Kiss Me While I Sleep cs-3 Read online

  She squeezed off a shot at the guards and made them dive for the pavement, though again they were too far away for accuracy. She used a modified Beretta model 87, shooting .22-caliber long rifle bullets, with a ten-round clip. She had just used two rounds, and she hadn’t brought any extra ammo with her, because she hadn’t been expecting to use it. Fool! she berated herself. She didn’t know if these two guys were Agency or some of Rodrigo’s men, but she was betting on Agency, for them to have found her so fast. She should have been better prepared, instead of underestimating them and perhaps overestimating herself.

  She snapped her attention back to the two soccer players. They both had weapons, and when she peeked around again, both fired off shots; one shot missed completely, and she heard glass shatter behind her, followed by more screams and the sudden shocked cries of someone who had been wounded. The other bullet struck the trash receptacle, sending a chunk of concrete into the air and peppering her face with stinging shards. She fired a shot herself—three—and checked the guards. They had both found cover, one behind a tree and the other behind a trash receptacle like the one she crouched behind.

  They weren’t changing their position, so she turned back to the soccer players. The one to her left had moved even further to her left, hampering her aim at him, since she was right-handed and the concrete that protected her was to some extent also protecting him.

  This was not good. There were four weapons to her one, therefore theoretically at least four times as much ammunition as she had. They could keep her pinned here until she ran out of ammo, or until the French police arrived—which should be any minute now, because even with the ringing in her ears from the gunfire, she could hear the sirens—and took care of her themselves.

  Behind her, traffic had snarled as drivers stopped their cars and jumped out to hide behind them. Her only chance was to run for the cover of the cars and use them to hide her movements; she’d have to shortcut through a shop, probably, or hope someone came by on a bicycle, so she could relieve them of it. She didn’t think she could trust her ability to run for any distance.

  The old man who had fallen was trying to get up and at the same time gather his trembling pet to him. “Stay down!” Lily yelled at him. He looked at her with terrified incomprehension on his face, his white hair wildly disordered. “Stay down!” she yelled again, making a downward motion with her hand.

  Thank God, he finally understood, and flattened himself on the ground. His little dog crept to him and lay down by his head, getting as close to him as it could.

  For a moment, time seemed frozen, the sharp smell of cordite seeming to hang over the park despite the chill breeze. She heard the two soccer players say something to each other, but she couldn’t make out the words.

  From her right came the purr of a well-tuned, powerful engine. She glanced in that direction and saw a gray Jaguar jump the curb, heading straight toward her.

  Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, almost deafening her. She had only a few seconds; she had to time her jump perfectly or the car would crush her. She gathered her legs under her, preparing to spring—

  The driver spun the wheel and the Jaguar slid sideways between her and the soccer players, the tires slinging clots of dirt and grass as they tried to grab traction, the rear end of the car swinging around so that it ended up facing in the same direction from which it had come. The driver leaned over and thrust open the passenger door.

  “Get in!” he yelled in English, and Lily dived into the front seat. Over her head came the deep boom of a large-caliber weapon, and the spent cartridge bounced off the seat into her face. She swatted the hot shell away.

  He floored the accelerator and the Jaguar leaped forward. There were more shots, several of them, the cracks and booms of different caliber weapons overlapping. The driver’s side rear window splintered, and the driver ducked as glass sprayed behind him. “Shit!” He grinned, then swerved to miss a tree.

  Lily had a dizzying image of a tangle of cars as they shot forward into the street. The driver spun the wheel again and the Jaguar once more swapped ends, throwing Lily onto the floorboard. She tried to grab the seat, the door handle, anything with which to anchor herself. The driver was laughing like a maniac as the car once more leaped a curb, fishtailed, then shot through a gap and briefly went airborne before coming down on the street with a hard thump that rattled her teeth and made the chassis groan. Lily gulped for air.

  He slammed on the brakes, made a hard left turn, and accelerated out of it. The G-force pressed Lily into the floorboard, preventing her from climbing into the seat. She closed her eyes as squealing brakes sounded directly beside her door, but there was no collision. Instead he made a right turn, bumping along a very uneven surface; with the buildings looming so close on each side that she thought they were going to lose the side-view mirrors, Lily knew they must be in an alley. Dear God, she’d gotten into a car with a maniac.

  At the end of the alley he slowed, stopped, then smoothly pulled out into traffic and measured his speed to that of the other cars around him, driving as sedately as any grandmother on Sunday morning.

  But he was grinning, and he threw back his head on a full-throated laugh. “Damn, that was fun!”

  He had both hands on the wheel, the big automatic lying on the seat beside him. This was likely the best chance she’d have. Lily stayed in the close confines of the floorboard. She fished around for her pistol, which she’d dropped when he was slinging her around as if she were on a carnival ride. She found it under the passenger seat and, with a smooth, economical motion, brought the weapon up and aimed it between his eyes. “Pull over and let me out,” she said.

  He glanced at the pistol, then turned his attention back to the traffic. “Put that peashooter away before you piss me off. Hell, lady, I just saved your life!”

  He had, which was why she hadn’t already shot him. “Thank you,” she said. “Now, pull over and let me out.”

  The soccer players hadn’t been Agency; she’d heard them call to each other in Italian, so they were Rodrigo’s men. Which meant this man was maybe, probably, Agency. He was definitely American. She didn’t believe in coincidence, or at least not in massive coincidence, and for this man to show up just as she was pinned down, with driving skills like a professional and toting a Heckler and Koch nine millimeter that cost close to a thousand bucks . . . yeah, like he was anything else except Agency. Or more likely he was a contract agent, a hired killer just like herself.

  She frowned. That didn’t make sense. If he was a contract agent sent to terminate her, then all he’d had to do was stay out of it and she would likely have been dead very shortly, and he wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. She would have tried to make a run for it, though how far she’d have gotten with four gunmen after her and her stamina more than a little questionable, she didn’t know. Her heart was still hammering, and to her dismay she was still trying to drag in air.

  There was also the possibility that he was a lunatic. Considering how he’d been laughing, that was more than a little likely. Either way, she wanted out of this car.

  “Don’t make me pull the trigger,” she said softly.

  “wouldn’t think of it.” He glanced at her again, the corners of his eyes crinkling in another of those grins. “Just let me get farther away from the scene of the crime, okay? In case you didn’t notice, I was involved in that little fracas, too, and a Jag with a shot-out window is kind of noticeable. Shit. It’s a rental, too. American Express is gonna be pissed.”

  Lily watched him, trying to get a read. He seemed genuinely unperturbed by the fact that she had a weapon trained on him. In fact, he seemed to think the entire situation was a lark. “Have you ever spent any time in a mental hospital?”

  “What?” He laughed and shot her another of those quick glances.

  She repeated the question.

  “You’re serious. You think I’m a lunatic?”

  “You were laughing like one, in a definitely non-funny situ