Kiss me while i sleep cs.., p.31
Kiss Me While I Sleep cs-3,
p.31
She forced her eyes open, and found Swain watching her with an expression on his face that she didn’t recognize, alert and watchful, no hint of humor at all.
Fool, an inner voice said. She had been caught in exactly the same way she had caught Salvatore Nervi.
She could feel the numbness now, spreading through her body. She tried to stand up, but she barely managed to sit before collapsing back against the chaise. What could she do, anyway? She couldn’t outrun what was already inside her.
Swain came back to squat beside the chaise. “Don’t fight it,” he said gently.
“Who are you?” she managed to ask, though she could still think clearly enough to figure it out. He wasn’t a Nervi employee, so there was only one other possibility. He was CIA; whether one of their black-ops personnel or a contract agent himself; the end result was the same. Whatever his reason was for helping her with the Nervis, after that was finished, he had completed his own mission. She had completely fallen for his act, but then she’d noticed before what a superb actor he was, and that should have been a warning. By then, however, she had already been in love with him.
“I think you know.”
“Yes.” Her eyelids were so heavy, and the numbness had spread to her lips. She fought for coherency. “What happens now?”
He stroked a strand of hair back from her face, his touch gentle. “You just go to sleep,” he whispered. She had never heard him sound so tender before.
No pain, then. That was good. She wasn’t going to die in agony. “Was it real? Any of it?” Or had every touch, every kiss, been a lie?
His eyes darkened, or she thought they did. It could be that her eyesight was fading. “It was real.”
“Then . . .” She lost her train of thought, fought to get it back. What was she—? Yes, she remembered now. “Will you . . .” She could barely speak, and she couldn’t see him at all. She swallowed, made an effort: “. . . kiss me while I sleep?”
She wasn’t certain, but she thought she heard him say, “Always.” She tried to reach out her hand to him, and in her mind she did. Her last thought was that she wanted to touch him.
Swain stroked her cheek, and watched a light breeze flirt with her hair. The pale strands stirred and lifted, fell back, lifted again as if they were alive. He bent down and kissed her warm lips, then sat holding her hand for a long time.
Tears burned his eyes. God damn Frank. He wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t budge from his original plan, and if Swain couldn’t do the job, he’d by God send someone who could.
Yeah, well. If it hadn’t been for the small matter of a mole that still had to be located, Swain would have told him what he could do with his fucking job. But he had the recording Blanc had gotten to him during that week of preparation for taking down the Nervi lab, and when he got back to Washington, he had that to take care of. He’d heard Lily stirring in the bedroom yesterday afternoon and hadn’t been able to tell Frank everything that was going on, just the gist of what Dr. Giordano had been doing and a brief argument about what Frank wanted him to do with Lily.
He had sent Chrisoula away this afternoon because he had wanted one more time with Lily, wanted to hold her close and look into those remarkable eyes as she came, wanted to feel her arms around him.
It was over now.
He kissed her one last time, then made the call.
Soon the unmistakable whump whump whump of a helicopter sounded over the mountain slope. It sat down on a flat spot just off the terrace, and three men and a woman got out. They worked silently, competently, wrapping Lily and preparing her for transport. Then one of the men said to the woman, “Get the feet,” and Swain whirled on him.
“Her feet,” he said savagely. “She’s a woman, not a thing. And she’s a fucking patriot. If you treat her with anything but respect, I’ll rip your guts out.”
The man eyed him with consternation. “Sure, man. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Swain clenched his fist. “I know. Just . . . go on.”
A few minutes later, the helicopter lifted off. Swain stood and watched it until it was a tiny black speck; then, his expression set and blank, he turned and went into the house.
Epilogue
Six months later
Lily walked down the hallway toward Dr. Shay’s office for what she hoped was the last time. Six months of intensive deprogramming, therapy, and counseling was enough. After her initial rage at waking and finding herself in custody, she had been grateful for this second chance and had been as cooperative as possible, but she was ready to leave.
