Читать книгу Shannon McKenna Bundle: Ultimate Weapon, Extreme Danger, Behind Closed Doors, Hot Night, & Return to Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 31

András was murderously angry, and the long, hard, breathless climb up to the top of La Roccia did not help his temper. That sneaky bastard had disappeared into the sea, and now he was holed up and out of range in the caves. Janos couldn’t stay inside for long, of course. He was soaking wet. He had to come out before he died of cold. But he was a tough son of a bitch and that process could be a slow one.

Meanwhile, András’s reputation for speed had just been put at risk. And old man Novak waited, chewing his yellowed nails.

None of his worthless local team had been willing to follow Janos into the smugglers’ caves, though most of them had been inside them at one time or another. Two had been dispatched to watch other exits from the caves on the north side of La Roccia, one was a lump of gut-shot meat on the beach, and the other was not far behind, bleeding onto the rocks from a thigh wound and attracting unwelcome attention. With luck, he was comatose or at least unconscious.

András had described exactly what would happen to anyone who had the misfortune to be wounded and then talked to the police. He hoped those cretins knew just how sincere he had been.

Which left only himself and that brain-dead ape Angelo to slog their way up and over La Roccia to monitor the other Grotta exit, the tourist one. If he hadn’t been down by two men, he would have killed the fuckhead himself, for shooting at Janos after he had been briefed on the necessity of keeping the man alive. Of course, the idiot was the brother of Massimo, the gut-shot man, but even so. That was no fucking excuse for unprofessional behavior. Orders were orders.

Angelo huffed and puffed over the crest of La Roccia, and flung himself down onto a flat rock to wheeze and gasp, silently protesting the pace that András had set. He clutched the handheld monitor that András had gleaned from Hegel’s room.

“On your feet,” András growled. “He could already be outside the cave. Let’s go.”

Angelo heaved his muscle-bound bulk up and followed him down the stonework switchback path at a heavy, shambling run. András stopped at a scenic overlook with benches not far from the bottom, and booted up the laptop to scan for the signal. His heart thumped when he saw the icon finally appear, blinking. He clicked, enlarging the map until it was a detailed street map of the San Vito port area.

And there he was, the crafty son of a bitch. Lurking down on the edge of the water, no more than three hundred yards from András’s own current position. He should be visible. Saliva rushed into his mouth as he peered down at the busy port swarming with tourists. Then another slight movement on the screen caught his eye.

He glanced down, alarmed, and watched the icon detach itself from the shore, move out over the water. What the fuck…?

András shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted. The ferry whistle shrilled. Oh, shit. No. The prick had climbed onto a boat and was sailing away to some godforsaken rock in the Mediterranean.

“On your feet,” he snarled at the ape, who had once again dropped down onto his lazy ass, wheezing. “We need to find someone with a boat immediately to get us to wherever that ferry is going.”

To András’s surprise, Angelo made himself useful by promptly locating a man with a powerful motorboat, fast enough to get to the island before the ferry did. A smuggler, no doubt. Negotiations were swiftly concluded. András peeled several hundred-euro notes off his money roll, put them onto the man’s grimy palm and was climbing on board, one leg on the side of the boat, when suddenly he stopped.

Motionless, he sniffed the air as a shiver ran down his back, half in and half out of the boat. Angelo and his avaricious smuggler friend waited, their peasant faces blank and stupid.

He, after all, had been the one in the goddamn hurry. But the ferry retreating before him did not make saliva pump into his mouth. He was beset with doubts.

A trick?

But the tracer was inside the man’s body. How was it possible?

He stepped back onto the dock. “You go on,” he said. “Get to the island before that ferry does and watch for him. Follow him with the handheld. Call me immediately if you locate him.”

“Sì, sì, certo,” Angelo muttered sullenly.

“And if you kill him, I will rip out your liver with my hands and feed it to a stray dog while you watch. Is that clear?”

The smuggler blinked. His eyes darted between András and Angelo. Angelo nodded. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To make sure he hasn’t fucked me by going in the opposite direction,” András snapped. “Now go.”

A taxi was just letting out a clump of Dutch tourists in front of the nearest beachside hotel. András slid inside it gratefully. “Take me to the beach on the north side of La Roccia,” he said. “One hundred more euro if you get there in less than ten minutes.”

