I can,” he said. “But only if you will call me Val.”
“How old were you?” she asked. “When it happened to you?”
He didn’t feign incomprehension, but he was silent for so long she finally concluded he wasn’t going to answer at all.
“The first time?” he said, at last. “Eleven.”
She winced in the dark. “Oh.”
Silent minutes went by. Finally, Janos sat up, huffing out a sharp, irritated breath. “Stop thinking about it,” he said gruffly.
She was startled. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“I can hear you thinking about it. Please stop. I think about it myself as little as possible.”
Her chest jerked with involuntary laughter. “I’ll try not to.”
After a moment, he spoke again. “And you? How old were you?”
“Fifteen,” she admitted.
“Ah.”
A few more moments of that, and she was the one to snap at him. “Would you stop thinking about it, goddamnit?”
He laughed softly. “Hypocritical bitch.”
“Yes, that would be me,” she said crabbily. “And now, would you kindly stop your chattering and let me get some goddamn sleep?”
“You started it,” he pointed out logically enough.
“Shut up, Janos.”
“Call me Val, for the love of God,” he said wearily, and rolled over so that his back was to her.
She stared into the dark for a very long time, trying not to think about anything.
Chapter
15
Sleep was impossible despite how exhausted he was. He felt buzzed, wired. Proximity to that woman acted on his brain like a powerful chemical stimulant.
If he kept her close enough, he might never need to sleep again.
Tamar and Rachel were still asleep. Tamar cuddled Rachel, the child’s back tight to her belly, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Rachel’s curly black head was tucked under her chin and Tamar looked like a little girl clutching a doll that she feared would be taken from her.
Not by him, he vowed silently. Not by him. He would die first.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He plucked it out, and opened the text message from Donatella. It was terse and to the point.
meeting with la santarini 10:30 Tuesday dreaming of Paris baci e abbraci, D
Relief almost brought tears into his eyes. He drew in a huge breath. One point of agonizing dread and tension eased, though there were plenty more of them vibrating inside him to choose from.
He noticed Rachel’s pink fuzzy blanket draped over the chair. It gave him an idea. He fished in his jacket for the case of miniature spyware he’d been carrying everywhere he went, picking the same type he’d put into Tamar’s jewelry case, but he fished out the slightly larger size, for the sake of the longer battery life.
Three days, guaranteed, the catalog had boasted. Maybe more.
They weren’t the PSS-sanctioned transmitters that he usually used. When he’d researched the McClouds and Seth Mackey, he’d been intrigued with the merchandise in the SafeGuard online catalog. He had ordered an array of products to test and been agreeably surprised. Their software was better than that of PSS, and he liked the sleek, easy-to-use designs. The beacon burrs, as the catalog called them, were miniature X-Ray Specs GPS tracers, the smallest of them as slender as a wild grass seed. A pointed needle tip made for easy placement, no unstitching necessary. The tiny electronic parts and supercondensed battery were packed into a narrow plastic capsule. One slid it into a hem or fabric lining, and the thing was done.
He stared at Tamar for a moment to see if she was still asleep. She would read his gesture as threatening if she saw it, but if they should ever need the tracers, she would be grateful for them.
Swift, discreet action. He inserted one into Rachel’s stuffed bear, another into the upholstery of her new stroller, a third into her ski jacket. Overkill, but he didn’t care. He was the one who had put this child at risk. He wanted options should anything happen to her while they were in Europe. He only wished the batteries lasted longer.
He resumed the kung fu he’d been practicing for several silent hours. He’d tried meditating on the matrix, but he was buzzing at too high a frequency to have any hopes of centering himself.
He had to keep his wits about him—not so much against the enemies massed against them, but against Tamar herself. It took constant, careful attention to have anything to do with the woman. She was so sharp, so prickly and contentious. And so fucking beautiful.
She scrambled his circuits like an electrical storm.
He felt her eyes on the back of his neck as he sank down into a tiger crouch. His gaze flicked over her as he spun. Tamar was propped on her elbow, looking at him with squint-eyed, sleepy suspicion.
He continued without acknowledging her and silently finished the movement.
When he was done, she was on her feet with her back to him, punching a number into her cell phone. She spoke in a hushed voice, in Portuguese. “Rosalia? Yes, it’s Tam…yes, I just called to find out how your…oh, really? Wonderful, Rosalia, thank God. I’m so glad you got it all straightened out so quickly…no, actually Rachel and I are out of town right now…yes, for a few days, yet. I’m not sure how many. You just take a vacation and relax, and I’ll call you when I get back. OK. Thanks to you, too. Take care, Rosalia. Good-bye.”
She clicked her phone shut, and glared at him. He gave her an I-told-you-so shrug.
“Well, and so what?” she snapped. “Don’t give me that smug look. It was a shitty thing to do in the first place. You scared the poor woman to death. To say nothing of how her sons felt. You should pay them monetary damages for lost sleep and mental anguish. Embarrassing them at their place of work just to mess with me. It was unforgivable.”
He shrugged. “I will pay them damages, if you like, when all this is over. But it’s fine, now. I have arranged for an introduction to Ana Santarini. We have an appointment with her in two days.”
She frowned. “So long from now? Do we have to waste an entire—”
“She is in Italy,” he reminded her patiently. “We lose a day traveling, and when we arrive in Rome, we still have hours of driving to do. Do you have enough jewelry with you to show to a client without going home to get more? I suspect going back would be dangerous.”
“I have everything I showed you at Shibumi, and then some,” she said. “All unarmed, of course, but I have the means to arm some packed in my case.”
“Good. We should get on our way,” he said.
