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“Nice.”
“Why Nice? Why not Lyon? It’s closer.”
“Ronsard will be watching the airport in Lyon, and all the car rentals. He’ll expect us to go there.”
“Then how about Marseilles?”
“Our yacht is in Nice.”
“Really. I didn’t know we had a yacht.”
“The Company has a yacht, and the yacht has a computer with a satellite up-link. I’ll be able to get this information to Langley and let them start work on it immediately.”
“Nice it is, then.”
He took a knife from his pocket and knelt at her feet. Grasping a fistful of fabric in his hand, he inserted the knife about level with her knee and slit her gown sideways, cutting off the bottom half of the skirt. “You have more things in the pockets of that tuxedo than Snoopy has in his dog house,” she commented. “I don’t see how it fits as well as it does.”
“I have a very good tailor.”
Now that they were out from under the trees, she could see that his head was still bleeding. He cut a narrow strip off the swath he had just removed from her gown and tied it over the cut. His tuxedo was torn and dirty, and when she looked down she saw that what remained of her gorgeous Dior gown was in the same condition. The remnant of the fabric he draped around his neck.
They began running in an easy jog, because they weren’t wearing running shoes and the impact of the hard asphalt through the thin soles of their evening shoes jarred every bone and muscle as it was.
“Are we going to run all the way to Nice?” she asked after about a mile.
“No, we’re going to steal a car.”
“When?”
“As soon as we find one.”
She tried to find a stride that was easier on her feet and legs, and tried to keep her mind focused on the present. While they were being shot at she hadn’t had any trouble focusing, but now there was nothing but the rhythmic slap of their shoes on the asphalt, the easy sound of their breathing, and the night sounds surrounding them. With nothing posing an immediate threat, her thoughts zeroed in on what had happened in Ronsard’s office.
She didn’t want to think about it, but couldn’t stop. Maybe it had been inevitable, given the tug of sexual attraction she felt for him, had felt from the moment she set eyes on him in Frank Vinay’s office. He struck sparks off her, made her feel so alive she sometimes thought her skin couldn’t contain her. Those kisses they had shared—maybe the setup had been pretense, but her response hadn’t. With every touch, every dance, every kiss her anticipation had built until it was a wonder she hadn’t climaxed as soon as he licked her.
If only it hadn’t happened that way. If only he had been making love to her, instead of setting a scene for their cover story. For her, their coming together had been a cataclysmic event. For him, it had been a job.
Maybe that was what hurt so much. She wanted to mean something to him other than just another job, another means to an end. She was afraid . . . dear God, she was afraid she loved him.
She would have to be a Grade A fool to love John Medina.
Loving a man who traveled was one thing; thousands of women did. Loving a man who drew in danger with every breath was something else thousands of women did. Cops, firemen, high-iron men, oil-well riggers—they all had dangerous jobs and they were gone for long stretches of time. But at least they lived in the sunlight. At least their lives were real. John was always setting a scene, doing a job, working an angle. He was almost always someone else. She would never know if he was dead or alive, or if he was coming back even if he was alive.
She couldn’t love like that. She couldn’t live like that.
“Car,” he said, breaking the agonized chain of her thoughts, gripping her arm and urging her off the road. “Get down.” Headlights speared toward them through the darkness, the car moving fast.
She lay flat on her face in the weeds, with the evening wrap draped over her arms and shoulders and the remnants of her skirt covering her bare legs. John lay beside her, between her and the road. The car zoomed past.
Slowly they sat up. Until they stopped running, she hadn’t been aware of how her feet and legs were aching. She ru
bbed her hands up and down her shins. “Maybe barefoot would be better than these shoes.”
“On the ground, yes, but not on asphalt.”
The thin straps were rubbing blisters on her feet. She eased the straps to a different position. “I’m developing a problem here.”
He squatted beside her. “Blisters?”
