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!”
“No, just some glass cut the back of my neck. It’s minor.” He reached back and swiped his right hand across his neck. His fingers came away smeared with blood, but not a lot of it. “See?”
“Okay.” Smooth as silk, she reached out her left hand to confiscate the weapon lying beside his leg.
Without looking down, he snapped his right hand around her wrist. “Uh-uh,” he said, all playfulness gone from his voice. “That’s mine.”
He was fast, amazingly so. In a flash the good-natured goofiness had vanished, replaced by a cool, hard look that said he meant business.
Oddly, she was reassured by this glimpse, as if now she was seeing the real man and knew what she had to deal with. She moved farther away from him, as close to the door as she could get, not because she was afraid of him but to make it more difficult for him to grab her weapon with one of those lightning moves. And maybe she was a little afraid of him; he was an unknown, and in her business what she didn’t know could get her killed. Fear was good; it kept her on her toes.
He rolled his eyes at her action. “Look, you don’t have to act like I’m psycho or something. I’ll let you out safe and sound, I promise-unless you shoot me, in which case we’ll crash into something and I can’t make any guarantees.”
“Who are you?” she asked in a flat tone.
“Lucas Swain, at your service. Most people just call me Swain. For some reason, Lucas never really caught on.”
“I didn’t mean your name. Who do you work for?”
“Myself. I’m not real good at the nine-to-five routine. I’d been in South America for ten years or so and things got kind of tense there, so I thought taking in the sights in Europe for a while would be a good idea.”
He was darkly tanned, she noticed. If she read between the lines, he was telling her he was either an adventurer, a mercenary, or a contract agent She was still betting on the latter. But then why had he intervened? That was what made no sense. If his orders were to kill her, he could have done that when she first dived into the car if he hadn’t wanted to let Rodrigo’s goons do the deed for him.
“Whatever you’re involved in,” he said, “from the looks of it you’re outnumbered and could use some help. I’m available, I’m good, and I’m bored. So what was going on back there?”
Lily wasn’t an impulsive person, at least not in her work. She was careful, she did her homework, and she planned. But she’d already realized she’d need help in getting into the laboratory complex, and despite his unsettling good humor, Lucas Swain had proven himself to be skilled at a lot of things. She had been so alone these past few months that her solitude was a constant ache in her heart. There was something about this man that invited trust, something that eased the ache of loneliness.