Never Trust A Lady

Chapter 16

It was so easy. So incredibly easy.

Somnolent as a cat, she watched him put on the condom and felt no apprehension at all, not one smidgen of tension, urgency or doubt She felt glazed and dewy as an overripe plum, warm and weighted, and at the same time pulsing with anticipation and excitement. And joy…oh, yes, that most of all. What she was most conscious of as he gently, so gently, so perfectly filled her, was…happiness.

He chuckled when she sighed, and leaned over to kiss her, languidly, deeply, a long sweet kiss, intoxicating as champagne. And then she laughed, too, partly with relief because it was so easy, but mostly with sheer joy.

Braced on his forearms, he held her face between his hands and kissed her nose, her eyelids and then her mouth again, and all the while he was moving inside her, moving to the rhythms of her own body, fitting himself to her so perfectly, it seemed as if he’d become part of her.

And as he came into her body and became part of it, it seemed as if he’d also entered her mind and her heart and her soul and become part of those, too, so that she knew nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, except him. At last there was no such thing as thought. Only feeling.

Only him…and her…and such incredible. overwhelming emotions… feelings…sensations. She could feel them gathering strength and power within her, like a tsunami, building- and building until they took her over completely, until finally all she could do was close her eyes, cling helplessly to Tom and hold on for dear life while the wave broke upon her. While it battered and tossed and pummeled her and finally flung her, dazed and sobbing, into the quiet eddy of his arms.

“Oh,” she whimpered, awed and shaking. “Oh, dear…oh…my.”

“Stay with me,” he gasped, his voice raw and grating. “Stay with me, love…”

And she did, and felt the wave take him, too. She held him safe as he had held her, and afterward they clung to each other like castaways, like shipwrecked and battered survivors flung up on the same shore.

Inevitably, thought must return. Her first was What now? This was the scary time. Now, when she was at her most vulnerable, what would he say? What would he do? Trembling, she waited, knowing he could spoil it all, shatter her joy and crush her spirit with the wrong word.

But what he said was the most beautiful. most perfect thing she had ever heard, lovelier than a sonnet, more stirring than an anthem. Breathed like a benediction across her sweat-damp temple, one single word: “Wow.”

Emotion tumbled through her and emerged in the form of laughter; words were limiting, and risky besides. Words were hard to organize and easily misunderstood. Silence was better, a sweet, lazy silence filled with the thump of heartbeats, the whisper of breathing, the settling-down rustles, twitches and sighs of their cooling bodies.

I wish I could stay like this forever, Jane thought, and was awed by the fact that Tom seemed to feel that way, too. Even when he finally, and with obvious reluctance, separated from her and shifted his weight to one side, he pulled her with him and wrapped her warmly in his arms, tangling his legs with hers in the damp tumble of sheets, as if he meant to stay there for a good long time. No jumping up and dashing off to the bathroom to wash, the way David always did, as if her body had somehow soiled him.

Hating the fact that she should think of David at a time like this, she stirred restlessly, spreading her fingers wide across the hills and valleys of Tom’s chest, turning her face against the wet-silk roughness of his hair. Instantly he responded, stroking her back, her hair. She felt the warm press of his mouth on the top of her head, heard the sleepy rumble of his voice in her ear.

“Well, Carlysle, what have you got to say for yourself now?”

She thought about it, laughed a little and ventured, “I don’t know…I feel a little bit dumb, I guess. To think I was so worried…”

“Hmm, I could have told you, it’s not something you forget how to do.”

“I guess not… Hey,” she said when his stomach growled suddenly, stroking her hand downward into the shallow, hardmuscled valley below his ribs, “you must be starving. How ’bout that soup now?”

“Mmm, what’s this preoccupation you have with soup?” He took her hand and pushed it farther down, across his belly and into the damp, springy thicket of hair below. Her breath caught, and he laughed softly. “Worried about keeping my strength up?”

“How can you?” she said weakly. “So…soon?” But she was already exploring the hardening shape of him, and delighted when he groaned with pleasure.

