LITMIR.BIZ

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      She heard Corbett say in a grating voice, “Go on. I’m fine. We can’t…lose him. He’s the only lead we’ve got to…whoever’s responsible for this damned vendetta. We have to get him to our medical facility. Can’t let the French authorities—”

      “Too late, mate,” Adam said.

      Lucia heard it then, too—the raucous seesaw braying of incoming emergency vehicles, so markedly European and so different from the wail of sirens she had grown up with in the States. She saw Adam and Corbett exchange looks of helpless frustration, and she knew the other agents on the spot had already melted away into the night. She became aware of shouts and running footsteps. Embassy security reached them first, along with the few pedestrians out in the chilly evening. People crowded around the four of them; hands reached to offer aid and comfort. Lucia looked down one last time into the terrified eyes of Corbett’s would-be assassin, and with a small sob of gratitude, gave her desperate fight to keep him from bleeding to death into more capable hands.

      Time passed. It could have been days or minutes, for all Lucia knew. She spent it in a dreamlike state where time could stretch or compress without rhyme or reason. An eternity filled with the press of people and the cacophony of voices giving orders, asking questions, demanding one thing or another all faded seamlessly into the quiet efficiency and muted murmurs of medical personnel in a well-equipped emergency van. Over her strenuous protests she was checked for trauma, treated for shock and released; then, in another blink of an eye, she’d found herself transported through time and Paris streets to a hospital waiting room where, in the manner of such places the world over, time seemed to pass with the speed of glaciers.

      At some point Adam joined her, bringing her strong bitter coffee in a foam cup. She sat and held it, warming her cold hands while two policemen came and questioned them about the shooting.

      Just a formality, they assured her. It was clearly a case of attempted robbery gone wrong, and witnesses all seemed to agree that Lucia had acted in defense of her own life and her escort’s, and that the shooting of the would-be robber had been accidental, taking place in the course of the struggle for control of the gun.

      “Zere is just one sing I do not understand,” the older of the two policemen said in his heavily accented English, as he tucked his notebook and pen back into his pocket. “Do you know ze reason why Monsieur Lazlo was wearing body armor? Was he expecting some kind of trouble?”

      “No, I don’t,” Lucia whispered. Then she cleared her throat and added in a normal voice, “Corbett is a bit eccentric….”

      Adam grinned. “Rather like what’s ’is name—Howard Hughes, I guess, eh? Or Michael Jackson.” “Not at all like Michael Jackson,” she retorted, turning to glare at him, and the younger policeman chuckled.

      “Zere is just one sing I do not understand,” Lucia said to Adam sotto voce after the two law officers had departed. “Your story about being a passerby who just happened to witness the incident and stopped to help seemed to satisfy them all right, but I happen to know you had a gun. What on earth did you do with it?”

      He gave her an enigmatic look, then after a moment relented. In a seemingly casual movement, he lay one ankle across the opposite knee and gave his pantleg a twitch—just enough to reveal the holster strapped to his leg. He muttered out of one side of his mouth, “Cops’d have no reason to pat down an innocent bystander who’s just tryin’ to be a Good Samaritan, now, would they?”

      Lucia began to laugh, silently at first, with one hand over her eyes. When, to her shock, the laughter became a sob, she clamped the hand over her mouth, but it was too late to stop it. She gave Adam one brief, horrified look, then closed her eyes on the streaming tears. And after a moment she felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder, then begin to pat her, awkwardly, tentatively. The rather touching sweetness of the gesture turned the tears back into watery laughter.

      She dabbed at her cheeks with the blanket the emergency medical team had given her, since what was left of her gown was a bit gory and left a good deal of modesty to be desired. She had no idea what had become of her fur wrap and shoes.

      “Sorry, luv, haven’t got a hanky, I’m afraid.” Adam didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed she’d turned off the waterworks. Not that he minded being cast in the role of comforter, but his usual methods of dealing with female tears seemed far too dangerous in this particular circumstance.

      “That’s all right.” She sniffed, blew, wiped, then asked, “How soon will we know something?”

      “Haven’t a clue. But no worries, Laz is gonna be fine. He’s just got some busted ribs. They’re probably running tests and monitoring his condition to make sure there’s no damage to his heart. He took a pretty good hit to the chest, you know. Bullets can do some damage, even with a vest on. Believe me, I know.”

      She just looked at him for a moment with those aquamarine eyes of hers—reminded him of the color of the water off the Great Barrier Reef from the air—then said in a voice he could barely hear, “I know all that. I was asking about the boy.”

      Adam actually rocked back a bit when she said that, as if she’d gobsmacked him. “The boy—you mean the shooter? You’re askin’ me about the devil that almost killed—”

      “He’s not a devil, Adam, he’s not even a man. Didn’t you see him? He’s just a kid.”

      “Yeah, a kid with a bloody big gun.” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could he be wrong about her feelings for Laz after all?

      “Corbett didn’t want him dead,” she went on in that hushed, almost fearful voice. “What if he dies, Adam? What if I killed him? Corbett’s going to be so angry with me.”

      He snorted. “I seriously doubt that. Especially considering the alternative.”

      “The…alternative?”

      “Yeah—you dead instead of ‘the kid.’” He shoved himself to his feet, because he felt as if some sort of giant spring inside of him was getting ready to let go. “Look—you stay put. I’ll go and see what I can find out, okay?”

      All he knew was he had to get away from her before he said or did something that was going to embarrass the hell out of both of them.

      He found Corbett in a curtained cubicle, hooked up to a monitor of some sort and looking none too happy about it.

      “Thank God,” he growled when he saw Adam. “I was about to abandon all hope of rescue. Help me up, will you?”

      Adam was about to question the wisdom of that move but changed his mind when he saw the look on Corbett’s face and instead simply offered his arm.

      Corbett gripped it hard, gritted his teeth and got himself hoisted up into a sitting position and turned with his legs hanging over the side of the gurney. “I don’t know why they insist on all this—” he waved a hand at the wires attached to his arms and chest “—for some broken ribs and one hell of a bruise. It doesn’t require a medical degree to tell me I’m going to be damn sore for a while.”

      “Yeah, you are. So you sure you want to be doing whatever it is you’re about to do?”

      “Look, I’m going to hurt no matter where I am. I’d just as well do it at home. At least there I can—” He broke off, swearing under his breath, to glower at Adam. “Fill me in. How’s Lucia? Is she—”

      “She’s fine—a bit shaky, but she’ll be okay. She’s here, by the way—out there in the waiting room. Worried sick about the shooter, if you can believe it. Worried she’s killed him. Thinks you’re gonna be cranky with her if she did.”

      Corbett jerked and managed to whisper, “Good Lord,” through the resulting hiss of pain.

      “Yeah,” Adam said, refraining from any comment that could be construed as sympathy. “I told her it was him or her—not too much she coulda done but what she did.”

      Corbett’s

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