Ice Storm (Ice 4)

She didn’t bother to ask which Citroën. “You’re just lucky you’ve gotten away with it so far.”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I? I guess that proves how lucky I am. How’s Mahmoud?”

“He woke up, tried to stab me, then fell back as

leep again.”

“That’s my boy,” he said fondly. “Did you get the knife?”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary I’m not stupid,” she snapped.

“I never thought you were. And the good news is you can ditch the burka. It would cause more attention than your own spectacular self.”

She blinked. She was so used to pulling her protective coloring about her, sinking into the background, that she hadn’t heard a compliment in years. She had spent most of her life doing her best to be unspectacular—an elegant, faceless woman of a certain age. “Hardly spectacular,” she said dryly. “I do my very best to be quite ordinary.”

“Let me give you a hint, Mary Isobel,” he said, leaning toward her. “You’re doing a piss-poor job of it right now.”

He moved past her before she could reply, opening the door to the plane and scooping up Mahmoud’s body effortlessly, expecting her to follow. She almost grabbed the burka just to defy him, but she was beyond such childish reactions. Beyond any emotion at all, wasn’t she?

The sun was rising over the flat, stubbled landscape—they seemed to have escaped one kind of desert for another, but the dawn was still and empty. There were no buildings, no shelter, no vehicles to be stolen anywhere in sight.

But Killian was already moving, Mahmoud’s little body clasped in his arms as he strode across the open field, his long legs covering the distance so quickly that Isobel had to run to catch up. He stopped near a copse of trees, laying the child down with surprising care, then turned to look at her.

“Keep an eye on him, dose him if he tries to kill you. I’ll be back shortly. This is farmland—civilization can’t be too far away.”

“You think you’re leaving me here? Think again.”

“I can’t steal a car with you and the kid in tow,” he said reasonably.

“What’s to keep you from just taking off and not coming back?”

“The fact that I need your help to get into England and start a new life. Remember, I was the one who contacted you in the first place, and so far you’ve done squat to help me. I’ll give you a chance to earn your keep before long. Until now you’ve been nothing but an added inconvenience.”

“So maybe you think you’ll have an easier time of it without me.”

“Abandon you, princess?” he said lightly. “Never.”

She turned her back on him, heading over to stand by Mahmoud, because if she spoke another word she’d hit him. There was no violence in her system, only reluctant duty. Except when it came to him, and suddenly she was six years old and enraged.

One thing for sure, if he came back with a Citroën she was going to shoot him, point-blank.

She glanced down at the sleeping child. Isobel didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. She didn’t want children, didn’t know what to do with them, and it would have been better all around if Mahmoud had simply been blown to pieces in the explosion. He’d been through too much in his short life to come back from it all and have any chance of normalcy.

She knelt down, brushing the matted hair away from his face, the gesture almost unconscious. He looked so young, so innocent. If she had a heart it would have broken for him, but she’d disposed of it years ago.

She pulled off the jacket she was wearing, bunched it up and put it beneath the child’s head. And then she hunkered down to wait.

It wasn’t a Citroën, it was a significantly ugly Opel, probably made nearby at the Spanish Opel factory, and she wondered if he’d gone out of his way to find something small and hideous. It was a bilious shade of green, two-door and tiny. Being cooped up with someone as tall as Killian was going to bring back all sorts of unpleasant memories. If she let it.

She waited until he’d put Mahmoud on the tiny backseat. He’d picked up her discarded jacket as well, and, after a brief glance at her, tucked it under the boy’s head again. She climbed in, her knees practically up to her chin, and glared at Killian. “Couldn’t you have managed to steal something a little more roomy?”

“The trick to stealing cars, my angel, is that you choose ones nobody’s looking for. Steal a Jaguar and half the country’s after you. Steal a rusted-out economy car and the police have better things to do. Stop complaining. You’ll be back to your Saab soon enough.”

She let the little shiver of ice slide down her back. “I’m no longer surprised by how much you know about me,” she said as he put the tiny car into gear and headed out into the morning light. “But I wonder why you bother to remember such mundane details.”

“Nothing about you is mundane. And I have a photographic memory. Everything is kept somewhere inside my head. Every word, every act, every touch, every taste.”

“Stop it.” Her voice was small and deadly.