Dreams That Burn In The Night (30 page)

"Can I have my
purse back?"

He methodically
refilled the purse, stuffing her things back in, locking the snap. His eyes met hers.

"Are you going to
say you feel naked without it?" he asked, handing it back to her. She took it from him, putting
it in the chair alongside her thigh, within easy reach.

"I'll let you know
when I feel naked," she said smartly.

"How about a
drink?"

"You got
7-Up?"

"Yeah."

"Great. Make me a
martini."

He started for the
bar, turned in midstride, frowned at her.

She wrinkled her
nose at him. "A joke," she admitted. "I have no sense of humor. I'll take vodka, if you have it.
A full glass of it, no ice."

He grimaced. "I
don't know which is worse. Vodka straight or a martini made with 7-Up."

He made himself a
whiskey sour, a double. He rummaged through the kitchenette and the bar for clean glasses but
couldn't find any. He improvised. He poured his drink out of the cocktail shaker into a cracked
china sugar bowl and handed her a measur­ing cup full of vodka. "Did you want an olive in that? I
don't have any but I could give you a grape instead."

"Classy," she said,
taking the cup. "I bet you use a tuning fork for a swizzle stick."

"Which reminds me,"
he said. "I'm sort of expecting some kind
of explanation. Like who you are, what the artillery is for, are you in danger, that sort
of thing." He took a long sip of his drink, looked at her over the rim of the sugar bowl. "And
since what I do and who I am is a secret or is supposed to be, I kind of would like to know how
you know what you know."

She took her shoes
off, threw them on the floor. She tilted the measuring cup back, drank deeply from it. She
emptied it.

"You're bright. Why
don't you figure it out." She didn't react to the stiff jolt of the vodka. It could have been
water the way she handled it.

"The only place
I've seen people drink vodka like that is in . . ." He let the sentence trail off, his eyes
narrowing.

"Moscow. They drink
vodka like that in Mother Russia." She studied his face carefully. "Does drinking like a Russian
make you one? In any case, I'm not Russian. I was born, in case you're interested, in Detroit.
And I drink like that so I can get drunk so you can take advantage of me."

"What kind of
trouble are you in?" he asked. She crossed her legs and he found himself staring at
them.

"Various kinds."
She held out the measuring cup. Her hands were now steady. "They don't trouble me at the moment.
Let's not think about them."

He made himself
another whiskey sour and refilled her measur­ing cup with vodka. He knew they were both going to
get drunk. He removed his tie, unbuttoned a few of his shirt buttons. While he made the drinks,
she moved to the sofa.

He sat down next to
her. She moved over until she was almost sitting in his lap. She kept her purse with her, never
letting it out of easy reach. He noticed and it bothered him.

"Let's see, what
sort of menace shall we pick? You're the daughter of the American ambassador and you want to
defect from Washington, D.C., to America? No, much too probable. You borrowed too many books from
the Library of Congress and they are dangerously overdue. You are being chased by several irate
librarians with brass knuckles. No. None of those?" He shrugged, putting his arm around her. "I
give up. Unless you're a Russian spy, in which case, I might as well tell you, the room is
bugged."

"That's it. I'm a
Russian spy born in Detroit." She put her head
on his chest and took one of his hands in hers. "To be more accu­rate, I'm a free-lance
assassin working for the KGB and I bet you're kidding about the apartment being
bugged."

He liked her
perfume, the silky feel of her hair. She was really quite beautiful.

"I've never kissed
a free-lance assassin before."

"Try
it."

He did. It was even
better than he thought it would be. Much.

"Do all free-lance
assassins kiss like that?" she asked him, knowing the effect she had on him.

"I don't know. I
haven't kissed them all." He kissed her again.

There was a knock
on the door.

"Expecting
someone?" she asked, turning away from him. Her hand touched her purse.

"I'll shove milk
and cookies under the door and maybe they'll go away," he suggested.

The knock was
repeated, louder, more insistent.

Reluctantly he got
up from the sofa and moved to the door. He put his hand on the doorknob, made as if to open it,
but looked back at her to see if she approved. She was pale, her eyes were al­most shut. She had
her purse in her lap.

He put his eye to
the peephole in the center of the door, which gave him a clear view of the hallway outside the
door. A bullet went through the lock a scant inch from his hand.

He dove sideways,
his hand going inside his coat for a gun. He wasn't going to have much time.

She moved even
quicker than he did. She had her gun out of her purse and already aimed before he got out of the
way of the door.

The door burst
open, a heavy foot sending it crashing back against the wall. A heavyset man, face obscured with
nylon, rushed through the doorway, a huge .45 caliber booming explo­sively in his hand as he
entered. The bullet crashed into the wall above her head. His eyes went wildly about the room,
trying to find Gregory. Too late he realized he had run past him.

Gregory brought his
gun up from the floor, barrel aimed at the intruder's torso. The gunman lowered his gun, trying
to pivot, get a bead on the man on the floor, but he was moving too fast. Gregory shot, taking
the man high on the right side, too high, not a heart shot but still a solid hit.

The man was not
completely out of position. Gregory had more than enough time now. He sighted carefully, the
heart this time.

Another shot
thundered in the room. Not the .45. A hollower echo, a smaller-bore gun. Gregory held his thumb
on the ham­mer, pulling up his next shot. It had been suddenly taken out of his hands.

The right side of
the gunman's face exploded in a mess of shat­tered bone and flesh. She'd hit him solidly in the
head. The gun­man spun around involuntarily like a drunken dancer, the .45 flying from his hand.
He was dead before he toppled over on his back. He fell like a man without bones.

