Though her eyes opened and lifted to him, they were blurred. “Mac, is that you? You have to get away.”
The color drained from his face. It must have been as white as Roxie’s, as the hand touching her coat came away damp and sticky.
He moved her and more dark red blood surged through the hole in the cloth. Yes, she was alive, her heart still pumping, but not for long unless he did something fast that would save her.
For a second that lasted an eternity all his triage training deserted him. Never before had it been so important that he succeed. He must keep her alive.
Cold air licked at his body as he ripped off the tail of his shirt, folded it into a pad and pressed it inside her coat onto the wound, holding it down hard.
An agonized grunt made him turn.
Sevarin wasn’t dead. Eyes red as flames burned in his face.
Walking awkwardly, he lurched toward them like a zombie from a horror movie. The kind of monster no bullet could stop.
Yet, Mac’s did.
The rescue copter—owned by IBIS—that Mac had called up to transport Roxie was less than ten minutes away.
It had taken both he and Thierry to contain the bleeding. And though he hated to do it, he put Roxie in Thierry’s care.
Mac had some mopping up to do in the château.
Jean-Luc and the chauffeur had surrendered to Thierry and the waiting agents. Had given up without a murmur, so he’d been told. But no one had seen Javier since he ran back into the château.
It didn’t take Mac long to discover the results of his failure to make sure Javier didn’t escape.
Two vials were missing. The metal box itself had been too heavy for a man on the run, but now…even if they caught up with Javier the orders would have to be, “Don’t shoot.”
The plants inside the glass tank appeared even worse than when he saw them last, slushy and soggy, as if they had gone into a meltdown that formed condensation inside the glass.
In less time than it took him to think of the idea, Mac knew what he had to do. It was a makeshift plan but it would work.
Carefully, he removed the vials from their container one by one. He laid them on top of the gas hobs, then did a quick search of the cupboards until he caught sight of what he needed to make a bomb. One can of fly spray and another of air freshener.
He popped the aerosols inside the microwave oven. Not knowing how long it would take, he set the timer for thirty minutes, then turned on all the stovetop knobs on full. The room quickly began to fill with gas.
To make sure the flames would reach the plants, he lifted the cover off the glass aquarium. The stench of rotting vegetation was awful.
He shuddered to think of a whole country filled with such corruption. What the hell happened if there were no plants to make oxygen?
At the rate the microorganisms sucked up chlorophyll, they could kill the world’s ecosystem in no time flat. Mac couldn’t let that happen. He pressed the start button on the microwave.
Picking up one of the wrought-iron chairs, he smashed the fish tank knowing that when this gig was over he would have a lot of explaining to do. Then he ran out of the château.
Jason Hart wasn’t going to be happy with this result.
He’d barely reached Roxie and Thierry when he heard the first thump as the gas propellant inside the cans exploded and caught fire as it blew up the microwave.
“Get down!” he shouted to the others.
He threw himself over Roxie’s small frame to protect her from flying glass just as the windows of the château blew out.
A minute later the helicopter arrived.
It was early, but, thank God, not early enough to be blown out of the sky by the blast.
In the hour before dawn, Paris no longer looked a City of Lights.
Though it had stopped raining, Mac felt as if an ice storm brewed side him, freezing all his emotions as he awaited news.
Roxie had been through surgery, they’d removed the bullet and she was now in intensive care.
But since he wasn’t related, they wouldn’t tell him her condition. His IBIS ID card hadn’t cut any ice with the critical-care nurse on duty.
Not after Charles Fortier and Pierre Dumont, one of Paris’s top FIS officers, had shouldered him aside.
As usual he had underestimated Roxie.
She’d gotten a message out to the FIS before she’d made a break for it. According to Thierry, whom Mac had asked to report in for him, Roxie’s superiors weren’t any more pleased with him than Jason Hart had been.
The last piece of news had come to Mac secondhand, in a call from his fellow agent. Although he’d been expecting his career to crash like a house of cards after his escapades, the news still cut him up.
He’d decided to save Jason the trouble of firing him by writing his resignation as soon as he returned to the Paris headquarters.
He would miss being an IBIS agent.
It had become his life since Jason had drafted him out of the Naval Intelligence. But those were the breaks.
He’d done the deed, now he’d live with the consequences.
It was 7:00 a.m. when the night nurse came looking for him. “Could you be the Mac whom Mademoiselle Kincaid is calling for?”
Chapter 15
The effort to raise her eyelids was almost too much, Roxie wasn’t in pain, she simply felt as if she’d run a marathon or gone fifteen rounds with a world heavyweight champ.
Last time she’d opened her eyes it had been dark, the room dimly lit around floor level, but the light seeping through her lashes was brighter, much brighter, and she didn’t know if she could bear to let it in.
She’d been dreaming of Mac.
This time the train at Gare du Nord had taken him away. She had a miserable, sinking feeling that meant he was dead. Her chest shuddered over the dull, leaden lump of her heart.
Tears she couldn’t hold back slid down her cheeks.
A touch on her face startled her, made her blink. Made her see. Dear heavens, was she delusional?
