Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [37]
It was midafternoon—she could tell that much by the position of the sun—and she wondered what in hell she was going to do. The huge sandwich she’d wolfed down in the kitchen wasn’t sitting very well, and in the tropical paradise everything suddenly felt rank and rotting.
She wasn’t going to let her discomfort get to her— she was getting out of here in one piece, and she was taking Harry Van Dorn with her. She hadn’t had much of a chance to do anything worthwhile since she’d abandoned her principles and sold her soul to Roper, Hyde, Camui and Fredericks. Maybe it was time to give something back. Harry Van Dorn wasn’t going to be exterminated like some oversize tropical cockroach, on the say-so of some mysterious vigilante group. He was getting out of this alive. They both were.
She just had to figure out how.
It was getting close to midnight in London, but Isobel Lambert’s day was far from over. She stared at the transmission in disbelief. Peter Jensen, the perfect operative, the Iceman in so many ways, was balking at an order. Questioning a decree from London. It was unheard of. Unimaginable.
It was healthy.
She’d been worried about him. He’d been instrumental in Bastien’s desertion of their ranks, and he had to have wondered whether that was the answer for him. Bastien had been weak enough to fall in love— she sincerely doubted that Peter Jensen was even capable of such a liability.
Which worked in her favor—she couldn’t afford to lose him right now, when so many lives were hanging in the balance.
But even well-oiled machines could break down, and robots could go haywire, and whether Peter wanted to believe it or not, he had a conscience, albeit one buried so deep it would be hard to find.
It seemed to be surfacing at an unfortunate moment, but Madame Lambert held the firm belief that there were no mistakes. If Peter was having doubts about his orders then he was probably right to question them.
And there was nothing she could do from five thousand miles away but trust him.
8
To her amazement Genevieve had fallen asleep. When she woke, the sun was lower on the horizon and she couldn’t remember where she was.
Until she heard that infuriating voice from the doorway. “I thought you’d be busy planning your escape, not taking a nap.”
She’d locked her door. She should have known it would be a futile gesture—she could barely summon up a trace of outrage. She’d fallen asleep in one of the chairs, and now she kept her gaze trained on the shimmering blue waters ahead of her, refusing to give him any attention. The house had been built on a knoll, and the view was gorgeous. Including the tactfully camouflaged stone wall and the shark-infested waters just beyond.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider knocking,” she said in a deceptively mild voice. “I realize it’s too much to ask you to let me lock the door, but a moment of warning would be considerate.”
He came into the room. He’d showered and changed and she could have kicked herself. For a short period of time he’d been relatively inattentive, and she could have made a run for it. Instead, she’d fallen asleep.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t try,” he said. He’d read her mind again. Was she really that transparent? No, she was a decent enough poker player when called upon. Any lawyer had to be able to bluff.
Peter Jensen was just particularly good at sensing people’s reactions, or he knew her better than she knew herself. She was much happier believing it was an innate talent, and not something personal.
“Why not?” She turned to give him her full attention. “Do you expect me to just roll over and play dead?”
A shame the mind reading didn’t go both ways. His face was completely impassive—the notion of death hung in the air with neither of them wanting to claim it.
“The house has an experimental security system,” he said after a moment. “If you try to open one of the doors or windows you’ll get an electric shock. Quite a severe one, I’m afraid, and I don’t think there’s anyone