Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“Nobody’s going to kill anyone.” He made it an order.

They faced each other in the empty church, each of them judging the distance between them. It was the length of a single lunge with a knife or a blow with the fist. It was inescapable death from a fired pistol. This was a fighting distance that left no room for retreat or defense. Advantage would go to whoever was first to attack.

Neither of them attacked. Nothing simple was happening here. Nothing straightforward.

She stilled. The lines of her drab clothing hung quiet. The strength of her determination glowed vivid as fire inside her skin. She could have been a candle lit in this churchy gloom.

That was the way she always looked when she fought. Doubly alive. Daring the world to aim a blow in her direction. Dodging it quick as an animal when it came.

The child he’d known had been skinny as a whip, vibrating with energy, her arms and legs too long for her body, her features too big for her face. Now all the disparate, unsettled, unfinished parts of her had come together. Then, she’d been dangerous. Now she was deadly.

But her voice was full of laughter, same as always. “What do they call you at Meeks Street? Not Devoir. George? Clarence? Percival?”

“Thomas Paxton. Pax.”

“Pax.” She mumbled the syllable around her mouth, tasting it. “Latin for peace. It seems an odd name for a spy.”

“I’ve always thought so. I don’t want to fight you, Vérité.”

“We agree, then. And I’m Cami. I’ve been Cami for a long time now.”

A thread of recognition spun from the name “Cami.” He couldn’t grab hold of it. “Will you come with me to Meeks Street? Come quietly? I don’t want to hurt you, Cami.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, either.”

Slowly, she ventured a single small step into the space that lay between them. And then the next step. She kept her hands in his sight, held before her, unthreatening. She said, “I’m sad for the memory of an old friendship, lost forever. I owe you a tremendous debt from those days in the Coach House.” They were very close now. Hesitantly, as if her hand made the decision all by itself, she reached toward him. “I come from a family that never forgets debts. I wish . . .”

“There is no debt.”

She touched his cheek. It shocked like a spark from cat fur. She whispered, “I wish . . .”

An awareness of Vérité as a woman had been hovering in his muscles and blood since he’d walked into the church. He’d pushed it away. Ignored it. Denied it.

Now it crashed over him like a hot wave. Heat everywhere. On his skin. Pooled in his groin. Hunger for her became a massive tug, as if his heart were being pulled from his body.

He was used to mastering his emotions. Making himself cold. But he was angry when he snapped out and manacled her wrist and held it away so she wasn’t touching him.

He said, “No.” Just the one word dropped between them.

She stared at him with eyes like dark jewels. “I wish we hadn’t met again.”

“So do I.”

“I would have liked to remember the boy I knew once upon a time.”

Her hair fell in rings that gleamed like polished ebony. How would it feel to fit his fingers into those curls? They’d just fit.

She didn’t try to free herself. That was the worst of it. This close to him, where he could feel her breath on him, she didn’t fight to get away.

He said, “I haven’t become a fool . . . Cami.” Deliberately, he used the name of a stranger, one that didn’t belong to the girl he’d known. “Step back a bit.”

“You think I wish to seduce you?” A wry smile. “Even my great folly doesn’t stretch that—”

The door of the church creaked open. A man stood framed by the doorway, backed by a dazzle of daylight. A middle-aged man, taller than most, strong featured, with brown hair cropped short. He held himself very straight, very proud.

It can’t be. Before the name formed in his mind, before he recognized, before he believed, he felt coldly sick in his belly.

It was a trick of light. It was imagination. Madness. He whispered, “No.”

The bastard had died six years ago, burned with a dozen others in the house on rue Jacob. What was left of the charred body had been identified beyond doubt from old scars. Men came from all over Paris to see the monster thrown into the lime pits.

He said, “You’re dead.” Could he kill a nightmare? He let go of Vérité. Pulled his gun.

Her cloak swirled a sharp confusion. Metal glinted in her hand. She tossed a dark cloud in his face. Her fist slammed into his belly.

He gasped. And the air was red agony. Fire in his lungs. Hot knives in his eyes.

