Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

She didn't see Wallace.

She did see, however, a woman emerging from the first-class lounge, wearing trainers and jeans and a navy-blue parka. She had black hair and a young face, and Chace tried to avoid meeting her eyes, but it was too late, and confusion and surprise were stamped on the woman's face with the same clarity as Elizabeth's profile on a coin.

Fucking hell, Chace thought, and she turned immediately away, keeping the motion and movement casual, scanning for a direction, seeing the sign for the women's lav. She made for it, knowing that she was trapping herself, and hoping that the woman behind her wasn't certain enough of what she'd seen to call it in.

The bathroom was like the rest of the terminal, modern and too bright, white walls and chrome fixtures, and as soon as Chace was through the door, she kicked it closed behind her, working her way down the line of stalls, trying to read which were occupied and which were open. The fear, and she knew it for what it was, was struggling to get loose inside her, and she felt her head go light and her stomach weak with the new surge of adrenaline.

None of the stalls were occupied, and Chace reversed, heading back to the entrance just as the woman came through, and again they were face-to-face and close enough now that Chace saw that she truly was fresh to the game. She had one hand in the pocket of her parka, the other out, holding the black cylinder that would become the baton, and Chace saw the outline of the wireless earpiece in her ear and knew there wasn't any other choice about it.

With her right hand, Chace brought her go-bag up at the woman's face, catching her in the chin and knocking her back into the already closing door. Her impact slammed it home, and Chace dropped the bag on the follow-through, driving her left fist at the other woman's neck, trying to put her down.

The woman saw it coming, jerked her head right, brought her free hand up to parry, and Chace saw the com button dangling from her sleeve, and it became the focus of her existence. She couldn't let her hit the button, she couldn't let her transmit. If this bird from Box got the word out, neither Chace nor Wallace would make it out of the terminal.

Chace snapped her left arm back, turning her hand, trying to grab the woman's wrist, and she felt the impact at the side of her knee, the baton connecting with soft flesh and timid cartilage, and she heard herself swearing. She knew she hadn't been hit hard because the knee hadn't abandoned her, but the pain was extraordinary and brutal, and it made her vision swim.

But she had the wrist, and then the thumb, and she trapped the digit between her own thumb and fingers, closed her hand, sweeping it down. The woman grunted, trying to turn with it and swing at Chace again, and failed at both, and Chace drove her into the door, slamming her head forward with her right before reaching down to the trapped hand and wrenching the lead free from her palm. The wire snapped and she tossed it away, and then Chace's breath was gone and the world was white, and she was tasting bile and blood in her throat, aware that she was having trouble standing, that somehow she'd lost her grip on the woman.

She came back to herself in time to see the woman spin, drawing back to jab the baton at Chace's stomach a second time, and somehow Chace got out of the way, slamming into the door of one of the stalls and crashing hip-first into the toilet. She righted herself, and the woman was coming at her again, baton raised, and this time there was nowhere to go, and Chace lurched forward, bringing her left arm up to block and taking the blow high on her forearm.

It took everything she had not to scream.

Chace continued forward, now under the woman's arm, ramming into her, fists working. She hit her four times, all with her right, all jabs along the left side of the woman's chest, trying to hurt her, to cause her as much pain as she could. The woman slammed into the sinks with her lower back, gasping, and Chace heard the baton clattering to the floor, felt the dull impact of a fist that somehow missed her neck and landed on her shoulder instead. Chace dropped her chin instinctively, felt the woman clawing at her hair, trying to get her head back, to get another shot at the throat.

Chace punched low with her left, feeling her arm scream in protest, already going numb, making it as vicious as she could, almost screaming herself. She landed the blow just above the pelvic bone, felt the punch sink, felt the woman slacken, groaning. Chace turned out of the clench, grabbed her with her right, jamming her thumb into the woman's nose, yanking her forward. The woman staggered, flailed, but her legs were going, and her breath had already gone, and she had nothing left.

Chace pitched her face-first into the stall, throwing her against the toilet, then bashed her head against the porcelain. The woman moaned, flailed weakly, and Chace bounced her again, and she stopped moving.

Wheezing, Chace got to her feet, her lungs crackling, her right knee throbbing, a hand on the side of the stall to steady herself. Over her own breathing, she barely heard the muffled announcement from the terminal PA, a call for boarding for the nine fifty-nine train. She glanced down at her watch, realized that she'd been in the bathroom now for perhaps all of a minute.

The woman groaned again, slid farther between the toilet and the wall of the stall.

Chace leaned down, caught her beneath each armpit, and hoisted her onto the toilet seat, leaning her back. She ran her hands over her quickly, finding the radio secured at her hip, pulling it free and then turning the squelch all the way up. Now, instead of no response, whoever radioed would hear distortion and static, and it was possible that could be mistaken as network trouble rather than an agent down.

Somehow, Chace didn't put much stock in that happening.

She unfastened the woman's belt and trousers, yanked them down around her ankles, righted her once more on the seat before turning and shutting the stall door, locking them both inside. The clearance at the bottom was slight, and Chace had to squeeze through, her left arm all but dead, her knee making her wince in protest. If someone came in now, she'd have a hell of a time explaining things.

But no one did, and she grabbed the baton as she got back to her feet, collapsing it and dumping it into the refuse bin. She checked herself in the mirrors over the sink, brushing her hair back into place with her fingers, straightened her clothes. She looked, she thought, fucking awful, but not like a woman who'd been in a fistfight, and that was about as much as she could ask for at the moment.

Taking her go-bag once more, she stepped back into the terminal to find Tom Wallace searching for her. Frowning slightly, already turning toward passport control, he handed over her passport and ticket as soon as she reached him.

"Stomach trouble?" he asked.

"Thought you were taking care of it."

"Mine's in the men's room," Wallace said. • They arrived in Paris just before one in the afternoon, at the Gare du Nord, and before they left the station, Chace found a phone and made the call to Air France reservations. The next available flight to Tel Aviv was the following morning, departing ten-thirty, and she booked seats in their false names, Monique DuLac and Richard Kent, and then paid with the credit card Wallace supplied her in Kent's name.

"Done?" he asked when she hung up.

"French is an easily acquired Romance language, Tom," she said. "You should have picked it up by now."

"Merde," he told her.

"It's done. All we have to do now is occupy ourselves for the rest of the day."

"Fancy a trip to Disneyland, then?"

"I'm knackered."

"Or we could find a room and get some rest," he amended.