Lazlo's Last Stand

“Don’t try to talk,” she said, forgetting he probably wouldn’t understand English.

But he was still struggling to get words out, so she leaned closer. And heard, garbled but unmistakably in English, “Don’t…want to die…”

She lifted her head and yelled, “Adam—I need help!”

She heard Corbett say in a grating voice, “Go on. I’m fine. We can’t…lose him. He’s the only lead we’ve got to…whoever’s responsible for this damned vendetta. We have to get him to our medical facility. Can’t let the French authorities—”

“Too late, mate,” Adam said.

Lucia heard it then, too—the raucous seesaw braying of incoming emergency vehicles, so markedly European and so different from the wail of sirens she had grown up with in the States. She saw Adam and Corbett exchange looks of helpless frustration, and she knew the other agents on the spot had already melted away into the night. She became aware of shouts and running footsteps. Embassy security reached them first, along with the few pedestrians out in the chilly evening. People crowded around the four of them; hands reached to offer aid and comfort. Lucia looked down one last time into the terrified eyes of Corbett’s would-be assassin, and with a small sob of gratitude, gave her desperate fight to keep him from bleeding to death into more capable hands.

Time passed. It could have been days or minutes, for all Lucia knew. She spent it in a dreamlike state where time could stretch or compress without rhyme or reason. An eternity filled with the press of people and the cacophony of voices giving orders, asking questions, demanding one thing or another all faded seamlessly into the quiet efficiency and muted murmurs of medical personnel in a well-equipped emergency van. Over her strenuous protests she was checked for trauma, treated for shock and released; then, in another blink of an eye, she’d found herself transported through time and Paris streets to a hospital waiting room where, in the manner of such places the world over, time seemed to pass with the speed of glaciers.

At some point Adam joined her, bringing her strong bitter coffee in a foam cup. She sat and held it, warming her cold hands while two policemen came and questioned them about the shooting.

Just a formality, they assured her. It was clearly a case of attempted robbery gone wrong, and witnesses all seemed to agree that Lucia had acted in defense of her own life and her escort’s, and that the shooting of the would-be robber had been accidental, taking place in the course of the struggle for control of the gun.

“Zere is just one sing I do not understand,” the older of the two policemen said in his heavily accented English, as he tucked his notebook and pen back into his pocket. “Do you know ze reason why Monsieur Lazlo was wearing body armor? Was he expecting some kind of trouble?”

“No, I don’t,” Lucia whispered. Then she cleared her throat and added in a normal voice, “Corbett is a bit eccentric….”

Adam grinned. “Rather like what’s ’is name—Howard Hughes, I guess, eh? Or Michael Jackson.” “Not at all like Michael Jackson,” she retorted, turning to glare at him, and the younger policeman chuckled.

“Zere is just one sing I do not understand,” Lucia said to Adam sotto voce after the two law officers had departed. “Your story about being a passerby who just happened to witness the incident and stopped to help seemed to satisfy them all right, but I happen to know you had a gun. What on earth did you do with it?”

He gave her an enigmatic look, then after a moment relented. In a seemingly casual movement, he lay one ankle across the opposite knee and gave his pantleg a twitch—just enough to reveal the holster strapped to his leg. He muttered out of one side of his mouth, “Cops’d have no reason to pat down an innocent bystander who’s just tryin’ to be a Good Samaritan, now, would they?”

Lucia began to laugh, silently at first, with one hand over her eyes. When, to her shock, the laughter became a sob, she clamped the hand over her mouth, but it was too late to stop it. She gave Adam one brief, horrified look, then closed her eyes on the streaming tears. And after a moment she felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder, then begin to pat her, awkwardly, tentatively. The rather touching sweetness of the gesture turned the tears back into watery laughter.

She dabbed at her cheeks with the blanket the emergency medical team had given her, since what was left of her gown was a bit gory and left a good deal of modesty to be desired. She had no idea what had become of her fur wrap and shoes.

“Sorry, luv, haven’t got a hanky, I’m afraid.” Adam didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed she’d turned off the waterworks. Not that he minded being cast in the role of comforter, but his usual methods of dealing with female tears seemed far too dangerous in this particular circumstance.

