Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [95]
He moved so quickly I barely reacted in time, catching his upraised arm with both hands. ‘For God’s sake, John!’
He threw me off with a single snap of flexed muscles, like a man dislodging a snake or venomous insect. I staggered back, slipped, and sat down with a thud. I didn’t hear the shot but I heard him scream and saw him fall, his body curling into a hard knot of pain.
So that was what a silencer looked like, I thought, staring at the gun in Mary’s dainty hand. For some reason I’d expected it would be bigger.
Her lips parted, and out came a string of obscenities that shocked me almost as much as what she’d just done. It was like hearing Dorothy cursing Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. Her pink mouth wasn’t pretty now, it had the grotesque shape of a Greek Fury’s, and her eyes were as opaque as coffee caramels.
‘Damn him! Why’d he have to get in the way?’ She turned those yellow-brown eyes towards me and the look in them made me shrink back. That pleased her. ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. He won’t be going anywhere for a while, and you wouldn’t leave him, would you? See what you can do for him. I’d hate to have him die. I have plans for you, Vicky dear, and it won’t be nearly so much fun if John isn’t there to watch.’
The door closed. The key turned in the lock.
John sat up. ‘Missed,’ he said with satisfaction.
I stared at the spreading stain on his sleeve. ‘Missed?’ I croaked.
‘She meant to do a bit more damage than this.’
He didn’t have to elaborate. She must have known the only way she could stop him was to put a bullet in one or the other of us, and she probably didn’t care which. If he hadn’t pushed me away . . .
And if I hadn’t interfered he could have stopped her, before she aimed and fired.
Out of all the questions boiling in my overheated brain I fished the least important. ‘Is she pregnant?’
‘Not by me, at any rate.’ John didn’t look up. He was concentrating on rolling up his sleeve, and not doing a very good job of it.
‘Are you trying to tell me you didn’t . . . You never . . .’
‘As you have had occasion to observe, my principles are somewhat elastic, but there are some things at which even I draw the line. All other considerations aside . . .’ He glanced at me from under his lashes. ‘All other considerations aside, I’d as soon bed a black widow spider. If you don’t believe me, and you probably don’t, I can produce witnesses. Max and Whitbread took turns spending the night with us. Cosy little arrangement . . . Would you mind helping me with this? She’ll be back before long, and it would not be a good idea for either of us to be here when that event occurs.’
He had a point. I hoisted myself up and went to investigate the medicine cabinet. It was well equipped. You’d have thought they were expecting a small war.
I slapped some gauze and tape over the bloody furrow the bullet had left. ‘How are you planning to get out of this room?’ I asked. ‘The door’s locked.’
‘With these handy little devices you were clever enough to bring along.’ John plucked one of the pins out of my hair.
‘Was that why you . . . Ow! That’s the one with the hook on the end, it’s caught – ’
‘One of the reasons.’ His fingers brushed my cheek in a caress so fleeting I might have imagined it. ‘You do it, then. I haven’t had much practice at this, since I usually keep my lock picks elsewhere. Thank you.’
He knelt by the door and started poking at the lock. ‘Maybe we should start thinking about where we’re going after we get out,’ I said uneasily.
‘The operative word, my love, is “out.”’ He seemed to be having some trouble, possibly because he was perspiring heavily, despite the comfortably cool temperature of the room. ‘Mary won’t be pleased when she finds us gone.’
‘Is she in love with you?’
The pick slipped and rattled onto the floor. ‘Bloody hell,’ said John between his teeth. ‘Keep your grisly suggestions to yourself, will you? If I believed that were the case I’d cut my throat and be done