Not for the first time, she wondered if she would finally have to give up, go creeping shamefaced back to the cottage and beg forgiveness of the kind and caring people Corbett had charged with keeping her here.
He’d gone back to Paris knowing only that someone he trusted had betrayed him. What if he went to the wrong person for help? What if he decided to trust no one and tried to tackle his enemies alone?
And once more, just when despair seemed imminent, she lifted her eyes…and beheld salvation.
This time salvation came in the form of a panel truck, parked outside what appeared to be a bistro. Although the driver was nowhere to be seen, the truck’s motor was running, feathery plumes of vapor waving from the exhaust pipe in a way that seemed almost friendly…hospitable, like the smoke from a cottage chimney in an otherwise deserted landscape. But what truly made it seem like a miracle to Lucia’s tired eyes, a chariot straight from heaven, was what was painted on the side. In familiar red-and-white script were two words understood in any language:
Without stopping to dwell on the unbelievably good luck, or question whether she should, she tried the truck’s back door. She wasn’t even surprised to find it unlocked. She crawled inside, closed the door securely behind her, and finding just enough room between the boxes of bottles and cans of syrup, lay down on the floor of the truck with the sewing bag under her head for a pillow.
She didn’t mean to fall asleep. However, the next thing she knew she was being jolted awake by the clang of the truck’s metal doors. Stiff, sore and completely disoriented, she lifted her head and blinked owlishly at the gray daylight, while a strange male voice shouted exclamations and questions at her in Hungarian.
Thanks to his numerous trips to America to visit his brother in Cincinnati-as he later explained to her-the truck driver’s command of English was reasonably good. Thus, she was able to, firstly, convince him not to immediately summon the police, and secondly, discover that, yes, she was now on the outskirts of Budapest. Even better, not far from the airport.
So it was, that barely an hour after sunrise, thanks to a kind and America-friendly Coca-Cola delivery-truck driver and most of her small supply of euros, Lucia was walking into the main terminal at the Budapest airport. An hour or so after that, thanks to her Visa card, she was about to board the first flight of the day to Paris, dressed in a new pair of jeans, leather boots and a very cool-looking black leather jacket. And, just in case there was an international APB out on her, a yellow beret and dark glasses-also very cool.
She still had her sewing bag, although the inspectors at the security checkpoint had confiscated her scissors.
By midmorning Corbett Lazlo, wearing the coveralls and cloth cap of a member of the hospital’s janitorial staff and pushing a mop, was making his way slowly along the corridor just outside the maximum-security wing.
It was a quiet time in the wards and corridors, relatively speaking. The doctors had made their rounds, medications had been dispensed, breakfast trays served and cleared away. It was too early for lunch and visitors were limited to members of a patient’s immediate family. Most of the traffic Corbett encountered now consisted of patients, scheduled for various tests, procedures and therapies, being trundled off to labs and operating rooms.
It was not by chance that Corbett was in that particular place at that particular time.
Earlier that morning, by means of a focused flirtation with one of the nurses just going off her shift, and some promises he didn’t intend to keep, he’d learned that there’d been quite a bit of interest, not to mention gossip, about the very good-looking young man in the jail wing, recovering from a gunshot wound and injury to the spine. It was said he’d attempted to assassinate someone famous. Speculation as to who that famous person might be ranged from Michael Jackson to the French president’s mistress. Of much greater interest to Corbett, however, was the information that this young man was scheduled to receive his first physical-therapy session this morning at ten o’clock.
He was still some distance from the double sets of reinforced doors leading to the prison wing when a loud buzzer sounded. He paused to watch, leaning on his mop and wiping his face with a large handkerchief, while first one, then the other set of doors swung open to allow passage of a hospital bed carrying a sullen-looking young man encased in a full-body brace. The bed was pushed along by a very large French West-African orderly and accompanied by an armed uniformed police guard. Walking beside the bed, one hand placed solicitously on the young man’s shoulder, was a tall, slender woman with red-gold hair. None of these paid the slightest attention to the janitor as they passed.
Corbett waited until the caravan had turned the corner at the end of the hallway, then leaned the mop carefully against the wall, tucked the handkerchief into his back pocket and sauntered after the group.
During his early morning reconnaissance he’d noted and marked the presence of several suspiciously bulky individuals in and around the hospital he felt fairly certain were Cassandra DuMont’s thugs. He spotted two more now. He’d also identified three of his own agents manning their posts at strategic locations around the prison wing, but had not made himself known to them. He did not do so now, either, primarily because he didn’t feel like explaining why he was operating without his usual backup, any more than he wanted to explain to Adam why he was choosing to take on Cassandra and her crew alone.
Adam would figure it out, of course, once he realized the stakeout Corbett had assigned him was a red herring. By the time he did, Corbett sincerely hoped
Lucia was stuck in traffic. A pile-up on the rain-slick freeway during morning rush hour had been cleared, but by the time traffic was moving again it was already midmorning. She was also hungry. She’d considered whether to take time to eat something before leaving the airport, but a persistent sense of urgency, not to mention a shortage of euros, had convinced her to head for the car-rental counter instead. The coffee and biscuits she’d eaten on the plane were now a distant memory.
The map and directions to the French hospital supplied to her by the rental-car agency proved accurate, and once clear of the traffic slowdown she made good time. It was a few minutes past ten when she pulled into the hospital’s visitor parking area, only to find it full. With no time to waste driving around in circles, hoping to catch someone pulling out, she exited the lot with an angry screech of tires and, luckily, found a place to park on one of the side streets. Of course, the rear end of her rental car was partly blocking someone’s driveway, but, she told herself, that couldn’t be helped.
With the help of the car’s rearview mirror, she put on her new beret, tucked all her hair up inside and adjusted it to a jaunty angle. Then she put on her new sunglasses-notably unnecessary in the December overcast-and got out of the car, locked it and pocketed the key. She left the sewing bag behind, having first removed from it a blunt knitting needle, which she’d inserted into the lining of her jacket just inside the right sleeve.
She made her way briskly along the wet sidewalk toward the hospital’s main entrance, sparing only the briefest glance and a quick thank-you wave to the driver of the old black BMW who had stopped to let her cross the street.
At the wheel of the BMW, Adam Sinclair lifted one finger in acknowledgment of the wave, then turned his head to watch the woman jog up the hospital steps. He did this purely as a reflex, a natural male response to a tall, shapely woman with a confident and sexy walk.
An instant later the same car was screeching around a corner and into the hospital’s emergency loading zone. Swearing as only an Aussie can, Adam opened the car door and bolted for the sliding doors before the engine had stopped running.
In the physical-therapy waiting area, Cassandra DuMont sat leafing through a magazine with impatient, jerky movements. No one else was around, the orderly and police guard having disappeared down the hallway and into one of the rooms in the large therapy complex with their patient and prisoner. And the woman didn’t bother to give the man in the janitor’s coveralls and cap a second glance-until he sat down in one of the chairs across from her.
She looked up, then, with hot, angry eyes poised, Corbett was sure, to demand the reason for such an intrusion.
And she froze.
“Hello, Cass,” he said quietly. He put out a hand when she started to rise, casting quick, furious looks around, searching for someone-one of her watchdogs, no doubt. “Don’t bother to call for help. I came alone. It’s just you
