Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(112)

He was, of course, at full salute. It was ridiculous, but she felt too mellow to say anything about it, even when he rolled on top of her.

She was wet and soft from the last time, and very sensitive. He pushed his big phallus slowly inside her. Tam looped her arms around his shoulders and wiggled, seeking the perfect angle.

“Do not come inside me again,” she warned.

“I will not come at all,” he assured her. “I’ve come enough.”

She made a dubious sound. He took her face in his hands and looked earnestly into her eyes. “Trust me,” he said. “Please.”

The snide comeback was ready on her lips, but somehow she stopped it. It was the look in his eyes, the intensity behind the words.

He wasn’t feeding her a line, jerking her around. It was a plea from someplace deep within him. He wasn’t even talking about sex.

She swallowed, clamping down on her mortal dread of being made a fool of. She could risk this. Maybe just this much, for once.

“I will…try to,” she said, haltingly.

He bent his head down and kissed her reverently on the forehead.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will try to be worthy of your trust.”

That was too much for her. “Oh, stop it, you melodramatic fool,” she snapped. “Don’t get swishy on me, Val. I can’t handle it.”

He proceeded to wrap her in a breathlessly tight, hot, marvelous embrace and express himself nonverbally, most eloquently…and to her utter satisfaction.



András strolled down the darkened corridor of I Santi Medici. The security of the place was lax. He’d slipped in a door that someone had left conveniently propped open; he’d sauntered through dim, deserted halls and stairwells, and he’d been obliged to kill no one so far. The nurses and doctors on call at this indecent hour had all been elsewhere, chatting in the nurse’s station, or dozing on unused beds. No one noticed him sliding by like a big, quiet ghost.

He knew exactly where to go, having sent flowers earlier that afternoon. The stringy youth who he’d paid to deliver them had ascertained the room number for him. Ah, yes, there it was, a big bouquet of calla lilies and birds-of-paradise. The nurses had placed it with the other flowers clustered around the white and blue ceramic statue of the Madonna who presided at the end of the corridor, her electric crown glowing eerily in the darkness.

A grim-faced old man in pajamas and a green bathrobe sat outside his room door with an IV in his arm, the rack clutched in his fist. No doubt trying to evade the groaning or flatulence of his roomates. He blinked at András with clouded eyes. A witness. Pity. András took note of the room number. Unfortunate for the old man, but he was well into his eighties and clearly not enjoying his life overmuch. András would probably be doing him a favor by holding his nose shut for a few minutes after he finished with Hegel.

Hegel was not alone in his room either, András was irritated to note. He hadn’t wanted to conduct a full scale massacre tonight. At least the other man was sleeping. A stringy, grayish creature with a chicken neck and a mouth that gaped wide and toothless.

Hegel’s eyes were closed. His head was bandaged and one arm was in a cast. András grasped the nurse call button, which dangled on the end of a plastic cord, and looped it up high over the IV rack next to the bed. Well out of the man’s reach. He grabbed a chair and sat down.

Hegel’s eyes popped open at the scrape of the chair, widening with alarm when he saw who sat before him. András was ready with the rubber ball, which he shoved into Hegel’s mouth. He wrapped a gag of rubber around the man’s mouth to hold it in, knotting it behind his head. He fastened Hegel’s good hand to the metal bedstead with a cable tie, pulling it tight enough to cut off the circulation.

Then he laid a heavy hand over the other man’s throat, putting a relentless pressure on his larynx. “We need to talk,” he said. “My original plan was to cut or burn you for a few minutes before we started to demonstrate my commitment, but you must be loaded with pain medications right now. My skills would be wasted on you. But I could puncture your eyeball, for instance, with this.” He held up a long, gleaming needle. “Or saw off one of your ears with this.” He held up a serrated blade, one of the offerings of his multiblade pocketknife.

Hegel’s eyes protruded. He made a gurgling sound in his throat.

“Or we could skip that part of the conversation and speak of Tamara Steele and Val Janos,” András suggested.

Hegel nodded frantically.

“I will take off the gag,” András told him. “If you speak above a whisper, I will put it back in, saw off one ear, and deflate one eye. Do we understand each other?”

Another frantic nod. András reached back, loosened the rubber gag, and plucked out the ball, wiping the spit off on Hegel’s sheets.

Hegel coughed, staring wide-eyed at the other man. His jowled face glistened with pain and fear sweat.

András reached into his briefcase and took out the laptop which he had taken from Hegel’s hotel room after speaking with Ferenc. He opened it, perched it on the man’s chest, and unfastened the tourniquet that held his arm to the bed. “The password, please.”

András observed carefully as the man’s stubby, trembling finger punched a sequence of letters, numbers and symbols into the computer. He committed the password to memory.