I and My True Love (40 page)

She came to a corner where two narrow streets merged like two streams plunging downhill before they emptied into the broad river of traffic. Here was a bus coming down, heavily loaded, large, red, powerful, confident in its right of way.

“Wait!” someone called sharply beside her as she stepped off the sidewalk. A hand went out to seize her arm, and missed.

* * *

She lay still on the wet pavement, her eyes closed against the hideous pain and the worried faces. A man had wrapped his coat around her, a policeman had rolled up a jacket to put under her head. The noise of traffic had faded to the distance. Voices swept over her, ebbing, flowing, like a restless sea.

“It was an accident.”

“I yelled ‘wait!’ But she—”

“What happened?”

“—never heard me.”

“She stepped off the sidewalk right into—”

“You can’t blame the driver.”

She opened her eyes. The faces had gone, someone had pushed them away. Only the policeman, the bus driver, the man who had taken off his coat, were still there. Looking at her.

She tried to speak.

“That’s all right now,” the policeman said and kept hold of her hand. His eyes left the bruised and bloodstained face, and searched angrily for the ambulance.

The bus driver stared down at her. He said nothing at all. He kept shaking his head. His face was twisted with worry. He seemed to be asking, “Lady, why did you have to pick on me?”

So he knew, she thought slowly, painfully. He had seen her face in that last moment. When she had turned suddenly. To look up at him in the driver’s seat. In that last moment when she could have jumped back. And didn’t. In that last moment when she had wanted to jump back and wouldn’t. That last moment of fear, of controllable fear as the bus smashed its weight down on her.

She tried to speak. “It was an accident,” she wanted to tell them.

“Lie still, now,” someone said gently, his voice fading.

She gathered her strength and spoke through its pain. “Accident,” she whispered. “It was an...” She watched the driver’s face pleadingly. He turned away, into the mist that had thickened around them. She stared at the shadow, and when it came back again it was Jan standing there, Jan watching her, Jan listening to her.

“An accident,” she repeated.

“Yes,” someone said from a great distance, “yes. He knows that.”

Then she could close her eyes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helen MacInnes, whom the
Sunday Express
called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.

Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.

Since her first novel
Above Suspicion
was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers;
The Salzburg Connection
was also a major film.

Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.

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HELEN MacINNES

A series of slick espionage thrillers from
The New York Times
bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”

Pray for a Brave Heart

Above Suspicion

Assignment in Brittany

North From Rome

Decision at Delphi

The Venetian Affair

The Salzburg Connection

Message from Málaga

While We Still Live

The Double Image

Neither Five Nor Three

Horizon

Snare of the Hunter

Agent in Place

Ride a Pale Horse

Prelude to Terror

The Hidden Target

Cloak of Darkness
(November 2013)

Rest and Be Thankful
(December 2013)

Friends and Lovers
(January 2014)

Home is the Hunter
(February 2014)

PRAISE FOR HELEN MacINNES

“The queen of spy writers.”
Sunday Express

“Definitely in the top class.”
Daily Mail

“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.”
The New York Times

“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.”
Times Literary Supplement

“Absorbing, vivid, often genuinely terrifying.”
Observer

“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.”
Newsweek

“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.”
The New Yorker

TITANBOOKS.COM

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THE MATT HELM SERIES

BY DONALD HAMILTON

The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.

Death of a Citizen

The Wrecking Crew

The Removers

The Silencers
(June 2013)

Murderers’ Row
(August 2013)

The Ambushers
(October 2013)

The Shadowers
(December 2013)

The Ravagers
(February 2014)

PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON

“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.” Anthony Boucher,
The New York Times

“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.”
Book Week

“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times

“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good...”
Milwaukee Journal

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