Page 63 of Icebound

“Make sure you don’t. You know how debilitating those headaches are.”

He raised his eyes to Luc’s bespectacled ones. “I’m no fool,” he said lightly. In fact, he’d stopped taking the little blue pills Luc fed him a couple of days ago, and there’d been no sudden, blinding headache. The headaches that had been plaguing him were all but gone. In return, he had to put up with strange, convoluted dreams and peculiar half-memories, but his head was clearer, and it was a worthwhile trade-off. Last night, he’d woke with Chloe’s name on his breath, pissing him off. She was gone, and he never had to think about her again.

But he did. Taking the pills again would probably wipe her from his mind, but for some strange reason, he didn’t want her to go.

“I’ve got a new bottle of them,” Luc said helpfully. “I’ll get you a glass of water to take them with.”

“I already took mine for today.”

“An extra one won’t hurt you.”

Why had he never noticed how insistent Luc was about those fucking pills? Purportedly, they were supposed to cure the monumental headaches that had been plaguing him, so bad that he could barely think straight. But Luc had always been strangely insistent, as he was being now.

“Sure,” Jean-Marc said easily, watching as Luc took the big bottle from one of the capacious pockets of his flak jacket.

“Take two,” Luc said, dropping two of them into his hand.

He didn’t argue, simply cheeking the two pills as he swallowed a gulp of water. The moment Luc had his back turned he would spit them out.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Luc. In fact, he didn’t trust anyone, but Luc was his colleague and therefore required a minimum of confidence. Maybe. He pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and coughed into it, dispensing with the pills while Luc had wandered over to the louvered window.

“She thought she was in love with you,” Luc said abruptly, and he didn’t pretend he didn’t understand.

“She’s an American. They’re always romantic.”

“Not always,” Luc said, and launched into an obscene and extremely funny story about an affair he’d had with a neurotic tourist that made him swear off Americans from then on.

For some reason, Jean-Marc didn’t feel like laughing, though he made the right, appreciative sounds. “Tell Maddelena,” he suggested. “She’d be highly amused.”

“And what’s happened between you two? Speaking of women who are in love with you.”

“Maddelena loves no one but herself.”

“Her father won’t like it,” Luc warned.

“Her father knows her, and he knows me. Le Fauçon is not a sentimental man—he’s all for practicality. And Maddelena is a very impractical creature.”

“What are we doing next?” Luc asked.

“Nothing. At least for now, we stay put.”

“Maybe he’s hoping for a reconciliation with Maddelena.”

“He’s a realist. Maddelena will find someone new to entertain her and we’ll be off on a new job. That’s the way things work.”

“Yes,” said Luc, albeit with a trace of uncertainty. “He’s good with how the last one turned out. Despite the change in venue.”

“The job was accomplished, the employer was pleased,” he said briefly.

“Who was the employer?” Luc asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I assume it was the government of LaDonna’s home country, out to get rid of a troublemaker, or even Putin himself. It doesn’t matter one way or another. They pay their money and we give them results.”

His headache was starting up again, but he kept his mouth shut, or Luc would start feeding him more pills, and he was determined not to touch the damned things again. Without them, he was admittedly a little disoriented, but he was tired of having things glossed over with chemicals. The dizziness would wear off, and he’d be able to think clearly again. Remember all the things that were lost in the mist. Forget about the things he had no more use for, such as Chloe. She was gone, out of his life, he reminded himself. It was all for the good.

“If I were you, I’d reconcile with Maddelena. You know she’ll get bored with you in very little time—she hasn’t got that large an attention span. She’ll go on to something else and there won’t be anything between you and Le Fauçon.”

Jean-Marc frowned. “There is nothing between me and Le Fauçon. And unfortunately, Maddelena has never gotten sick of me.”