Mac was here, beside the bed. “You’re alive.”
He grinned. “Yeah, want to pinch me to make sure?”
The relief was stupendous, made her feel dizzy. Made her experience emotions too big to share with anyone, even Mac. Yet, she couldn’t remember feeling so vulnerable before.
It took all her powers of deception to say, “Don’t make me laugh, I’m already in stitches.”
Mentioning her wound grounded her in reality and panic surfaced. “You shouldn’t be here, Mac, they’ll take you in.”
Weakness seemed to have diminished yesterday’s resolve to hand him over to FIS. “I was going to inform on you, but I can’t do it. Go! Go away before I change my mind.”
Mac leaned closer and she saw weariness bracketing his eyes. “That’s not very professional for an FIS agent,” he said, his voice sounding rusty, as if his throat were closed.
Then she understood. “You know?”
“That you don’t work for MI6?” he asked, dark eyebrows straddling his forehead in a frown that faded almost as soon as it was born.
Mac took her hand, hooked her fingers round his thumb and squeezed gently. “Yes, I know.” He sighed. “You weren’t very honest with me, but I can’t complain. I wasn’t completely honest myself. My name isn’t Makjzajev, it’s McBride.”
“But…?” She felt too exhausted to take the facts in.
He had lied.
“I was working undercover, and I couldn’t take the chance that you would give me away. For all I knew you could have belonged to a real terrorist organization trying to move in on the deal.” His thumb rubbed against her palm as he waited for her to speak.
And waited…
Then, “But you still saved my life….” She gasped faintly, her head buzzing, as she tried to patch in the latest addition to the bewildering equation that explained their relationship.
“I’m hoping that will count in my favor.”
His favor
!
Roxie’s breathing became erratic, as if she couldn’t catch up with it. Her pulse racing, she pronounced her dismay. “But, you…you slept with me!”
“Not until the third night.”
“And you expect me to commend you on your control?”
His features contracted. “Why not? I wanted to take you to bed and make love to you the moment I saw you.”
Just what had that been, an excuse or a protest?
She wanted to weep again, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead she fisted the bedcovers in her free hand.
“And just exactly who do you work for?” she asked through tight lips.
“IBIS.”
“Never heard of them,” she replied primly. This man had been closer to her than any other human being. She’d done things with him, for him, to him that she’d done for no other, and embarrassment, absent at the time, now made its presence known.
“Not many people have. Being covert, we like it that way. The Intelligence Bureau for International Security is a worldwide organization, yet few people know we exist.”
She pulled her hand away so he couldn’t tell she was shaking.
The anger surging through her couldn’t be good for her blood pressure, but she was past caring. “Some of us wish we still didn’t know, that we had never met you.”
“I know you don’t mean that. You’re hurt. It will get better.”
That was all he knew; she had a wound deep inside that would never heal, and it wasn’t the result of the bullet she’d taken in the back.
She had let down her guard, broken her oath of silence as much as she’d dared and he’d never even hinted he was more than he claimed. Hadn’t reciprocated.
The pain struck so fiercely she couldn’t voice her emotions. She’d fallen in love with a man in whose eyes she was no more than a convenient female body. A cook, a lover, but never a confidante.
Mac knew he’d gone about it all wrong. He needed to make amends fast. “Listen to me, chérie, please,” he pleaded. “I never dreamed you’d really get hurt. I was hoping to avoid that scenario. I even prayed about it.”
Exasperation over letting her down surfaced. “Dammit, I had backup on call outside all the time. I just needed to get my hands on Green Shield before calling them in.”
Roxie didn’t take the news too well. “You mean we could have gotten out of the château… whenever we wanted?”
He took a deep breath and tried another tack. “Yes. Chérie…sweetheart, if you had seen the results of Green Shield’s work you would realize why it was vital.”
She nodded. “I did see it, through the kitchen window before I escaped from Yves. The garrote came in useful, it tripped him.”
Once again her courage stunned him. Her small stature belied her abilities. “You did well, chérie. You make me proud.”
Her eyes snapped open, their gray depths accusing as if he’d taken credit for her efforts. He moved on quickly. “Yves won’t bother you anymore, he’s dead.”
“You killed him?”
“It was either you or Yves, not what you’d call a choice. I did what I had to.” Mac held his breath. He’d just confessed to killing a man. Would she be able to look at him without seeing blood on his hands?
“What? Do you expect me to berate you?” A twisted half smile shaped her lips. “I’m not a bébé. I know this is war, undeclared, yet the battle goes on. In this age, terrorism is the monster we face. And Sevarin?” She whispered the question.
“Sevarin died at the scene and Jean-Luc and the chauffeur are locked up.”
After all she’d gone through, the next piece of news would be the kicker. “Javier escaped. He took a couple of vials of Green Shield with him. We’re on to it, though.”
“Javier!” his name was more like a cry of pain as Roxie tried to sit up. He pressed her back against the pillow.
“Take it easy,” he told her. “We’ll get him.”
“Didn’t you know? He’s Sevarin’s son, head of security at the unit where Green Shield was evolved. If you hadn’t been so secretive I would have told you that while we were at the château.”
