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.