Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [62]
“Money can’t buy everything, my friend, but it can buy a lot. Including me.”
She heard the faint popping sound almost at the same time the round hole appeared in the middle of Hans’s forehead. For a moment everything moved in slow motion, and then Hans’s big body crumpled to the ground.
“Poor stupid Kraut,” Renaud muttered as he went to untie Harry. “Never call a Frenchman ‘Froggy.’”
Genevieve didn’t move, frozen to the thick, damp earth beneath her. She wanted to throw up. She’d just seen a man killed, as easily as swatting a fly, and her stomach churned in protest against such horror.
She forced herself to breathe, trying to pull her shocked wits together. Hans was dead, Harry was alive, and Renaud had been bought. By Harry. With Hans dead, the place wouldn’t be blown up; with Renaud busy saving Harry’s life she could run for it with no guilt at all.
Peter was already on the boat, ready to sail away. If he came back and found Hans’s body, would he abort the mission or reset the charges and blow the place? Or would he track Harry down and finish it himself? And finish her?
Why had he lied and said he’d already killed her? What did it matter if Renaud knew she was dead or not? For that matter, why did he leave her alive in the first place?
She started to move backward, deeper into the undergrowth, when Renaud’s voice shattered her illusion of safety.
“Get your ass out here, lady. I can’t carry Harry by myself.”
She could run. He wouldn’t have a clear shot at her, and Harry was a bigger priority for him at the moment.
Then again, he’d saved Harry. Wasn’t that what she wanted?
“And put the gun down. I don’t think you know how to use it, but women with guns are always dangerous. And stop dragging your heels. I have no problem killing you if you aren’t going to help me.”
She emerged from the bushes, setting the gun down on the flagstone patio. She didn’t want to look at Hans’s body. When she was growing up, the various family cats had brought in bird and rodent corpses as a token of appreciation, and she’d had to avert her eyes while she covered whatever was left of them with a paper towel while someone with a stronger stomach would remove them.
Hans was a far cry from a decapitated sparrow, and she felt her stomach lurch again. She focused her attention on Renaud, not the most appetizing sight himself.
“I have to get him to the far side of the island— Harry was with it long enough to let me know how to get a seaplane to pick us up. You, too, if you do what I tell you. Are you going to help me?”
“Of course. But won’t they come after us when you don’t show up at the boat and the place doesn’t explode? What if the plane doesn’t get here in time?”
“By ‘they’ do you mean Peter? He won’t wait that long—company policy. Rules of the game. Once the place blows he’ll be out of here, thinking everyone’s dead and the perfect plan went perfectly. He won’t like it that two low-level operatives didn’t make it, but he won’t lose any sleep over it.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who leaves anything to chance,” Genevieve pointed out.
“You know him pretty well for such a short time. I wonder why he lied about killing you.”
“I have no idea. I assure you, he planned to.”
Renaud shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Yes, Jensen’s a thorough, exacting professional at what he does. A bloody artiste, if you ask me—I’ve seen his work. But he also knows just how good he is and he’d never imagine that a hired gun like me could outsmart him.”
“And what if he comes back to check?”
“Then I’ll kill him. But he won’t get that far, if for some crazy reason he decided to leave the boat. Half the island will be gone in another twenty minutes, and if we don’t get rich boy out of here, we’ll be gone as well. And I don’t intend to let that happen. I’m going to end up with more than enough money so that Peter Jensen and his entire fucking Committee can never find me.”
“I thought Hans said he was the only one who could blow it?”
“You were standing there that long? You’re better than I thought.” He rubbed his unshaven jaw. He still had a