Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(79)

She snorted. “Pfft. Don’t overdo it, Janos.”

He glided to the closet, took out blankets and pillows, and lay one of them down across the doorway. He tossed the pillow on it, swathed the other blanket around himself, and stretched out without a word.

She had expected to slide directly into sleep, but her overloaded nerves had pushed her beyond sleep into another place. Thoughts and worries jostled in her head. She was too rattled to sort them out.

But one thing kept circling back. Nudging at her and making her queasy and wakeful. One random, irrelevant detail.

“Janos?” she whispered.

He yawned. “We’ve been through so much together,” he said sleepily. “And we’ve made love twice. Can you not call me Val?”

“That wasn’t love that we made, and if I knew your real name, I’d use it.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Val is as real as any other name, Tamar Zadro.”

Her childhood name sent a cold shiver through her. “Call me Tam Steele, please,” she said tightly. “Tell me something, Janos.”

“If I can,” he said. “But only if you will call me Val.”

“How old were you?” she asked. “When it happened to you?”

He didn’t feign incomprehension, but he was silent for so long she finally concluded he wasn’t going to answer at all.

“The first time?” he said, at last. “Eleven.”

She winced in the dark. “Oh.”

Silent minutes went by. Finally, Janos sat up, huffing out a sharp, irritated breath. “Stop thinking about it,” he said gruffly.

She was startled. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“I can hear you thinking about it. Please stop. I think about it myself as little as possible.”

Her chest jerked with involuntary laughter. “I’ll try not to.”

After a moment, he spoke again. “And you? How old were you?”

“Fifteen,” she admitted.

“Ah.”

A few more moments of that, and she was the one to snap at him. “Would you stop thinking about it, goddamnit?”

He laughed softly. “Hypocritical bitch.”

“Yes, that would be me,” she said crabbily. “And now, would you kindly stop your chattering and let me get some goddamn sleep?”

“You started it,” he pointed out logically enough.

“Shut up, Janos.”

“Call me Val, for the love of God,” he said wearily, and rolled over so that his back was to her.

She stared into the dark for a very long time, trying not to think about anything.





Chapter


15




Sleep was impossible despite how exhausted he was. He felt buzzed, wired. Proximity to that woman acted on his brain like a powerful chemical stimulant.

If he kept her close enough, he might never need to sleep again.

Tamar and Rachel were still asleep. Tamar cuddled Rachel, the child’s back tight to her belly, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Rachel’s curly black head was tucked under her chin and Tamar looked like a little girl clutching a doll that she feared would be taken from her.

Not by him, he vowed silently. Not by him. He would die first.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He plucked it out, and opened the text message from Donatella. It was terse and to the point.



meeting with la santarini 10:30 Tuesday dreaming of Paris baci e abbraci, D



Relief almost brought tears into his eyes. He drew in a huge breath. One point of agonizing dread and tension eased, though there were plenty more of them vibrating inside him to choose from.

He noticed Rachel’s pink fuzzy blanket draped over the chair. It gave him an idea. He fished in his jacket for the case of miniature spyware he’d been carrying everywhere he went, picking the same type he’d put into Tamar’s jewelry case, but he fished out the slightly larger size, for the sake of the longer battery life.

Three days, guaranteed, the catalog had boasted. Maybe more.

They weren’t the PSS-sanctioned transmitters that he usually used. When he’d researched the McClouds and Seth Mackey, he’d been intrigued with the merchandise in the SafeGuard online catalog. He had ordered an array of products to test and been agreeably surprised. Their software was better than that of PSS, and he liked the sleek, easy-to-use designs. The beacon burrs, as the catalog called them, were miniature X-Ray Specs GPS tracers, the smallest of them as slender as a wild grass seed. A pointed needle tip made for easy placement, no unstitching necessary. The tiny electronic parts and supercondensed battery were packed into a narrow plastic capsule. One slid it into a hem or fabric lining, and the thing was done.

He stared at Tamar for a moment to see if she was still asleep. She would read his gesture as threatening if she saw it, but if they should ever need the tracers, she would be grateful for them.

Swift, discreet action. He inserted one into Rachel’s stuffed bear, another into the upholstery of her new stroller, a third into her ski jacket. Overkill, but he didn’t care. He was the one who had put this child at risk. He wanted options should anything happen to her while they were in Europe. He only wished the batteries lasted longer.

He resumed the kung fu he’d been practicing for several silent hours. He’d tried meditating on the matrix, but he was buzzing at too high a frequency to have any hopes of centering himself.