Gregory got to his
knees, moving slowly, trying to think. It had all happened very fast. The left side of his face
was splattered with the dead man's blood. He'd turned his wrist in his awkward dive for the
floor. It throbbed. He put his gun back inside his coat, dropping it in the holster, and got all
the way to his feet.

He stood over the
body, his eyes going back to look at her. This was one fine mess.

He studied what was
left of the man's face. He'd never seen it before now, he knew after a moment's study. He had a
good memory for faces. It had been part of his training. The clothes told him nothing,
off-the-rack ready-mades. He suspected the pockets would contain no identification.

"One of your
friends?" he said, watching her face.

Her hands were
shaking, the gun still held out in front of her face in an awkward two-handed stance. She acted
as if she had never fired a gun before.

"I killed him,
didn't I?" she said, her eyes closing as if to shut everything out.

"Maybe," he said,
looking down at the body. But he was sure she had. "Chances are, he would have died from my shot.
Can't tell." He was sweating, a nervous reaction beginning to set in. He'd had a lot of training
for this kind of thing but still it affected him. He was not quite made out of steel.

"Can you . . . can
you cover him up with something?" she said, her voice a trifle unsteady. "I don't want to look at
... at that." She was surprisingly calm, all things considered.

He took off his
jacket and laid it over the dead man's head. He stepped to the door, looked out into the hallway,
found it empty. With one foot, he pushed the door back against the doorframe.

The door did not
hang right. He put a chair up against it to hold it closed.

"Keep the neighbors
out," he said. "Not that I expect them to come. This is the kind of place where gunshots cause
instant deafness."

She lowered the gun
slowly until it rested in her lap.

"Do you want to
tell me about it?" he asked. He gestured at the body on the floor. "Do you know who he
is?"

"I don't know him.
Never saw him before. But I know what he was. I know he's a professional assassin."

"After
you?"

She didn't say
anything.

He kicked the .45
on the floor with the toe of his shoe.

"Charming," he
said. "You've got such charming friends." He looked back at the door. "Can we expect more of him,
or is this the whole crop? Ordinarily they don't travel in groups."

"Not a friend. He
nearly killed me. I swear I felt the bullet go by my head."

He glanced up at
the wall behind her, saw the bullet hole, nod­ded. "Four inches to spare but that's pushing it.
Consider yourself lucky."

"I guess this ruins
everything," she said. She sighed.

He was moving
toward the phone. "What?" he said somewhat absently.

"Are you going to
call the police?"

"Well, a plumber
wouldn't exactly be a logical choice, would it?"

"I didn't want the
night to end this way," she said, smiling at him. "I may have pretended hard against it but I
know what I hoped for." She smiled at him, the faintest suggestion of a blush on her
face.

He had the receiver
to his ear, his ringers poised to dial. His eyes met hers. "You can't be serious," he said,
wondering if she meant what he thought she meant. "There's a dead person on my floor."

"I want to make
love to you," she said. "Since I first saw you, I felt that way. I still feel that way. I want
you."

His finger
hesitated on the dial, hitting the first number.

"Now there's going
to be cops and reporters and statements," she said. "We've wasted all that brilliant
conversation."

"Ah." He sighed. He
looked at her. His hands shook. He couldn't tell if it was from shock or arousal. He suspected
the lat­ter. She was quite the most lovely thing he had ever seen. "You read too many women's
magazines."

"I saved your life,
didn't I?" she said. "Shouldn't there be some sort of reward?" She loosened the top two buttons
of her blouse.

"For the record, I
tried valiantly to resist and..."

"Failed," she
finished for him.

The phone went back
in its cradle and he moved toward her. She grabbed him with one hand and pulled him down on top
of her. Her other hand still held the gun.

She ripped at his
clothes. His hands fumbled with hers. Their mutual desire was intense, their haste awkward. Her
top opened to his clumsy fingers, revealing lush breasts. Her skirt rolled up over her waist as
she tugged his pants down to his ankles. She struggled futilely with his shirt, unable to get it
off because of the shoulder holster.

They joined as
violently as a gunshot. Her back arched under him, drawing him deep within her. Her body rippled
and con­torted, her elbow thumping into the back of the sofa. She still held the gun in her right
hand, which was behind his back. It seemed like she had forgotten it existed. Her nails dug into
his back, drawing blood.

He drove against
her, driving, taking them to a mutual climax, a heavy and almost violent consummation. They
collapsed against each other, suddenly spent, perspiring.

"That was good,"
she said, her face flushed.

"You taste as good
as you look," he said, and he had his mouth on her neck, biting gently, moving against her
slowly, still inside her, reluctant to move off her.

She put her hand
against his chest, pushing him away gently.
He sat up, resting between her legs, gazing down at her body,
thinking he would take her yet again, still feeling a fire in
his
loins.

She raised the gun,
holding it at eye level, the barrel aimed
squarely at his head.

"What's this?" he
asked, a mocking smile on his face.

"The second team,"
she said.

He turned his head,
looking back at the coat-shrouded figure on the floor. He didn't believe her. "You know what I
like about you?" he said, looking at her breasts. "You never lose your sense of
humor."

"I never had one,"
she said, the gun never wavering.

He started to move
closer to her. She drew back the hammer with her thumb, cocking the gun. He frowned. "Let me see
if I've got this right? Pulling a gun on me is a new method for provoking a second
erection?"