Cold as Ice (Ice 2)

He managed a laugh. “Not the Porsche, babe. That’s Harry’s and it would attract too much attention. Besides, there’s a dead body in the back.”

She was about at the end of her limit, as was he. But she said nothing, moving around to the passenger side of the nondescript sedan and climbing inside. By the time he joined her she’d already fastened her seat belt, and for some reason it made him want to laugh.

“You ever disobey my orders again and I’ll kill you myself,” he said, starting the car.

She didn’t say a word. She simply turned her face away from him, staring out the window, as he made his way out of the subterranean garage that now held a Porsche and two corpses.

You ever disobey my orders again and I’ll kill you myself, he’d said, and Genevieve hadn’t said a word. Too many threats, too many deaths had left her numb and tired and unwilling to fight. The headlights speared through the dark cavern as the car climbed higher, and Genevieve had the stupid fancy that he was taking her out of hell. Except that he was the devil himself, and wherever he took her would be full of death as well.

“I want to go back to America,” she said, finding her voice. She didn’t, wouldn’t look at him. At the hands that had touched her. At the hands that had killed for her.

His derisive laughter wasn’t going to improve her shaken mood. “Oh, yeah?”

“I don’t care if this third-world bog is safer, I want to go home. If not New York, then at least somewhere in the States.”

She glanced over to see him pull something that looked like an upscale BlackBerry out of his pocket and punch in a few buttons. A moment later the rock wall opened in front of them. “How about California?” he said as the door closed behind them.

She was momentarily silent, feeling disoriented and stupid. “Where are we?”

“Near Santa Barbara. Where did you think we were? What was that…some third-world bog? But isn’t that exactly where you’d originally planned to go? In another week I can ship you off there and you can wallow to your heart’s content.”

“What difference will a week make?” she asked.

“It’ll be the end of April, Harry Van Dorn will be dead and you won’t ever have to see my face again.”

“Promises, promises,” she whispered, leaning her head back against the seat. She turned to look at him for the first time, and she almost laughed. He looked like a normal, middle-class American male, driving his conservative sedan on the crowded California freeways. Except that he’d just killed two men. And his left shoulder was soaked with blood.

Isobel Lambert was going to have to call in help from unexpected places, and she wasn’t happy about it. She was someone who believed in keeping promises, and once someone left the Committee they were free, as long as they showed their usual discretion.

But these weren’t ordinary times. Everyone she had was working on breaking the Rule of Seven, and the clock was running out for them. Two more parts were coming together through painstaking hard work— Harry Van Dorn had neo-Nazis working on some kind of mess at the memorial at Auschwitz, and he actually thought he might get away with blowing up the British Houses of Parliament despite the watchfulness of English security. He’d overstepped his capabilities on that one—even though foolproof security was practically impossible, he hadn’t realized that the Committee specialized in the impossible. They’d picked up Harry’s chosen suicide bombers in a random sweep, and the transit workers had very kindly decided to call a strike on the nineteenth and twentieth of April meaning no one could get to work. Problem solved.

But that still left Peter Jensen stuck in the middle of America with what sounded like a pain-in-the-ass companion, and no way to use agency resources to get him out.

There was only one person she could turn to. He might not do it for her, but he’d do it for Peter. He’d probably put up a fight, refuse to help her, but in the end she knew he’d do the right thing, as he always did. They’d saved each other’s lives countless times. It was time for Bastien Toussaint to do it again.

17

“I’m hungry,” Genevieve said.

“I’m happy to hear violence doesn’t impair your appetite.”

She wanted to slap the snarky son of a bitch, but she was too worn out. Her stomach was twisting, she felt weak and shaky, and she was so hungry she was tempted to sink her teeth into Peter’s leg. She wasn’t going to say a thing about his shoulder. He could bleed to death for all she cared, and they could go careening off the freeway head-on into a semi and then she wouldn’t have to worry about being hungry ever again.

“He shot

you,” she said grudgingly.

“Kind of you to notice. Don’t worry, it’s just a graze. Stings like crazy but it’s already stopped bleeding. I just need a little first aid.”

“Don’t expect it from me. And I’m not worried. I just want to make sure you can still drive.”

He smiled, the rat bastard, and she remembered his mouth all too vividly. She jerked her head away again and closed her eyes. It was the middle of the night and there were people everywhere. The bright lights of a thousand cars all around her, the noise and color of the freeway were an assault on her deprived senses, and part of her wanted to crawl back into a dark, safe hole and hide.

“What do you want to eat?”

“A cheeseburger,” she said dreamily. “The biggest, greasiest cheeseburger in the world, with French fries and Diet Coke.”

“No Tab?”