Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [69]
“What name?”
He didn’t smile. “Either one, Ms. Spenser. Call, and I’ll come. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about your requested miracles.”
She should have asked for Tab while she was at it. It was just as likely as bringing Peter back from the dead.
Except…
It hit her with stunning force. He wasn’t dead. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she just did. He hadn’t been on that boat when it exploded into a shower of nothingness. She could feel it, in her bones, in her gut. Peter whoever-he-was wasn’t dead.
And she was probably still too hopped up on the meds they’d been giving her to know her own mother.
She didn’t care. If it was a fantasy then she was happy enough to live in it. After all, she was never going to see the man again, either way.
She’d just be happier believing he was alive. Still on this earth, tormenting some other poor woman who happened to get in his way.
No more tears. She needed to look forward, to get out of this mink-lined prison and back to America. Right now, all she had to worry about was herself. And that was going to keep her busy enough.
Harry’s affable smile vanished the moment Jackshit left him alone in his study. Even for someone as necessary as his Jap assistant there were certain precautions, certain formalities. He’d given Jack the order to kill in the past, and Jack had followed through with his customary silent efficiency, but still Harry had never let his charming smile fade.
It was gone now, and he prowled the study like an angry jungle cat. He liked the image—he could picture himself as a sleek, oversize panther, a danger to all who knew him. And he was. He was just smart enough to fool them.
She’d fucked him. The little bitch lawyer had fucked Jensen—he could see it on her, smell it on her. She’d kept her distance from him that first night on the boat and then spread her legs for that lying bastard, and for that she was going to have to pay.
Things would have been so different if she’d just done her duty and slept with him that first night. He’d come to expect it from the women his lawyers sent down to him, and Genevieve Spenser should have been no different.
But she’d kept her distance, and he’d been alone when they came to get him. If she’d been there they might have thought twice. Or he could have used her as a shield, slowing them long enough so they couldn’t knock him out.
She was as much to blame as Peter Jensen and his crackpot do-gooder Committee. And he was going to have to do something about it.
As soon as he tried to repair the damage that had been done. Destroying the dam in Mysore was out of the question now—the security had been beefed up, the insurgents he’d put on retainer had disappeared. The sabotage of the oil fields was also questionable—the paperwork had disappeared along with his gorgeous boat, and the wells were still in his name. It might give him an even stronger appearance of innocence if something were to happen to them while he still owned them, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to make that sacrifice. He’d drop that one as well, for now.
Harry kicked the walnut desk, angry and frustrated. They were getting in the way of his careful plans, and it was more than annoying. He required a certain symmetry, and the Rule of Seven was inviolate. They’d smashed that, and there was no proper ring to the Rule of Five.
And it was only four days till April nineteenth, the beginning of the end. Four days to come up with two equally effective circumstances to throw the financial world into chaos. At least his enemies were way behind the eight ball. They might have found out two of his targets, but they had no idea about the deadly strain of avian flu that was about to hit mainland China, or the diamond mines in South Africa, or the memorial shrine at Auschwitz being blown to pieces when the visitors’ center was full.
Maybe he was being too hard on himself. The Rule of Seven had been simple, working east to west. It would start with the massive outbreak