Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [82]
The man fell, the flashlight crashing to the floor and rolling to one side. Peter moved toward him and rose, but he already knew the unknown guard was dead. Even blinded by the flashlight Peter’s shot had been perfectly centered between his eyes.
He felt her come up behind him, and he could barely keep his temper in check. He moved away, picking up the flashlight and shining it into the dead man’s face. He wasn’t sure why he did it—maybe to punish her— but her reaction was no more than a choke of horror. It would have served him right if she’d thrown up on him.
“Good shot,” she said in a rusty voice, trying to sound casual. “Why do you people always shoot people between the eyes?”
He turned to look at her. She was far from as calm as she sounded—her color was ashen, and he wondered if she was going to pass out. “Because a smaller gun has a smaller bullet and it’s neater. If I was carrying something bigger I would have blown his head off, and it would have made a huge mess. Are you going to faint at my feet again?”
That put some color back into her face. “I don’t faint.”
“You also don’t obey orders. What the fuck did you think you were doing back there?”
She didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t really expect her to. “Get in the car,” he said wearily. The ice had drained from his veins, leaving him empty and tired.
“Which one?”
He managed a laugh. “Not the Porsche, babe. That’s Harry’s and it would attract too much attention. Besides, there’s a dead body in the back.”
She was about at the end of her limit, as was he. But she said nothing, moving around to the passenger side of the nondescript sedan and climbing inside. By the time he joined her she’d already fastened her seat belt, and for some reason it made him want to laugh.
“You ever disobey my orders again and I’ll kill you myself,” he said, starting the car.
She didn’t say a word. She simply turned her face away from him, staring out the window, as he made his way out of the subterranean garage that now held a Porsche and two corpses.
You ever disobey my orders again and I’ll kill you myself, he’d said, and Genevieve hadn’t said a word. Too many threats, too many deaths had left her numb and tired and unwilling to fight. The headlights speared through the dark cavern as the car climbed higher, and Genevieve had the stupid fancy that he was taking her out of hell. Except that he was the devil himself, and wherever he took her would be full of death as well.
“I want to go back to America,” she said, finding her voice. She didn’t, wouldn’t look at him. At the hands that had touched her. At the hands that had killed for her.
His derisive laughter wasn’t going to improve her shaken mood. “Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t care if this third-world bog is safer, I want to go home. If not New York, then at least somewhere in the States.”
She glanced over to see him pull something that looked like an upscale BlackBerry out of his pocket and punch in a few buttons. A moment later the rock wall opened in front of them. “How about California?” he said as the door closed behind them.
She was momentarily silent, feeling disoriented and stupid. “Where are we?”
“Near Santa Barbara. Where did you think we were? What was that…some third-world bog? But isn’t that exactly where you’d originally planned to go? In another week I can ship you off there and you can wallow to your heart’s content.”
“What difference will a week make?” she asked.
“It’ll be the end of April, Harry Van Dorn will be dead and you won’t ever have to see my face again.”
“Promises, promises,” she whispered, leaning her head back against the seat. She turned to look at him for the first time, and she almost laughed. He looked like a normal, middle-class American