The entire six months hadn’t been taken up with therapy, though. Two months in, she’d had surgery to repair that leaky, damaged valve in her heart, and recovery from that hadn’t happened overnight. She felt completely well now, but the first few weeks after the surgery had been rough, even though the cardiac surgeon had used the minimally invasive technique. Any surgery on the heart required that the heart not be beating, so she’d been placed on a heart-lung machine while the work was being done. She still felt uneasy about that, even though it was in the past.
Dr. Shay wasn’t Lily’s idea of a typical shrink, assuming there was such an animal. She was a short, chubby, jolly elf of a person, with the kindest eyes Lily could imagine. Lily would have killed for Dr. Shay, and that was part of the reason she was still at the private clinic.
She had herself worried about whether she would ever be able to fit into a normal life, but the therapies Dr. Shay had designed had shown Lily how far she’d been from that normality. Until she had gone through those exercises that tested her impulses, she hadn’t realized how ready she was to kill, how that was always—always—her initial reaction to confrontation. Over the years she had become very good at avoiding confrontation because of that, without ever realizing that was what she was doing. She had minimized the risk by not associating with many people.
She had gone through the exercises again and again until she retrained herself, and through many sessions with Dr. Shay until her anger and pain were more manageable. Grief was a terrible thing, but so was isolation, and she had made things worse on herself by being so isolated. She needed her family, and with Dr. Shay’s encouragement she had worked up the nerve to call her mother a few weeks before. They had both cried, but Lily had felt a sense of incredible relief at once more connecting with that part of her life.
Swain was the only part of her life that she hadn’t discussed with Dr. Shay.
She hadn’t been allowed visitors or any contact with the outside world until she’d called her mother, so it wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t seen him or heard from him since that day on Evvoia when she’d thought he’d killed her. She wondered if he even realized that had been what she’d thought.
She didn’t know if he would get in trouble for the way he’d conducted his mission, how much the Agency even knew about it, so she simply hadn’t mentioned him and neither had Dr. Shay.
She knocked on Dr. Shay’s door, and a voice she didn’t recognize said, “Come in.”
She opened the door and stared at the man who sat behind the desk. “Come in,” he repeated, smiling.
Lily entered the office and closed the door behind her. Silently she sat down in the seat she usually took.
“I’m Frank Vinay,” the man said. He looked to be in his early seventies, maybe, and he had a kind face but the sharpest gaze she’d ever encountered. She recognized the name with a sense of shock. This was the Agency’s director of operations himself.
A few dots connected, and she said, “Swain’s Frank?”
He nodded. “I’ll admit to that.”
“You were really in a car accident?”
“I really was. I don’t remember anything about it, of course, but I’ve read all the reports. It put Swain in a bind, because he found out there was a mole who was reporting to Rodrigo Nervi, but he didn’t know who it was and I was the only person he could say for sure wasn’t the mole, so he had no one to call. He was totally on his own with that operation—except for you, of course. Please accept your country’s thanks for what you did.”
Whatever she had expected to hear, that wasn’t it. She said, “I thought you would have me killed.”
The kind face turned somber. “After all your years of service to the country? I don’t operate that way. I read the reports, you know; I saw the signs that you were stretched thin, but I didn’t pull you in the way I should have. After you killed Salvatore Nervi, I was afraid you were going to disrupt the complete network, but I still never contemplated having you terminated unless you gave me no choice. This was my first option,” he said, indicating Dr. Shay’s office. “But I knew there was no way you would believe it if the plan was presented to you. You would either run, or kill, or both. You had to be taken, so I sent my best hunter after you. It was a fortuitous selection, because another field officer might not have worked the situation as capably as he did when circumstances changed.”
“When he found out about the mole, and I found out what was really going on at that laboratory.”
