21

He expected her to fight back. To tell him to go fuck himself, that she wasn’t walking back into Harry’s sick world no matter what the cost—they could find some other way to get him. Wasn’t that what their job was? Saving the good guys, killing the bad?

But she didn’t. “And what did you tell them?” she asked, her voice deathly calm.

“I told them you’d do it. We’ll have a sniper there, and the moment he gets a shot he’ll take it. All you have to do is stay calm.”

“I’m very calm,” she said. “Just answer one question. Why were you so sure I’d do it? Because I’m in love with you?”

He flinched, the first real blow she’d ever managed to inflict on him, and she told herself at least she had that much.

“You aren’t in love with me,” he said flatly. “You’re much too smart for that. You know the difference between great sex and true love. Though maybe I’m wrong—you didn’t even know where your clitoris was.”

He was fighting back, but he couldn’t embarrass her. She was beyond that point. “Then why did you think I’d do it?”

“Because you’re a foolish, sentimental woman who thinks she can make a difference in the world. In fact, it’s for the same reason you made the mistake of thinking you might be in love with me—because you’re emotional and romantic and you think you need to be in love to have great sex.”

“At least we’ve graduated from ‘nothing special,’” she said coolly.

He ignored the comment. “You’ll do the right thing. Whether it kills you or not. That’s why you didn’t take the out I gave you back on the island and make for the bunker, but went back to try to save Harry Van Dorn’s sorry hide. And look at what it got you. The man wants to kill you, to get back his lost pride because we scuttled every plan he had.”

“And you’re going to let him.” It was a statement not a question.

It wasn’t enough to get a rise out of him. “No. There’ll be people all around you, even though you won’t see them. Someone will take Harry out before he gets within ten feet of you, and then you can live happily ever after in your fancy New York apartment.”

“Don’t you think Harry will have thought of that? Won’t he have snipers as well?”

He didn’t deny it. “We’re professionals. We do this for a living and we know what we’re up against. If I didn’t think we had a very good chance of getting you out alive I wouldn’t have told them you’d do it.”

“‘A very good chance?’” she echoed. “How touching. And when is this all going to happen?”

He shrugged. She was taking this about as well as he’d expected—maybe even better. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t begging. She was accepting the inevitable. With the bonus that she now hated him for betraying her. “Tomorrow sometime. He’s made the initial contact, set the terms. He’ll let us know when and where it’ll go down.”

She looked smaller, sitting on the rumpled bed in the plain clothes he’d bought her. Smaller, more vulnerable, and he wanted to shout at her, tell her to say no. They couldn’t make her do it, they couldn’t make her do anything. It didn’t matter what he told them, in the end it was up to her and she knew it. All she had to do was say no.

“All right,” she said. “On one condition.”

“There are no conditions. Either you do it or you refuse.”

She went on, undeterred. “You said there’ll be backup?”

“A whole team of operatives focused on keeping you alive.”

“Lovely,” she said. “Just so long as you aren’t one of them.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. “Why?”

“Because I want you to walk out of this room and I never want to see you again.” Her voice was steel, hard and unbendable, a voice he’d never heard before.

“I’d be happy to but I can’t. Not until backup arrives. Harry won’t have stopped looking for you, even though he’s hatched this plan, and I’m not leaving you alone until someone comes.”

“You can sit outside the door and keep watch. Or you can get back in the car and watch from there. I don’t care what you do,” she said in a cool, impersonal voice. “I just don’t want to have to see you.”

“I can do that,” he said. “If you keep the door locked.”

She nodded, as if she didn’t trust her voice. He picked up his cold coffee and headed for the door, but her voice stopped him as he opened it.

“Just one question,” she said. “Did you know about this last night? Did you decide to fuck me into compliance so I’ll do what you want?”

He could see her beginning to unravel, and he couldn’t have that. They couldn’t. She had to be strong, and angry, or she’d never survive. She needed rage, not pain. So he did the best thing he could for her. He lied.

“Yes,” he said.

She nodded, and he closed the door behind him, waiting long enough to hear her lock and latch it. He couldn’t sit outside the door—it would be too obvious, but he had a perfect vantage point from the car. No one could even approach that room without risking death.

He needed to toss the cold cup of coffee. He looked down, and the damn thing was shaking in his hand.He stilled it instantly, letting the icy wall form again. And he headed down the stairs to the car.

