Lazlo’s Last Stand

Quiet descended. Her focus narrowed. She saw only a pair of ice-blue eyes, heard only the whisper of her own life forces: blood, adrenaline and that intangible something Master Liu called chi. I am weightless. Invincible.

There. The slightest flicker in those diamond eyes. She feinted so that the blow only grazed her side, and her mind ordered her body not to feel it. She whirled and aimed a kick at Corbett’s glistening chest, which he blocked easily. She heard a soft chuckle of approval as she twisted around, regained her balance, shifted on the balls of her feet to meet the counter attack.

The battle was short but hard fought. Neither asked for nor gave any quarter, and it ended, as it always did, with Lucia flat on her back, pinned to the mat by Corbett’s hard hands and lithe body.

Eyes closed, she fought to block the bombardment of her senses: the crazy rhythm of out-of-sync heartbeats, the scent of clean man sweat, the feel of healthy male hide, warm and slick, salty-sweet to the tongue…

Of course, the last was only her imagination. She fought for the courage to say something flippant and flirty, knowing it was a lost cause. Breathing hard, she had to settle for, “Someday I’m going to beat you.”

Corbett’s deep voice vibrated from his chest to hers, hinting at a smile. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Lucia opened one eye. “If I beat you-when I beat you-then will you give me a field assignment?”

The thin, sensual lips, suspended enticingly out of reach above hers, twitched the smile into oblivion. “I have better uses for your talents. Speaking of which-” he raised his head to glance at the large clock on the wall above the door “-hadn’t you better be off? I should imagine you’ll need some time to dress for our…date this evening.”

Lucia looked into his eyes, and it was anger she did battle with now-anger mixed with helpless longing. She masked them both, she hoped, with a teasing smile and an airy, “Oh-a date? Is that what we’re calling it?”

A small pleat of frown lines appeared between Corbett’s black eyebrows. “You are accompanying me to a holiday ball at the British embassy, my dear, in full formal regalia. What else ought we to call it?”

Lucia snorted, deliberately inelegant. “That’s only because there’ve been two attempts on your life in the past few months, and you’re hoping the assassin will strike again so the army of agents you have planted all over the scene can nab him. You can hardly put one of your usual…um…debutantes in the middle of a takedown operation, now, can you?”

She enjoyed a nice sense of satisfaction when he looked taken aback and didn’t reply. Knowing the victory would be only temporary, she seized the moment to twist out of his grasp and regain her feet, pleased with the toned muscles that made the motion as smooth as that of a trained gymnast. Call it a date, if you like, she thought as she scooped up her jacket and shoes. I prefer to call it my first field assignment.

She slipped around the screen, nearly colliding with the man just entering. Adam Sinclair stepped out of her path with exaggerated care, grinning broadly. “He’s all yours,” Lucia said tartly, and she sailed out the door with her nose pointlessly in the air.

Adam found Corbett sitting in the middle of the mat, gazing at the screen, knees drawn up, arms propped on top of them.

“She’s right, you know,” he said to his best friend and long-time partner as he offered him a hand up.

Corbett grunted and stooped to pick up a towel from the mat. “You heard that, did you? How long have you been lurking?”

“Oh, I came in as you two were in the heat of battle-just in time for the takedown, as a matter of fact. Wasn’t about to intrude on that little scene. From where I was standing…”

Corbett made a soft sound that in anyone less dignified would be called a snort. “For God’s sake, Adam, I’m Lucia’s employer, her teacher.”

“She’s hardly a schoolgirl. Face it, Laz. She’s a grown woman, and a damn gorgeous one, at that. And any fool can see she’s got it bad for you.”

“She’s got a bit of a crush, maybe, and if you think I’d be such a bloody jackass that I’d take advantage of that-”

“God forbid!” Adam held up both hands in mock surrender.

Neither man spoke again as they walked together through the maze of gleaming corridors, not until they were inside the elevator, a private one to which only a very few people had access. Corbett pressed the pad of his thumb against a glass plate and gave the voice command for the ninth floor. As the elevator purred silently upward, he said without turning, “Everything’s in place for tonight, I assume.”

Adam allowed himself a wry smile. “Since you have to ask, I take it you’re concerned.”

That remark earned him a heated reply. “Concerned? Why on earth should I be? This idiot, whoever has been taking potshots at me, must be a bloody poor excuse for an assassin. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you now, would I?”

Adam shrugged. “You never know, he might get lucky this go-’round-third time’s the charm, and all that.” He paused, and when no reply seemed forthcoming, added, “In any case, it’s not yourself you’re worrying about. It’s her.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Lucia.”

This time he waited out the silence. The elevator gave a discreet ding and came to an almost imperceptible stop. In response to another voice command from Corbett, the door opened onto a sparsely but elegantly furnished foyer.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into taking her,” Corbett said in a tight voice as he stepped from the carpeted elevator onto gleaming marble.

Adam kept silent while the other man went through the biometric security measures required for entry into his private quarters. “You could always go by your lonesome,” he said as he followed Corbett into the immaculate and tastefully appointed apartment. And he was struck by the silence. He wondered, not for the first time, whether the man ever felt lonesome.

Adam knew he was one of only a very few human beings in the world Corbett Lazlo trusted enough to let his hair down with, but most of the time even he had no clue what his best friend might be thinking-or feeling. He knew the emotions were there, but they were like rustlings in the shadows, unseeable and unknowable.

Corbett made an unintelligible, though vehement, remark, which Adam could only assume was in Hungarian, Corbett’s parents’ native tongue. He tossed the towel onto a chair as he made his way to the kitchen. Adam, close behind, heard him mutter, “You’re forgetting the reason I’m attending this bloody party in the first place-the only reason.”

“Ah, yes-Mum and Dad. Right. The M.P. and his lovely lady will be attending, I take it? What about Edward? Too busy with Josh and Prudence’s wedding to put in an appearance, I suppose.”

Corbett took two bottles of Perrier out of the stainless steel refrigerator and handed one to Adam. He cracked the other open, drank deeply, then smiled and shook his head. Adam knew he still found it hard to believe his favorite nephew-and one of his best agents-was about to marry the daughter of the British prime minister. “Oh, he’ll be there. My brother never misses an opportunity to cozy up to the haut monde. My parents naturally will be expecting me to bring a date. And I mean, a believable date. If I don’t, for the next six months I can look forward to a parade of nubile British damsels toddling in and out of my life, each one more lovely and mind-numbingly youthful than the last. The strain of keeping-” he swept the hand holding the Perrier in a vague arc “-all this…” He let it trail off.

“Your secret life,” Adam finished for him, nodding as he drank. On a different sort of day he knew it would have been dark-brewed German beer, but not today. Not tonight. “Yeah, I can see how that could complicate one’s social life a bit. Doesn’t have that effect on mine, but then, I’ve never minded the occasional white lie. One thing you don’t need to worry about with Lucia, though, isn’t it?”

After a long pause with no reply, Adam leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “You underestimate her, you know. You trained her yourself-you should know what she’s capable of. She’s as good as any agent we’ve got.”

Corbett drank the rest of the water in his bottle before he replied. He waved the empty bottle again in a rough half circle, frowning. “Field ops isn’t what I recruited her for. You know that. She has one of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever run across. When it comes to computers-God, I can’t begin to understand the things she knows. The things she can do. It would be crazy to risk all that in the field. Insane.”

“Yes, it would be insane,” Adam said softly, meeting the other man’s eyes over his own raised bottle. “To