She looked away from him for a few seconds, her bottom lip clenched in her teeth. He nearly asked if she was in pain but thought better of it. The mood Roxie was in she wouldn’t thank him for being oversolicitous.
He’d gone about everything back to front, and it didn’t look like it was going to be an easy fix.
Fatigue framed Roxie’s eyes when she looked his way once more and forced out the words, “I may not be a high-flying spy like you, but I do know my facts. That’s why I had to escape. Sevarin would have recognized me. He visited the House of Fortier many times with Madeleine Saber, his mistress.”
Her smile was ironic. “Sevarin put too much trust in her. Not only did she like spending money, she also liked to talk….”
“You could have told me, I would have made sure you were safe….” His voice faded away. They both knew he hadn’t been able to keep her safe, had he? She was lucky to be alive.
It was a hard fact to swallow, but if the bullet had hit an inch lower they wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“I would have given anything to make sure you never had to go through this, anything.” He knew it sounded like begging, and it was, dammit!
How the mighty had fallen.
Fallen in love.
The silence in the hospital room stretched until he couldn’t bear it any longer. “Dammit, chérie, I’m in love with you!”
Her eyes widened. She covered her mouth with her hand as if to stifle a cough…God help him if she was laughing.
Finally, she said, “How can you love me? You don’t even trust me. If you’d told me this yesterday I would have been over the moon, but most of the luster has rubbed off the glow I felt.”
He lifted her hand to his lips but stopped when he saw how weary she was. “Yeah, I know, my timing stinks, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give up.”
“Go find a woman to love whom you can trust. That isn’t me.”
Mac didn’t have time to reply.
“What are you doing here, McBride?” The growl from Pierre Dumont interrupted their conversation. “I left instructions you weren’t allowed in to see Roxie.”
“Instructions with whom?” Mac demanded. “If you’d had a guard on her door like you’re supposed to, I wouldn’t have been able to get in.”
Dumont’s face went red as he fluffed metaphoric feathers. “A guard would only attract unnecessary attention.”
Mac called his bluff. “Javier Sevarin is still on the loose. I think Roxie deserves that attention, and if you won’t put a guard on her door, I will.”
“Javier knows nothing about me, I’ll be all right.” Roxie’s voice, though weak, was enough to stop the quarrel.
“We can’t take that for granted, chérie.”
“A guard will be put on your door. It will be worth it to stop this fellow bothering you,” Dumont snapped in a tone that brooked no argument, and appeared full of confidence that he’d fixed Mac. In fact he’d done exactly as Mac wanted.
Kissing the back of her hand again, Mac took his farewell, “À bientôt, chérie.”
And for her ears only, “We will we meet again.” Then Mac withdrew to the corridor to await the arrival of her guard.
Two hours later he showed up at IBIS headquarters, knowing he had a dressing-down to face and a resignation to write.
“There are some questions I need to ask,” said Dumont, drawing a chair up beside Roxie’s bed, as if his height looming over the bed might intimidate her, when actually it didn’t matter to her one way or the other.
For fifteen minutes he asked questions and she answered, or hoped she’d given him the correct one.
Her mind was elsewhere.
Mac loved her.
Was it true, or was that his way of easing his guilty conscience?
“How did you become involved in this? Your mission was simply
to follow Zukah and discover whom he was meeting. Did you not understand?”
“I understood parfaitement. I followed him to what I now know was the apartment of Monsieur McBride. They went inside, but as I could not see through the door, I did the next best thing. I entered the apartment, pretending I thought it belonged to someone else.”
“You could have been shot. Did that not occur to you?”
“I was shot, but no, at the time I thought I was carrying out my assignment to the best of my ability. I took a risk and it paid off. Mac would not let them harm me.”
Had he really wanted her the moment she walked into his apartment? God, she had been dumb with fright, hardly able to speak….
And Mac, he was the ultimate professional…very little got in his way. Not even so-called love.
“Very well, I want to know all you learned. I don’t trust this IBIS agency to tell us everything.”
Roxie lost track of time. She was weary and reduced her replies to monosyllabic answers: “Yes” and “No.”
The nurse was her savior. “The fifteen minutes is up, Monsieur Dumont.” She bustled around to the opposite side of the bed. “My patient is tired, and once I’ve changed her dressings she will sleep.”
Was sleep the answer? Only if she didn’t dream of Mac. She was already confused. Memories of sleeping in his arms would hardly break the spell of loving him.
Mac was halfway across the threadbare foyer of the Hôtel Margeaux when it occurred to him that maybe it was time to change his address. He’d gotten used to the privacy afforded by the faux living quarters IBIS had found him.
Certainly, the old girl had seen better days, but then who hadn’t? Built in the 1920’s, in its heyday the Margeaux had been a triumph of art nouveau.
The black-and-gold metal elevator doors, framed by arching bird of paradise tails, swung out to let him enter instead of gliding silently into the wall.
The decor was something he’d appreciated, thanks to his mother, an avid fan and collector of art-nouveau pieces. That’s what had drawn him to the hotel. It had a familiar feel to it.
Honeymoon with a Stranger Page 18