Black Ice - Anne Stuart [62]
He drove down the narrow alleyway that led behind the house, closed the sagging wooden gates behind them, and stashed the taxi near some bushes, hoping it might avoid aerial surveillance. He only needed a few hours.
He pulled Chloe from the back seat, and she moved like an automaton. It might be nice if he could count on her being out of it for the next few hours, but he’d already had more than his share of luck. He walked her through the empty building, up littered stairways, past broken windows and abandoned furniture, up three flights to the empty attics. Her dazed state lasted until he pushed the button hidden at the side of the old chimney and the door slid open, exposing the small room.
He was unprepared for her reaction. She went from limp obedience to full-bodied panic, lashing out at him, trying to bolt, screaming…
There were a number of ways to silence a person, render them unconscious. If he’d realized she was about to flip out he would have been able to do it more gently, but he had no choice but to hit her, just so, and everything drained from her terrified body.
He caught her as she fell, dragging her into the tiny room and closing the door behind them. They were enclosed in darkness, but he knew the space very well indeed. The rest of the house had no electricity, but this one room had once been very well wired. He wasn’t about to check—he wasn’t about to do anything that would signal their presence here. He dragged her over to the bed against the wall and dumped her down on it, lifting her legs up and pulling his coat around her. There was only one window in the place, overhead and covered with a blackout curtain that no light could penetrate.
She would be unconscious for at least an hour, maybe more. He glanced at his watch, the number glowing in the dark, the only light in the inky blackness. It was just after eight in the morning, and he hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours. It wouldn’t make sense to head out to the airport for another twelve hours, and in the meantime, even an hour’s sleep would make a difference.
The bed was a narrow one, and he had no intention of doing anything to disturb her. He’d slept in worse places, and he was a creature of discipline. He took one of the thin wool blankets from the bed, covering her with the other, and stretched out on the hardwood floor. His body hurt—he felt old at thirty-two. Working for the Committee was a younger man’s game—this kind of shit aged you like dog years.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep immediately. But just as his spirit was rebelling against the Committee, his body was rebelling against its training. He lay there for five minutes, staring up into the darkness, listening to the sound of her breathing, wondering what the hell he was doing.
And then he slept.
She was trapped. Smothered in a blind darkness, the weight of it pressing down on her, stealing her sight, stealing her breath, darkness and the smell of blood all around, and she could see Sylvia lying there in a pool of red, her throat slashed, her eyes staring, her favorite dress ruined by the blood that had soaked into it. She would be furious about that. She would have wanted to be buried in that dress, she loved it so much. He’d slashed her throat—the man had slashed her throat—the same man who told her he’d kill her? And she’d let him take her, blindly, out into this darkness where she couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only open her mouth to scream….
He caught her as she flung herself off the bed, his arms like bands of iron around her body. She fought him like a crazy woman, alone in the darkness with death and blood pressing down on her, but he