She was unreasonably delighted, too, when he said, “It’s been a long time for me, too…guess I’ve been saving up.” For a while, then, he let her hand have its way, before he stopped her with a little chuckle of regret “But you’re right, I can’t live on…sex alone. And neither can you. Maybe we should both have some of that soup.”

“It’ll just take a minute. I’ll go turn it on…” Eager to please him, she was already scrambling out of bed, bending to pick up the tunic that lay abandoned on the floor.

“Hey, you don’t have to wait on me.”

She turned, the tunic still clutched to her chest, to find him propped on one elbow, watching her with a peculiar half smile, half frown on his face.

“I just thought…” she faltered. “Would you like to take a shower while it’s heating?”

The frown disappeared as the smile pushed it aside. “Why, do I stink?”

“No!” she cried, mortified. “I didn’t mean…” But there was something about his smile, a glint in his eyes that made it devilish rather than poignant. And something in that which banished her embarrassment like a mist in a hot desert wind.

With one knee on the mattress, she leaned across to kiss him, and said in a throaty murmur, “You smell…delicious. Very sexy. Earthy. I just thought you might like to wash some of that off before you…”

“I’d love to…” his mouth opened under hers, and she sank into it gladly “…if you’ll come…do my back. Soup can wait…”

Soup…life…the world.…reality. They could all wait. Sooner or later, she knew, daybreak would come and she would have to wake up to the reality that Tom’s place in her life was fleeting at best; an Interpol agent who called a boat home, who lived and traveled mostly in distant, exotic places, he was like a wild mountain lion taking a daytime stroll through the quiet, sunlit garden of her life. By sheer chance, because of a case he happened to be working on, his world had brushed briefly against hers. But the truth was, he had no place in her life, nor she in his.

Tomorrow…tomorrow she would find out the truth. And when she did, and told him what he needed to know, he would have no more reason to stay. No reason at all.

So, there was only tonight. For now, this was the only reality. She would think about everything else…tomorrow.

For now, she would be happy to once again shut down her mind, and just…feel. Feel the gentle sluice of warm water over her skin, the slippery caress of soapy fingers. Feel the teasing tug of his teeth on her nipples, the drumming of her pulse against his hand…his mouth…his tongue.

How could she think at all, when his fingers were pushing… probing…filling her, when his tongue was following the water’s course into valleys and deeps…into her body’s secret and most sensitive places…the hollow of her throat…her navel… the soft, swollen petals between her thighs?

How could she think…breathe…stand, when her whole body was being rocked by such exquisite torture, such unimagined sensations, when she was being torn apart, shattering into a million quivering pieces?

What could she do but feel? And cling, sobbing, to Tom’s broad, slippery shoulders while he held her, oh so tightly, and stroked her back, buttocks and thighs, and whispered words of love against her belly that he didn’t mean.

“Easy…easy, love…”

They were words, just words. Of course he didn’t mean them. she told herself afterward as she stood in the kitchen stirring soup, her wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of her tunic, her knees still weak from the residual effects of her body’s most recent cataclysm. She could hear Tom whistling as he toweled himself dry in her bathroom. Probably, she thought, he didn’t even know he’d said that-it was doubtful he’d be so cheerful if he had known.

She sniffed a little as she wiped away shower drips with the back of her hand, set aside the ladle and turned off the burner under the steaming minestrone. Turning to survey the table, she murmured, “Oops,” and bent to scoop up Tom’s jacket, which she’d just noticed lying on the floor behind one of the chairs. For a moment she stood and held it, stroking the old, butter-soft leather with her hands, bringing it to her face, inhaling deeply of the musky, already-familiar smell. Tom’s smell.

Was that when it happened? she wondered. Did I fall in love with him there in that moving van, when he put his jacket over me, thinking I was asleep? Almost certainly that was when she’d known she could fall in love with him.

There was something in one of the pockets. Something hard, and…

A peculiar vibration began in her spine, right between her shoulder blades. I won’t look, she thought. I won’t look…I mustn’t look. It’s not what it seems.

She could just see the corner of a handkerchief sticking out of the pocket. The vibration spread from her spine and into her chest as, in a kind of hypnotic and unwilling fascination, like someone passing by the scene of a traffic accident, she watched her own fingers touch the handkerchief, then slowly, slowly pull it forth. Pull it until the folds of clean white cotton parted, and she could see the pale blue gleam of china. China that perfectly matched the soup bowls sitting on the table a few feet away.

