Kiss Me While I sleep (6 page)

“What’s up?” Swain asked, stretching his long legs out as he relaxed, his spine curving so he sank down in his chair. Formality wasn’t Swain’s way.

“A delicate situation in Europe. One of our contract agents has gone off the reservation, killed a valuable asset We need her stopped.”

“Her?”

Frank handed the report over the desk. Swain took it and swiftly read through it, then passed it back. “The deed’s done. What’s there to stop?”

“Salvatore Nervi wasn’t alone in the situation that ended with the death of Lily’s friends. If she’s on a rampage to get all of them, she could wreck our entire network. She’s already done considerable damage by eliminating Nervi.”

Swain screwed up his face and briskly rubbed both hands over it. “Don’t you have some irascible rogue agent, forcibly retired under a cloud, with some special skill that makes him the only choice possible for locating Ms. Mansfield and stopping her killing ways?”

Frank bit the inside of his cheek to control a smile. “Does this look like a movie production to you?”

“A man can hope.”

“Consider your hopes dashed.”

“Okay, then, how about John Medina?” Swain’s blue eyes were full of laughter as he got into the spirit of deviling Frank.

“John’s busy in the Middle East,” Frank said calmly.

His reply brought Swain upright in his seat, all hint of laziness gone. “Wait a minute. Are you saying there really is a Medina?”

“There really is a Medina.”

“There’s no file on him-” Swain began, then caught himself, grinned, and said, “Oops.”

“Meaning you’ve checked.”

“Hell, everyone in the business has checked.”

“That’s why there’s no file in the computer system. For his protection. Now, as I was saying, John’s deep cover in the Middle East, and in any case, I wouldn’t use him for a retrieval.”

“Meaning he’s way more important than I am.” Swain had that goofy grin again, meaning he took no offense.

“Or that he has different talents. You’re the man I want, and you’ll be on a plane to Paris tonight. Here’s what I want you to do.”

After spending an entire day eating, resting, and doing light workouts to increase her stamina, Lily got up the morning of her departure feeling much better. She carefully packed her carry-on bag and shopping tote, making sure she was leaving nothing crucial behind. Most of her clothes were left hanging in the closet; the odd photographs of complete strangers that she had put in cheap frames and set around the flat, to give herself the appearance of a background, were left in place.

She didn’t strip the bed linens or wash the single bowl and spoon she’d used for breakfast, though she did take the precaution of thoroughly wiping the place down with oil-dissolving disinfectant, to destroy her fingerprints. That was something she’d been doing for nineteen years, and the habit was strongly ingrained. She had even wiped down her surroundings before leaving the Nervi compound, though she hadn’t been able to use a disinfectant She had also always wiped her eating utensils and drinking glasses with a napkin before they were collected, and cleaned her hairbrush every morning, flushing the stray hairs that collected in the bristles.

She was uncomfortably aware she couldn’t do anything about the blood Dr. Giordano had drawn for analyzing, but DNA wasn’t used for identification the same way that fingerprints were; there was no extensive database. Her fingerprints were on file in Langley, but nowhere else; except for the occasional assassination, she’d been a model citizen. Even fingerprints were no good unless there was a file somewhere to match them to, and get a name. One slipup meant nothing. Two provided a means of identification. To the best of her ability, she tried never to provide even a starting point.

Probably Dr. Giordano would find it odd in the extreme if she called him and asked for the return of any leftover blood. If she were in California, now, she could claim she was a member of a weird religious cult and needed the blood, or even that she was a vampire, and probably get any remnants returned.

The ghoulish thought made her mouth curve into a wan smile, and she wished she could share that thought with Zia, who’d had a rich sense of the absurd. With Averill and Tina, and especially with Zia, she’d been able to relax and act silly occasionally, like a normal person. For someone in her line of work, relaxation was a luxury, and done only with others of her kind.

The faint smile faded. Their absence left such a huge void in her life that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to fill it. Over the years her affection had been given to an ever-shrinking circle, until finally there had been just five people in it: her mother and sister-and she no longer dared visit them for fear of bringing the danger of her job to their doorsteps-and three friends.

Averill had once been her lover; for a very brief time they had staved off the loneliness together. Then they had drifted apart, and she met Tina during a job that required two agents. She had never bonded instantly with anyone before the way she had with Tina, as if they had been twins meeting for the first time. They had only to look at each other to know they were thinking the same things at the same times. They had the same sense of humor, the same silly dreams that someday, when they weren’t in this line of work any longer, they’d get married and own their own businesses-not necessarily in that order-and maybe even have a kid or two.

Someday
had come for Tina when, like helium balloons floating around in a closed room, Averill eventually floated across her path. Lily and Tina might have had tons in common, but chemistry was one thing that was different; Averill took one look at slim, brunette Tina and fell in love, and the feeling was mutual. For a while, between jobs, they had bummed around together and generally had a blast They were young and healthy and good at their jobs; admittedly, being assassins made them feel tough and invincible. They were professional enough not to swagger, but young enough to feel the rush.

Then Tina was shot, and reality crashed down on them. The job was deadly. The rush was no longer there. Their own mortality stared them in the face.

Averill and Tina reacted to it by getting married, as soon as Tina was well enough to walk down the aisle. They set up housekeeping together, first in a flat here in Paris, then they bought a small house on the outskirts. They began taking fewer and fewer jobs.

Lily usually came back to visit whenever she could, and one day she brought Zia with her. She’d found the baby, abandoned and starving to death, in Croatia, just after Croatia had declared its independence from Yugoslavia, when the Serb army was already decimating pockets of the new country in the beginning of the bitter war. No one Lily had asked seemed to have any knowledge of the baby’s mother, or none they’d admit to, and they had even less interest. It was either take the baby with her or know she was leaving it to die a miserable death.