The man’s eyes lit up. The taxi dashed out onto the road and jounced up the cobblestoned streets.

It took the man eleven minutes to get to the other side, but András was not inclined to quibble. They jerked to a stop right next to the ice-cream stand near where Janos’s rented Opel Tigra had been parked. The car was gone. So his instinct had been correct—unless, of course, someone had stolen the car, always a possibility in southern Italy. He shoved the hundred euros into the hand of the taxista, and got out.

A slim, dark-eyed girl no more than seventeen presided behind the counter of the ice-cream stand. Pretty breasts, shown off by a low-cut pink leotard under her artfully opened sweater. Taut dark nipples shadowed the pale fabric. She would have seen who took the car. He gave her his nicest smile, but she shrank back.

“Did you see someone get into that Opel that was parked over there a little while ago?” he asked.

She opened and closed her rosy mouth. “Sì. A man.”

“And what did he look like?” he asked.

Her big, limpid eyes went blink, blink. “I don’t remember, really.”

“Ah.” András reached into his pocket, and pulled out a twenty-euro note. He slid it across the counter.

“Tall,” she said helpfully. “Dark.”

He waited for more. She shrugged. He pulled out another twenty.

She fluttered her lashes, made it disappear. “Wet,” she said. “He looked wet and cold. Like he was bleeding, too. His shoulder. And arm.”

So. Confirmed. Janos had gouged out the RF trace and gotten the better of him. But not for long. He had a fix on their nighttime position. Where else could a cold, wet, wounded man go but to ground? And to Steele? On track again. All was well.

He gave the girl a murderous smile. Her face went white. He’d gotten what he needed from her, but the sulky, grasping little bitch hadn’t made it easy. He didn’t like that. He reached over the counter and gave her nipple a vicious pinch that she would feel for the next ten days.

She shrieked and clutched her chest, staring at him wildly.

“Thank you for your help, signorina,” he said pleasantly.

He headed for his car, reflecting that the ice-cream whore was lucky he was so pressed for time. Or else he would have made her earn every last cent of that money, ten times over.

On her hands and knees.

“Is this the only thing you have?” Tam asked for the third time.

Pantaleo, Signora Concetta’s youngest son, gave her a grunt that she could only interpret as a yes, since it was followed by no other options.

She stared at the rusted 1965 Fiat 500. Inside, the upholstery was rotted to stinking gray dust. Shreds of ceiling fabric hung like cobwebs. The original color was impossible to determine. The exposed foam padding of the seats had discolored to deep orange, degenerating into grainy chunks; the dash coated with greasy dust. The backseat had been ripped out to make room for farm tools. Three windows were taped shut and the windshield was cracked and cloudy. A rearview mirror swung forlornly on a piece of duct tape. There were no side mirrors. She could see the ground through the holes in the floor.

The Vespino would have been better. At least it had a certain breezy, kitschy charm, whereas this thing looked post-apocalpytic, a vehicle of absolute last resort. She was tempted for the umpteenth time to just offer a fifty-euro note and ask someone in the signora’s family to drive her to the nearest car rental place, but for the fact that she was reluctant to let them know where she went. It was not healthy for anyone to know her business. In fact, her and Val’s presence here was not healthy for these people. It was high time they moved on and found another hiding place.

“Don’t worry,” Pantaleo said. “Cammina, cammina. It runs, it runs. There’s even a liter or so of benzina in it. Six hundred euro. For seven, I’ll even throw in all the farm tools.”

Uh-huh. Right. Like she was going to be harvesting any olive orchards in the near future. She gave him an eloquent look. He responded with a gap-toothed, can’t-blame-a-guy-for-trying grin.

She reached for her purse. “Three hundred,” she said sternly. “And you are robbing me. Please get all the junk out of it. Now.”

Pantaleo’s grin widened. He threw open the back door and began hauling out armfuls of junk and dumping it onto the ground. He took the money she held out and dug into his pocket for the key. “We have to go to the notary public, to do the passaggio di proprietà,” he said.

For this piece of shit? She gave him a coaxing smile. “Could we take care of that another day? Pretend I borrowed it until then, all right?” God knew she was going to abandon the wretched little turd of a car at the first opportunity. The very minute she rented one.

Pantaleo looked doubtful, but made no protest as she plucked the key from his dirty fingers and slipped it into her pocket.