The television was unplugged, and someone had yanked the cable wire out of the back. Genevieve plugged it back in anyway, and was rewarded with one very grainy channel with nothing but infomercials. She lay on her stomach on the bed, his bed. Because he’d claimed hers, taken her on hers, and she wasn’t going near it. She lay on the rumpled sheets and watched people tell her how to make a fortune in real estate, how to whiten her teeth, how to use kitchen appliances that were strange and incomprehensible. She could clear her nonexistent acne, take ten years off her face, learn to apply makeup, cut her own hair, remove unwanted hair and make scrapbooks.

They just didn’t tell her how to go on when she was twisted and broken inside.

If she got out of this alive she’d make her own infomercial, something along the lines of Fifty Ways to Kill Your Lover. She started coming up with some, but with violence looming over her head the exercise lacked a certain pleasure. Pushing him in front of a train, feeding him to the sharks were both nice ideas, but once it came to guns and explosions she shied away. She’d be facing that soon enough.

She slept off and on, not because she was tired but because she didn’t want to be awake. Maybe she was depressed, she thought wryly. Didn’t people sleep too much when they were depressed? And she sure as hell had a good reason. The man she loved was sending her to her death.

At least she’d learned that much. He was wrong about her being too smart to fall in love with him. She was dumb as a brick, because even after his betrayal she still loved him. She wanted to kill him, but she didn’t want him dead. She wanted him out of there, safe, and that had been half the reason she’d sent him away.

The other half was that as long as he was around she ran the risk of bursting into tears and begging him. And she had much too much dignity for that.

Harry Van Dorn was resplendent in crisp white slacks, a navy blazer and blue oxford shirt made of the finest Egyptian cotton, which he ordered by the dozen from Paris. He always liked to look his best when he was being filmed. His tousled blond hair fell in perfect waves—he had gone through half a dozen stylists before someone got it right, and his warm, lazy grin flashed whitely in his tanned face. He shoved his feet into soft leather loafers—no socks, of course— checked his reflection one more time and walked out into the huge hallway.

The lights and camera were all set up, and the children had already arrived. They were a patheticlooking bunch, but then, he’d chosen this group for their abject misery. They were the useless and unwanted of this world—sick and dying, and a large amount of his donated money was spent on prolonging their wretched little lives. They were ugly, all of them, and he didn’t like ugliness. They were a variety of colors—every dark race in this convoluted country. There was one pale-skinned blonde, but she had the thin, hollow-eyed look of an AIDS victim, and he wouldn’t touch her, or any of them, with a ten-foot pole.

But he would kill them. If he didn’t get what he wanted.

“This is so very kind of you, Mr. Van Dorn,” the woman who’d accompanied them gushed. She was in her twenties, a little plump, and she had a crush on him. She was always fluttering around him when he made his mandatory visits to bestow gifts and smiles on the revolting little patients to further ensure the world knew Harry Van Dorn was a kindhearted philanthropist. She even had the temerity to suggest he might like to have a cup of coffee with her, to discuss the patients, of course. She was some kind of social worker, he remembered, though her name escaped him.

She was still nattering on. “These children get so few treats—I know they’ll love a visit to your estate at Lake Arrowhead for the carnival you’ve arranged. They don’t get out of the hospital, much less out of the city, and I know a day in the mountains will be wonderful for them.”

“The pleasure is mine, Miss…” He deliberately let the sentence hang, just so she’d know how little he’d noticed her. She was expendable goods. But then, in the end, so was everybody.

Her bright smile faltered a bit. “Miss White. Jennifer White.”

He didn’t like the name. Jennifer was too much like Genevieve, and it was hard to keep his charming smile in place when he thought about her.

“I consider it an honor to escort these little tykes around for the day. If things run too late I’ll have my staff see that they’re well taken care of and they’ll be back in the morning.”

Jennifer White’s face creased in sudden worry. “But I thought we were talking about the afternoon only, Mr. Van Dorn?”

“Hell, it takes an hour to get up into the San Bernardino Mountains from here. You needn’t worry about them, Miss White. I have a fully qualified staff to look after them.”

“But I’m coming with—” she said.

“I’m afraid not. You’ve got orders to report back to the hospital—some kind of crisis.” It hadn’t taken much to ensure that. St. Catherine’s Children’s Hospital received a very large sum of money from him, and in the past couple of years they weren’t even forced to turn a blind eye to the damaged children he’d eventually given up to them. His tastes had changed, but one could never tell when he’d want to enjoy a bit of childhood innocence, and he always kept his resources in place.