The shaking was all through her now. She shook as if with a terrible sickness, unable to do anything but stare down at the broken pieces of the bowl she held in her hands, nestled in Tom’s handkerchief. What does this mean? What does this mean?

Moving slowly and stiffly, like a mechanical toy forgotten too long in the garden, she turned her head toward the doorway, trying to listen through the roaring in her ears. She couldn’t hear Tom whistling now. Any minute he might walk in. Any minute. Jerkily, she shoved the handkerchief back into the pocket from whence it had come and dropped the jacket onto a chair.

What does it mean?

It wasn’t an oversight,. a forgetful accident. She remembered very clearly. He’d deliberately hidden the pieces from her, wrapped them in his handkerchief and tucked them carefully away in his pocket. Why?

Oh, but she knew why. There just wasn’t any other reason she could think of that Tom Hawkins would have pieces of her broken china in his pocket. China only she had handled. She just couldn’t bear to admit it. So…that’s why. That’s what he really came for.

Of course, she thought, aching and sick inside. I should have known.

Interpol. The word conjured up such exotic, romantic images, it was easy to forget that it was just another police department. And that Tom was, first and foremost, a cop. He was working a case, a case in which she, obviously, was still a suspect. Of course, she thought, drawing in deep breaths and trying desperately to calm her trembling before she had to face him again. Why hadn’t she realized she’d still be a suspect?

But he didn’t know what she knew-all right, suspected-so why wouldn’t she be?

Maybe I should have told him, she thought. Then he wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble.

But she’d been so shocked and devastated to think she could have been so badly fooled, so stupidly naive, such a lousy judge of character…all right, and just plain hurt, too, to think she’d been used by someone she’d considered a friend, someone she’d trusted. She’d wanted to find out for herself if it was true. She’d wanted to be sure.

And if I’d told him, I wouldn’t have had this. I wouldn’t have had tonight

Calmer now, she leaned against the edge of the sink and gazed at her image in the night-darkened window. Her forty-five-year-old reflection stared back at her, with eyes full of inexpressible sadness. “Dummy,” she whispered, and her image did, too, mocking her.

Feeling lost and adrift in a sea of unfathomable sorrow, she took a deep breath, affixed a smile on her face and went to see what was keeping Tom.

Just inside her bedroom doorway she halted, then continued, the smile gone, now that there was no longer a need for it. A tear began a lonely journey to the place where her smile had been.

“Oh. Tom,” she whispered as she stood gazing down at the face of the man now sound asleep in her bed. He was lying on his side facing toward her, his head pillowed on his hand, mouth half-open…vulnerable, unguarded, in need of a shave. She reached out a hand to touch the hair that had fallen across his forehead, then pulled it back. After a moment she raised her arms and drew her tunic over her head and let it fall to the floor. Then she carefully lifted the edge of the comforter and slipped between the sheets.

Tom stirred in his sleep, and his arms came around her, pulling her close as he nestled her bottom against his belly. “Cold?” he murmured when a shiver she couldn’t control coursed through her.

“No.” she whispered gently. “I’m fine.”

His only reply was an unintelligible mutter, followed by a faint snore. Lying very still so as not to disturb him, Jane settled down to wait for morning.

Hawk knew even before he opened his eyes that something was wrong. Something had awakened him-some sound-but whatever it was, it was quiet now.

And that was it. The thing that was wrong. It was too damn quiet. He couldn’t hear Jane anywhere, not in the bathroom, or the kitchen, or anywhere in or around the house, as far as he could tell. The place sounded-felt-empty.

He threw back the covers, swung his feet around and stood up, found his pants on the floor where he’d dropped them, briefs still neatly in place inside his khakis, and pulled them both on in one swift, smooth motion. Zipping and buckling as he went, he crossed the room, bypassed the empty bathroom and stalked in his bare feet down the hallway to the kitchen. Empty.

