Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [121]
O’Banion studied her face for several more seconds. Then he put away the Glock. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Vera turned and walked as steadily as she could back to the car where Gunn waited, curled like a serpent in the trunk.
“What happened to your shoes?” O’Banion said.
“When I was a kid, my mother took me here on weekends. The first thing I did when I got here was to take off my shoes.”
O’Banion shook his head. “Fucking women.”
* * *
CAROLINE TOOK a tiny gold key from around her neck, inserted it into the lock on the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk. Inside was a large book with a moss-green cover on which was affixed an illustration of a tumbledown shop on a tumbledown block. It was an old book, much worn, thumbed-through, and read. Its title was The Little Curiosity Shop, a heavily illustrated children’s book, full of stories of fayries and magick. Caroline pressed her palm against the cover, caressing it, as she often did when she was absolutely certain that she was alone. She had read it so often she could still recite whole sections from memory.
Locking the book away, she got up from her computer workstation and stretched. Ever since the Syrian had returned with Arian Xhafa in tow she’d found it difficult to concentrate. Walking into the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. She was the only one in the compound allowed to drink; she was the only one who wasn’t Muslim. She enjoyed drinking in front of them, just as she got a kick out of dressing as she wanted. The Syrian was lenient, even Western in his views, but she knew not to push him past a certain point. She was valuable to him—more valuable than a platoon of suicide bombers—but that didn’t mean she could do whatever she pleased. Everyone had boundaries here, even him.
Popping the top of her beer she went and leaned against the sink, her ankles crossed as she stared out the window at the two men sitting side by side in the garden. She did not need to hear their conversation to know its subject. Xhafa, like all his kind, hated women. He disguised the hatred by wrapping it in religious text, but his prejudice was plain to her all the same. She’d had a great deal of experience with men’s hatred of women—their abuse, both psychological and physical, their contempt, their complete and utter dismissal. To Xhafa and men like him women were an inferior form of human being, a second-class citizen meant for breeding or, far worse, receptacles for the release of men’s pleasure.
She watched the pantomime for a while, providing the words she could not hear. When Arian Xhafa placed the segment of blood orange in his mouth, she laughed silently.
* * *
IN THE firelight, the blood looked black. Jack ached all over, but otherwise he felt okay. He sat on a tree stump near the fire Thatë’s men had started. The heat felt good on his back. Alli, kneeling beside him, rummaged in her backpack for the first-aid kit.
When she opened it, she said, “Shit, the gauze is sopping wet.”
“Those kits are supposed to be waterproof,” Paull said, peering over her shoulder.
Her fingers ran around the rim. “One of the hinges is broken,” she said. “That’s how the water seeped in when I slipped in the river.” She plucked out a small tube. “The Krazy Glue’s fine, but we still need something to bind Jack’s wound.”
The bullet had torn a more or less horizontal strip out of Jack’s side. The wound wasn’t deep, but if it wasn’t treated there was the danger of infection. Alli cleaned the wound with alcohol and waited for it to dry. Then she handed the tube to Jack.
Jack looked at Paul. “We have to get these children to a place of safety.”
“There isn’t one anywhere near here,” Alli said.
Paull nodded. “We’ll take them on the plane.”
Jack’s face clouded. “If you take them back to the States they’re going to run afoul of INS, which, these days, is nothing more than a pack of jackals on the hunt for aliens they can imprison or deport so it can look good with Homeland Security.”
Paull grinned. “Then I’ll just have to circumvent INS, won’t I?