The only way she could pull her hand free was to bite him, and that was one thing she wouldn’t do. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking.”
“That’s out of your control, Killian,” she said. “Sorry about your problem, but I’m not doing anything about it.”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“What’s this?” She couldn’t pull away, but she could move her fingers, and she brushed the length of him beneath the heavy denim. He didn’t react, but then, she hadn’t expected him to.
“Unfinished business. We’ll take care of it later. In the meantime, you can just lie still and be quiet. Look at it this way, you’ll be putting me through exquisite torment. Won’t you enjoy that?”
“I doubt it’s torment. I wasn’t fighting last night. You missed your chance.”
“There are always more chances, princess,” he whispered. “I had a crisis of conscience.”
“You have no conscience.”
“Not much of one, I’ll admit. But it does seem to appear when you’re around. I wasn’t going to kill you, you know. You didn’t have to shoot me.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Oh, I did. Over and over again. You still are completely blind when it comes to me, aren’t you?”
“No. I see you far too clearly, as the sick, murderous bastard you are. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to be charming, I know you’re an ugly piece of work in pretty packaging. I won’t kill you, but I’ll dance on your grave when someone finally manages it.”
He laughed, sounding almost lighthearted. “How sweet. You still love me, don’t you? I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but you always were a stubborn woman. Lousy judge of character.”
“I can change my mind and kill you.”
“Of course you can. But you won’t. It doesn’t matter what you think I am, what you think I’ve done. You’re in love with me, and you will be until the day you die.”
She shoved at him, and he let out a small sound of pain as he released her. “Careful there, Isobel. You really wouldn’t want to damage me.”
She sat up. The highway was empty—no one was following them. Probably no one had been following them for the last hour; he’d just used it as an excuse to humiliate her.
She opened her mouth to tell him all the things she wanted to do to him—hurt him, kill him. But the words didn’t come.
Because he knew her too well. Better than she knew herself. She was the Ice Queen, the Iron Maiden, and she wasn’t going there.
“Shut up, Killian,” she said, reaching for her ripped shirt. In the darkness he wouldn’t know how rattled she was. He might guess, but there was no way he could know for certain he’d managed to get to her. “Shut up and drive.”
And he did.
17
Things were not going according to plan. Then again, things seldom did, and Killian was used to adjusting at an instant’s notice. But something wasn’t feeling right about this situation, even taking into account the expected complications and snafus.
He had a simple enough job. The Committee was to extract him from North Africa, bring him to London, where he would supposedly be debriefed on his years spent in the service of some of the world’s most notorious dictators, warlords and terrorist organizations. While he was feeding them false and useless information, he’d be doing his own part to bring the Committee to total ruin. By the time he vanished, the Committee would be disbanded, leaving the way clear for his people to take over. It should be easy enough to accomplish—his cover was so impenetrable that no one even suspected there was more to him than there appeared to be. He’d always been particularly good at that. People believed what he wanted them to believe. But someone was killing off members of the Committee, and that body count had nothing to do with his job. At least, he hoped it didn’t. If someone else was assigned to the same task and they hadn’t bothered to inform him, he’d be beyond angry.
But the attack on the Committee seemed to be coming from somewhere else entirely. It was direct and bloody, and if he just stayed out of the way he might not have to do anything at all. Whoever was intent on b
ringing down the organization was doing a very effective, if violent, job of it, and his employers wouldn’t care just how it happened. No one in his line of work was particularly squeamish about body counts, as long as the outcome was the required one.
He could pull over and disappear into the night, leaving Isobel with Mahmoud. She wouldn’t thank him for that, and sooner or later he had no doubt that Mahmoud would track him down and kill him, if he had to wait ten years to do it. The boy was on his own mission—one from God—and Killian had to pay.
As far as his intel went, the current roster of active Committee agents was very small. Takashi O’Brien was tied up in his late grandfather’s business in Tokyo. Peter Madsen was little more than a bureaucrat, sidelined with a bad leg. Morrison was dead, and MacGowan had disappeared, which left Jeffreys in Thailand, and perhaps one other.
And Isobel. Sitting beside him in the front seat, her bloody shirt covering her poor back, staring out into the night as he drove down the A35. If someone was targeting Committee operatives, she’d be high on the list.