In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(117)

“You thought wrong,” he said. “I don’t agree. It’s not safer.”

“Just give me this,” she pleaded. “One night. One last try. No one will attack me or seduce me. I don’t want anyone but you. I’m trying so hard, Sam! Let me find some meaning in all this horrible shit!”

He stared up at the ceiling, the glaring overhead light. That headache slammed heavily into his skull with every heartbeat. The price of that head-butt. The silence stretched, tense and tight. Then tighter.

He shook his head. He couldn’t go with her. He couldn’t physically restrain her. But he’d be damned if he’d give her his blessing.

“No,” he said. “I’m done.”

“Oh, shit. Shit,” she hissed. “Please! Don’t turn this into a stupid ultimatum! I’ll be back tomorrow! After that, I’ll be good, I promise!”

“Don’t come back tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t come back at all.”

Her eyes were full of torment. He looked away from them.

“You can’t mean that,” she whispered.

“I mean it,” he said. “Enjoy your freedom, Sveti. Try to be careful.”

“Don’t throw us away over this! I have to do this, at all costs!”

“We both know what the cost is,” Sam said. “Pay it and go. We’re all done here.” He closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at her.

She got up but did not leave. “Simone brought you a car,” she offered. “I parked the one we used before in a garage across the street. When I told him that it was covered with blood, he said to—”

“Take it,” he said. “You need a fresh, untraceable car, if you want to go out and challenge your bad guys all alone.”

“I’m not challenging anyone! Keep the new one. I’ll just rent—”

“Take the car and go.”

“Sam—”

“For the love of Christ.” He put his hand over his eyes, blocking her out. “Please. Don’t make me beg.”

He waited. The door clicked open, and after a long, torturous pause, it clicked shut again.

Sam opened his eyes. He was alone in the room. So. It was done. She’d left the parking ticket on the little table next to the bed.

He stared at the crucifix on the wall. It came clear to him, for the first time. The point of having a crucifix in a hospital room. It had eluded him thus far. He’d had some vague idea of comfort, tradition, prayer.

But it wasn’t about comfort at all. No way. That crucifix was to put things into perspective for the poor bastard on the bed. The unspoken message being, You think your shit is bad? You call that pain?

Yeah, his shit was bad. He struggled to breathe.



Sveti leaned on the wall outside Sam’s door to keep from falling.

After the events of the last twenty-four hours, she would have expected to be burnt-out and empty. But letting her barriers down for Sam had opened up a vast new capacity for suffering inside her. Oh, lucky girl.

“Svetlana! There you are!”

She wiped the tears off her face and did not try to smile as Hazlett strode toward her. If only she could get what she needed from the Villa Rosalba without having to do a smiling PR song and dance for it. But that was the price she had to pay. One of the many. She’d bargained away her own heart for this. “Hey, Michael,” she said dully.

Michael gestured toward Sam’s door. “How is your friend?”

“He feels terrible, but he should make a full recovery,” she replied. “His family will be arriving soon.”

“Excellent.” He gave her a toothy, approving smile. “So you won’t feel like you’re abandoning him!”

Hah. Right. Her feelings must have shown on her face. He laid his hand on her shoulder. It felt heavy and hot through the thin silk.

“Is he upset?” he asked. “About you coming to the Villa Rosalba?”

She shrugged, that being none of his f*cking business.

“Predictable. I anticipated that. But he can’t expect you to sleep in a hotel room alone, or to wander the corridors of the hospital all night, eating out of vending machines and sleeping in an upright chair!”

“He just wants me safe,” she said quietly.

“Well, and so you will be. Finally. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate what he did for you, though perhaps keeping you out of the situation altogether might have been more intelligent.”

“Don’t blame him,” she said. “He tried.”

“Not hard enough, in my book,” Hazlett said. “Ready to go?”

She hesitated, looking at Sam’s door. She could still change her mind. Run back into that room. Stay forever under Sam’s sheltering arm. It was wonderful, under there. Warm, safe, exciting, sexy. Fun.

Everything she could want. And she did want it, desperately. But it meant staying forever in this tortured limbo.

Sasha and her mother had both begged her, in their own ways, to take this next step. If she turned away, she would live and die always knowing that she’d fallen short and failed them. It was time to stop being poor little Sveti, flotsam on the tide, swept here and swept there. She had to grow up and do the hard thing. She’d heard that phrase thrown around both in jest and in earnest for years. Only now did she really understand what it meant.