Ice Storm - Anne Stuart [9]
And thank God that was who she was. An elegant, ageless automaton, with no desires, needs or emotions. Those had been scrubbed out of her over the long years, and after the initial shock of recognition, she could view her current mission with equanimity. Josef Serafin would be out of commission, and the world would be a marginally safer place.
The winter sun was blazing down on her open-topped vehicle. But the Jeep was the fastest, most rugged conveyance she could find, and if someone managed to track her, or Serafin, even an armored tank wouldn’t keep them safe.
The tires were kicking up too much dust, but during the seven-hour drive from Agadir she’d seen only a handful of sheepherders and a few nomadic encampments. There was a good chance she was being tracked by satellite, but there wasn’t much help for it. Killian…Serafin…was hidden in a deserted village near the Algerian border, and there was enough trouble in the neighboring areas that she had every confidence they’d manage to get away. But then, she never went into a mission without being convinced of its viability.
She could get Josef Serafin out of Morocco, back to London, without someone blowing his head off, no matter how many people wanted to do just that. Including his unwilling savior.
The sun was starting to set by the time she reached the outskirts of the deserted village of Nazir, and a shiver danced across her skin. It was getting colder, as it did in the desert, the blistering daytime heat turning to a bone-numbing chill.
It looked as if no one had lived in the town of Nazir for years, perhaps decades. The doors with their faded blue paint were shut, the dusty streets empty, and for a moment she wondered if she’d come to the wrong place. Had her intel been faulty? Or was she walking into a trap?
No trap—her instincts, on high alert, told her nothing worse than Killian would be waiting for her in the abandoned rubble. Though she wasn’t sure there was anything worse.
She pulled the Jeep behind the ruins of an old mosque, climbing out and stretching. She was a tourist who’d gotten lost—if she ran into anyone asking uncomfortable questions she could fend him off quite easily.
If she had any sense, she would have come in disguise. Someone younger, ditzier, so that her tale of getting lost on the road to Mauritania would seem plausible. But young and foolish was just a little too close to the woman Killian had known long ago. Even so, he would never recognize her. But she’d know. It would make her vulnerable.
Leaving the Jeep, she moved aimlessly down the deserted street. She had a knife at her ankle, a handgun at the small of her back, and the ability to kill swiftly and silently with her bare hands. No one would touch her, no one would get the upper hand….
“Hey, lady.” The young voice came out of nowhere, and she jumped like a startled kitten, too unnerved by the child’s unheralded appearance to even draw her gun. Which was just as well—to any hidden observer she was simply a foolish tourist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Lady,” the child said. She looked down at the collection of rags and dirt in front of her. He was the size of a six-year-old, with the eyes of an ancient. “Lady, you come.”
“Come where?” She hadn’t missed the gun he was holding. An AK-47. An early model from Russian surplus, she guessed. She’d seen child soldiers before, but she’d never been able to get over the shock of heavy machinery held so easily in such small hands.
“You come, lady,” he said again, seemingly the sum total of his English.
She touched the gun at the small of her back, to remind herself it was there, and followed the pitifully thin figure down the deserted streets. Killian ought to pay his stooges better, she thought, deliberately distancing herself. The child was skin and bones, held together by dirt. It was