“Then perhaps I should take the children back and we could do this another day,” she suggested nervously.

“Miss White, do you seriously believe these poor little munchkins aren’t completely safe with me and my fully trained staff?” He used his best aw-shucks grin, and she melted, the silly cow.

“Oh, of course not. I just thought…I mean, it’s too much of an imposition…”

“Not an imposition at all,” he said grandly. “One of my drivers will get you right back to the hospital so you can take care of things, as I know you’re so capable of doing. In the meantime, these poor kids will have the treat of their life up at my place by the lake.”

She was still protesting as one of his men hustled her out the door, and he waited until the sound of her voice died away before turning to the children.

He clicked his fingers to his film crew, and they began rolling. In Los Angeles you could find anything for a price, and the one for having a live-in film crew who could record anything he wanted to preserve and relive, no matter how nasty, was surprisingly cheap. Drugs and whores and elegant surroundings kept them pretty well satisfied, and when that began to pall it was easy enough to dispose of one and replace him. It tended to keep the others more compliant.

“It’s a beautiful spring day here in L.A.,” he said, addressing the camera. “April nineteenth, in fact. You people know I had a lot of plans for today, but for some reason those have all fallen through. I’m not particularly worried about any fallout—suspicions are one thing, proving a damn thing would be just about impossible. Not with my resources backing me up.

“So I accept defeat gracefully.” He bared his teeth in an affable grin. “You managed to put a spoke in my wheels, all without understanding what I was trying to accomplish. It may have seemed harsh, but in the end the new order would have been better all around.”

He looked at the unpleasant children. Not that he tended to like children in general, except the very pretty ones who didn’t cry too much when he touched them. They never seemed to respond to his famous Van Dorn charm. It was almost as if they could see through him, past the smiles and the jokes.

Dogs didn’t like him either. Maybe dogs and kids were smarter than the rest. Or maybe he just didn’t care enough to try to fool them. Either way, the handful of scrawny, ugly kids were looking at him with deep distrust.

“I’m a man of many charities,” he continued. “This here is an important one to me—looking after dying kids, trying to make their last few months on earth a little brighter.”

The camera moved, panning the children’s faces. He didn’t know children well enough to guess how old they were—probably all under twelve—which made them even more pathetic. Heart-wrenching, to the right people.

“Now, we’d hate to have anything happen to these kids, but the roads up in the mountains can be very treacherous, and there aren’t even guardrails in some places. The van they’re driving in could go over the edge if someone isn’t careful, and I like to think of myself as a very careful man.”

He half expected the kids to start weeping and wail- ing at that veiled threat, but none of them even blinked, the stoic little bastards.

“I have to admit my pride is wounded. And it really burns my hide to think I have to let go of everything I’ve worked for. But I will, no fuss, no ugly publicity, I’ll just slink back and keep giving my money away to hopeless causes and you won’t need to worry. But I need one thing, and if I don’t get it, these children aren’t going to be happy. Accidents are bad enough. Burning to death’s a sight worse—real painful, I’ve heard. And if a van goes over a cliff somewhere up in the mountains there’s a good chance it’ll catch fire just in case there are survivors. I always carry extra fuel in my vans, just in case I need it.” He smiled at the camera, feeling very benevolent.

“So I’m taking these children up to my place in Lake Arrowhead, and don’t make the mistake of thinking you can get there first. It’s an armed fortress, and anyone who tries to get in will blow themselves to kingdom come. Oh, and you may not know which place I’m talking about—I own a number of properties around Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear, most of them so tied up in dummy corporations that it’ll take you too long to guess which one.

“So here are the details you’ve been waiting for, Ms. Lambert. We’ll have a little trade. You bring Ms. Genevieve Spenser, Esquire, back to me and I’ll hand off the children, clean and neat. Now, why would I want Ms. Spenser, you ask yourself? Because I’ve already killed every motherfucker who tried to mess with me on this, and she’s the only one still walking around. And I don’t like that. It’s kinda salt in the wound, you know what I mean?

