Ice Storm (Ice 4)

Killian was sitting in the copilot’s seat, handcuffed, and the pilot was holding a pistol to his head. “Go back in the plane,” the man ordered. “Or I’ll shoot your friend.”

“Looks like you’re going to shoot him anyway,” Isobel said, not moving. Killian appeared singularly unalarmed, a fact that annoyed her.

“He’s worth more alive than dead, and I like money. You, however, don’t matter.” The plane must have been on autopilot, for he turned away from the controls and aimed the gun at her.

A mistake. Killian slammed his head against the pilot’s, so hard the man jerked in his seat, and a moment later the two of them were down on the floor, sprawling into the plane, Killian’s hands still bound. Isobel stepped back, out of the way. If she came too close she could be pulled into it, and if she tried to shoot the pilot they could end up with a depressurized cabin. Besides, she might miss and get Killian, which would be a great tragedy to someone in this world, if not to her. She watched, unmoving, as the pilot slammed his elbow into Killian’s unprotected stomach.

She’d witnessed violence before, participated in it. The strange silence of this life-and-death struggle gave it an eerie sense of unreality, as the unpiloted plane flew through the desert night. She ought to do something, ought to stop them, but some small part of her was taking a savage delight in watching Killian get the shit beat out of him.

Except that he was winning. He had the man under him, his knee on his neck. The cracking sound was unmistakable, and then the pilot lay still in the narrow walkway.

Killian rose, falling back into the seat, slightly out of breath. “Get the keys to the handcuffs, would you, princess?”

She didn’t move. “I think I like you better when you’re tied up.”

He didn’t even blink. “It didn’t stop me from killing him, and it wouldn’t stop me from killing you. Can you fly a plane?”

“No. Can you?”

“Of course. I was going to wait until we were closer to landing before I killed him, but you did have to blunder in and precipitate things, didn’t you?” He sounded vaguely annoyed. “Next time, remember I don’t need rescuing.”

“Next time, I’ll let you die,” she said, kneeling down and going through the dead man’s pockets with efficient distaste. She found the keys and threw them to Killian. Found a crumpled back of cigarettes and palmed them, sliding them into her pants pocket.

“You can try,” he said, unfastening the cuffs and tossing them on the body. “Cover him with a blanket or something, will you? I don’t want Mahmoud to wake up and see him. Another dead Arab won’t increase his trust in me.”

“You expect him to trust you?”

“Not exactly. But I’d prefer not to push him over the edge right now. He’s happy to wait to kill me, but he could always change his mind, and I’m not in the mood to break his scrawny little neck.” Killian slid over into the pilot’s seat, checking the gauges with reassuring confidence. But then, when had he ever seemed less than confident? “Close the door and go back to your seat. I’ll let you know when we’re getting close to landing.”

“Landing where? I’ve made arrangements to get us from Spain to England, but I need to know our starting point.”

“Our pilot was heading toward Málaga, where I expect we had a welcoming committee. I’m heading farther up the coast—there’s an airport in Almeria and one in Murcia. I don’t think this plane holds enough gas to get farther.”

“All right. We’ll rent a car to take us up to Bilbao.”

“We’re leaving from Bilbao? That’s a pretty busy airport.”

“We’re not flying,” she said, and closed the door before he could ask any more question

s.

At least she could be enigmatic, too. It wasn’t much of a weapon against someone like Killian, but it was better than vulnerability. She looked down at the dead man on the floor. Someone had betrayed them again, maybe Samuel, maybe someone else. Whoever it was, he knew far too much about Killian’s whereabouts, and her plan was a perfect way to just disappear for twenty-four hours. At this point the only person she could trust was Peter Madsen, and he was a thousand miles away.

This was up to her. She’d be bringing Killian back to the U.K. in one piece, though she didn’t mind if he was a bit battered in the process. But failure wasn’t an option.

Mahmoud was still out, and she put her hand on his forehead. Cool to the touch, and his eyes flickered open for a brief moment, dilated, drugged, before closing again. He wouldn’t be causing any trouble for quite a while, she thought, sinking back into her seat. In the meantime she could only hope Killian was half as capable as he seemed to think he was. Or else they were all going to end up in a fiery crash somewhere north of Algeria or deep in the Mediterranean.

Peter Madsen quickly wiped the memory off his PDA, deleting all trace of Isobel’s message, and tried to ignore the peculiar sense of relief that washed through him. He still wasn’t comfortable with emotions. He’d made peace with the fact that he loved Genevieve to an almost dangerous degree, but he was determined to stay icy and detached as far as his work went. Except that Bastien, the closest friend he’d ever had, had turned his back on what was most precious to him just to save Peter’s life. And Taka had almost died for him as well. Even if he’d paid that debt back in full, it made ties that Peter couldn’t break.

But his strongest ties, after Genevieve, were to Isobel. He could see her so clearly, she was like a mirror of his former self. The ice-cold control, the gnawing pain that was going to make her crazy or kill her if she didn’t find a way to deal with it. You could only stay in this business a certain amount of time before you snapped. And Isobel was dancing on the razor’s edge.

But she was alive, she had Serafin and she was headed to Spain. He’d make arrangements for them to take the car ferry from Bilbao—giving them almost twenty-four hours of breathing space out in the Atlantic. He still wasn’t sure why there was a child to provide papers for as well, but Peter was nothing if not efficient. The papers would be awaiting her at a café just outside the city, and they’d be on their way to England by tomorrow evening.

She hadn’t asked for transport to Bilbao, so he was leaving that up to her. Nor had she said anything about the mission—he could only assume it was still on, even if she’d had to go dark for a stretch of time. He didn’t doubt Harry Thomason’s word that Isobel had known Josef Serafin in another life—Harry didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

And Peter didn’t doubt Isobel had known exactly what she’d been walking into—she didn’t make those kinds of mistakes either. Serafin might be considered the most dangerous man on earth by certain glossy news magazines, but Peter would put his money on Isobel every time.

He flicked off the light switch, setting the alarm system. Overhead he could hear Reno—music that could only be Japanese hip-hop, for God’s sake, and thumps and bumps. Either he had half a dozen girls up there on the floor and he was doing them one by one, or he was doing some sort of exercise. Or dancing. The thought of Reno dancing was enough to send cold shivers down Peter’s spine. He preferred the notion of an orgy. In the few days Reno had been in London it was clear he was like catnip to the nubile female population. It was astonishing he was finding enough time to work on his English.