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“By ‘they’ do you mean Peter? He won’t wait that long—company policy. Rules of the game. Once the place blows he’ll be out of here, thinking everyone’s dead and the perfect plan went perfectly. He won’t like it that two low-level operatives didn’t make it, but he won’t lose any sleep over it.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who leaves anything to chance,” Genevieve pointed out.
“You know him pretty well for such a short time. I wonder why he lied about killing you.”
“I have no idea. I assure you, he planned to.”
Renaud shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Yes, Jensen’s a thorough, exacting professional at what he does. A bloody artiste, if you ask me—I’ve seen his work. But he also knows just how good he is and he’d never imagine that a hired gun like me could outsmart him.”
“And what if he comes back to check?”
“Then I’ll kill him. But he won’t get that far, if for some crazy reason he decided to leave the boat. Half the island will be gone in another twenty minutes, and if we don’t get rich boy out of here, we’ll be gone as well. And I don’t intend to let that happen. I’m going to end up with more than enough money so that Peter Jensen and his entire fucking Committee can never find me.”
“I thought Hans said he was the only one who could blow it?”
“You were standing there that long? You’re better than I thought.” He rubbed his unshaven jaw. He still had a bruise from where she’d kicked him, and she devoutly hoped he hadn’t noticed it beneath the grime. “Hans isn’t the only one here who understands demolitions. They’ve been set and I’m leaving them. We’ve got twenty minutes, lady, but that’s it.”
“Wasn’t,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Hans wasn’t the only one who knows demolitions. Past tense. He’s dead.”
“So he is,” Renaud said. “I’m getting a little tired of everyone trying to correct my English. Get your ass over here or I’ll do what Peter should’ve done.”
She skirted the body sprawled on the ground and began to help haul Harry to his feet. He opened his eyes for a moment, flashed the ghost of his engaging, toothy smile before passing out again.
“Shit,” said Renaud, struggling under Harry’s weight. “I thought he’d be coming out of it by now. I cut back the dosage with him but I hadn’t counted on Hans becoming a problem. It’s hard to tell how much to dose him—he’s got the constitution of an ox. I can give him twice the amount of drugs that would kill a normal man and it barely slows him down.” He shifted Harry’s weight. “Put your shoulder under his arm and let’s get moving. Unless you’d rather stay out here and end up as pixie dust.”
He weighed a ton. They half carried, half dragged him away from the house, moving into the greenery at a snail’s pace.
“Where are we going?” she managed to gasp out.
“It wouldn’t make any difference if I told you,” he wheezed. “A beach on the far side of the island.”
She flashed back to the detailed schematic stored in her mind, and after a moment she remembered the stretch of beach on the opposite side of the island from the villa. Far enough to escape any damage from the explosion, she hoped. It all depended on how ambitious Hans had been.
Not enough to damage Harry’s boat, which was probably back where they’d been dropped off, close to the main house. If they could just get far enough away in time, they should be fine.
The hidden bunker wasn’t too far away from the beach, in case anything went wrong. And she fully expected things to go wrong at this point, the way her luck had been going.
Her bare foot caught on a root, and she went sprawling on the trail, Harry’s heavy body landing on top of her as Renaud let go with a curse.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe—Harry was heavier than he’d appeared, and it was like lying under a horse.
A second later, the weight was removed and replaced by a gun barrel pressed against her temple. “Do that again,” he growled, “and I’m leaving you behind.”
She was going to point out that it hadn’t exactly been her fault, but she kept quiet. She’d been able to fight back with Peter. If she said anything, anything at all, Renaud might very well pull the trigger.
Leaving lawyer brains all over Harry. His cleaning services were going to have a hard enough time getting rid of the dirt and grass stains on his Versace sportswear. Lawyer brains would be almost impossible to get out.
She scrambled to her feet, ignoring her skinned knee, and helped Renaud haul Harry upright again. Harry was marginally more awake—he looked down at Genevieve out of totally stoned-out eyes and murmured something unintelligible.
“Keep going, Harry,” she muttered. “We’re trying to save your life.”
He didn’t seem particularly moved by the notion, but he managed t
o put a marginal effort into propelling his big, drugged body forward down the narrow path and they moved onward, like a macabre funeral procession with the corpse still alive.
