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.