Ice Storm - Anne Stuart [11]
“Do I look harmless enough?” he asked when she’d completed her long, shocked perusal.
“I’m not a fool, Mr. Serafin,” she said. She couldn’t afford to let her relief lower her guard. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“Indeed,” he said. “Are you going to show yourself?”
She stepped into the light, the 9 mm semiautomatic held tightly, trained at his chest. If she had to shoot she’d go lower or higher—the throat was efficient, the groin almost as painful. Both caused much more suffering than a bullet to the heart or the head, and if anyone deserved to suffer it was this man.
There was no expression in his flat black eyes as he looked at her and the gun. “Are you going to kill me?”
If this man had really been Killian, she would have been tempted. But she’d been wrong…plus tired and emotional and deluded. “Not until you give me reason to.”
“You mean I haven’t already? Given my activities during the last twenty years?” He was goading her, amused by her.
She hated killing, hated it with a sick, deep passion. But when they learned everything they needed to from this miserable excuse for a human being, she was going to enjoy putting a bullet in his head.
“Right now, you’ve got a free pass,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Are you ready to go? My Jeep is waiting, and we’d do better to travel in the dark. We’re heading down the coast highway to Mauritania and catching transport there.”
“I don’t think so. They’ll be looking for me in Western Sahara, and I don’t trust women drivers on these roads. We’ll head east and go through Algeria.”
“The border’s closed.”
“And that creates a problem?”
She controlled her temper. “You asked us to get you out of here and safely back to England. If you already made plans, then why did you bother with us?”
“I need cover. I need someone at my back, dubious as you now appear to be. And I need the resources of the Committee to get resettled in a new life. You’ve agreed to do that, much as it galls you, because of the intel I can bring to the table. We go through the mountains into Algeria. I drive. And I take Mahmoud with me.”
“The arrangement was for you alone, not your plaything. You’re not molesting children on my watch.”
“What a cynic you are, Madame Lambert. I don’t like young boys. I hate to deny you one more example of my infamy, but I’m not interested in raping children.”
“What do you rape? Or is it only the soldiers you control who get to torture and murder?”
There was a long silence. “You knew who I was when you made the deal. It’s a little late to change your mind.”
“The most dangerous man in the world,” she said, her tone mocking.
“But not, perhaps, the most evil man in the world. There’s a difference.”
“I don’t really care. I don’t have to like you, I just have to get you back to England. Alone.”
She felt it—the sight of a weapon trained on the back of her head. She trusted her instincts implicitly. Someone was pointing a gun at her, someone who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.
Serafin must have read her expression even as she tried to keep it blank. “That would be Mahmoud aiming his AK-47 at you. And don’t think for a moment he wouldn’t use it. He has a vested interest in keeping me alive and within reach, and he won’t hesitate to kill you if you get in his way.”
“Wouldn’t that interfere with your plans?” Her voice was level.
“It would,” he said. “Unfortunately, Mahmoud is the one with the gun.”
She held out both hands, her own gun visible. “The Jeep’s big enough for three,” she said. “As long as he doesn’t get in my way.”
Even without looking she knew the machine gun was no longer trained on her back, and she tucked her own weapon away, turning to look at the child behind her, an empty-eyed casualty of war and poverty. He was probably no more than ten and yet he was ageless, and already dead.
“You surprise me, Madame Lambert,” Serafin said. “I thought a woman would be more tenderhearted. Surely you wouldn’t want to