Linda Howard - Kiss Me While I Sleep

Frank hated working with the Nervis. They had some legitimate business concerns, yes, but they were like Janus: everything they did had two faces, a good side and a bad side. If their researchers were working on a cancer vaccine, another group in the same building was working to develop a biological weapon. They gave huge amounts of money to charitable organizations that did a lot of good work, but they also funded terrorists groups that killed indiscriminately.

Playing in the pool of world politics was like playing in a sewer. You had to get dirty in order to play. Privately, Frank thought the end of Salvatore Nervi was good riddance. In the realm of his work, though, if Liliane Mansfield was responsible, he had to do something about it.

He pulled up her security-coded file and read it. Her psychological profile said that she’d been operating under some strain for a couple of years now. In his experience there were two types of contract agents: those who did their work with no more emotion than they would expend on swatting a fly, and those who were convinced of the good they did but whose souls, nevertheless, wore thin under the constant assault. Lily was in the latter group. She was very good, one of the best, but each hit had left its mark on her.

She had stopped contacting her family years ago, and that wasn’t good. She would feel isolated, cut off from the very world she’d worked to protect. Under those circumstances, her friends in the business had become more than just friends; they’d become her surrogate family. When they were hit, her tattered soul had perhaps taken one blow too many.

Frank knew some of his colleagues would laugh at him, thinking in terms of souls, but he’d been in this business a long time and he not only knew what he saw, he understood it.

Poor Lily. Perhaps he should have pulled her out of the field when she first started showing signs of psychological strain, but it was too late now. He had to deal with the situation that existed.

He picked up the phone and had his assistant locate Lucas Swain, who, wonder of wonders, was actually in the building. The fickle Fates must have decided to smile on Frank.

Some forty-five minutes later, his assistant buzzed him. “Mr. Swain is here.”

“Send him in.”

The door opened and Swain sauntered in. Actually, he sauntered everywhere. He walked like a cowboy who had nowhere to go and wasn’t in any hurry to get there. Ladies seemed to like that about him.

Swain was one of those good-looking people who seemed to be perpetually good-natured, too. There was a goofy smile on his face as he said hello and took the chair Frank indicated. For some reason, the smile worked in the same way as the walk: people liked him. He was a devastatingly effective field officer because he went in under people’s radar. He might be a happy man, he might have a walk that looked like the definition of laziness, but he got the job done. He’d been getting the job done in South America for the better part of a decade, which explained the deep tan and rock-hard leanness.

He was beginning to show his age, Frank thought, but then, weren’t they all? There was gray at the temples and along the hairline of Swain’s brown hair, which was kept cropped short because of an unruly cowlick in front. There were lines bracketing his eyes and on his forehead, creases in his cheeks, but with his luck, the ladies probably thought that was as cute as his walk. Cute. It was a sad day in hell, Frank reflected, when he was mentally describing one of his best male field officers as cute.

“What’s up?” Swain asked, stretching his long legs out as he relaxed, his spine curving so he sank down in his chair. Formality wasn’t Swain’s way.

“A delicate situation in Europe. One of our contract agents has gone off the reservation, killed a valuable asset. We need her stopped.”

“Her?”

Frank handed the report over the desk. Swain took it and swiftly read through it, then passed it back. “The deed’s done. What’s there to stop?”

“Salvatore Nervi wasn’t alone in the situation that ended with the death of Lily’s friends. If she’s on a rampage to get all of them, she could wreck our entire network. She’s already done considerable damage by eliminating Nervi.”

Swain screwed up his face and briskly rubbed both hands over it. “Don’t you have some irrascible rogue agent, forcibly retired under a cloud, with some special skill that makes him the only choice possible for locating Ms. Mansfield and stopping her killing ways?”

Frank bit the inside of his cheek to control a smile. “Does this look like a movie production to you?”

“A man can hope.”

“Consider your hopes dashed.”

“Okay, then, how about John Medina?” Swain’s blue eyes were full of laughter as he got into the spirit of deviling Frank.

“John’s busy in the Middle East,” Frank said calmly.

His reply brought Swain upright in his seat, all hint of laziness gone. “Wait a minute. Are you saying there really is a Medina?”

“There really is a Medina.”

“There’s no file on him—” Swain began, then caught himself, grinned, and said, “Oops.”

“Meaning you’ve checked.”

“Hell, everyone in the business has checked.”

“That’s why there’s no file in the computer system. For his protection. Now, as I was saying, John’s deep cover in the Middle East, and in any case, I wouldn’t use him for a retrieval.”

“Meaning he’s way more important than I am.” Swain had that goofy grin again, meaning he took no offense.

“Or that he has different talents. You’re the man I want, and you’ll be on a plane to Paris tonight. Here’s what I want you to do.”

4

After spending an entire day eating, resting, and doing light workouts to increase her stamina, Lily got up the morning of her departure feeling much better. She carefully packed her carry-on bag and shopping tote, making sure she was leaving nothing crucial behind. Most of her clothes were left hanging in the closet; the odd photographs of complete strangers that she had put in cheap frames and set around the flat, to give herself the appearance of a background, were left in place.

She didn’t strip the bed linens or wash the single bowl and spoon she’d used for breakfast, though she did take the precaution of thoroughly wiping the place down with oil-dissolving disinfectant, to destroy her fingerprints. That was something she’d been doing for nineteen years, and the habit was strongly ingrained. She had even wiped down her surroundings before leaving the Nervi compound, though she hadn’t been able to use a disinfectant. She had also always wiped her eating utensils and drinking glasses with a napkin before they were collected, and cleaned her hairbrush every morning, flushing the stray hairs that collected in the bristles.

She was uncomfortably aware she couldn’t do anything about the blood Dr. Giordano had drawn for analyzing, but DNA wasn’t used for identification the same way that fingerprints were; there was no extensive database. Her fingerprints were on file in Langley, but nowhere else; except for the occasional assassination, she’d been a model citizen. Even fingerprints were no good unless there was a file somewhere to match them to, and get a name. One slipup meant nothing. Two provided a means of identification. To the best of her ability, she tried never to provide even a starting point.

Probably Dr. Giordano would find it odd in the extreme if she called him and asked for the return of any leftover blood. If she were in California, now, she could claim she was a member of a weird religious cult and needed the blood, or even that she was a vampire, and probably get any remnants returned.