Kiss Me While I sleep (22 page)

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.

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 Megane 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 naiveté. 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 out shooting 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 out-doorsman, 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 cafe 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.”