“I will kill her—don’t try to fool yourself into thinking otherwise. The Rule of Seven is just going to have to be the pissant Rule of One, and I don’t like it, I can tell you that. So you have your choice. Half a dozen little brats who are going to die anyway, or one less lawyer in the world. You know that old joke—‘What do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?’— ‘a good start’? I know what your choice is going to be, because you really don’t have any choice at all. I’ll let you know where the trade-off is going to be.”

His cameraman was well trained—he knew a closing line when he heard it and he shut off the camera, the bright klieg lights going out.

“You’ll get that where it needs to go? Find out where the she-wolf that runs them has gotten to, and get an answer. You understand?” he said. It was a foolish question—they all knew what would happen if they failed him, and Takashi’s unfortunate death had been a recent reminder.

There was an absolute jumble of hurried reassurances, and Harry flashed them all his brilliant smile before turning to the ugly little children. “Come on, little ones,” he said. “We’re going on a journey.”

The one he liked least, a tall, skinny black girl, had clearly appointed herself leader. “We don’t want to go with you,” she said, stubborn.

“Well, now, ain’t that too damn bad?” he said, actually amused. “Because you’re just a bunch of sick little kids and I’ve got twenty big strong men who live just to see that everything I want happens. So do as I tell you and get in the fucking limo.”

A smaller child spoke up, the feisty little shit. “You’re not supposed to swear,” he said sternly.

“Well, hot damn, you’re right. I do beg your par- don. Follow my men and you’ll get a nice ride in a big white limousine up a big tall mountain.”

“And if we don’t?” the leader demanded.

It would be so easy to snap her scrawny little neck, he thought dreamily. Maybe, when the deal went through, as he had no doubt it would, he’d return five kids instead of six.

“What’s your name, little girl?” he asked.

“Tiffany Leticia Ambrose.”

Tiffany. That was the funniest damn name he’d ever heard for a ridiculous little piece of trash. “Well, Tiffany, if you don’t shut your mouth, your little friends are going to pay the price for it. Understand?”

Any other child would have dissolved into tears. She simply nodded, and stepped back, and Harry flashed his benevolent grin over all of them. “So, we’re all agreed? Off to the mountains?”

And without waiting for an answer he took off, leaving them to trail behind him, like sheep to the slaughter.

When Genevieve woke, it was mid-morning—she could tell that much because the infomercials had switched to mindless cartoons. Not even decent Americanized anime, she thought foggily. And then she heard the sharp, staccato footsteps, the firm knock on the door, and she knew it was time to wake up. A good day to die?

She certainly wasn’t expecting what waited patiently at her motel-room door. The security hole had been blocked by some previous inhabitant, but she figured Peter wouldn’t let anyone dangerous up to her door. Or if he did, then she was screwed anyway.

She opened the door, staring at the creature in front of her. Elegant, ageless, with a cool, serene beauty that was almost eerie, the woman met her shocked stare with a smile. “I’m Madame Isobel Lambert,” she said, pronouncing her last name the French way, even though her accent sounded British. “I’m Peter’s boss, the current de facto head of the Committee. May I come in?”

Without a word Genevieve opened the door wider, resisting the impulse to peer over the walkway and see if Peter’s car was still there, with Peter in it. Madame Lambert was about five foot four, though her stiletto heels brought her up higher, but even in bare feet Genevieve felt as if she was looming over her.

“Sorry I can’t offer you a chair or some coffee,” she said, her voice brittle. “But I’m not equipped for entertaining.”

Isobel Lambert looked at the bed, the one she’d shared with Peter, and Genevieve wanted to scream. Did all these people have some kind of sixth sense? Why didn’t she look at the other bed where people had slept alone?

Genevieve sat, claiming the other bed, and let the woman think what she wanted. Hell, it was probably simpler than that—Peter had doubtless given her a full report. Or even worse, he’d been following her instructions in the first place.

She couldn’t go there. Not if she wanted to make it through the day, though that was already not a sure thing. She’d slept in her clothes—stupid, when she only had one change—and she was feeling rumpled and grungy. Then again, she might only need one change of clothes.

Madame Lambert had taken a seat on the other bed, crossing her elegant legs at the ankles and taking out a cigarette. “Do you mind? I’ve just started again.”

The room already smelled of stale smoke, and Genevieve didn’t care. “I don’t know that I’m going to have to worry about dying from secondhand smoke,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“You aren’t going to die, Ms. Spenser.”

“Call me Genevieve. No need to stand on formalities when you’re turning me over to a murderer.”

