Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(34)

“My goodness,” she said, turning slowly in a circle, “this could use a woman’s touch.”

Frankie flushed. “Sorry. But, well, my job gives me no spare time.”

“Except for the shooting range.”

“Huh. That’s part of my job.” He stepped toward her. “Here, let me take your coat.”

It was the first time she felt his hands on her. They trembled just a bit right before she let her coat fall into his waiting arms.

“And what about weekends?”

He shrugged. “Weekends I treat myself to a big Waffle House breakfast after I hit the shooting range.”

Waffle House, she thought pityingly. That’s his big treat.

He watched, mouth half open, while she unzipped her dress. It slid down and pooled around her ankles. Very carefully, she stepped out of it; she did not take her high heels off. Men liked their women in high heels, especially with nothing else on.

He seemed to have stopped breathing. Then, as she walked him backward into the bedroom, his breath started to come in little wheezes, like he had asthma. When the backs of his knees pressed against the bed, she shoved him down, climbed on top of him.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said thickly.

“Shut up.” She put her lips over his, her breasts pressed against his fluttering chest.

She undid his belt and trousers because his hands were trembling too badly, but when they touched her bare flesh they were terribly gentle, terribly romantic, if hands could be said to move in a romantic fashion, so that she felt some inner cog slip in the machinery of her plan, just for a moment, she felt the dissonance, the potential for change, and then it was back in place and everything was as it had been.

The act was purely physical for her, but not for him. And like the best escort she made it real for him, made him believe what he wanted to believe, helping him wish it into existence. There was an eruption of violent motion, of sweat and intimate moisture, and then it was over. It ended abruptly, and more than a little sadly. But then these things always did, she had found.

She had once seen a film of a cheetah running down a baby Thomson’s gazelle while its mother hightailed it. The cheetah had used every last ounce of energy to reach the small gazelle, grab it by the throat, and kill it. For a long time, it crouched above its fallen prey, watching for larger predators, chest heaving mightily until it slowly brought its breath back into itself.

This is how Frankie seemed to her now, his chest rising and falling just as if he had run a great distance. She was still on top of him, thighs spread, hands gripping his shoulders.

“My God, that was good.” She looked him right in the eye when she said this, which was the only way to lie successfully. She had learned that particular lesson a long time ago.

“Wow,” he replied. “Just wow.”

She laughed her soft, silken laugh, and, putting her lips against his ear, she told him how she had felt when he did that to her, and that, and that. She felt him stir beneath her.

“Frankie,” she said.

He stroked the base of her spine. “Mmm?”

“I want to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

“I want to tell you what I do.”

“But I thought we—”

She pressed a finger against his lips. “I’m trusting you, yeah? I need to. I’ve got no one else.”

He stared up at her, as mesmerized as he had been at dinner, but for a different reason. Then again, maybe not.

So she told him about Meme LLC, about what they did there, and, saving it for last, about Mac giving her the impossible task of deciphering and intercepting what had come to be called the Bourne Initiative.

“I never heard of the Bourne Initiative,” he said. “You sure that’s what it’s called?”

“Of course I’m sure, and here’s why: Mac claimed he didn’t send a Dreadnaught field unit to terminate Bourne.”

“Well, I know the Russians have a kill team in place.”

“That’s what Mac said.”

“Right.”

“I don’t believe it. I need Bourne. I want you to help me find him.”

“Wow.” He lifted her up, moved her aside, rolled to the edge of the bed. He stood up, looked back at her. “As usual, the general was right.”

“What?” She experienced the sudden onset of free fall. “What did you say?”

His demeanor had altered radically. The dazzling marquee lights had shut down; the carnival of pink flesh and innocence had left town. His smile was a little sad, but mostly pitying. And that pity—now it was he who was pitying her—was in the instant possibly the hardest outcome of this failure for her to endure.

“You know what a honey trap is, I take it?”

His eyes were alight with a dark and sinister energy. But at the moment she was too shocked to feel fear.

Jesus Christ, she thought.

She wanted to say something, anything, but her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. She could not move or breathe. An unbearable weight pressed down on her, forcing the air out of her lungs.

What the fuck is happening? She knew; of course she knew. But her brain refused to process the information.

Her consciousness, lifting out of her body, flew far away. Once, when she was a teenager, her father had taken her hunting up in the Yukon. They had gone hunting for what? Deer, elk? She couldn’t for the life of her remember now. It was snowing when they’d come upon the wolf. Its left forepaw was stuck in one of those awful steel traps. It turned, looked at them with eyes that she could swear spoke to her. Then it put its head down and started to gnaw at the trapped leg just above the steel jaws. “Oh, hell,” her father had muttered just before he shot the wolf dead.