Darkness Before the Dawn (Maggie Bennett 2)

She’d stared at him, her face growing paler. “His contacts had disappeared. They couldn’t help him.”

“No.”

“Then you were willing to let him be picked up by the local police? He’s been in and out of a coma—how do you know he won’t say something incriminating?” she demanded. “And how long will he have to wait there for help?”

He’d considered lying to her. But it wouldn’t work—he coul

d see there in the back of those wonderful eyes that she knew. She just didn’t want to believe it.

“He won’t need any more help,” he said, and his voice sounded cold, distant. He’d known Jim Mullen for five years, had worked with him, had his life saved by him. He was damned if he was going to let the woman next to him know what he’d gone through in the last few hours. Knowledge was power, and he couldn’t afford to give her that power. His long, slender hands clenched the steering wheel of the Mercedes, then relaxed. “Jim’s dead,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t be naïve, Maggie. You saw what kind of condition the man was in. Even with the best of American medical technology, he wouldn’t make it. He’d been holed up in that shack for days before you got there. If we had tried to take him with us, we would have walked straight into the arms of the secret police.”

“At least then he would have gotten some help.”

Randall laughed, a singularly unpleasant sound. “He would have been tortured to death, Maggie. It’s better this way, and Mullen knew it. It sounds melodramatic, but cyanide capsules are standard issue on any undercover mission, no matter how innocuous they seem.”

“Code thirty-seven,” she said in an odd little voice.

“Exactly.”

“And you let him do it,” she said, her voice rich with loathing. “You did absolutely nothing to try to help him, to get him out of there. You just left him to die.”

He looked across at her, his face enigmatic. “I brought another capsule in case he’d lost his.”

She hit him then. She’d gone for him, dry-eyed and furious, pounding on him, scratching, punching, but in her exhausted state it had taken little effort for him to subdue her, even with having to control the vehicle at the same time. He drove into a ditch, slammed it into park, and caught her arms. He twisted them just enough to bring sanity back.

Finally she had subsided, sinking back against the seat limply, her eyes still wide with dazed hatred. “You’re a murderer,” she said in a low voice.

Slowly he released her arms. “Yes,” he agreed. “Though not in this case.”

It had shocked her out of the last remnants of fury. She was looking at him, he thought, as if he were Dracula about to bite her neck. The idea had a certain charm. He found that the deathly depression that had settled around him when they’d left Mullen was beginning to lift. “Life is like that, you know,” he’d continued. “It’s not clean and pretty and fair. Good people die, bad people prosper, and you do filthy, rotten things to survive. And if you can’t accept that, can’t do the same, then you’ve picked the wrong career.”

She didn’t hesitate. “I picked the wrong career,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“A little industrial town near the western border.”

“Does it have an airport?”

“It does. We, however, are not going to make use of it. At least, not right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jim’s body will be found within the next few hours, and then the hunt will be on. They’ll suspect he wasn’t here alone, and they’ll be wanting to find out who was with him. We’ll have to lie low for a day or two, until they decide he didn’t have anyone with him.”

“Oh, God.”

The quiet sound of those words had sent an answering surge of tension through him. “What?”

“I left my phony passport behind. Jim took it when I got there, and I don’t even know where he hid it. Should we go back?” She shuddered at the thought.

“No.”

“Maybe they won’t find it.”

“They’ll find it. I suppose it has your picture on it?”