The whole situation made her very twitchy. Renting a car was an unwanted level of exposure. Georg had to have surmised that she and Val needed one, and there were not so many places to obtain them in this immediate area. All undoubtedly being watched.

At least no one would expect her to be driving a 1965 Fiat 500 held together with nothing but rust. But on the flip side, she would attract attention just by looking so ridiculous in it.

Stop dithering and get to it, she lectured herself.

Truth to tell, she actually had been stalling. She was angry and baffled at herself. It was so unlike her.

It had taken a certain amount of time to prepare her plan of attack for Ana, of course, and to arm the appropriate jewelry pieces. Another reasonably long interval had been necessary to bathe, groom, arm, and adorn herself to her satisfaction. She fiddled uncomfortably with the matching tongue studs that she’d chosen for the occasion. She didn’t like body piercings much as a fashion statement, but the studs were the only weapon for an intensely personal job like this one.

They belonged to a secret, personal category of Deadly Beauty designs called Ultimate Weapons—but only in her head, since she’d never spoken of them out loud to a living soul. They were ideas she had not developed commercially because they were too dangerous. Besides, many of them had no aesthetic component of any kind.

They were just for herself. Her paranoid, fucked-up self.

She put each weapon she designed through a certain algorithm she had developed to estimate the risk factor to the wearer. Any weapon with an over fifty percent risk factor of accidental death went into the Ultimates category and as such, was not saleable.

The tongue studs had a seventy-five percent risk of death.

She just had to make her tongue relax and stop worrying the things, or she could break the capsules prematurely. That would be disastrous. Self-control, Steele.

Yikes. She’d never had such difficulty summoning it.

After she dressed and prepared, she’d taken a few moments to center herself and find that calm, chilly, professional inside her.

Robot Bitch. Right. That was where it all broke down. Because Robot Bitch was nowhere to be found, and without her, Tam was lost and dithering. No other word for it.

Not wanting Val to come back and find her gone. It felt like such a flagrant fuck-you. Not wanting to reject his help, to hurt his feelings, of all crazy things. Not wanting to make him angry. God, since when had she ever given a shit about whether or not she made a man angry?

If said man was not holding a gun to her head or a knife to her throat, that is. There were exceptions.

And this was another exception, God help her. She did care, enough so to box herself in and fritter away precious time hoping he’d get back before she’d gotten around to leaving. So that they could have a proper knock-down, drag-out fight that she could definitively win, forcing him to acknowledge that they’d be better off if she went alone.

Hah. Dream on. That knock-down, drag-out fight was a problematic scenario. Val was bigger, stronger, and quicker than her, though she hated to admit it. Stubbornly unreasonable, too. And very intense about protecting her, which was touching and sweet and manly of him, but oh, dear God, what an inconvenient pain in the ass.

The only way to win an argument with a man strong enough to be worth arguing with was to just slip away and do as she pleased while he was looking elsewhere. Deal with the fallout later. That had always been her policy before. So what had changed?

Never mind. She was afraid to examine that question too closely.

After all, she was calculating cold-blooded murder. If Janos didn’t ride shotgun, he had a small measure of plausible deniability with Ana, Donatella, their Camorra husbands, and the Italian authorities.

And the more streamlined her plan of invading the clinic, the better. For him, too. She understood his desire to monitor the situation so that he could keep her in one piece to help him save Imre, but solo, she could handle this more smoothly.

Besides, Val was too damn pretty. He attracted attention from every side. It was like hauling around a jewel-draped pink elephant. People looked, people took note, people remembered. Especially women. He was wildly impractical, as an accessory. To murder, anyway.

She herself was pale and severe today in her somewhat limp and wrinkled suit, hair braided tightly back. No makeup. Unlikely to attract undue attention. Ana would certainly notice that Tam was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, which bugged her, but there was no remedy for that except for shopping, and she had no time for anything so frivolous, or she would miss her window. It was today or it was never.

And? So? Move it, Steele. She forced herself to pick up the pace, hustling back to their funky room for a blanket to cover the filthy seat of the Fiat and protect her clothes. She grabbed her briefcase and purse, and off she went to find a decent car to drive and get the job done.

If all went well, she’d be back soon to face down Val’s wrath with her usual sass. And then she would go with him to Hungary and keep her end of the bargain.

