Hot Streak

CHAPTER 35

E gon and Mariel were dancing on the small outside terrace. The last traces of sunset reflected off the water falling into the pool, sparkling saffron on mauve. They held each other close, moving slowly to the music, absorbing the pleasure inundating their senses.

“I'm glad I met you,” she murmured, her face lifted to his.

“I should have met you years ago,” Egon softly replied, feeling happiness for the first time in years.

“I would have been too young,” she teased.

“I would have waited for you.” His voice was low and hushed. Mariel was genuine and unaffected, with a warm vivacity that seemed to reach out and touch him. She'd talked of her home in Haut-Provence, of the countryside, and her family. Her conversation was eons away from the brittle banality passing for entertainment in his social milieu: seeing who'd outdressed whom; participating in silly games; overindulging to alleviate the lethargy, the excruiating sameness of the people and idle chatter. Mariel was like a fresh, cool sea breeze, and for the first time in many long years he thought beyond today.

“Do you have to go back?” Egon asked.

“No, not for three days,” she answered, her cheek against the soft linen of his shirt, his scent fragrant in her nostrils.

That wasn't what he meant. “I mean can you stay with me.”

She looked up, her expression bewildered. “I said I would.”

He stopped dancing. “Forever,” he said without emphasis.

She didn't realize this was the only commitment Egon had ever offered. She smiled at him. Misunderstanding both the meaning and significance of his words, she flirtatiously replied to what she interpreted as amorous banter. “Forever and ever.”

“I'm quite serious,” Egon said.

Her smile diminished as they stood in the center of the dance floor. “Please don't.” She, too, had been touched by emotions so powerful she'd had to rationalize them away as the product of a tropical evening in the company of a wealthy young aristocrat with extraordinary charm. Egon von Mansfeld was beyond the pragmatic dreams of a young farm girl only two years out of Provence. You don't have to say things like that. I'll stay with you for my three days without the facile words, she thought. And in some ways his words tarnished her pleasure. A man so handsome and wealthy had surely used those phrases many times before.

Egon smiled then, a small, crooked grin. Hugging her, he said, “I'll tell you again in the morning when you know me better.”

Responding to his smile, she brushed aside her misgivings and allowed herself to only feel the sheer joy of being with him. “I should like that immensely,” she replied. “And if we're not dancing, could we go?”

Egon glanced around, startled to see the band was still playing while they'd become an obstacle in the center of the floor. “We can dance all night if you care to,” he said graciously.

But she shook her head.

“In that case,” he remarked, his lean face creased in a smile, “I'll show you Le Retour.”

“And teach me to ride.” Her voice was husky with double entendre.

His eyes held hers for a long moment. “With pleasure,” he said.

Carey lost at least ten minutes arguing with Molly outside the Sheraton. The idea of her waiting while he searched for Egon seemed reasonable to him. Unfortunately, he was unable to convince Molly of his plan's merit.

“I'm not going in, and that's that.”

“I'll carry you in.”

“Try.”

And her eyes were such narrow slits, he knew he'd be thrown into jail if he attempted that maneuver. “Look, I'll level with you. There's a certain amount of danger.”

“I already know that.”

“I won't be gone long,” he countered.

“Then I won't be in the way for long.”

He held his arm out the window to catch the last of the light and checked the time once again. He couldn't waste another minute. “Okay,” he said, “you win.”

“I don't want to win. I want us to cooperate.”

“Cooperate, shit,” he muttered, slamming the car into gear and taking the turnaround with a sharp jerk of the wheel and squealing tires. “Does this place look like fucking Sesame Street?”

“You needn't be grumpy,” she said in the satisfied tone of a winner.

“Egon better be at the Ruins,” Carey said in a very grumpy voice.

But he wasn't.

Carey was informed that Count von Mansfeld had left a half-hour ago.

“For?” Carey snapped.

“Le Retour, of course,” the maоtre d' smoothly replied.

“You're driving like a madman,” Molly remarked in as placid a tone as she could muster slung against the door as they rounded a curve at eighty.

“Keep it in mind,” Carey growled, his frustration mounting. He couldn't shake the nagging fear that Ceci would appear before he could carry Egon off. Damn Egon's politesse. If he'd taken that sweet young thing straight to Le Retour instead of wining and dining her, they'd all be halfway back to the plane at Montego Bay by now.

“At least you know where he is.”

Carey only grunted, his mind racing over possibilities for defense at Le Retour. What was the weapon situation? Egon's father used to keep some rifles in the study. They'd taken them out for target practice once, but how often were they oiled? It probably had been years since they were used, and this humidity was hell on metal.

“You can't always have your way, you know,” Molly said in a small voice that brought his head around for a brief moment from the headlights' flaring gleam.

“I know,” he replied with a sigh. Molly was unaware, he realized, that he had had his own way for a great many years now… almost without exception. And “cooperation” was almost as big an adjustment for him as it was for her to recognize there were paid killers in the world. Killers who were, at the moment, probably extremely close and checking their ammunition. “I don't want my way in an arbitrary sense, but will you promise me to listen if things start really heating up? You don't know-” He hesitated, and then simply finished, “just promise me.”

“I can shoot, you know.”

“I don't want you to shoot. Jesus, that's the last thing in the world I want you to do. Lie, humor me-just promise.”

“Okay, okay. I promise.”

“Thanks, Honeybear. I love you like crazy. Now if we can drag Egon out of his darling's arms in time, we might, we just might get the hell out of here healthy. It's only nine. Once we're back on the road past Ocho Rios, they can't tell one car from the other.”