she hadn’t managed to kill him, as she was no doubt fondly fantasizing about.
He might lie to everyone else, but he never lied to himself. He had every intention of getting her into bed; after eighteen years he was still thinking about her. But he couldn’t afford to rush it.
He’d needed her PDA, though, and it had given him just the right excuse. She wouldn’t know that he’d been looking for that excuse since she first walked into the ruined house in Nazir.
It hadn’t taken him long to get used to her new face. He’d seen photos of it often enough over the intervening years. Stephan Lambert had done an excellent job on her, and the ageless perfection of her classic features worked well in her line of work. Most people would never guess she was thirty-seven. But then, there was no one left from her past life. She’d been reported dead, her family in the U.S. had mourned and then gone on with life. No one had asked any questions.
Which was one reason why he’d chosen her in the first place, to act as his cover. Her connections were tenuous at best—there were no close friends, no doting family for her to get in touch with. No one knew she’d spent the last two weeks of her former life traveling around France with a seemingly harmless graduate student. There’d been no way to trace her, and no way to trace him. She wasn’t happy about the room he’d booked on the ferry; it came with a double bed and a banquette that opened into a twin, but he wasn’t about to make her life easier by telling her about it. Particularly since he knew she was going to make him share the bed with Mahmoud, who probably had lice, while she took the single. Too bad. They’d made it onto the boat with little problem. and he noticed there were shops on one of the upper decks. Killian could find them some clean clothes, at the very least, it was too much to hope they’d be able to get Mahmoud clean—nothing short of major sedation would get him near water. Killian would make Isobel deal with it once they got to England. In the meantime, they’d simply have to survive. The ferry was beginning to pull away from the dock. The sunny day had turned dark and windy, from a storm coming in. ft was late afternoon; they’d arrive in Plymouth in the middle of the next day. They were safe for now, and he could relax his guard. Marginally. There was no way anyone could have picked up on their change in direction. He was a man used to all possibilities. There were any number of people wanting him dead, but he had no idea who had bribed Samuel and the pilot. Someone who had far too good an access to his plans. Isobel might be setting him up. but he doubted it. If it was a simple termination she would have taken care of it long ago. Unfinished business, she’d call it. Some of his enemies had resources that were limitless. They’d know he’d made it to Spain, thanks to the pilot, but there were any number of ways to get out of there, any number of airports, ferries or roads over the Pyrenees to France. It was unlikely they could check eve
rything.
The Bilbao ferry office had been bombed; they would be expecting the three of them to show up in time for the departure and then be stranded. They, whoever they were, had no idea he’d forestalled them and made his own plans. They would only now be realizing he hadn’t come to Bilbao. and the Santander ferry had already set sail.
“I’m going to take a look around,” he said. “I think we’re safe, but I always like to be careful. Stay here with Mahmoud and I’ll be back soon.”
“How about you stay with Mahmoud and I’ll do recon?” Isobel asked.
“Because I don’t trust you,” he suggested. “Besides, Mahmoud isn’t looking well. He needs a maternal touch.”
“I’m not the motherly type,” she snapped, glancing at the boy. Mahmoud was curled upon the banquette, and beneath the layers of dirt he was turning a definite green.
“Just keep telling yourself that, princess. I think I’d better find some Dramamine before we’re both very sorry. Do you need some as well?”
“I have no problem with seasickness.”
“That’s right, this isn’t the first ferry we’ve been on together, is it?”
“Go to hell.” she growled, looking away from him.
He closed the door quietly behind him. She’d take good care of Mahmoud. She was trying very hard to be a major badass, but it was a lost cause. Even after all these years, and the changes she’d gone through, he knew her too well. And as long as she hated him with such a fiery passion, all was well. She hadn’t gotten over him. She’d never get over him. Not if he could help it.
Bastien Toussaint sank back on his heels, staring at the piece of wood in front of him. There was an American saying—measure twice, cut once. He’d measured seventeen times and cut twelve, and the damned piece was still just a hair too big. He opened his mouth to let out a long, colorful string of curses, and then closed it again. The baby was asleep, strapped into the porch like contraption Chloe used for him, and he tended to sleep through everything, including saws, hammers and loud music. A blessing, since their firs child, Sylvia, had chosen to disdain sleep for most of the first year of her life. And at age four months the baby was hardly likely to notice the difference between a “b1ast it” and the string of much more colorful invective Bastien had been toying with. But he couldn’t bring himself to swear in front of his very young children. He was getting soft in his old age. He rose, took the offending board back to the table saw and shaved one more sliver off it, then returned. It finally fit, needing just a few taps of the hammer to secure it into place. Baby Swede was stirring, now that things were quiet. Ridiculous name for a Toussaint, but Bastien had gone along with it, because Chloe had wanted it. In honor of Stockholm Syndrome, she’d said. That unfortunate and highly unlikely scenario in which a hostage fell in love with her kidnapper. And he couldn’t argue with that, particularly with a very pregnant, very cranky woman.
He picked up the sling, gently, but Swede opened his blue eyes to stare up at him with that solemn expression he’d been born with. He looked like him, a fact Bastien found disarming.
Chloe was in the half-finished kitchen of their rambling house, and she raised an eyebrow when he came in. “How’s the Hundred Years War coming?”
“Carpentry takes time,” he said. “You can’t rush these things.”
She simply shook her head, knowing him too well. The work would be done in his own time, and meanwhile she managed with only two interior doors, on their bedroom and on the working bathroom, plus a door on every closet in the house. No door to the bedrooms, but the closets were complete, and fortunately no one asked why, when there were no kitchen cabinets, and only plywood flooring and Shectrock walls. He wanted to do it all himself, needed to. Every other weekend Chloe’s family came up to help him, but in the end it was up to him to make the house secure. And he needed to do that, to make peace with himself.