And his wrath did always translate into spectacular sex. She was pleasantly aching and sore from last night’s massive dose.

She practically knocked Val over as she turned the corner of the casale. He tottered at the impact, a frightening apparition. Dead pale, blood and bruises on his face, hollow-eyed. He put out his hand to the building for balance, stumbled, and jolted down onto one knee.

It was a body blow to see him like that. It knocked out her air.

“Jesus, Janos! What happened to you?” she demanded.

He shuddered and swayed on his knees, teeth chattering. He smelled like the sea. He’d gone for a dip, for Christ’s sake. The raw mountain breeze whipped around them. She reached down and gripped him under his armpits, dragging him to his feet. The fabric of his wet jacket was sticky and dark on one side. Blood. “Oh, merde,” she muttered. “You’re wounded. What the fuck happened to you?”

“András,” he whispered. “Novak.”

Great. Just great. The baddies, all converging on them, and it had to be today. “Come on, let me get you out of this wind. You look like ten different kinds of shit, Janos. I should never have let you go out by yourself. I might have known you’d fuck it up. Men.”

His pale, shaking lips twitched at that, but he stumbled, thudding against the building with a gasp of pain. She loaded as much of his weight as she could onto her shoulder, on the nonbleeding side. She was not trashing her one outfit if she could help it.

Once inside, she whipped off her own jacket, rolled up her sleeves, and pushed him down until he sat on the bed. She started in with his shoes, peeled off the sodden pants and briefs. He moaned with pain when she started in on the jacket, so she slowed down, peeling it off what appeared to be the good arm first, and then lifting the blood-soaked sleeve gingerly away. Then the shirt.

She sucked air through her teeth when she saw the ragged, oozing mess of his shoulder and hurried to the bathroom, rummaging for the cleanest towel she could find. She pressed his torso down onto the bed, heaved his long legs up until he was lying flat, then dragged the thickest wool blanket out of the armoire and laid it over him.

“You lie there and warm up,” she said. “I’ll go get some disinfectant from the signora.”

Breathless seconds later, she was eyeing the sleek little Opel parked in the ulivetto as she banged the signora’s door. Nice. At least he’d gotten some decent wheels before getting himself fucked up.

She burst out her request for disinfectant, bandages, and dry clothes as soon as the door opened, and realized that her voice was thin, high and shaking, like a child. Whoa. Breathe, Steele. Breathe.

The signora’s face furrowed into a deep scowl. “He is in trouble?”

Tam gave her an expressive shrug. “E’ un tipo fuocoso,” she confided. He’s a fiery type. She hoped the older woman would assume he’d gotten into a stupid, macho fight.

The signora shook her head. “Men,” she muttered darkly. She shoved open the door to the kitchen and gestured Tam inside.

The room was huge, spotless, a baroque-era kitchen with appliances that dated from the 1950s. She disappeared into the inner rooms and returned moments later, presenting a bottle of alcohol, rolls and pads of gauze, and, miracle of miracles, surgical bandages—the kind you could buy over the counter in the States. Left behind by other tourists? Who knew? They just might close the wound.

The older woman thrust some men’s clothes at her.

“They will be short for him,” she warned. “I don’t have any pants long enough for that one.”

Tam thanked her effusively and scurried back, heart pounding wildly, as if Val might die or disappear if she took her eyes off him.

He was still shivering violently, even under the heavy wool. She turned on the light and hastened to deal with the shoulder wound.

It alarmed her. Deep, jagged and uneven, it looked like it needed internal and external stitches from an ER doc who knew what the fuck she or he was doing, not a seat-of-the-pants emergency medic like herself. She cleaned it as best she could, wincing in sympathy as he sucked in a tortured breath at the sting of the disinfectant.

She bandaged it, following the directions on the box to close the torn flesh until the surgical glue set. It took only seconds. Whether it would hold, she didn’t know. The shoulder was the worst, but she worked on his battered hands and knees as well. Then she dove into the poison kit, where she kept her emergency pharmaceuticals. Too bad she didn’t have a topical anesthetic, but at least there was a full spectrum intramuscular antibiotic. She loaded the syringe, poised it over his good arm.

“Allergic to antibiotics?” she asked. “Don’t even think about going into anaphylactic shock on me, big boy. My nerves are shot as it is.”

He shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. She jabbed.

He was still vibrating with cold, and in the absence of a hot bath, she could think of only one solution to that. She stripped off the rest of her clothes, lifted the blanket, and clambered on top of him.

She braced herself for a shock, but oh, God, he was cold. Shuddering, clammy, sticky with sea salt. She wrapped her arms around him, tried to give him all the warmth she had. Wishing there was more. She wanted to cover every inch of him with comfort. Wanted to be bigger, wider, softer. A down comforter of a woman. Not a tight, wound up, stringy female, all bent metal and barbed wire and twine.

The contact seemed to help him anyway, thank God. His shuddering began to ease, and he began taking deeper breaths. She ran her fingers through his salt-stiffened hair, which had dried into a spiky punk do, which she kind of liked. À la Hollywood bad boy.

“What the hell happened to you, anyway?” she asked.

He opened his eyes. To her alarm, they welled full of tears.

“Imre is dead,” he whispered brokenly. “He killed himself. I watched it on videophone. He stabbed a piece of glass into his femoral artery.” His voice was shaking like a young boy’s. “He did it to free me.”

She drew in a long, careful breath. “Oh, my poor baby,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

It was either exactly the right or exactly the wrong thing to have said, because it melted him right down, and that, to her startled horror, melted her down too.

The two of them blubbered, arms wrapped tight and shaking around each other. As if his grief and loss were her own.

And it was, she realized, as she cried against his chest. It was her own, and he was her own. He had been for quite a while now, but she hadn’t wanted to face it yet. She should have known when he’d made her cry by telling her to pretend she loved him two nights before. She should have known after that dream, after he picked up her stuffed valentine heart out of the dust and rubble of her broken doll self and brought it to life. Miraculously.

When the emotional storm subsided, she wiped her face, propped her chin on her forearms. Both of them embarrassed and shy.

She sniffed back her tears, and went on the offensive as usual. “So? Let’s have it, loverboy. The bruises, the shoulder, the dip in the sea?”

“András,” he said.

She nodded. She knew the man, and wished that she didn’t. It was not safe to be on that guy’s radar screen. He was in the same class as Kurt and Georg. “How did András find us?”

“He had a tracer on me. He must have gotten it from Hegel.”

That was a nasty shock. “He had a what?” Her voice squeaked.

He jerked his chin in the direction of his shoulder. “There,” he said. “It must have been in there since I was treated for that bullet wound last year. Looks like PSS stopped trusting me even then. They wanted to keep me under control. Hegel must be dead, I assume.”

“So that’s how they found us at the hotel. And the airport, too.”

“Yes.” His voice was subdued. “By following me. I should have figured it out earlier. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she heard herself say. Though of course, it was. She couldn’t help the meaningless words from coming out. Look at her, trying to make the guy feel better about almost getting her and Rachel killed, hah. What a gooey, soft-headed chump she was becoming. Frightening to contemplate.

The story came out of him, terse, halting phrases issued from his chattering teeth. The death-defying dive into the stormy sea, swimming through icy salt water in underground caves, digging transmitters out of his own body in the watery dark with the tip of a pocketknife. Could she have done it?

“Why didn’t—”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t call you,” he said simply. “I couldn’t lead him to you. And there was no time for a doctor. András would have had me and that would have been it. Game over.”

“Got it,” was all she said.

He started to give her his habitual shrug, but froze halfway through, grimacing in pain.

She refused to let herself melt with pity. His machismo was pointless. His pain hurt her. If he suffered needlessly, then so did she. Life had too much suffering in it as it was. Suffering needlessly pissed her off, big-time.

But not all of him hurt. Amazingly, Val’s body was stirring beneath her, his cock growing long and hot and hard against her belly. She wriggled against it, hardly believing the evidence of her own senses. Yes, sure enough. Rock hard and ready. Even now.

“Val,” she said sternly. “You have got to be kidding.”

“Sorry,” he said innocently.

“You know that this naked hugging thing is strictly therapeutic in nature, right? I was worried about hypothermia and shock. I was not looking to wank your willie. We don’t have time.”

“No?” he said. “But you are so beautiful. So hot and strong and full of life.” His arms tightened, pulling her closer. “And I love you.”