Madame Lambert smiled. “Peter told me you were a fighter. That’s very good. If you were a useless crybaby I wouldn’t have even considered this option.”

“I could cry,” Genevieve offered instantly. “Give me a minute and I’ll be a useless, sobbing wreck.” In fact, it was true. For the past twenty-four hours, for the past God knows how many days, she’d been on the edge of it, ready to start crying and never stop, but she was far too pragmatic to give in.

“I thought Peter said you agreed to this.” Her perfect, unlined face managed to express concern. How many face-lifts, how many Botox injections had gone into making that perfect, ageless mask?

“Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice. I’m not sure the same could be said for the six children Harry’s planning to kill if we don’t deliver you.”

She felt sick inside. Could things get any worse? “No choice at all,” she said.

Madame Lambert nodded. “The trade-off is going to be at his place up in Lake Arrowhead. I don’t know why he’s chosen it—there are only two main roads down out of the mountains.”

“Maybe he thinks you’ll just let him just walk away.”

“It’s happened in the past. We have to make some uncomfortable moral decisions in this business, Genevieve. Sometimes evil gets to walk away untouched. But he’s not walking away with you or the children, I promise you.”

“Have you found Takashi yet?”

Again that faint, imperceptible shadow. “No,” she said. “But he’s a hard man to kill. If anyone could make it then O’Brien could. I haven’t given up hope.”

“He saved my life.”

“So did Peter,” Madame Lambert pointed out. “Several times, in fact.”

“He was also going to kill me. Your orders?”

The woman didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. “Yes. Trust me, it was a difficult order, and I’m glad he chose to ignore it.”

“And now I get a brand-new way to die.”

Madame Lambert rose and stubbed her half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray. “You aren’t going to die,” she said again. “Not if I can help it. We’ve got a Kevlar vest for you, just as an extra precaution, there’ll be snipers all around, and the moment someone gets a clear shot they’ll take it. You won’t get anywhere near him.”

“How about having a few paramedics around, just in case.”

Madame Lambert looked at her coolly. “We always do.”

“Did he tell you my conditions?”

“‘He’ meaning Peter? Yes. He said you didn’t want him anywhere around. You shouldn’t let adolescent emotions interfere with something that could make the difference between life and death. Peter’s a crack shot—you couldn’t have anyone better watching out for you.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” she said. “And I don’t have adolescent emotions. I just don’t like being used.”

“Who says the adolescent emotions are yours?” Madame Lambert said with a faint smile. “The tradeoff time is three o’clock this afternoon. They’re expecting some fog up in the mountains, and it can be quite treacherous. In the meantime, you must be famished. Why don’t you freshen up and I’ll take you out for a late breakfast?”

“I’m not really hungry,” she lied, still smarting from the “freshen up” comment. She did look rumpled, particularly compared to Madame Isobel Lambert’s perfection, but then, a few weeks ago that perfection had been hers as well. Designer clothes and shoes, perfect hair and makeup, the quintessential corporate goddess.

Now she was rumpled, barefoot, tangled hair and no makeup. No defenses. “Food sounds great,” she said wearily when the woman made no comment. “As long as I don’t have to run into anyone who’d ruin my appetite.”

“Peter’s already on his way back to England,” Madame Lambert said. “I’m afraid he didn’t leave a message.”

Genevieve knew her expression didn’t change. She was already prepared for it—desertion was just one more thing to be expected. It didn’t matter that she’d told him to go, he was still feeding her to the wolves and abandoning her so he wouldn’t have to watch. Bastard.

She rose. “Give me half an hour and I’ll be ready,” she said in an even voice.

“That’s fine. We’re in no particular hurry.” Madame Lambert made no attempt to move.

“Could I have a little privacy?”

“Don’t be silly, child. You Americans are all so prudish. I promise not to look. But we’re not letting you out of our sight for the next few hours.”

“In case I change my mind?”

“You can always change your mind. Harry Van Dorn has just suffered a series of disappointments, and he’s not about to leave anything to chance at this point. He’ll be working on any number of ways to grab you. He’d much prefer not to have to barter—we’ve already screwed the pooch for him with his grand and glorious scheme, and he wants revenge. Killing Takashi and Peter isn’t enough.”

“What?” Panic swept through her, and she didn’t even try to hide it.

Madame Lambert’s smile was smug and reassuring. “He thinks Peter died on the island. If he knew he was alive he’d much rather have him than you.”

