Black Ice (Ice 1)

Or maybe it was just part of his penance.

He was drinking too much, but what else could he do as he lay out in the sun trying not to think? Drinking and smoking, sleeping with the pretty waitress when he was drunk enough to forget. It was a good life, he told himself, settling his sunglasses on his nose and closing his eyes to the bright Portuguese sun. Maybe he could just stay that way forever.

His sun was blotted out, and he waited, patiently, for it to reappear. And then he opened his eyes to see Jensen standing beside his chaise.

He looked very different from the last time Bastien had seen him, across the room at the Hotel Denis where he’d been attending to Ricetti. His brown hair was longer and deep black, he was dressed in designer denim, and although his eyes were covered with sunglasses Bastien had no doubt they were some color other than his natural blue.

“Are you here to kill me?” he inquired lazily, not moving from his chaise. “It’s a pretty public place, and I’d hate to see you get caught. We’ve always gotten along well—why don’t you wait until I’m back in my room or alone on a deserted street?”

“You’re being melodramatic,” Jensen said, taking the chaise next to him. There was no visible sign of a gun, but Bastien wasn’t fooled. No operative would go out unarmed. There were too many unknown, unseen enemies. “If I wanted to kill you I would have done it back in Paris, when Thomason ordered me to, instead of letting you go.”

Bastien smiled faintly. “I thought it would be you. What made you change your mind?”

“Thomason is an asshole. He’s not going to be around forever, and you were too valuable a commodity to simply flush away.”

Bastien smiled faintly. “Sorry, Jensen. My services are no longer available. Go ahead and flush.”

Jensen shook his head. “I only kill when I’m paid to,” he said. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“If it’s not to kill me then I suppose it’s to talk me back into the fold. And you’re wasting your time. Tell Thomason he can go fuck himself.”

“Thomason doesn’t know I’m here, and he wouldn’t be very happy if he did.”

Bastien lifted his sunglasses to peer at his companion. “Then who sent you?”

“You and I weren’t the only Committee members at the meetings.”

“Tell me something I don’t know. Like who else was on our payroll.”

Jensen shook his head. “That’s need-to-know information, and as long as you’re out of the fold then that knowledge is too dangerous to spread around.”

“Fine,” Bastien said, pulling his sunglasses back down again. “I’m not coming back, and you can tell them that. You can either kill me or go away.”

“I’m not here to bring you back, I’m here to warn you.”

“I don’t need warnings, Jensen. I’ve managed to keep myself alive for this long, I can continue as long as I’m in the mood to.”

“Not you, Bastien. We both know you’re always in danger. It’s your little American. We think they’ve found her.”

Spring came early to the mountains of North Carolina, but Chloe was in no mood to notice. Her parents pampered her, her brothers and sister hovered, her nieces and nephews delighted her, but the raw, torn place inside her was still bleeding. Every time she thought it had scarred over something would remind her, and she’d start shaking again.

Maureen, when she fell in the snow, the knife flying out of her hand, the blood soaking into the heavy drifts of white. Sylvia, her eyes wide and staring at the death that had taken her. The tangle of bodies, the sounds of screams, the smell of blood at the Hotel Denis. She’d remember, and she’d start shaking, and there was no one there to remind her to breathe.

They were all dead—she’d been able to ascertain that much. The police had broken in on the scene just moments after she and Bastien had jumped from

the balcony, and those who survived the bloodbath died in the hospital shortly thereafter. Convenient that no one was left to tell the truth. Monique had died on the scene, shot in the face, Bastien had told her. The baron had succumbed a day or two later, and the rest of them were already gone.

The one thing she didn’t think about was Bastien. For all she knew he was dead—he’d been careless and courting it long enough, and he’d been shot. Then again, he was someone who didn’t die easily. Maybe he was off on a new assignment, or maybe…

Anyway, she wasn’t going to think about him. He was in the dark, mixed-up past, and there was no way she could make sense of it, no matter how hard she tried. So she let go, moving through her days in a calm, even state of mind, while her parents looked on with worried eyes.

They were beginning to relax by mid-April. She’d signed up for courses at the university. Chinese would be enough of a challenge to keep her mind totally occupied, and she would start doing some volunteer work at the hospital in a week or so. By the fall she’d be ready to find a real job, even move out on her own despite her parents’ protests. She was healing, and she refused to even consider what she was healing from. She only knew it took time.

For now she was safe. The Underwoods owned two hundred acres on the side of a small mountain, and their sprawling house was casual, comfortable and nicely isolated. The old farmhouse had been renovated, added on to, torn down and fixed up for a hundred or so years, and its current state was rambling, cluttered and completely cozy. Her mother made no pretensions at being neat, and while a weekly housekeeper kept the place clean, order was a lost cause. All the Underwoods had too many interests. Books and projects, fishing rods and sewing machines, microscopes and telescopes and seven working computers pretty much took up any available space.

Even the guest house wasn’t immune, mainly because Chloe was doing her best to keep her mind busy. She read constantly—television was too ephemeral to keep her mind occupied. She knitted, she played Tetris on her Game Boy with single-minded concentration whenever she had to be in a public place. It even went with her into the bathroom. The little blocks falling into place gave her a Zen-like sense of security, and she played till her hands went numb.

She was cheerful, calm and pleasant, and her parents were almost deceived into thinking she was well on her way to being healed. Chloe knew it was going to take longer, but there was no rush. As long as she had her parents’ place to hide in she could take all the time she needed.