Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [26]
But she simply let him hold her down as she shook, and it wasn’t until he had an unbidden, unwanted erotic thought about cradling her head at crotch level that he let go of her, almost as if he were burned.
She sank back against the seat, her eyes wide and staring. “I killed him,” she said in a bleak voice. “I didn’t realize…”
“No, you didn’t realize,” Taka said, trying to forget about the feel of the warm skin at the back of her neck. He didn’t want to offer Summer any kind of comfort, but he couldn’t keep himself from adding, “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and anyone else you involve is going to run the same kind of risks.”
“I wasn’t trying to involve anyone. I just needed to get away from here…”
“You’re going to need me for that.”
She turned to look at him. “Who the hell are you?”
Takashi wondered whether he should try the Ministry of Antiques story again, then discarded the idea. They were long past that innocent lie. The next lie he told needed to be far more plausible and deadly, or she was going to run again.
And he couldn’t afford to let that happen. At this point the only way she was going to get away from him was if she was equally safe from the brethren, and, right now, the only way that would happen was if she was dead.
“Someone who’s not going to let the Shirosama get you,” he said, which was nothing more than the truth. She just didn’t know what lengths he’d go to ensure that.
She leaned back against the seat, her color pale in the reflected city light. She didn’t ask where he was taking her, and he didn’t volunteer the information. He drove fast and well, moving through the constant traffic with the ease of someone who’d learned to drive in one of the most congested cities in the world, and she said nothing, retreating in on herself.
He still couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t cried—not once in the time he’d been with her. She’d been through more than most American women would see in a lifetime, witnessed more violence, and yet through it all she’d remained shaken but dry-eyed. He wasn’t used to it—there was something almost unnatural about her control. As long as she kept that eerie calm, she was capable of bolting, and he couldn’t afford to let that happen.
She needed to break, completely. And if the events of the last twenty-four hours hadn’t managed to do it, then he was going to have to finish the job. Until Summer Hawthorne was weeping and helpless, she was a liability.
He glanced at her pale, set profile. The lights from the oncoming cars prismed through the rain-splattered windshield, dancing across her face in shards of light and dark. Yes, he would have to break her. Or kill her.
Or maybe both.
Isobel Lambert stubbed out her cigarette, hating the taste in her mouth, the smell on her fingers, hating everything. She needed to go back to the doctor, see if there was something new she could try. She’d already gone through the patch, gum, nasal spray, hypnosis, cognitive therapy, clove cigarettes, and everything else under the sun, but nothing had stuck. She’d manage a day, a week, even three months one time, then something would happen and she’d pick them up again.
Her therapist had a glib explanation: her job. Her life was all about death. The giving of it, the ordering of it. By smoking she could atone by seeking her own death in a slower, more insidious way.
Just so much bullshit, Madame Lambert had told the good doctor. If smoking made it easier to accept the hard choices she had