Lap of Luxury (Love Don't Cost a Thing)

“What?”

“If I’m hurt they won’t think I’m a threat. They’ll wonder if I have something useful to tell them.”

I grimace. “Let’s think of something else.”

“What the hell is wrong with you all of a sudden? You came all this way to murder me, and now you can’t even punch me in the goddamn—”

I ball my hand into a fist and punch her in the mouth. Ciara gasps in pain and claps her hands over her face. When she looks up at me, blood is dr

ipping down her chin from a split lip and tears slide down her cheeks. I glance guiltily around for Mikhail, as if he’s about to materialize and throttle me.

“You’re welcome,” I mutter. “When you reach them, pretend to collapse, and don’t raise you head until I call out that it’s all clear.”

Ciara is still breathing sharply and trying to pull herself together. All her whimpers are like knives on my nerves. I turn her around and give her a push. “Stop wasting all your tears here. Go.”

I creep the opposite way around the dune and watch from the far side as Ciara limps toward the two men. They eye her warily, guns raised.

She shakily puts her hands up in surrender, and the effect is wretched combined with her tears and bleeding mouth. When she’s within ten feet of the men, she collapses, just like I told her to. Before they can react, I pull the trigger of the rifle in two short bursts.

One man goes down. The other shots miss.

Miss.

I stare at the rifle in my hands, aghast. What the fuck is wrong with me? Navarro’s man starts to swing around to face me, then decides he needs to deal with the threat closest to him first. The girl on the ground. Ciara isn’t even reaching for the dead man’s weapon. As soon as I fired she put both her hands over head and she’s still lying like that. The other man’s rifle is swinging around in her direction. It’ll take just a second for him to shoot five or six bullets into her, ending her life.

“Fuck!” I leap to my feet and empty my magazine into the man’s back as fast as I can. The weapon clicks futilely in my hand a dozen times before I realize that the man has slumped to the ground. Dead.

I pass a shaking hand over my sweating face, my heart feeling like it’s going to beat out of my chest. What the fuck has got into me today? I run over to Ciara, feeling like the last five seconds has shaved fifty years off my life. She’s still face-down in the sand, and I put a hand under her arm and haul her to her feet, scolding her as I do.

“What’s wrong with you? You were just going to lay there and get shot? Pull yourself together for fuck’s sake, or you’re going to get killed.”

To my astonishment, Ciara clutches my shirt and buries her face against my chest, crying even harder. I can’t remember a woman ever reaching for me to comfort her. I stare down at her, unsure what to do. Bethany wouldn’t carry on like this.

“There, there,” I mutter, and pat her hair.

Ciara continues to hold onto me and sob, and I’m painfully aware that we’re out in the open and I’ve just made one hell of a racket. I say her name sharply, and she pulls herself together and looks up. The wound on her lip is clotting.

“You’re fine. Now move, because we need to find Navarro.”

“Okay,” she whispers thickly, and wipes the tears and blood from her face with the hem of her shirt. I catch a glimpse of her ever-so-slightly protruding belly. Bethany’s going to look like that soon. Then she’ll get bigger and bigger, warm and full in my hands. Wherever she is, let her be safe. Let her not die today.

A voice adds, Because of me.

The radio is lying on the ground, and I pick it up. “You don’t know any French, do you?”

Ciara sniffles for a moment. “I do, actually.”

Of course she does. Posh girl. “How do you say, ‘Fuck. We’ve lost them. Where are you?’”

“Merde. Nous les avons perdus. Où es-tu?”

I whisper the phrase a few times under my breath, and then press the call button and bark it into the radio. The reply comes back a moment later, and I wait for Ciara to translate.

“He says they’re north of the house. Can’t be far from here.”

The radio crackles again, and the man on the other end asks, “Alexis? Ai-je entendu des coups de feu?” I don’t need a translator to recognize the suspicion in his tone.

“They heard the gunshots. We should move,” she says.