Within two days she loved the infant as fiercely as if she’d given birth to it herself. Getting out of Croatia hadn’t been exactly easy, especially since she was lugging a baby. She’d had to find milk, and diapers, and blankets. She hadn’t worried about clothes at that point, just some means, any means, of keeping the baby fed and dry and warm. She named her Zia, just because she liked the name.

Then there was the problem of getting paperwork for Zia, finding a forger good enough, and getting her into Italy. Once out of Croatia, caring for her was less difficult, the supplies Lily needed more readily available. The task of caring for her was never easy, though. The baby jerked and went rigid whenever Lily touched her, and often spat up almost as much milk as she swallowed. Rather than subject the infant to even more travel, when she’d had so few constants in her very short life, Lily decided to stay in Italy for a while.

She thought Zia had been only a few weeks old when she’d found her, though it was possible lack of food and care had made her smaller than average. After staying in Italy for three months, though, Zia had gained enough weight to have dimples on her plump little hands and legs, she was drooling incessantly as she began to cut teeth, and she looked at Lily with the openmouthed, wide-eyed expression of sheer joy that only the very young could achieve and not look like total idiots.

Finally she took Zia to France to meet Uncle Averill and Aunt Tina.

The changeover in custody happened very gradually. Whenever Lily had a job, she would leave Zia with them; they loved the baby and she was content with them, though it still broke Lily’s heart every time she had to leave her, and she lived for the moment when she returned and Zia saw her for the first time. That little face would light up and she’d squeal in delight, and Lily thought she’d never heard a sound so beautiful.

But then the inevitable happened: Zia was growing up. She needed to attend school. Lily was sometimes gone for weeks at a time. It was only logical that Zia spend more and more time with Averill and Tina, until finally they all realized they had to get some more papers forged, showing the couple as Zia’s parents. By the time Zia was four, Averill and Tina were Daddy and Mom to her, and Lily was Aunt Lil.

For thirteen years Zia had been the emotional center of Lily’s life, and now she was gone.

What on earth had caused Averill and Tina to get back into a game they were well out of? Had they needed money? Surely they had known all they had to do was ask Lily, and she’d have given them every euro and dollar she had-and after nineteen years of the very lucrative work she did, she’d had a hefty balance in a Swiss bank. But something had lured them out of retirement, and they’d paid with their lives. And so had Zia.

Now Lily had used up most of her savings getting that poison and setting up the situation. Good papers cost money, and the better they were the more they cost. She’d had to rent the flat, get an actual job-because not having one would have been suspicious-then put herself in Salvatore Nervi’s path and hope he took the bait. That hadn’t been a sure bet, by any means. She could make herself look very attractive, but she knew she wasn’t a beauty. If that hadn’t worked, she would have thought of something else; she always did. But it
had
worked, beautifully, right up until the moment Salvatore insisted she taste his wine.

Now she had one-tenth the money she’d had before, she had a damaged heart valve that, as Dr. Giordano had explained, would eventually have to be replaced, her stamina was laughable, and her time was running out.

From a logical standpoint, she knew her odds weren’t good. This time not only did she not have Langley‘s resources behind her, the Agency would actually be working against her. She wouldn’t be able to use any of her known safe havens, she couldn’t call for either backup or extraction, and she would have to be on guard against… everyone. She had no idea whom Langley would send after her; they might simply locate her and have a sharpshooter take her out, in which case she had nothing to worry about, because there was no way she could protect herself from something she couldn’t see. She wasn’t Salvatore Nervi, with a fleet of steel-reinforced cars and protected entrances. Her only hope was not to let them locate her.

On the plus side… Well, there was no plus side.

That didn’t mean she’d walk out into the open and make herself an easy target. They might take her down, but she’d make it as difficult for them as possible. Her professional pride was at stake. With Zia and the others gone, pride was just about all she had left.

She waited as long as she dared before using her cell phone to call for a taxi to the airport. She had to cut it as close as possible, to limit the time Rodrigo would have to get people in place. At first the men tailing her wouldn’t know where she was going, but as soon as they realized she was headed to the airport, they’d call Rodrigo for instructions. The chance of Rodrigo already having someone-or several someones-on the payroll at the airport was at least fifty-fifty, but de Gaulle was a large airport and, without knowing exactly which airline she was taking or her destination, heading her off would be difficult All they could do was follow, but only so far before security would stop them.

If Rodrigo had the passenger list checked, the jig would be up, because she wasn’t flying under the name of Denise Morel, or even her own name. She had no doubt he’d check; the only question was how soon he’d do it. At first, he might not even be suspicious enough to do more than have her followed.

By leaving so openly, and taking so little luggage, she hoped he’d be curious but not suspicious, at least not for the short amount of time it would take her to disappear.

If the gods were smiling on her, he wouldn’t be unduly suspicious even when his men lost track of her in busy Heathrow. He might wonder why she flew instead of taking a ferry or tunnel, but a lot of people flew the short hop from Paris to London, and vice versa, if they were short of time.

In the best possible scenario, he wouldn’t think anything of her trip for at least a couple of days, until she failed to return home. The worst possible scenario would be if he had his men grab her in de Gaulle airport, regardless of witnesses and possible repercussions. Rodrigo wouldn’t worry about either of those. She was betting he wouldn’t go to that extent; so far he hadn’t discovered she wasn’t who she said she was, because he hadn’t had his men storm her flat. In the absence of that knowledge, there was no reason for him to cause a public disturbance.