“That’s all right.” She sniffed, blew, wiped, then asked, “How soon will we know something?”

“Haven’t a clue. But no worries, Laz is gonna be fine. He’s just got some busted ribs. They’re probably running tests and monitoring his condition to make sure there’s no damage to his heart. He took a pretty good hit to the chest, you know. Bullets can do some damage, even with a vest on. Believe me, I know.”

She just looked at him for a moment with those aquamarine eyes of hers—reminded him of the color of the water off the Great Barrier Reef from the air—then said in a voice he could barely hear, “I know all that. I was asking about the boy.”

Adam actually rocked back a bit when she said that, as if she’d gobsmacked him. “The boy—you mean the shooter? You’re askin’ me about the devil that almost killed—”

“He’s not a devil, Adam, he’s not even a man. Didn’t you see him? He’s just a kid.”

“Yeah, a kid with a bloody big gun.” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could he be wrong about her feelings for Laz after all?

“Corbett didn’t want him dead,” she went on in that hushed, almost fearful voice. “What if he dies, Adam? What if I killed him? Corbett’s going to be so angry with me.”

He snorted. “I seriously doubt that. Especially considering the alternative.”

“The…alternative?”

“Yeah—you dead instead of ‘the kid.’” He shoved himself to his feet, because he felt as if some sort of giant spring inside of him was getting ready to let go. “Look—you stay put. I’ll go and see what I can find out, okay?”

All he knew was he had to get away from her before he said or did something that was going to embarrass the hell out of both of them.

He found Corbett in a curtained cubicle, hooked up to a monitor of some sort and looking none too happy about it.

“Thank God,” he growled when he saw Adam. “I was about to abandon all hope of rescue. Help me up, will you?”

Adam was about to question the wisdom of that move but changed his mind when he saw the look on Corbett’s face and instead simply offered his arm.

Corbett gripped it hard, gritted his teeth and got himself hoisted up into a sitting position and turned with his legs hanging over the side of the gurney. “I don’t know why they insist on all this—” he waved a hand at the wires attached to his arms and chest “—for some broken ribs and one hell of a bruise. It doesn’t require a medical degree to tell me I’m going to be damn sore for a while.”

“Yeah, you are. So you sure you want to be doing whatever it is you’re about to do?”

“Look, I’m going to hurt no matter where I am. I’d just as well do it at home. At least there I can—” He broke off, swearing under his breath, to glower at Adam. “Fill me in. How’s Lucia? Is she—”

“She’s fine—a bit shaky, but she’ll be okay. She’s here, by the way—out there in the waiting room. Worried sick about the shooter, if you can believe it. Worried she’s killed him. Thinks you’re gonna be cranky with her if she did.”

Corbett jerked and managed to whisper, “Good Lord,” through the resulting hiss of pain.

“Yeah,” Adam said, refraining from any comment that could be construed as sympathy. “I told her it was him or her—not too much she coulda done but what she did.”

Corbett’s mouth tightened and his eyes got the stony look Adam knew all too well. “What’s his condition?”

“They won’t tell me much, given I’m not family. All they’ll say is, he’s in surgery. I’m thinkin’ it’s probably too soon to tell if he’s gonna make it.”

“Damn. Bloody mess…” Corbett lifted a hand to scrub at his face. Finding himself still tethered to the monitor, he tore the wires from his arm and chest in a rare fit of temper. “We should have had transport there on the spot, dammit. We should have gotten him out of there before—did we at least get an ID? Do we know who the bastard is?”

Adam cleared his throat. He’d had happier moments facing a dentist’s drill. “Sorry, boss. Didn’t have time to go through his pockets. Lucia had her hands full just tryin’ to stop the blood. If they’ve ID’d him—” He broke off, swearing, as his words were drowned out by sounds of a commotion of some sort drifting in from beyond the curtain. “What the bloody hell—”

The voice, now risen to clearly audible levels, was French accented, harsh and strident, almost as deep as a man’s but somehow unmistakably female. It bulldozed right over the attendant’s murmured response. “I want to see him. Now! He’s here—I know he’s here!”

