“No one I’ve been able to think of, that he wouldn’t have someone there on his payroll. Not the French police, not Interpol…” He let his voice trail off and shrugged. “I guess we have to save the world ourselves.”
“I don’t want to save the world,” she said grumpily. “I like things on a smaller scale. I want it to be personal,”
He had to laugh, because he knew what she meant. As much as she’d wanted to bring down the Nervi organization before, now they had to do it.
The job was much tougher than he’d imagined at the beginning. With a virus like that having to be contained, the security would be on a par with that at the CDC in Atlanta. Getting in would require more than just having information about the security system; they would need inside help. Just how they got that help was going to be a bitch.
“We may have to take the chance that the guy who called you is on the up and up,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re screwed.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she said, surprising him. Sometimes it was scary the way their brains seemed to work the same way and at the same pace. “The security in place because of the virus will be layered, and the virus itself kept in strict quarantine. We need someone inside.”
“You’ll have to meet with him. That’s the only way we can know it isn’t Rodrigo Nervi. If it is Rodrigo, he’ll jump at the chance to have you come to him. He doesn’t know about me-well, he might have an idea after the shoot-out the other day, but he doesn’t know what I look like or anything-so I can watch your back.”
She gave a grim smile. “If it is Rodrigo, he’ll have so many men watching that you won’t be able to do a thing about it But I agree, that’s the only way. I’ll have to do it. But if it’s Rodrigo and they grab me, do me a favor and kill me. Don’t let them take me alive, because I expect Rodrigo will want to have some fun and games with me before he kills me. I’d just as soon skip that part”
Swain’s stomach knotted at the thought of Nervi getting his hands on her. There were hard decisions he had to make, but that wasn’t one of them. “I won’t let that happen,” he said quietly.
“Thanks.” Her smile turned a little brighter, as if he’d given her a gift, and his stomach knotted even tighter.
Neither of them had eaten yet that morning, so with Lily’s sunglasses and hat in place they stopped at a sidewalk cafe and had brioches and coffee. He watched her eat, his heart thudding as he wondered if this was the last day he’d have with her. He’d thought he could put if off longer, but circumstances were piling up on them. If her mystery caller was Rodrigo Nervi, there was no way they could know until the meeting, and then it would be too late.
He wished there was some other way they could do it, but there wasn’t. The meeting had to take place. She had to accept the guy’s proposal when he called tomorrow, set up a meeting, and be there. Then… the caller would either turn out to be Nervi, or someone else. God, he prayed it was someone else. He wanted more than one more day with her. He wanted more than one night.
He himself had gone into every job knowing it might be his last, that when you worked with violent people sometimes the violence turned on you. Lily was the same; she had put herself in the front lines and accepted the odds. That didn’t make it any easier, knowing she was there by choice.
But if Nervi and his goons were the ones who showed up and he lost Lily, he swore to God the bastard would pay. Big time.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Swain turned in his Megane and, at Lily’s insistence, got a little blue four-cylinder Fiat from a different rental company. “No!” he moaned in horror when she told him what she wanted him to get. “Let’s get a Mercedes instead. There are a lot of Mercedes around.” He brightened. “I know. Let’s get a Porsche. We might need the horses. Or a BMW. Both of those sound good.”
“Fiat,” she said.
“Gesundheit.”
Her lips twitched, but she managed not to laugh. “You don’t want anything noticeable.”
“Yes, I do,” he said stubbornly. “It doesn’t matter who notices me because no one knows who I am. If I were looking for someone, I’d look at people who were driving Fiats, because that’s what you get if you don’t want to be noticed.”
Using that same theory, she had put on a bright red wig as a disguise, so he actually made sense. But by now the amusement value was so great she wanted to see him drive one of the smaller Fiats for at least a day, just to hear how creative he could get with his complaining.
“You started out driving a Jaguar, then today you picked me up in a Megane-if anyone saw us-so anyone looking for you would already know you like fast cars. A Fiat would be the last thing anyone would look for.”
“No joke,” he grumbled.
“A Fiat’s a good car. We can get a Stilo three-door; it’s fairly sporty-”
“Meaning, I can pedal it at ten miles an hour instead of five?”
She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, so ridiculous was the mental picture she had of him on a tricycle, his long legs folded up around his ears while he pedaled like mad.
He was sulking so much he wouldn’t even approach the rental counter until she turned around and hissed, “Do you want me to put it on my credit card? Rodrigo would know about it before the hour’s up.”
“My credit card might expire from embarrassment at having something like this charged to it,” he snapped, but then he squared his shoulders and stepped up like a man. He didn’t flinch even when the car was brought around and the features pointed out. The Fiat Stilo was a quick little car, with nice acceleration, but she could tell he judged it woefully short on horsepower.