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“Medical research.”
“And how is their waste dumped? Is it treated first? All the nasty little critters killed?”
She sighed. Common sense said the waste would be treated before it was dumped into the sewer, in which case there wouldn’t be a direct connection between the complex and the sewer system. Instead, the waste material would go into some sort of holding tank where it was treated, and from there to the sewer. Common sense also said they didn’t want to come in contact with any of the raw sewage.
He said, “I vote we stay out of the sewer.”
“Agreed. Doors and windows are best. Or . . . we could find some big boxes and have ourselves shipped to the lab.” That idea came out of nowhere.
“Huh.” He considered the idea. “We’d have to find out if all packages and boxes are x-rayed or something, if they’re opened immediately, if they ever get large shipments—things like that. See, we wouldn’t want to come out of our boxes until late at night, at least after midnight, when there are fewer people around. Or does the lab operate on an around-the-clock basis?”
“I don’t know, but that’s something for us to check out. We’ll have to know anyway, even if we get the specs on the security system.”
“I’ll drive by tonight, check out how many cars are in the parking lot, try and get an idea of how many people work there at night. I’m sorry, I should have done that last night,” he apologized. “In the meantime, we have today. Disneyland’s out. Do we just turn around and go back to our respective rooms, where we spend the day being bored? What else is there to do? Now that you’ve been made, I wouldn’t advise walking around Paris, shopping.”
No, she didn’t want to go back to her little studio apartment. It didn’t even have the advantage of being old and interesting; it was just convenient and safe. “Let’s just drive. We can stop to have lunch when we get hungry.”
They kept driving east, and when they were well away from Paris and the heavy traffic, he picked a straight stretch of road and let the horses run. It had been a long time since Lily had gone fast just for the enjoyment of it, and she settled back in her seat, securely buckled in, while a pleasant sense of faint alarm made her pulse quicken. She felt like a teenager again, when she and seven or eight of her friends would cram into one car and bullet down the highway. It was a miracle all of them made it through high school alive.
“How did you get in this business?” he asked.
Startled, she looked at him. “You’re driving too fast to talk. Pay attention to the road.”
He grinned and let up on the gas pedal, and the needle dropped down to a hundred kph. “I can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said in mild protest.
“Neither of which requires much in the way of a brain. Talking and driving are different.”
He said thoughtfully, “For someone in this business who takes as many risks as you do, you aren’t really much of a risk-taker, are you?”
She watched the scenery zipping by. “I’m not a risk-taker at all, I don’t think. I plan carefully; I don’t take chances.”
“Who drank wine she knew was poisoned, taking the chance that the dose wasn’t lethal? Who is being hunted all over Paris but stays there anyway because she’s got a vendetta going?”
“These are unusual circumstances.” She didn’t mention the risk she had taken in deciding to trust him, but he was smart enough to figure out that one, too.
“Was it something unusual that got you started killing people?”
She was silent for a moment. “I don’t think of myself as a murderer,” she said quietly. “I’ve never harmed an innocent. I’ve made the sanctioned hits that I was hired by my country to make, and I don’t believe the decision was ever lightly made. I never thought so when I was young, but now I know there are people who are so inherently evil they don’t deserve to live. Hitler wasn’t a one-time phenomenon, you know. Look at Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Baby Doc, bin Laden. Can you say the world isn’t or wouldn’t be better off without them in it?”
“And hundreds of other tin-pot dictators, plus the drug lords, the perverts and pedophiles. I know. I agree. But had you already decided this when you made your first hit?”
“No. Eighteen-year-olds generally don’t get into heavy philosophy.”
“Eighteen. Man, that’s young.”
“I know. I think that’s why I was chosen. I used to look like such a rube,” she said, smiling a little. “All fresh-faced and innocent, not an ounce of sophistication to me, though at the time I thought I was cool and world-weary. I was even flattered that I was approached.”
He shook his head at such naivete. When she didn’t continue, he said, “Go on.”
“I came to their notice because I joined a shooting club. The boy I had a huge crush on at the time was an avid hunter and I wanted to impress him by being able to talk about different makes of weapons, caliber, range, all that stuff. But I turned out to be darn good; a pistol felt natural in my hand. Before long I was outshooting almost everyone else in the club. I don’t know where that came from,” she said, looking at her hands as if they held the answer. “My dad wasn’t a hunter, had never been in the military. My mother’s father was a lawyer, not at all an outdoorsman, and my other grandfather worked in a Ford factory in Detroit. He went fishing sometimes, but he never hunted that I knew of.”
“It’s just a particular blend of DNA, I guess. Maybe your dad wasn’t interested in hunting, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have found he had a natural talent for shooting. Hell, you could have gotten it from your mother.”
Lily blinked, then chuckled. “I never even thought of that. Mom’s a peacemaker, but personality doesn’t have anything to do with physical skill, does it?”
“Not that I ever noticed. Back to the shooting club.”
“There isn’t much to tell. Someone noticed how I shot, mentioned it to someone else, and one day a nice middle-aged man came to talk to me. First he told me about this person, a man, everything he’d done and the people he’d killed, and backed it up with newspaper clippings and copies of police reports, things like that. When I was properly horrified, the nice man offered me a lot of money. I was horrified all over again, told him no, but I couldn’t stop thinking about everything he’d told me. He must have known, because he called me two days later and I said yes, I’d do it. I was eighteen.”
