came the smell of burning circuit boards as the trike slowed
dramatically. On a two-wheeler, he'd probably be going sideways now,
but the trike just wobbled the rear end back and forth a little as it
came almost to a stop.
None of the geriatric crowd, most of whom looked to be in their
eighties, even noticed him until he crept around them at walking
speed.
That would have been all he needed, to plow into Grandma and Granddaddy
on his trike at full tilt. One more brick on the load..
And, of course, there was the big problem in his life:
Toni.
She was still in England, practicing pentjak silat, the Indonesian
martial art in which she was an adept, studying with that Carl
somebody. There hadn't been anything personal between Carl and Toni
when Michaels had left the U.K.' but--who knew about now? It had been
more than a month. A lot could happen in a month.
Toni Fiorella was smart, beautiful, and could kill you with her hands
if she felt so inclined. She'd been his deputy commander until she'd
quit. And she'd been his lover--until she'd found out about his
indiscretion with the blond MI-6 agent Angela Cooper.
Near indiscretion, Alex, his little voice said. We didn't actually do
anything, remember?
Yeah, we did. It never should have gotten to the point where I even
thought about it.
We were tired, half-drunk, and Cooper was working at it--the massage
and all-No excuse.
It was an argument he'd had with himself a thousand times in the last
six weeks. With a thousand variations. If only Toni hadn't gone under
the channel to France. If only he hadn't agreed to a beer and fish and
chips with Angela.
If only he hadn't agreed to go to her place to let her massage his
back. If, if, if.
It was all pointless speculation now. And he couldn't lie to himself
about it, no matter how much he wished it.
He thought about bringing the trike back up to speed, but it suddenly
didn't seem worth the effort. The Chinese place was not that far away.
It wasn't as if he was in any kind of hurry now, was it? Or was
hungry. Or gave a rat's ass about getting back to work on time.
Even the thought of getting a new project car hadn't given him any
great joy. He'd done a Plymouth Prowler I and a Mazda MX-5, a Miata,
but the garage at his condo' sat empty now. The Miata had been the car
in which he'd.
first kissed Toni. He couldn't keep it after she'd quit on him and
stayed in England.
He blew out a sigh.
You sure are a sorry, self-pitying bastard, aren't you?
Snap out of it! Suck it up! Be a man!
'Fuck you,' he told his inner voice. But that part of him was right.
He wasn't a sensitive New Age kinda guy who got all weepy in sad
movies. In his world, men took care of business and soldiered on. That