She stiffened. “Don’t get flowery on me, Val,” she warned. “I can’t take that kind of thing. You know that. So just don’t do it.”

“I love you,” he repeated stubbornly. “I almost died today, and I would have missed my chance to tell you, although I am sure that you know it. So I will say it if I damn well please, and you will listen. I love you. I mean every word. I love you, Tamar.”

Her eyes leaked, her face was hot. This was so not fair. Not now, on top of everything. She wanted to tell him she loved him too, but the words were backed up, bottlenecked behind a burning knot.

She hid her face against his good shoulder. Waited until her throat opened up and she could trust herself to harrumph.

“Well,” she muttered, “you can’t be too badly hurt, if you’re rubbing your erection against me and carrying on about deathless love. I suppose that’s good news. Now what?”

That flashing, deep-grooved grin was so beautiful, it practically broke her into pieces. “My tough babe,” he murmured. “I hate to say it, my love, because there is no place on earth I would rather be than beneath your naked body, but we must run quickly. And far.”

“But you cut the tracer out, right?”

“I was in this bed with that thing transmitting for sixteen hours,” he said. “He will check here. Perhaps he is already on his way. I hope I bought time with my ferry trick, but I cannot count on it.”

She stared into his eyes, her mind working furiously. “You have the car,” she said. “We’ll go and find another place where you can rest up while I deal with Ana and Stengl. I have to get that over with. Then, I’m all yours. We will run. Anywhere you want.”

His face went somber, and he gazed up at her for a long moment. “Perhaps you have not understood,” he said carefully. “Our plans have changed. We must leave it, Tamar. All of it. Stengl, too.”

Everything went cold and distant around her, as it had in Ana’s salone. She felt a door slam shut inside her. A door with her bereaved fifteen-year-old self behind it. No. She took a deep breath.

“No, Val,” she said. “I came all this way for this. I’m not leaving until it is done. Don’t try to stop me.”

But she could already see that he didn’t get it. He couldn’t. How could he? He’d already rearranged his reality, and Stengl was not relevant to his reality. Only to hers. She was alone with the nightmare of her past and she always would be.

She actually tried, for a few seconds, to imagine letting it go. Just walking away. But she’d gone too far down that road by now. She’d spent too many years imagining Drago Stengl’s face when he saw her standing before him and knew death was near.

When he finally understood what he had done to her. To all of them. Knowing that at last the bill had come due.

She couldn’t let it go. Or rather, it would not let her go. It had clutched her like a skeletal claw for her whole adult life. Its grip was not easing now. It clamped down, a death grip, crushing her. She couldn’t endure any more of that. Not if deliverance was possible.

He cupped her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. “Imre did this to set me free,” he said, his voice urgent. “I cannot waste his gift. I cannot risk the last thing on earth that I care about. I want to make a life with you. I never dreamed of such a thing, but you have made me dream of it, and now I must have it.”

“And Rachel?” she asked.

He waved an eloquent hand. “Of course we will get Rachel,” he said forcefully. “I am not stupid. I know she comes first.”

He felt her stiffness, her unresponsiveness, and gave her an impatient shake. “Let it go for Rachel, Tamar. For us. Think of it. You are contemplating murder. The Italian police will pursue you no matter what the man has done. The Camorra will pursue you on Santarini’s behalf for killing his father-in-law. Your problems will multiply. Do not try to do this thing. I will stop you. It will fuck our only chance. And I will not risk you now, do you understand? It is no longer an option.”

She absorbed that. Everything it meant, everything she had to do. A knife turned slowly inside her chest. “Easy for you to say, Janos,” she whispered. “You’ve been cut loose. I haven’t.”

His face went tight. He lifted his head off the pillow. “I just watched the one person on earth that I could claim as family bleed to death for me. Do not talk to me of what is easy.”

She slid off his body and onto the floor, turning her back and gathered the force to do what she had to do next. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was an easy morning for you.”

He reached for her, stroking her arm. “Tamar. My love. Please.”

She turned and looked down at the hand that held her. The one attached to his good shoulder. So strong and beautiful despite the scabbed, ragged knuckles. As skillful and tender as it was lethal.

She grabbed it, pulled it up, kissed it. Silently saying good-bye.

