Linda Howard - Kiss Me While I Sleep

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?”