The Lioness(90)

His father in that cab. His grandfathers’ heart attacks: they’d both gone the same way.

David Hill. Terrance Dutton.

When Katie had stopped weeping over Terrance’s body, he had dragged the dead actor into the vehicle and sat him upright in the second row, which at the moment was in the shade. It wouldn’t be soon.

God, had he ever been around so much death? He thought of Reggie Stout. Now there was a guy who’d seen carnage. He thought of some of his clients, especially three who worked in hospitals and emergency rooms.

It had all happened so fast today. He and Terrance had rushed at Glenn, and the Russian had gotten off the single burst that had, essentially, unzipped the actor from the base of his neck to his navel. But he had only just barely had time to fire. Billy had reached him, and the attack had caught him so spectacularly unprepared that Billy had managed to get his hands on the assault rifle. He hadn’t been able to wrest it from his captor’s grasp, but at some point in the scuffle the barrel had wound up facing the sky and when it had gone off—when, Billy believed, he himself had squeezed the trigger—the sight had been just under the son of a bitch’s chin. He honestly had no idea how many bullets had entered and exited the man’s skull, but he had found bone fragments in even his front shirt pocket. They had rained on his face like hail. The firing was brief but booming, so loud that for a second or two he had thought he himself had been wounded. Afterward, he had wiped most of the dead man’s blood and brains from his cheek and his chin with his shirttails, but pulpy remnants of the Russian still coated parts of his hair as if squeezed from a tube.

He hadn’t told his sister yet that her husband was dead. That it might have been the very Russian whose hand she had bandaged and bound who had shot David. He hadn’t told her that he’d concluded his own wife had likely perished too. If he could get a moment alone with the guy (no, he would get a moment alone with him), he would make it clear that he’d shoot him without hesitation if he ever offered Katie even the slightest hint that he’d murdered David. Billy feared, based on the way that Katie had collapsed upon the body of her friend, that the news her husband was gone as well might be too much for her. Yes, she had rallied: she seemed better now. Stunned, but not incapacitated. Mostly exhausted. But the fact they’d killed David just might put her over the edge.

He saw Katie was standing, leaving Cooper seated in the grass. She tucked into her belt one of the other Russians’ pistols. Much to Billy’s astonishment, a few dozen wildebeest appeared about a hundred yards away and were grazing rather placidly. They didn’t seem to care that a few minutes ago their world had exploded with gunfire. His sister walked over to him slowly and stood beside him for a long moment, and the siblings watched the animals, though Billy kept glancing back at Cooper. Or whatever the fuck his name was.

“Well, this safari sure as hell went to pot,” she said dryly. “Remind me never to use that travel agent again.”

She had said it to elicit at least a small smile from him, and so he obliged. He wiped at the sweat that was dribbling down the temples on both sides of his skull. He understood why she was capable of making a joke, bad as it was: they were no longer in danger from their kidnappers. At least immediate danger. Imminent danger. He didn’t know where the other Russians were, but they weren’t here now, and so he felt as well his sister’s relief.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Of course.”

“You and Terrance. Before David moved out to L.A. and you two reconnected, were you and Terrance ever lovers? I mean, I know you weren’t publicly. But the two of you—”

“I know. There was a chemistry. Off-screen, too.”

“But…”

“But we never wanted to screw up our friendship. And, in some ways, the fact there was always a slow burn between us made us even closer. And…” She gazed for a moment into the Land Rover.

“Go on.”

“A romance? It would have cost him work. We all know that.”

“You, too.”

She turned away from the vehicle and slapped ferociously at a mosquito on her arm. Then she flicked the dead insect into the grass. “But it was mostly just the idea that we were better as friends.”

“I’m really sorry, Katie,” he mumbled.

“It’s not your fault. If this nightmare is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’m the one who brought you all here.”

“You know that’s ridiculous. It’s not your fault at all.”

“We should have stayed in Paris. All of us. Just continued the party there.”

He thought of the airport outside Paris where they had mustered, which immediately made him think of planes. God, if a fortune teller had told him two weeks ago how much death loomed in his life, he would have nodded and thought to himself, “Fucking Pan Am clipper crashing into the ocean.” We know nothing of what’s coming. Just…nothing.

“David wants giraffes at the ranch,” she was saying. “I mean, not really. But I think they’re his new favorite animal.”

David wants…

The two words made him cringe. Present tense. He considered whether he was making a mistake not telling her the truth right now. Perhaps he was overestimating her fragility and he should just rip off the Band-Aid. But before he could decide, she was asking, “How long do you think it will be until someone finds us?”