“Whoa, someone’s not a happy camper.” Adam tweaked aside the curtain to have a look, but the speakers weren’t visible from where he stood. He threw a glance over his shoulder. “Maybe I should go—” He broke off, due to the fact that the man he was speaking to appeared about to take a header off the gurney.

“Laz? Here, mate, what—” He managed to get to him just before he toppled over, while out in the lobby the woman, whoever she was, ranted on.

“Tell me how he is, damn you! Don’t tell me you cannot! I am telling you, I am his family. I am his mother!”

“Are you all right, man? Crikey, you’ve gone as white as a sheet. Here—lie down.” Bloody hell, Adam thought. If it was his heart after all… “I’ll get the nurse.”

“Help…me up, dammit. Got to see…” Corbett’s grip on Adam’s arm would have done a croc proud.

I know that voice.

It couldn’t be. Just wasn’t possible. But there was no mistaking it, even after almost twenty years. Corbett could hear its echoes resounding through the halls of the emergency wing, strident, raw, crackling with emotion.

Her voice.

“You will pay for this, Corbett Lazlo! Everything you care about, whatever means the most to you, I will destroy. If it takes the rest of my life, I swear I will…make…you…pay!”

He told himself it wasn’t her, but he had to see with his own eyes.

With one arm across Adam’s shoulders and the other across his ribs, he managed to stand erect. Dark splotches were floating through his field of vision. He shook his head to clear it…concentrated on breathing deeply. Evenly. Relax…tensing up only makes the pain worse.

Bloody hell. He’d never felt so feeble and woozy. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Adam swearing at him, but he couldn’t spare the energy it would take to tell him to can it. He needed every ounce of strength just to take those first steps.

Out in the emergency entrance, the woman’s voice had quieted to a raspy, throaty sound, like a lioness purring. And Corbett remembered that one, too, as clearly as if it had been yesterday….

Murmuring words of love to me in a tangle of sweaty sheets on a stolen afternoon in the hot little room in Montmarte… Saying my name in a way no one else ever has, before or since, giving it the French pronunciation: Cor-bay…

Speaking of betrayal, as we sat together on a rooftop in London, watching the fog swirl around the chimney pots, with that particular intensity in her voice and in her eyes, that hint of violence and danger that made me wonder sometimes whether she was not quite sane. “I give you fair warning, mon cher. I love with passion and I hate the same way. Do not ever make me hate you….”

He’d been young then, and had laughed off both of them—the words of love and the warnings—and he’d known in his heart it was the danger that made her so irresistible.

Just as he knew in his heart now that it was not only possible, it was true. The voice was hers. He knew it even before he heard the words that erased all possibility of doubt.

“Yes, that is right. I am Cassandra DuMont. His name is Troy DuMont. He is my son. Now will you tell me where… Yes, yes, I understand he is in surgery….”

Corbett didn’t hear the rest. The initial shock of hearing her voice, recognizing it, had blocked the significance of her words from registering on his consciousness. Now, as he pushed through the double automatic doors into the triage area, he found himself face-to-face with the woman he’d tried so hard to expunge from his memory. He’d even thought he’d succeeded. Hoped he had. Now he knew how foolish he’d been to even try. Knew he should have paid more attention to the things she’d said to him, both the love words and the warnings.

Because suddenly, as if a curtain had been torn down, he saw everything clearly. All at once he knew. All the months of watching mission after mission end in near disaster, of trying to track down moles and trace vicious threats delivered via e-mail, of seeing his agents picked off one by one—even that mess years ago that had gotten him branded a traitor and booted out of British SIS, and would have seen him locked up in prison for the rest of his life—he knew who was responsible for it all.

Cassandra.

And there was worse than that. Much, much worse than he could ever have imagined.

“He’s my son!”

Cassandra DuMont had a son. A son who had tried three times to kill him and, but for Lucia and a state-of-the-art Kevlar vest, would have succeeded. A son now fighting for his life only a few floors away. A son who appeared to be at least nineteen or twenty—certainly no younger. And that could only mean…

He’s my son.

Corbett stood frozen while the doors to the E.R. area swished shut behind him, still dazed, caught in a nightmarish web of shock and disbelief. And it was in that moment that she turned and saw him.

