If he were a man with any softer feelings left inside him he would have taken the nightgown as a souvenir, to remember her by. She was unlike anyone he’d ever dealt with—vulnerable and angry and surprisingly brave. But then, he didn’t need a nightgown to remember her for the rest of his life. It wasn’t going to be that long.
She’d torn the nightgown when she’d yanked it off—he’d been too busy covertly admiring her body to notice. The fabric was old and well laundered and very soft—it must have been in her possession for many years. She’d slept in it since she’d been no more than a girl—she wasn’t that old as it was.
He didn’t know why he did it. But he did. He took the fabric and yanked at the tear, ripping a piece from it. She wouldn’t notice. He wasn’t going to give her the chance to pack anything. He had the piece shoved in his pocket, conveniently forgotten, by the time she emerged from the bathroom, looking just as furious as she had when she went in, though unfortunately more clothed.
Nothing like telling a woman you didn’t want them to really piss them off, he thought. He couldn’t afford to have her start having second thoughts. The sex they’d shared had been nothing but that—short, powerful, even harsh. She belonged in a field of daisies with a tender lover. Not on the run for her life with a murderer.
He’d only begun to think of himself as that, but it fit as well as anything else. He’d killed in self-defense, he’d killed in cold blood, he’d killed by assassination and he’d killed in formal combat. He’d killed women and men, and he hoped to God that he wouldn’t have to kill Chloe. But he would if he had to.
Maybe he’d tell her before she died, if it came to that. He could make it very fast, so she barely knew what was happening, but before he drove the knife up into her heart he could tell her the truth. At least she could die feeling smug.
He was getting ahead of himself. If he was forced to kill her it would be a failure, and he wasn’t a man who considered failure to be an option. As long as they kept moving they’d be fine. And as long as he kept his hands off her they’d keep moving.
“Do you have a coat of your own, or do I need to let you have mine?”
“Mine’s at the château. I can borrow one of Sylvia’s—I’ve already lost some of her best clothes.” She sat down in a chair and began to put on her socks and shoes. He didn’t need to tell her to wear comfortable shoes—her boots were well-worn and serviceable looking, with low heels. She’d be able to run in them if she had to.
He hadn’t seen her in jeans and a sweater before. She looked even more American, and even more desirable. She got up and opened the door to the bedroom, and he recognized the smell before she did.
r /> He tried to get there in time, but it took him a second to spring to his feet, and she’d already gone in. The room was darker than the rest, even with the early light of predawn, and she wouldn’t be able to see anything. But she must have known, because she turned on the light.
His hand was already over hers, turning it off again, but not fast enough that she didn’t see the woman’s body lying on the floor. She hadn’t been dead for more than a few hours, probably just before Chloe had arrived home. The smell would have been more noticeable if she’d been there awhile.
He’d put his arm around Chloe, clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her scream and dragged her from the room, kicking the door shut behind them, closing the body away from them. But the smell filled the room, and they had to get out of there, fast.
She was gagging, and he didn’t blame her, but he couldn’t afford to be gentlemanly about it. He’d come in the back way, over the roofs and through the storage room window, and he’d go back that way, taking Chloe with him, if he had to sling her over his shoulder and carry her.
She stopped trying to scream, and he let go of her mouth long enough to grab his coat from the bed before pushing her from the room, closing the door behind them.
And out into the icy dawn of the Paris streets with the stink of death still on them.
14
Chloe was in shock, the first piece of luck Bastien had had in a long while. She was past the point of speaking, of protesting, of doing anything but moving with him in blind obedience. He stopped long enough to wrap her in his coat, and then he moved on, keeping hold of her limp hand. If he let go of her she’d probably just stand in the middle of the street until they found her.
He moved fast, in and out of alleyways, backtracking. Why the hell had they killed the girl and then not come after them? Maybe it was a simple mistake—if they’d sent an outsider they might have thought she was Chloe. Or maybe they’d killed the girl as a precaution, then went looking for them, and they’d somehow managed to miss each other in the night.
That was the least likely—he didn’t believe in lucky breaks. His sixth sense told him there was no one watching them as he moved Chloe through the dawn-lit streets. Maybe they thought he’d bring her in himself.
Poor little American idiot, caught up in a game that was way over her head. Both sides wanted her, and he knew his own organization well enough to know that both sides wanted her dead. She was a liability—she’d seen too much, and the sooner she was disposed of, the better.
The traffic had begun to pick up, the sun was rising over the rooftops when she suddenly froze. He knew what was coming, and he held her as she vomited into the street. Her roommate’s body wasn’t the first dead person she’d seen—she’d been there when he’d killed Hakim.
But her time with Hakim had momentarily inured her to reality. She’d had enough time to recover her equilibrium, to start thinking for herself, and the sight of her friend’s brutally murdered body would have hit her full force.
She’d stopped, and he handed her a handkerchief to wipe her face as he hailed a taxi. One pulled up fairly quickly—despite the hour and the neighborhood and Chloe’s obvious distress the taxi drivers of Paris were well trained. They could judge the cost of a patron’s clothing from a block away, to know whether they were worth stopping for.
He bundled her into the cab and followed her, keeping his arms around her and her face tucked against his shoulder. The fewer people who saw her, the safer she’d be.
“Where to, monsieur?”
He gave an address in the fifteenth arrondissement, then leaned back. The driver took off, weaving through the burgeoning traffic with expert ease, but Bastien could see him watching them in his rearview mirror.
“Your girlfriend drink too much?” he asked. “I don’t want her puking on my seats.”
A legitimate enough concern, Bastien thought. “She’s done for now. She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my wife. She’s three months pregnant and having a hard time of it.”
He felt her jerk in his arms, but he put his hand to the back of her head and held her down.