Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(133)

“Here’s your money.” Ana opened a drawer, and pulled out several paper-wrapped packs of bills. “One hundred and ten thousand euro, as agreed yesterday. Nonsequential banknotes of fifty and one hundred.”

Tam tucked the cash into her purse. A girl couldn’t have too much of it. After all, whether she succeeded with this plan or not, she’d still provided a genuine service to the woman, so it was not stealing. And nice thick stacks of money were always handy in a desperate fugitive flight.

With or without Val.

She pushed away a stab of pain. Forced herself to focus.

Ana shrugged into her coat. “Thank goodness I asked GianCarlo to bring the car around before he left,” she muttered. “I really am pressed for time, Ms. Steele. Are you ready to leave? Please?”

“Just one last detail.” She picked up the golden earring she’d just shown Ana how to arm with Amplix 15, and switched it with the duplicate that she had hidden in her pocket. “Let me show you something. A little caveat.”

Ana adjusted the fluffy fur collar of her jacket and made an impatient sound. Her heels clicked across the tiles. “What is it now?”

“Just a moment. This is important.” Tam unscrewed the bead, pressed the lever that released the spring that held the needle inside. She pressed until a single drop of fluid trembled on the tip. It shone like a diamond in the afternoon light that slanted through the windows of the salone. “A demonstration of how these weapons can be applied.”

Ana snorted. “That’s not necessary. And I don’t appreciate—ay!”

Tam had seized her elbow and pressed the needle to Ana’s wrist.

Ana froze in place. “Ah…take that needle away from my arm,” she said in a strangled voice. “Immediately.”

“I’m afraid not,” Tam said. “Walk, please. Toward the door. Right foot, then left foot. That’s the way. We’re taking my car to Nocera.”

Ana’s eyes dilated. Her face went gray under the mask of cosmetics. “How do you know where I…oh, my God. Who are you?”

“If you have to ask, I’m too bored with your self-absorbed stupidity to bother explaining.” Tam towed the woman along, letting her feel a faint sting of the needle tip against her skin. “Guess. Dredge through your memory. It will give you something to do as we drive.”

Ana began to cry noisily as Tam dragged her toward the Opel. “I don’t understand,” she whimpered. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Tam clenched her jaw. The noisy sobbing and wet snuffling sounds were intensely unpleasant to listen to. Robot Bitch, she reminded herself. Get the job done. “Open the car door, and get in.”

Ana slid into the car with a thump, her eyes already dripping gothic black streaks down her cheeks.

“Do you have a remote opener for the electronic gate in your purse?” Tam demanded. “I hope for your sake that you do.”

Ana nodded, hiccuping pitifully.

“Get it out and toss it onto the driver’s seat.”

Ana did so. Tam sucked in a sigh of relief, grabbed her hairclip, and squirted the soporific into Ana’s face.

Ana’s head flopped to the side almost instantly. Snot cascaded from her nose down over her mouth. Tam averted her eyes, grateful for the silence. This would keep her quiet for the twenty or so minutes it would take to get to the clinic. So far, so good.

She slid into the driver’s seat. Ana was sagging sideways, which put her body unpleasantly close to Tam’s. She shoved the other woman upright on the seat and strapped her slack body in.

The remote really did open the gate, to her relief. Would have been a fine joke on her if it hadn’t.

She felt better once she was speeding around the curves on the mountain highway. Driving very fast gave her something to concentrate on other than how monumentally shitty all this was making her feel.

Robot Bitch was not supposed to feel shitty. She wasn’t supposed to have feelings, period. She just got the job done, boom boom boom.

Tam reminded herself grimly of what Ana had tried to do to her. Her ugliness, her spite. She thought of driving that pin into Ana’s boyfriend’s scrotum. Her first real strike for freedom, for payback.

She’d come a long way since then, but she felt like she was crawling back into a prison and pulling the door shut after herself.

She’d thought this experience would be cleansing. Cathartic. It wasn’t. Looking at the unconscious woman’s slack, drooling mouth, she didn’t feel cleansed. She felt, paradoxically, soiled. And cuffing Val to the bed made her feel that way, too. Only much, much worse.

A vague, formless fear stirred inside her, that she had drifted too far. She was going down a road that had no escape. She was doomed.

She stomped it. None of this doom shit. She did not have the luxury of doubt. It wasn’t part of her personal philosophy.

The problem was, that was feeling a little tight lately. Like a pair of outgrown shoes.



The decrepit Fiat shuddered and threatened to fall apart at any speed above forty-five kilometers an hour. Amazingly, the Vespino with its buzzing fifty-cubic-centimeter miniature motor had been quicker. No wonder Tamar had considered the ten minutes or so that he’d been unconscious to be a sufficient head start. The real head start was the velocity of the f*cking toy car.

He drove with grim purpose, leaning forward to squint through the cracked, filthy windshield in a desperate attempt to see the road well enough not to kill himself. He pondered how much time he might gain or lose by procuring another car, either by stealing or renting, but came up with no useful ideas. San Vito was the closest place, but he could hardly go back there to rent, and going anywhere else would cost him still more time. And as groggy and addled as he was, he was in no shape to steal a car. He’d probably get caught and get himself beaten to death by an eighty-year-old man. Something ignominious like that.