And swiftly snapped the handcuff that hung open from the wrought iron headboard around his wrist. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

He stared at her, openmouthed, and then exploded upward, erupting in a stream of profanity that sounded like Romanian. He rattled the thing violently, twisted it, jerked. Red bloomed afresh on the white gauze of his shoulder, spotting and spreading. The surgical bandage underneath peeled half off.

“Oh, God, stop that. Don’t flail around like that,” she begged. “You’ll hurt yourself worse.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you treacherous bitch?”

She flinched. His anger hurt more than she’d ever dreamed, with all her defenses down. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, fogging up again, and stumbled clumsily back out of range of his lunging, grasping hand.

“Get back here,” he snarled. “Open this fucking thing. Now!”

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She darted in to snatch up her clothes and scrambled out of range again to yank them onto her body. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Ah, sì?” he said viciously. “And this is why you shackle me naked to a bed? Staked out like a fucking goat for András when he comes? Oh, yes, Tamar. I can see how much you care.”

“When I come back—”

“When you come back, my balls will have been sliced off and shoved down my throat,” he snarled. “Is that what you wanted all along? Did you not have the courage to do the deed yourself?”

She realized that tears were rolling down her face as she shook her head. “No. I have no intention of leaving you like this for long—”

“Then just open it!” he bellowed. “Give me the pick kit!”

“Please just shut up for a second and listen to me,” she begged. “There’s a piece of shit Fiat 500 out in the ulivetto that belongs to me.” She dug the key out of her pocket. “I bought it from Pantaleo, the signora’s son. Here are the keys, so you’re not grounded—”

“Fuck the car!” he roared. “The cuffs, you crazy puttana—”

“I said to shut up and listen!” she flared. She crouched down and plucked the keys to the Opel out of the sodden pants crumpled on the floor.

He made a derisive sound. “Ah. So. You take my car as well?”

“You have the Fiat, so don’t bitch.” She tossed the key Pantaleo had given her onto the bed. “You have dry clothes right here, and I will leave you my cell phone, too, so you’re not—”

“Fuck the cell phone! Let me loose!” The bedframe rattled, thudded, scraped against the floor. He jerked at it, maddened.

She jittered uneasily backward. Time to beat hell out of there. “I will leave your pick set right by your hand,” she went on desperately. “And Georg’s gun. I don’t wish you any harm. On the contrary. Please believe me.”

He held out his hand. “Give me the gun.”

“Right,” she muttered. She let out a long breath and let her arm fly up, darting like a lash to spray the soporific from her barrette into his face. “After for the gun, big boy. I’m not quite that stupid.”

It was a tiny blast, the shortest her finger could coordinate. “This won’t last long,” she told him hastily. “A quarter of an hour at most. Probably less, because you’re so big. And then…you can get free.”

He stared at her, stunned into silence, and the air escaped all at once from his lungs. He sat down heavily on the bed, blinking.

His eyes were bleak. He looked utterly betrayed.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, her voice breaking oddly. “Just a little head start. That’s all I need.”

He opened his mouth, tried to speak, seemed puzzled when he could not.

“I’ll buy a cell phone when I finish,” she told him. “I’ll call you after this just to see if you still want to have anything to do with me. If not, just tell me to fuck off then. You have that to look forward to.”

He swayed, wavered. She pushed him gently down onto the bed, hating the painfully hyperextended angle of his trapped arm.

She scooped up his legs again, heaving them onto the bed, and tugged at his feet to ease the pull. Then she covered him with the wool blanket, laid the gun by his hand, the cell phone, the tiny lock pick kit.

She kissed his forehead, his cheekbone, his jaw. His lips. Her last chance to touch him without getting killed, probably. He hated her now.

He tasted like the sea. Salty. Like life. It was crushing her heart.

His eyes, amazingly, were still open. Still giving her that fierce, accusing look. Fighting it like crazy. He was so damn strong.

God, how she loved that. How she loved him.

She cupped his face, kissed him hungrily once again. “I love you, too,” she said. Amazing how much easier it was to say that when she knew that he could not respond. What a hopelessly twisted, sicko wench she was. “I love you, Val Janos,” she repeated more forcefully. “I really do. I hope you can forgive me for this someday.”

On impulse, she pried the multiblade ring off her thumb, and slid it onto his ring finger.

She grabbed her stuff, hot tears streaming, and bolted.