Chloe moved past him, scooping up the baby and giving Bastien a fleeting kiss. “I know, dear,” she said.
It was close to dusk, almost time for him to quit for the day. He reached out to her, to pull her back, when suddenly the power went out, leaving them in the afternoon dusk.
Power went out often enough up in the mountains of North Carolina, but there was no wind storm, and the day was calm. There were only two possible reasons.
Someone might have hit one of the power lines with his car—an accident.
Or someone knew that most of Bastien’s elaborate security devices ran on electric power.
He froze, waiting for the familiar, comforting sound of the generator powering on. Nothing. The lights stayed off, just the one battery-powered emergency floodlight spearing into the room. He was crushing Chloe’s hand, and she hadn’t made a sound of protest.
“Where’s Sylvia?” he mouthed.
“Down for a nap.” She could be as silent as he was.
“Take the baby and go to her room. Take her and get in the closet. Lock it and don’t come out until I tell you to”
“But—”
“The closet’s fortified, remember? You’ll be safe.”
“But you...”
He simply stared at her and three years fell away, and she was looking into the face of a killing machine. The man she’d probably thought she’d never have to see again.
She simply nodded, vanishing silently into the shadows.
Leaving Bastien to the hunt. He didn’t carry a gun—it upset Chloe, and his security system was top-notch. He hadn’t counted on them hitting the generator, too.
He’d grown dangerously soft. Nonetheless, Bastien had no doubt he could get his family out of this. He’d gotten out of worse situations, and it had only been his own skin. No one was going to touch his wife and children.
No gun, but he could improvise. He could kill someone with a wooden spoon if he had to, but there were plenty of knives in the kitchen, tools in the unfinished library. He wondered if the men who’d come after him had been properly warned what they were up against.
He was almost insulted there were only three of them. The first was skulking around the back door, looking for a way in. Bastien cut his throat and took his gun.
It was a heavy pistol—something Dirty Harry would use. It lacked finesse, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Bastien would rather not use it—the sound might frighten the babies, and even though Chloe had nerves of steel he didn’t want to test them.
The second intruder was heading toward the stairs, and he was good, better than the first. The fight was short and savage, and Bastien broke his neck with a quick, ruthless snap.
One more. He was moving in the library where Bastien had just been working on the burled walnut paneling, fitting the pieces together with the painstaking precision that was driving Chloe crazy.
If the man moved fast enough he might make it up the stairs before Bastien could stop him. His family would be safe in that steel-lined closet, but the very thought of a killer getting anywhere near them made him furious.
He stepped out of the shadows, and the man spun around, firing, his semiautomatic sending a spray of bullets across the walnut paneling.
It was the last straw. One shot with the elephant gun in his hand and half the man’s head was gone.
Chloe was going to be pissed. He didn’t know how much they could hear, but he couldn’t let them come down to this mess.
He worked fast, getting most of the blood and bone cleaned up, sprinkling sawdust from beneath the table saw over the mess once he’d dragged the bodies out. There was no disguising the bullet holes in the paneling, but at least he could spare his loved ones the worst part.
He hated to make them wait, in the darkness, not knowing, but in the end it was better this way.
He dumped the bodies at the edge of the woods, making sure no one else was wandering around. Just three of them to take him out. Whoever had sent them had made a very grave error.
He switched on the generator, then raced up the stairs two at a time. Chloe fell out of the
closet, into his arms, pale but in control. Sylvia, his fierce and passionate young daughter, was for once perfectly calm, and Swede was asleep.
Bastien had blood on his clothes, but at least he’d washed the hands he put on his wife. She didn’t flinch.
“I took care of him:’ he said, wanting to keep the body count down for her peace of mind.
“Him?” she echoed skeptically.
“Them,” he admitted, regretting that he hadn’t been able to question any of them, to find out who’d sent them. There was nothing on their bodies to give him any clue. “How long will it take you to pack?”
“With your help, maybe half an hour. Where are we going?”
“To get help. From the only people I trust.”
Chloe looked down at her somber daughter. “We’re going to visit Uncle Peter and Aunt Genevieve, sweetheart. Go get your favorite toys.”
Sylvia moved over to her toy shelves with that unnerving calm, and Chloe looked up into his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling helpless for the first time in the last brief, bloody hour.
She kissed him on the mouth, and if her eyes were bright with unshed tears, she ignored them. “I’m not,” she said. “You did what you had to do.”
He held her so tightly that the baby woke up with an annoyed squawk. Resting his forehead against Chloe’s, Bastien let out a long, shuddering breath. And then he pulled away.
“Let’s just go,” he said. “We can buy things on the way to the airport.”
She nodded. And ten minutes later they were speeding down the road, into the darkening night.
14
After two hours of Mahmoud puking, first into the toilet, then dry heaves into a trash bin, a towel and the rapidly emptied fruit bowl in the cabin, Isobel decided she wasn’t going to wait any longer. The storm had picked up, the huge ferry was responding to the waves with enthusiasm, and night had fallen. No sign of Killian—with luck he’d been washed overboard, leaving her stuck with Mahmoud. Even a psychopathic child soldier was preferable to her nemesis, but not one racked with nausea. He was too weak to fight her when she scooped him up. He was nothing more than skin and bones, and she cursed Killian under her breath. If he was going to keep the damn kid with him out of some twisted form of penance, he might at least see he was properly fed.