It was odd, but with everything that had come crashing down on him in the past few minutes, his brain still managed to register the fact that she was beautiful. Odd, too, that he could notice how much she had changed, and yet was so much the same. The same tall, voluptuous body, the same golden curls, the same big—slightly protuberant—blue eyes. But the years and the thirst for vengeance had taken their toll, too, and in that instant just before she recognized him, he felt a flash of sorrow for the loss of the passionate but somehow naive young girl he had known.

“You!” She shrieked the word and lunged at him, as if she meant to kill him on the spot, with only her bare hands. Adam managed to intercept her before she could reach him, and she stared wild-eyed past the restraining barricade of his arm like a crazed animal through the bars of a cage. “You did this, Corbett Lazlo! You shot him—just like you shot my brother. If you’ve killed him, too…”

“Here, now,” Adam said, panting a little as he tightened his hold on her increasing struggles, “I think you’ve got things a bit backward, haven’t you? Your boy was the one doin’ the shooting. Tried his best to kill Mr. Lazlo, here.”

“Yes!” She hissed it like an enraged cat. “And should have, if he’d only waited for the right moment, as I taught him. If he’d had more patience.” Her mouth stretched in a terrible travesty of a smile. “He would have killed you, Cor-bey—his own father. Yes, that is right. As you have already guessed, the man you shot is your own son!” Her voice broke, before it erupted in a shrill crescendo. “If you have killed him, I will make you wish he’d killed you instead. I will make you pay—”

Behind Corbett the door whooshed open. In the sudden silence, a voice spoke calmly…quietly. Another voice he knew well.

“Madam DuMont, Corbett didn’t shoot your son,” Lucia said. “I did.”

Chapter 3

Corbett felt himself go cold from his scalp to the pit of his stomach. There was a moment when he was literally frozen in place, unable to move, unable to think. Unable even to decide how to feel. On the one hand, he could have throttled Lucia himself if it could have prevented her from uttering those words—words that amounted to her death warrant.

But then again…what was this strange shimmering, vibrating warmth now beginning deep inside his chest and spreading slowly through him? Was it admiration?

Because, by God, he had to admit she was magnificent. She put him in mind of an avenging goddess, wrapped in an EMT’s blanket, barefooted, the torn remnants of her golden gown swirling around her scraped and dirty legs, red-brown curls gone wild as if they had life and energy of their own.

Or was it something else that made his heart quiver so oddly? Something else entirely—perhaps the fear in her deep blue eyes contrasting so poignantly with the determined set of her mouth and the smudges of dried blood on her smooth, soft cheeks…

The frozen moment—and that’s all it was, a moment—passed. Movement resumed with an explosion of sound and fury. And after that things happened the way they do during times of disaster—quickly but at the same time seeming to move in slow motion: Cassandra shrieking like a wounded leopard and lunging toward Lucia; Adam brushing past Corbett to intercept her once more; Corbett moving in the opposite direction, moving through the breath-stopping pain in his ribs to grab Lucia and shove her behind him.

Before the echoes of Cassandra’s initial scream had died, while she was still drawing breath for a new assault, the elevator doors swished open. A doctor in surgical scrubs, face mask dangling from its neck straps, stepped out. Confronted with the strange tableau in the foyer, he halted as if he’d hit a wall.

Four faces turned toward him, and then once more, all motion, all sound, stopped.

The doctor’s uncertain gaze traveled from one emotion-wracked face to another. Paused at Cassandra…focused on Corbett.

“Are you the parents of Troy DuMont?”

And time resumed its normal cadence.

Too dazed to do otherwise, Corbett simply shook his head, while Cassandra DuMont whirled, tearing herself out of Adam’s grasp.

“I am! I am his mother. Tell me—my son—is he…” Her voice was the terrible croaking of a mother in terror.

“He’s still in surgery at the moment,” the doctor said in calm, British-accented English. “He’s come through quite well, thus far. If you’d care to come along with me, there’s a place upstairs where you can wait more comfortably.”

