Ice Storm - Anne Stuart [91]
What had she been doing all day with the man she’d drugged? He was more than just a hostile—Reno could figure that out by the expression in her eyes when she’d thought no one was looking. They’d dumped his unconscious body on the small bed in the closed-off apartment, and she’d stood there, looking down at him with an unreadable expression on her face.
Maybe she’d killed him at some point during this long day. But then, he would have been called to help Madsen move the body. The Committee’s operatives had gone undercover, and right now there seemed to be only the three of them.
Reno hoped Taka was looking out for himself, that son of a bitch. He was the one who’d arranged to have him shipped out of the country, and while there was no doubt Reno had made the mistake of losing his temper with some very unforgiving people, it also had something to do with the fact that Taka’s sister-in-law was coming for a visit. He and his wife kept Reno as far away from Jilly Hawthorne as they could, even if it meant exiling him halfway across the world.
He pushed himself up off the floor, considering his annoyance with his entire family, women, the Committee, England and life in general. “I’m going to bed,” he told Mahmoud.
The boy simply nodded, staring fixedly as his video game character rode a dragon through a flame-colored sky.
“Don’t stay up all night,” Reno said, and then could have kicked himself. He’d turned into an old man. The kid could stay up for days if he wanted to, playing games, and be none the worse for it. Reno had done it often enough.
Empty Red Bull cans were piled high in the trash bin; boxes of cereal, Chinese take-out containers, bags of chips were littered all over the place. The boy hadn’t stopped eating. Reno had taught him how to use chopsticks rather than his hands, but it had been harder convincing him not to leave them stuck in the rice. Mahmoud had argued with perfect logic that it should only be bad luck to leave them stuck in Japanese rice, not Chinese. But then he’d carefully removed them.
No, the kid was okay. Tomorrow, maybe he’d take him to a video game arcade and let him try Guitar Hero and DDR. Or steal a fast car and drive out into the countryside, and maybe they could find a castle or two.
At least Reno was no longer so damn bored.
Mahmoud made no sound when they came for him. The struggle was silent, muffled, and Reno wouldn’t have woken up if they hadn’t knocked over the bin of soda cans. He came flying through the darkness toward the shadowed men, and he took out two of them with the sheer element of surprise. But then he heard the crack of his arm breaking, as if from a distance, and felt a flash of blinding pain. Then nothing at all.
Bastien Toussaint glanced around the pristine offices of Spence-Pierce, wondering what the hell was happening behind the double-thick walls. It was three in the morning, and he wasn’t any more eager to face Chloe than Madsen was to deal with his very annoyed amazon wife. They weren’t much further than they’d been when they’d started out that morning, and there was no way either of them was going to stop until they figured out what the hell was going on. So far they’d come up with bugger all.
Bastien sank back in the chair, taking the mug of coffee Madsen offered him, liberally laced with Scotch. He had no fears the Scotch would slow him down—he was riding on pure adrenaline, as if the last three years of peace had never happened. Old habits died hard, he thought, looking at the high-tech arsenal Peter had laid out on the teak desk.
“You want to tell me why you never thought it important to share the fact that Josef Serafin was CIA?” Peter said, absently rubbing his bad leg.
Bastien shrugged. “We had an arrangement. Thomason sent me to Central America to kill both Serafin and his boss, Ideo Llosa, the head of the Red Terror. Once I made Serafin, he agreed to take care of the other half of my mission. It was why he was there in the first place. I left him