“Exactly. It was a complicated situation. When Damone Nervi discovered what his father and brother were planning, he took steps to prevent the virus from being released by hiring Averill Joubran and his wife to destroy the work, and that set the whole ball of wax into motion.”
A man as handsome as a movie star, was how Mme. Bonnet had described her friends’ visitor. That was Damone Nervi, all right.
“So he knew all along who I was, that day at the laboratory,” she murmured. “And he knew I killed his father.”
“Yes. He’s an amazing man. He wouldn’t have minded if you’d been killed in the explosion, mind you, or if one of the guards had shot you as you and Swain were leaving, but he did nothing to compromise your mission.”
He was a bigger person than she was, Lily silently admitted. She had almost lost control and attacked Dr. Giordano—but she hadn’t, she realized. That was how Damone Nervi must have felt. Hah. He wasn’t a bigger person, after all.
“The thing is, we may not have done any good at all,” she said. “The avian flu virus may mutate on its own, at any time.”
“That’s true, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. But the CDC and the WHO are working hard to develop a reliable method of producing the vaccine, and if the virus mutates before that happens—” He spread his hands. “At least no one is releasing it deliberately, and making a fortune from the deaths of millions. Which brings me to another health issue,” he said, smoothly switching subjects. “How are you doing?”
“I feel well, finally. The surgery wasn’t a picnic, but it worked.”
“I’m glad. Swain was there, you know.”
She felt as if he’d thrown a body block at her. “What?” The word came out as a weak gasp.
“For your surgery. He wanted to be there. When you were placed on the heart-lung machine, he almost fainted.”
“How . . . how do you know that?” She almost couldn’t speak, so profound was her shock.
“I was there, too, of course. I was . . . concerned. It wasn’t a minor surgery. He saw you in recovery, but had to leave before you were awake.”
Or he’d wanted to leave before she was awake. She didn’t know how to take all this in, or what to think.
“You can leave here anytime you want,” Mr. Vinay continued. “Do you know what you want to do?”
“See my mother and sister, first of all. After that . . . I don’t know. I need a new line of work,” she said wryly.
“If there’s any field in which you’d like to be trained. . . . We can always use someone who’s dedicated and resourceful, and loyal.”
“Thank you for the offer, but I’ll have to think about it. I honestly have no idea what I want to do.”
“Maybe I can help out a little,” he said, getting to his feet with some difficulty. He used a cane now, she saw, leaning his weight heavily on it. “He’s waiting. Do you want to see him?”
There was no need to ask who was waiting. Her heart leaped, and her pulse began racing. “Yes,” she said without hesitation.
He smiled. “I’m glad. I didn’t know if you understood how difficult things were for him.”
“I didn’t at first,” she said honestly. “I was so shocked to realize . . . but then I began to think.”
He laboriously made his way around the desk, and patted her shoulder. “Have a good life, Liliane.”
“I will, thank you . . . Mr. Rogers.”
Frank Vinay smiled, and left the office. Ten seconds later, the door opened again and Lucas Swain stood there, as good-looking as always, but now he wasn’t laughing. The expression in his blue eyes was almost . . . scared.
“Lily,” he began. “I—”
“I know,” she interrupted, and with a laugh launched herself at him. His reflexes were excellent; he opened his arms and caught her.
By Linda Howard
A LADY OF THE WEST
ANGEL CREEK
THE TOUCH OF FIRE
HEART OF FIRE
DREAM MAN
AFTER THE NIGHT
SHADES OF TWILIGHT
SON OF THE MORNING
KILL AND TELL
NOW YOU SEE HER
ALL THE QUEEN’S MEN
MR. PERFECT
OPEN SEASON
DYING TO PLEASE
CRY NO MORE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2004 by Linda Howington
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
library of congress control number: 2004092320
eISBN 0-345-47853-3
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Document version: 1
Document creation date: 22.5.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.30, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Linda Howard
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Linda Howard, Kiss Me While I Sleep cs-3
