Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(130)

“No?” he said. “But you are so beautiful. So hot and strong and full of life.” His arms tightened, pulling her closer. “And I love you.”

She stiffened. “Don’t get flowery on me, Val,” she warned. “I can’t take that kind of thing. You know that. So just don’t do it.”

“I love you,” he repeated stubbornly. “I almost died today, and I would have missed my chance to tell you, although I am sure that you know it. So I will say it if I damn well please, and you will listen. I love you. I mean every word. I love you, Tamar.”

Her eyes leaked, her face was hot. This was so not fair. Not now, on top of everything. She wanted to tell him she loved him too, but the words were backed up, bottlenecked behind a burning knot.

She hid her face against his good shoulder. Waited until her throat opened up and she could trust herself to harrumph.

“Well,” she muttered, “you can’t be too badly hurt, if you’re rubbing your erection against me and carrying on about deathless love. I suppose that’s good news. Now what?”

That flashing, deep-grooved grin was so beautiful, it practically broke her into pieces. “My tough babe,” he murmured. “I hate to say it, my love, because there is no place on earth I would rather be than beneath your naked body, but we must run quickly. And far.”

“But you cut the tracer out, right?”

“I was in this bed with that thing transmitting for sixteen hours,” he said. “He will check here. Perhaps he is already on his way. I hope I bought time with my ferry trick, but I cannot count on it.”

She stared into his eyes, her mind working furiously. “You have the car,” she said. “We’ll go and find another place where you can rest up while I deal with Ana and Stengl. I have to get that over with. Then, I’m all yours. We will run. Anywhere you want.”

His face went somber, and he gazed up at her for a long moment. “Perhaps you have not understood,” he said carefully. “Our plans have changed. We must leave it, Tamar. All of it. Stengl, too.”

Everything went cold and distant around her, as it had in Ana’s salone. She felt a door slam shut inside her. A door with her bereaved fifteen-year-old self behind it. No. She took a deep breath.

“No, Val,” she said. “I came all this way for this. I’m not leaving until it is done. Don’t try to stop me.”

But she could already see that he didn’t get it. He couldn’t. How could he? He’d already rearranged his reality, and Stengl was not relevant to his reality. Only to hers. She was alone with the nightmare of her past and she always would be.

She actually tried, for a few seconds, to imagine letting it go. Just walking away. But she’d gone too far down that road by now. She’d spent too many years imagining Drago Stengl’s face when he saw her standing before him and knew death was near.

When he finally understood what he had done to her. To all of them. Knowing that at last the bill had come due.

She couldn’t let it go. Or rather, it would not let her go. It had clutched her like a skeletal claw for her whole adult life. Its grip was not easing now. It clamped down, a death grip, crushing her. She couldn’t endure any more of that. Not if deliverance was possible.

He cupped her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. “Imre did this to set me free,” he said, his voice urgent. “I cannot waste his gift. I cannot risk the last thing on earth that I care about. I want to make a life with you. I never dreamed of such a thing, but you have made me dream of it, and now I must have it.”

“And Rachel?” she asked.

He waved an eloquent hand. “Of course we will get Rachel,” he said forcefully. “I am not stupid. I know she comes first.”

He felt her stiffness, her unresponsiveness, and gave her an impatient shake. “Let it go for Rachel, Tamar. For us. Think of it. You are contemplating murder. The Italian police will pursue you no matter what the man has done. The Camorra will pursue you on Santarini’s behalf for killing his father-in-law. Your problems will multiply. Do not try to do this thing. I will stop you. It will f*ck our only chance. And I will not risk you now, do you understand? It is no longer an option.”

She absorbed that. Everything it meant, everything she had to do. A knife turned slowly inside her chest. “Easy for you to say, Janos,” she whispered. “You’ve been cut loose. I haven’t.”

His face went tight. He lifted his head off the pillow. “I just watched the one person on earth that I could claim as family bleed to death for me. Do not talk to me of what is easy.”

She slid off his body and onto the floor, turning her back and gathered the force to do what she had to do next. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was an easy morning for you.”

He reached for her, stroking her arm. “Tamar. My love. Please.”

She turned and looked down at the hand that held her. The one attached to his good shoulder. So strong and beautiful despite the scabbed, ragged knuckles. As skillful and tender as it was lethal.

She grabbed it, pulled it up, kissed it. Silently saying good-bye.

And swiftly snapped the handcuff that hung open from the wrought iron headboard around his wrist. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

He stared at her, openmouthed, and then exploded upward, erupting in a stream of profanity that sounded like Romanian. He rattled the thing violently, twisted it, jerked. Red bloomed afresh on the white gauze of his shoulder, spotting and spreading. The surgical bandage underneath peeled half off.