Through the kitchen window he could see the red Nissan in the driveway. For some reason it looked lonely. A quick check of the carport confirmed his suspicion: Jane’s car was gone. He figured it must have been her starting it up and driving off that had waked him. He didn’t know why that realization filled him with such unease, but it did. Something was wrong. He knew it was. Why had she left without waking him? Why hadn’t she said goodbye?

Swearing under his breath, he closed the door and was about to bolt back into the bedroom after his shirt and shoes when he saw the note printed in Magic Marker on the magnetic message board stuck to the refrigerator door:

TOM! HAVE TO GO TO WORK. THERE’S COFFEE AND ENGLISH MUFFINS. PLEASE (underlined) EAT SOMETHING!

She’d signed it simply, Jane. Her signature looked smudged, as if she’d written something else, wiped it out and written her name over it instead.

Well, sure, thought Hawk, momentarily relieved. It’s Monday. She had to go to work. That explains it.

But the cold, uneasy feeling came creeping back, twice as bad as before. Because hadn’t somebody told him-Campbell, probably, or Devore, or maybe she’d told him herself-that she worked in a bank? What the hell kind of bank opened at this hour?

“Carlysle,” he groaned aloud, “what are you up to?”

His stomach was burning and churning, and only partly from lack of food. He was so keyed up already he didn’t think coffee was a good idea, and he didn’t have time to wait for muffins to toast. He noticed that the kettle full of untouched soup was still there on the back burner of the stove; he poured some into the coffee mug she’d set out for him and drank it down cold, swallowing the lumps of meat and vegetables whole. He knew it was going to hit his stomach like a hand grenade, but he couldn’t help that; he needed the food, and the idea of eating nauseated him.

He had a bad feeling about this. He couldn’t remember ever having had such a bad feeling.

As if someone had been watching him, the cellular phone began to ring as he was settling behind the wheel of the red Nissan. He let the seat belt snap back into its well, snatched up the phone and barked, “Yeah!”

“Hawkins-where the hell’ve you been?” It was Agent Campbell, sounding more excited than vexed. “I’ve been trying to get you all night. You weren’t in your-”

“No,” said Hawk as the ignition fired, “I wasn’t. Listen-”

“Things are about to pop over here. If you want to be in on it, better get your butt in gear now. It’s turning into a regular circus, you want to know the truth-CIA arrived last night, that’s one thing I wanted to tell you-and a bunch of guys from Mossad just called in to say they’re on their way, and not to do anything until they get here. Seems they think they oughta have first crack at her, I guess, because of that Israeli jet that went down two years-”

“Jeez,” Hawk broke in, “who the hell’ve we got here, anyway? Khadafy’s wife?”

“That’s the other thing I wanted to pass along. We’ve got a tentative ID on the lady with all the paintings. Took a while-still sorting things out over there at the Kremlin, it seems. Finally came through about four this morning.” Campbell paused. Hawk ground his teeth and spun gravel as he turned the Nissan onto the paved road. “Ever hear of Galina Moskova?” Hawk frowned and grunted a negative. “Alias Emma Butterfield Parker?”

Something began to nibble at his memory. Something ugly.

“Code name…The Duchess?”

“Holy…” Hawk went on to further embellish his favorite word, and when he ran out of possibilities, muttered, “We thought she had to be dead. Jeez. You’re sure?”

“Sure as we can be. It was that fingerprint your people turned up that did it. There’s never been a decent photo, and any descriptions would be, what, ten years out of date? And it’s likely she’s altered her appearance anyway. But the prints don’t lie. It’s her, all right.”

Hawk didn’t say anything for a few moments. He was on the highway now, pushing it as hard as he dared on the narrow country road, made more treacherous with patches of ground fog that had collected in unexpected places. He felt as though some of that fog had settled inside him. Jeez…Galina Moskova. The Duchess. Emma Butterfield Parker.

He remembered it all now. No wonder the hit on Loizeau had seemed so clean and professional. Back in their glory days, Galina Moskova had been one of the KGB’s most ruthless and successful assassins. As sought-after interior designer Emma Butterfield Parker, she’d moved almost unnoticed through Britain’s upper crust, pulling off an unbroken string of high-profile hits, many of them so discreetly done, it wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union that it had been known for certain they were hits, and not unfortunate accidents or death from natural causes. Discretion and restraint-those had been Emma’s trademarks. She’d had a reputation for never using an ounce more muscle than it took to get the job done.