His gun clattered at his feet. He grabbed for Vérité and felt her slip beyond his reach. He staggered and fell to his knees on the cold stone.

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. He groped on the floor, trying to find his gun.

Blackness and pain, endlessly, everywhere. Worlds of it. No air anywhere. Damn. I’m going to die.

Over the roaring in his head he heard Vérité running away down the aisle.

Cami jerked back. The cloud of snuff and hot pepper spread like a black exhalation, floating bright in the light from the windows, dark in the lines of shade. Devoir grabbed at her, blind and clumsy with pain. His fingers slipped in the folds of her cloak and she was free. After years of soft living, the old dance of attack and retreat still lived in her muscles.

He doubled over and fell to his knees, choking. She kicked his gun, clattering, across the stones.

Devoir was down. Another betrayal to mark on her slate. She was a Baldoni, after all.

The mélange de tabac—the snuff mixture—was a Caché weapon. On the sparring field of the Coach House they’d been trained to survive it. The Tuteurs would throw the powder suddenly and follow it with kicks and punches. “Get up. You are a soldier of France,” they’d say. “Fight like a soldier. Get up. Fight.”

Devoir always staggered up again. He’d been the toughest of them all.

He was tough now. He scrubbed his mouth and nose into his sleeve, snarling and cursing, his hat lost under the pews, his pale hair wild over his face. He didn’t rub his eyes. The Cachés taught each other these useful skills in whispers in the cold dormitory at night. Never touch your eyes.

She headed toward the blackmailer, who stood squinting in the gloom. His right hand was thrust deep into his coat pocket, almost certainly because he was carrying a gun there. She’d just as soon it stay pocketed. Men didn’t like to draw a gun and put it away without using it. There was an old Baldoni saying to that effect.

She rounded the last pew and put herself in the line of fire between that gun and Devoir. Not a tranquil place to be.

She went forward, making every step an interval, individual and distinct, hoping the blackmailer would avail himself of these moments to make wise choices. If he was experienced and controlled and intelligent—a professional, in short—they might avoid gunfire and death in the church today. That was a worthy goal in the great scheme of things.

Or the man might shoot her, reload in a brisk fashion, and then shoot Devoir. If she’d misjudged how important she was to this man’s long-term plans, she would be dead and never get to tell the lies she’d crafted. That would be a great pity because they were very good lies.

In the background, Devoir blundered against wooden pews that screeched and scraped. She could hear him panting, almost feel the pain of air pushing past a tight, burning throat. She didn’t look back to see whether he was up on his feet, being concerned with the important matter of not getting shot in the next little while.

In a minute or two, Devoir would retrieve his own pistol. She was almost sure Devoir wouldn’t shoot her. She had no such sanguine expectations of the man she walked toward.

Close up, the blackmailer was a fellow of pleasant features, brown hair, and washed-out, light-colored eyes. He was well groomed and well and comfortably dressed, even fashionable. Over it all, like a slick surface, he carried an air of conscious superiority. She placed him in his fifties, of an age to be one of the bitter dispossessed fanatics who’d ruled France during the Terror. A few of them had escaped the guillotine when Robespierre fell. Since he knew an uncomfortable lot about her, he was, or had been, Police Secrète. Maybe even one of the men who’d created the Coach House and pulled the strings of the Tuteurs. She might even have seen him, long ago in Paris, which would explain the uneasy twinge of recognition plucking at the back of her mind.

He eased a nasty little cuff pistol out of the pocket. She said, “Put that away. We have to get out of here. Now. Before his friends show up.”

“I told you to come alone.”

“In your informative letter. Yes. I didn’t bring him. He followed me.”

“Who is he?” He peered into the obscurity of the church.

She collected the last step that lay between them. “He’s an unforeseen complication and I’ve dealt with it. Get out of my way.”

He didn’t budge. He didn’t send the gun back into hiding. These were not good signs. He said, “Did you blind him? What did you use? Poison? Acid?” He had a surprisingly melodious voice.

“I employed methods sufficient for my purpose.” Let him think she was armed with poison. Always let an enemy overestimate one’s ruthlessness. “He won’t interfere again.”