Cassandra threw a look back at Lucia. Corbett waited with muscles tense as she hesitated, the battle between a madwoman’s thirst for vengeance and a mother’s love for her child played itself out, the struggle written in anguish across her face. Then she gasped and bent forward as if she’d taken a blow to her stomach, and began to move backward toward the elevator as if pulled against her will by an irresistible force. In the doorway she paused, made a V-sign with two fingers like the forked tongue of a snake and stabbed them at Lucia.

“Chienne! Tu es fichue…”

The words were in French, but the venom in them was unmistakable in any language. Bitch! You are dead. For several seconds after the elevator doors had closed there was utter silence.

Adam broke it first with an explosive laugh. “Always was a charming wench. Did I understand her correctly? Did she say—”

“Later.” Corbett’s face was grim as he jerked his head toward Lucia. “We’ve got to get her out of here. Cassandra won’t wait for the outcome of the boy’s surgery to make good on that threat. How’d you get here?”

“Caught a cab, actually, since the other lads weren’t inclined to wait around to give me a lift.”

“That’ll have to do. See to it, will you?” The grip on Lucia’s arm tightened.

As she allowed herself to be steered toward the exit doors, she watched in a kind of numb bemusement as Adam turned up the wattage of his smile and swooped in upon the poor desk nurse, who’d been hovering behind her counter like a mouse behind a leaf, and was looking more confused than alarmed. She stammered a bit as she announced that she’d already summoned security, and blushed when Adam told her cheerfully to cancel that and summon a taxi instead.

Lucia thought it interesting that the girl who’d been steadfast in facing down a wildly distraught mother’s demands, seemed completely flustered in the presence of Adam’s Aussie charm.

As for her own feelings, they were in such turmoil she felt all but paralyzed. Though oddly, not with fear. It was anger she felt, and an irrational sense of betrayal. Irrational, because what right did she have to be jealous of anyone Corbett chose to involve himself with? But jealous she was. And this was even more odd because she’d never minded—well, not terribly—the parade of nubile beauties he’d “dated” briefly on and off over the years.

But this? A son?

For there to be such passionate hatred now, she knew, there must once have been an equally passionate love.

The automatic doors whisked open to admit a gust of cold misty air. Its effect on Lucia was like a slap in the face, and while it did nothing to lessen her misery, it did serve to snap her out of her sleepwalking state.

“It is December,” she said in a voice that matched the weather, and gazed pointedly at Corbett’s chest, which was quite bare and still trailing an assortment of tubes and wires. “You might want to put on some clothes.”

She didn’t mention her own state of undress, but drew some satisfaction when his startled look took in the thin blanket she was clutching around her. Noting the fact that it didn’t come close to covering her legs, and that those legs were clad only in torn nylon stockings.

His mouth hardened and his brows drew inward. Still dragging her with him like a recalcitrant child, he made a swift U-turn and headed back to the E.R. Doctors and nurses immediately surrounded them, scolding and warning in two languages of the irresponsibility and dire consequences of their actions. Which Corbett, of course, ignored, and instead demanded his clothes. A nurse, looking troubled, nevertheless scurried to fetch them. With equal imperiousness, since Lucia’s clothes were unavailable, Corbett demanded she be provided with something to wear in their stead. Another nurse hurried to obey.

None of this surprised Lucia in the slightest. It was simply the way things were done with Corbett Lazlo.

A short time later, still clutching the blanket but now dressed in nurses’ scrubs and squeezed between Corbett and Adam in the backseat of a cab driven by an apparently suicidal Haitian, Lucia listened to a conversation in which her immediate future was being planned. It was a two-way dialogue, without any input at all from its subject.

“We’ll need a chopper,” Corbett began as soon as they were seated, destination given and the taxi in motion.

Adam’s response was brisk. “Already on it, boss. It’s warming up as we speak.” There was a brief pause before he added, “I’m assuming a safe house?”

“I don’t trust any of our ‘safe’ houses. There’s only one place I know of where I can be certain Cassandra can’t get to her.”

Tempted to thrust her hand in the air like a first-grader, Lucia cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me?”

“Ah—the old homeland?” This was Adam, as if she hadn’t spoken.

Corbett nodded. “It’s the only place I can think of that’s not on anybody’s radar.”