“Then why don’t you just let him go in my place?” It wasn’t what she wanted, but surely Peter would have a better chance with Harry than she did.

“Because he’s much more valuable when Harry thinks he’s long gone.”

“And I’m dispensable.”

“I didn’t say that. You can change your mind.”

“Stop saying that! You know I won’t. You might be able to live with the deaths of six children on your conscience, but I can’t.”

“Trust me, child, I live with far worse on my conscience,” she said, reaching for her cigarettes again.

“On second thought, you can’t smoke,” Genevieve said. “I don’t want to die smelling like an ashtray.”

Peter would have come back with some cynical crack about cremation. But Peter wasn’t there, and Madame Lambert wasn’t Peter. She put the cigarettes back in her Hermès handbag—an item so expensive even Genevieve had denied herself—and snapped it shut. “As you wish,” she said. “But I’m still not leaving you alone.”

“Suit yourself,” Genevieve said, and stomped into the tiny bathroom.

It wasn’t until she’d finished with the longest shower she could manage that she realized she hadn’t brought her clean clothes in with her. She grabbed the skimpy towel and walked into the room, throwing modesty to the winds. Madame Lambert wasn’t going to have any prurient interest in her body. In fact, Peter probably hadn’t either. It had all been part of his job.

Madame Lambert had made the bed and was lying on it, the pillows tucked behind her, her expensive shoes lying neatly on the floor beside her, and she looked at Genevieve with casual interest. The new clothes were folded neatly at the foot of the other bed, and Genevieve thought, fuck it, and tossed the towel.

“You’re probably wondering what Peter saw in me,” she said in a conversational voice as she pulled on the plain white panties and bra. “And the answer, of course, is nothing at all. He was doing his job.”

Genevieve had marks on her, and she knew it. Not just the love bite on her neck, the whisker burns on her breast. Her whole body was covered with him, and no matter how often she washed she couldn’t wash him away. He was inside her still, breathing through her skin, his heart making hers race.

“How very young you are,” Madame Lambert said in an obnoxiously cheerful voice. “Like a teenager who’s first discovered sex.”

Genevieve paused in the act of zipping up her jeans. “Look, I’m putting my life on the line for you guys. I don’t have to listen to condescending remarks while I do it.”

“You’re right. I’d just forgotten what it was like to be young and in love.”

“You’ll have to ask someone else. I’ve never been there.”

Madame Lambert said nothing. But her catlike smile said it all.

God, but Harry hated children. Healthy, pretty ones were one thing, but these were pallid, sickly and obnoxious. They didn’t know when to shut up, and during the twists and turns up Route 330 one of them threw up on the leather upholstery of his white limo.

It was the final straw. He hadn’t been riding in the back with them, of course. He’d been up front with his driver, in a far less comfortable seat than he should have been enjoying, and the brats behind him never shut up.

“Can’t you turn off the noise back there?” he demanded of the driver.

“Sorry, sir. This particular limo isn’t soundproofed.”

“Well, at least can you do something about the smell?”

The driver shrugged, not having the good sense to be afraid of Harry’s temper. Not enough people were afraid of him, he decided, particularly not those people who’d managed to mess with his glorious Rule of Seven.

He’d gotten past that initial disappointment, priding himself on his resiliency. He had a new goal now—destroying the Committee and everyone in it, and he’d already gathered powerful reinforcements. The shadow group was a threat to everything he held dear—free enterprise, the right to enjoy himself however he pleased, democracy. He was going to bring them down, every one of them, and then he could turn to rebuilding a new Rule of Seven, something even grander and more glorious.

Because this was personal. Not just the destruction of his carefully laid plans. The infiltration of his private life, with Jack-shit O’Brien and Peter Jensen. There was something so…underhanded about that. But then, what could you expect from people who didn’t have the advantages he’d had. Weren’t as gifted as he was.

He was going to enjoy himself with Genevieve Spenser. First, because Jack-shit/Takashi had tried so hard to have him keep his hands off her. Second, because it would make Peter Jensen turn in his grave. Hurting the woman would be the next best thing to hurting the man who’d betrayed him. Hell, it might be even better; this way he could get his revenge twice over.

But first he had to get rid of these noisy, puking, disgusting children before he grabbed a gun and shot them.

“Stop the car,” he ordered.

And the driver slammed on the brakes.