Black Ice - Anne Stuart [42]
He was driving very, very fast on the dark, moonless roads, running for their lives, and yet he reached over and turned on the radio. It was a hit song from a few years back—she has revolver eyes, she kills with her glance, she shoots. Shooting, killing, guns.
The oblivion held off. She turned to look at him. “You killed a man tonight,” she said.
He didn’t even spare her a glance. “I killed two men tonight. You didn’t see me cut the throat of one of the guards. I promise I didn’t hurt any of the dogs, though.”
She stared at him in horror. “How can you joke about it?”
“It was a joke that you didn’t want me to kill the dogs? It would have made things simpler if I had, but I decided to defer to your tender sensibilities.” He took the corner with the speed and skill of a race-car driver, only giving her a quarter of his attention.
She didn’t know which was worse: a man like Hakim who killed with pleasure, or a man like Bastien who felt nothing at all.
“Go to sleep, ma petite,” he said. “We’ve a long drive ahead of us, and you’ve already had a busy night. I’ll wake you when I stop for food.”
“I don’t ever want to eat again,” she said in a faint voice, shuddering. She could smell the blood, and something else basic and foul.
“Suit yourself. American girls are too fat anyway.”
She couldn’t even summon a trace of outrage. If she didn’t know better she’d think he’d said it for the simple purpose of bringing her out of her dazed, deadened state, but it seemed unlikely he’d care. She ought to ask him where he was taking her, but she couldn’t summon the energy or the curiosity. He’d take her wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted. She could only hope that if he decided to put his hands on her again it would be to kill her. She would rather be dead than have sex with this cold-blooded monster.
“Go to sleep,” he said again, in a gentler voice, even though the very notion of gentleness was absurd. But the song on the radio was soft and soothing as he sang of love and killing. C’est foutu. Everything’s fucked, he sang, and she could only agree, as she closed her eyes and let the darkness come.
Bastien glanced over at her once he was certain she’d drifted off. She was a mess—her arms were crisscrossed with shallow cuts and burns, her face was pale, tear-stained, her makeup giving her raccoon eyes. She looked very fragile, but he knew she was tougher than she seemed. She was still alive, a miracle in itself. She’d somehow been able to withstand Hakim long enough.
Hakim had a rhythm to his work—he’d been a man of method. He told them not to scream, and then worked on them until they did, like a lover trying to bring a reluctant woman to orgasm. Once they started to scream he moved faster, but Chloe had managed to keep silent. She had blood on her mouth and her lips were swollen from biting down to keep the screams at bay. Or maybe it was from his own mouth on hers. He’d certainly been no tender lover.
He’d found out what he needed to know, and that had been what mattered. And then he’d gone and screwed everything up by sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, interfering with Hakim’s fun and games instead of accepting that every war had its casualties.
Maybe he was just tired of all the collateral damage. Maybe he wanted to save one life instead of taking it. Maybe he was so burned out that he was courting death, screwing up important assignments on a whim.
She looked pretty messed-up for a whim. He needed to get them somewhere safe, where he could clean the wounds on her soft, pale skin, where he could figure out what the hell he was going to do now, both with her and with himself.
She was easy enough. He’d patch her up, calm her down and put her on the next plane back to