Like at the auction, Hawk thought. Using just enough poison on Aaron Campbell to knock him out, but not enough to kill him. That was Galina, all right.

And Loizeau? But he’d seen her, spoken to her, face-to-face. So of course he’d had to die. Neatly, cleanly, hadn’t even seen it coming. That was Galina, too.

Dear God…Jane. It came to him suddenly, like a hard left to the midsection. If anyone in the world could identify the woman, Jane could. They’d been friends. Shared meals, confidences, a hotel room…a tube of toothpaste. Would that make a difference to Galina Moskova?

Hawk knew the answer to that. His heart felt like a lump of ice.

“Ten years or so ago,” Campbell was saying, “apparently our Emma saw glasnost coming, saw the handwriting on the wall, and went AWOL.”

“We assumed her own people had shut her down,” Hawk said in a leaden voice. “Permanently.”

“Yes, well, I’m sure Emma saw that in her cards and that’s why she split. Anyway, seems she went underground for a while, then quietly opened up for business, near as we can tell, about seven, eight years ago-private business. Now she works for the highest bidder.”

“Hired gun on an international scale.” Hawk swore softly.

“Yeah, but apparently not limited to that. She’s been a busy lady. We’ve turned up connections to the Libyans-”

“God. Not-”

“Yeah, and as I said, the Israelis want her for their crash also-”

And we’ve connected her to Sicily. And that means…

“-And we’ve got suspicions about half a dozen other terrorist bombings in Europe over the past eight years…”

Marseilles…April 1990. A beautiful spring day, warm sunshine and a mistral blowing, making the masts in the small-boat harbor clank with their own kind of rhythm, like a band of children making music with spoons and pots and garbage-can lids. Two days left of spring break from Tom’s job teaching history at the American School in Milan…They’d spent the morning on the beach, watching the windsurfers dip and dart though the waves like butterflies. That afternoon they’d planned to explore La Canebière and look at the model ships in La Musée de la Marine. Jason had been promised ice cream, but it was sieste time, and everything was closed They’d walked past café after café, teasing Jason and telling him stories to distract him, when they’d come upon the street…he couldn’t remember the name of it now…a street with no traffic, paved with stones and lined will all sorts of little shops and cafés. And in the middle, the merry-go-round playing a tune…what was the name of it? It was from a movie with Leslie Caron, he remembered, and for years he’d heard it in his dreams. Hi Lili, Hi Lo, he thought it was called.

“Hawkins? Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” It came out so garbled, he cleared his throat and repeated, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You know this changes things.”

No kidding.

“If this is Galina Moskova we’re dealing with, then she’s got to be working for somebody with big bucks. I mean, government-big. She wouldn’t come cheap.” Campbell paused. “I’m thinking Libya.”

“Well, whoever it is,” Hawk said through the truckload of rock in his throat, “I don’t think she’s gonna be sitting here in Cooper’s Mill, North Carolina. waiting for her customer. She’s gonna be going to see the boss. So if you’re figuring on waiting for the rendezvous and getting both birds with one stone…”

“Right. So we move on her as soon as we know she’s got the disk. Uh, by the way, Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“What can you tell us about Mrs. Carlysle? We, uh, seem to have lost our… Ahem. The, uh, surveillance equipment we had on her seems to be down for some reason. You wouldn’t know anything about that, I don’t suppose.” Campbell’s voice was carefully neutral. “Or where she might be at the moment?”

“No, I don’t.” Hawk rubbed a hand over his eyes and then across his unshaven jaw. He felt like nine miles of bad road. “But I’ve got an idea she may be headed your way.”

“Say again?” He could hear the FBI agent’s voice crack.

“You heard me. I don’t know where she is. But I think she might be on her way to a meeting with our suspect.”

Campbell borrowed Hawk’s word and made it his own. “You don’t think she means to warn her?”

“Warn her of what, for God’s sake! Use your head. She doesn’t know anything. Look-I don’t know what she’s up to, but I’ll tell you this-she hasn’t got a clue who she’s dealing with.”

