his head to clear it…concentrated on breathing deeply. Evenly. Relax…tensing up only makes the pain worse.
Bloody hell. He’d never felt so feeble and woozy. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Adam swearing at him, but he couldn’t spare the energy it would take to tell him to can it. He needed every ounce of strength just to take those first steps.
Out in the emergency entrance, the woman’s voice had quieted to a raspy, throaty sound, like a lioness purring. And Corbett remembered that one, too, as clearly as if it had been yesterday….
Murmuring words of love to me in a tangle of sweaty sheets on a stolen afternoon in the hot little room in Montmarte… Saying my name in a way no one else ever has, before or since, giving it the French pronunciation: Cor-bay…
Speaking of betrayal, as we sat together on a rooftop in London, watching the fog swirl around the chimney pots, with that particular intensity in her voice and in her eyes, that hint of violence and danger that made me wonder sometimes whether she was not quite sane. “I give you fair warning, mon cher. I love with passion and I hate the same way. Do not ever make me hate you….”
He’d been young then, and had laughed off both of them—the words of love and the warnings—and he’d known in his heart it was the danger that made her so irresistible.
Just as he knew in his heart now that it was not only possible, it was true. The voice was hers. He knew it even before he heard the words that erased all possibility of doubt.
“Yes, that is right. I am Cassandra DuMont. His name is Troy DuMont. He is my son. Now will you tell me where… Yes, yes, I understand he is in surgery….”
Corbett didn’t hear the rest. The initial shock of hearing her voice, recognizing it, had blocked the significance of her words from registering on his consciousness. Now, as he pushed through the double automatic doors into the triage area, he found himself face-to-face with the woman he’d tried so hard to expunge from his memory. He’d even thought he’d succeeded. Hoped he had. Now he knew how foolish he’d been to even try. Knew he should have paid more attention to the things she’d said to him, both the love words and the warnings.
Because suddenly, as if a curtain had been torn down, he saw everything clearly. All at once he knew. All the months of watching mission after mission end in near disaster, of trying to track down moles and trace vicious threats delivered via e-mail, of seeing his agents picked off one by one—even that mess years ago that had gotten him branded a traitor and booted out of British SIS, and would have seen him locked up in prison for the rest of his life—he knew who was responsible for it all.
Cassandra.
And there was worse than that. Much, much worse than he could ever have imagined.
“He’s my son!”
Cassandra DuMont had a son. A son who had tried three times to kill him and, but for Lucia and a state-of-the-art Kevlar vest, would have succeeded. A son now fighting for his life only a few floors away. A son who appeared to be at least nineteen or twenty—certainly no younger. And that could only mean…
He’s my son.
Corbett stood frozen while the doors to the E.R. area swished shut behind him, still dazed, caught in a nightmarish web of shock and disbelief. And it was in that moment that she turned and saw him.
It was odd, but with everything that had come crashing down on him in the past few minutes, his brain still managed to register the fact that she was beautiful. Odd, too, that he could notice how much she had changed, and yet was so much the same. The same tall, voluptuous body, the same golden curls, the same big—slightly protuberant—blue eyes. But the years and the thirst for vengeance had taken their toll, too, and in that instant just before she recognized him, he felt a flash of sorrow for the loss of the passionate but somehow naive young girl he had known.
“You!” She shrieked the word and lunged at him, as if she meant to kill him on the spot, with only her bare hands. Adam managed to intercept her before she could reach him, and she stared wild-eyed past the restraining barricade of his arm like a crazed animal through the bars of a cage. “You did this, Corbett Lazlo! You shot him—just like you shot my brother. If you’ve killed him, too…”
“Here, now,” Adam said, panting a little as he tightened his hold on her increasing struggles, “I think you’ve got things a bit backward, haven’t you? Your boy was the one doin’ the shooting. Tried his best to kill Mr. Lazlo, here.”
“Yes!” She hissed it like an enraged cat. “And should have, if he’d only waited for the right moment, as I taught him. If he’d had more patience.” Her mouth stretched in a terrible travesty of a smile. “He would have killed you, Cor-bey—his own father. Yes, that is right. As you have already guessed, the man you shot is your own son!” Her voice broke, before it erupted in a shrill crescendo. “If you have killed him, I will make you wish he’d killed you instead. I will make you pay—”
Behind Corbett the door whooshed open. In the sudden silence, a voice spoke calmly…quietly. Another voice he knew well.
“Madam DuMont, Corbett didn’t shoot your son,” Lucia said. “I did.”
Chapter 3
Corbett felt himself go cold from his scalp to the pit of his stomach. There was a moment when he was literally frozen in place, unable to move, unable to think. Unable even to decide how to feel. On the one hand, he could have throttled Lucia himself if it could have prevented her from uttering those words—words that amounted to her death warrant.
But then again…what was this strange shimmering, vibrating warmth now beginning deep inside his chest and spreading slowly through him? Was it admiration?
Because, by God, he had to admit she was magnificent. She put him in mind of an avenging goddess, wrapped in an EMT’s blanket, barefooted, the torn remnants of her golden gown swirling around her scraped and dirty legs, red-brown curls gone wild as if they had life and energy of their own.
Or was it something else that made his heart quiver so oddly? Something else entirely—perhaps the fear in her deep blue eyes contrasting so poignantly with the determined set of her mouth and the smudges of dried blood on her smooth, soft cheeks…
The frozen moment—and that’s all it was, a moment—passed. Movement resumed with an explosion of sound and fury. And after that things happened the way they do during times of disaster—quickly but at the same time seeming to move in slow motion: Cassandra shrieking like a wounded leopard and lunging toward Lucia; Adam brushing past Corbett to intercept her once more; Corbett moving in the opposite direction, moving through the breath-stopping pain in his ribs to grab Lucia and shove her behind him.
Before the echoes of Cassandra’s initial scream had died, while she was still drawing breath for a new assault, the elevator doors swished open. A doctor in surgical scrubs, face mask dangling from its neck straps, stepped out. Confronted with the strange tableau in the foyer, he halted as if he’d hit a wall.
Four faces turned toward him, and then once more, all motion, all sound, stopped.
The doctor’s uncertain gaze traveled from one emotion-wracked face to another. Paused at Cassandra…focused on Corbett.
“Are
