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He hadn’t been prepared for how he would feel when he actually saw her, the woman who had killed his father. For a moment he had wanted to kill her, punish her for his anguish at what he himself had caused. He was certain that “Charles Fournier” was this woman in disguise, though it was such a good disguise he’d been taken aback and unsure that there wasn’t a third person involved. But he had deliberately forced her to shake hands with him, and the feel of that slender, feminine hand in his had convinced him.
So. She had accomplished the mission—and forced him to pay her a million American dollars to do it. He hadn’t intended to follow through on the payment, but she had outsmarted him by insisting on payment in advance.
He wished she had died in the explosion. Perhaps she had; he didn’t know yet if there were any fatalities other than Vincenzo. But if she had escaped alive, he would call a truce. Lily Mansfield was safe from the Nervi organization. She had reacted to an event he had caused, and in the same way that a snowball rolling downhill becomes an avalanche, so things had proceeded to this point.
He had murdered his brother. His immortal soul was perhaps damned for this, but he thought the lives he had saved by destroying the virus would be weighed in the balance. And he had saved Giselle.
Damone stepped to the door. The sound of the shots had of course been heard, but no one had entered. He opened the door and saw several nervous men standing just outside, wearing uncertain expressions. He looked over the faces and picked out that of Tadeo, Rodrigo’s man. “Rodrigo is dead,” he said gently. “I have assumed control of all operations. Tadeo, would you please make certain my brother’s body is treated with all due respect? I will take him home, bury him next to Papa.”
His face pale, Tadeo nodded. He knew the way things worked. He could become Damone’s man, or he could die.
He chose to live. He murmured some quiet words to the other men, and they went inside the office to take care of Rodrigo’s body.
Damone went into another room and placed a call. “Monsieur Blanc. It is over. Your service to me has ended.”
32
“Why Greece?” Lily asked as she swiftly gathered her things in Swain’s hotel room.
“Because it’s warm, and because it’s the first flight out that I could get us on. Do you have your passport?”
“Several.”
He stopped what he was doing and gave her an oddly tender smile. “The one in your real name. That’s what I booked your ticket under.”
She winced. “That might cause problems.” She hadn’t forgotten that she had to be on guard against the CIA, too, though so far she seemed to have gone in under the radar on that one. After what had happened today, whether that would remain true was anyone’s guess. “Turn on the television. Let’s see if anything is being reported on the news.”
Either the explosion was being kept quiet or they had missed the story in the news item rotation, and they didn’t have time to wait through another segment. Rather than call a bellman, Swain carried their luggage down himself, then checked them out of the hotel.
“We have to go to my apartment,” Lily said when they were in the car. They had ditched the van several blocks away from the hotel, and walked the rest of the way.
Swain gave her a disbelieving look. “Do you know how long that will take us?”
“I have to get my pictures of Zia. I don’t know when or if I’ll be able to come back, so I’m not leaving them behind. If I see we’re going to miss our flight, I’ll call and cancel the reservations and book us on the next one.”
“Maybe we can make it,” he said, a devilish grin on his face, and Lily braced herself for the ride of a lifetime.
They did make it to her apartment building in one piece, but Lily kept her eyes closed most of the way and didn’t open them no matter how close the screeching brakes and blasting horns were. “I won’t be a minute,” she said when he pulled to a stop.
“I’m coming up with you.”
She gave him an incredulous look as he climbed out of the car and locked it. “But you’re blocking the street. What
if someone wants to get by?”
“Then they can damn well wait.”
He climbed the stairs with her, his left hand on the small of her back and his right hand on his pistol butt. Lily unlocked the door, and Swain went in first as she reached in and flipped on the light switch, sweeping right to left with his pistol until he was certain no one was waiting for them.
Lily stepped inside and closed the door. “We can leave our weapons here.” She dragged a lockbox out of a cabinet. “This is sublet for a year, and I have eight months left.”
They both put their weapons in the box, and she locked it, then put it back into the cabinet. They could have put the weapons in their checked luggage, disassembled and in a lockbox, declared them to the airline, and perhaps had no trouble collecting them on the other end, but she doubted things would go that smoothly. It was always easier to acquire weapons once she got to where she was going than to try to take one with her. Besides, they didn’t want the airline personnel paying any particular attention to them.
She got Zia’s photographs and added them to her tote bag, and they were out the door. As they were going down the stairs, Swain said, grinning, “Was that the bed you bought from a nun?”
Lily snickered. “No, it came with the apartment.”
“I didn’t buy the nun story for a minute.”