There was a pause, during which Agent Campbell held a mumbled conversation with someone on his end, and Hawk made the discovery that none of the cow pastures he was driving past now bore any resemblance to the ones he’d driven past last night.

“Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“You figure Mrs. Carlysle to be heading for the suspect’s house or her store?”

Hawk thought about it while he was peering through the windows and checking all his mirrors, hoping to find something that looked the slightest bit familiar. “My guess would be the house,” he muttered. “Too early-the store wouldn’t be open, would it?” Damn. It seemed to him one cow looked pretty much like every other cow. And the same went for daffodils.

“Yeah, you’re probably right In that case, we should be okay.”

“How’s that?”

“I just got word-suspect’s on the move. She just left her house in a blue van, and is heading into town. We are in position. What’s your ETA?”

“Damned if I know,” Hawk snarled, and disgustedly hit the wheel of the red Nissan with the palm of his hand. “I think I’m lost!”

“My goodness, such a lot of cars for this early in the morning,” Jane said to herself as she glided through the green signal light and onto the brick-paved square. She wondered if it was jury-selection day over at the courthouse, or if maybe the Rotary Club was having a breakfast meeting at the Cooper’s Corner Café.

Connie’s Antiques looked dark and empty, but that didn’t mean anything. Connie was almost always in her shop early on Monday mornings, especially if she’d been on a buying trip over the weekend. Often Jane would leave for work half an hour early on Mondays, just so she’d have time to drop in at the shop and see what treasures her friend had brought home this time. Connie would have the teakettle on. and a tin of those English biscuits she liked, and she’d tell Jane all about her trip, and Jane would admire-and sometimes wistfully drool over-her latest purchases.

Right now. Jane thought, she’d most likely be in the back of the shop somewhére, just as usual, busy unpacking, cataloging, pricing and marking the things she’d bought at the auction in Arlington. Just as usual…

Oh, God, she thought, please don’t let it be true. This is Connie. Connie…my friend.

But her heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and she kept taking deep breaths that didn’t do any good. Her hands were like ice, and her legs felt weak and shaky.

Okay, she was terrified.

But she had to know. She had to.

Connie’s van wasn’t in its usual place in the tiny unpaved parking lot behind her store. Jane pulled into a spot far enough away from the back door so there would be plenty of room for the blue van and settled down to wait.

Alone in the quiet car, Tom came to her. She could smell him…feel his warmth soaking through his sweater and into her skin…feel the tender roughness of his whiskers against her softest places. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine he was there with her now…hear his emotion-scratchy voice saying, “Well, Carlysle, what have you got to say for yourself?”

No regrets. Even now. How could she regret something so wonderful, so lovely and rare, just because it was for only one night? She might as well regret lilacs, because they only bloomed once every spring…or bluebirds, or shooting stars, or dolphins. Once in a lifetime.

Her lips even curved in a smile as she remembered the gift he’d given her, that she would carry with her for the rest of her life, like a secret keepsake, hidden close to her heart. The gift of a single word. “Wow…”

She was debating whether to turn off the engine or leave it on so she could run the heater, when she heard the van bump down the potholed alley and roar into the parking lot behind her. Her hand shook as she turned off the ignition.

Shivering, she stood beside her car and waited while Connie backed the van into its place and climbed out, jingling keys. Giving Jane a little wave, she bent to unlock the back door of the shop, then straightened, calling out cheerily, “Hullo, dear-back from Washington so soon?”

Sidling closer, Jane thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat and gave a nervous laugh and a little shrug of vexation. “Oh-wouldn’t you know, the girls have gone off skiing with their father? Very spur-of-the-moment-typically David. Of course, I’d have had to come back to work today, anyway. Unless I took a sick day, I suppose. I could have, but if I’d stayed longer, I wouldn’t have had anyone to pick me up at the airport, would I? So I guess it’s just as well…” She was babbling. She never babbled.

Take a deep breath, Jane.

“There, dear, you’re shivering.” Connie was standing beside the back door of her shop, holding it open for her, smiling in her usual friendly way. “Do come in-I’ll just put the kettle on.”