His face came closer, filling her field of vision, distorted, grotesque in every lurid detail. His breath was sour and damp, pulsing wetly against her face, stealing all the air.
She placed the poison capsule between her molars, estimating distance, velocities, counting seconds, crunching data. Cold and sharp. Robot Bitch. Not yet…not yet…three…two…one…crunch.
The capsule broke.
Her mouth filled with a granular, metallic bitterness. His lips touched hers, hideously slippery with mucus. His mouth yawned.
She spat the poison wad into it.
Georg reeled back, spitting, pawing at his mouth and tongue as the corrosive burn began to spread. He lunged forward, slapped her. She did not feel it. He slapped her again and again. Her cheek was numb. He was screaming, bellowing, but she could not hear his voice.
The calculating machine in her head reminded her that she had less than fifteen seconds…thirteen…twelve, before it was too late to bother with the antidote, but she couldn’t coordinate her jaw muscles to bite again. She’d gone limp, spent her strength…nine…eight…seven…the icy tingle, the numbness of impending death crept through her…five…four…blood trickled from her nose…
Rachel.
She bit down on the other capsule. The antidote was bitter too. She needed more spit to swallow the stuff, but she was dry, her mouth full of sand and dust. She flung her head back so that the blood streaming from her nose would run down her throat.
Come on, Steele. You’re good at swallowing bitter pills.
Georg was falling, writhing, twitching. She saw it as if through the wrong end of a telescope. She could not enjoy her victory. It was too far away, too long ago. It had happened to someone else.
She gulped her own blood and fought the darkness.
It was Imre who saved him, in the end. Imre, who had taught him to use his brain like the high-functioning machine that it was.
Val cut loose from the fear battering at him like a hurricane wind. He took the three steps back and floated free. He still smelled Henry’s sweat. Still felt the cold circle of steel the other man pressed against the pulse point of his throbbing temple. Still felt the burning agony of his wounded arm and shoulder.
Still saw Georg, slavering and groping the woman Val loved.
But he floated apart from it. Waiting in the vast stillness inside his mind for his opportunity. There was always a split-second opening, if the mind was wide open and soft enough to sense it, flexible enough to recognize it for what it was. And quick enough to exploit it.
…he’s kissing her, fucking pig rapist…
No. That thought would shatter his focus. He let the thought go, wrenched his concentration back to the matrix. Wait. Just…wait.
Georg reeled back and began a strange dance, screaming and pawing at his mouth. He slapped Tamar, once, twice.
“What is it? What is it? Where’s the antidote?” he bellowed. “What is the antidote, you fucking bitch?”
Antidote? Poison. Oh, God, no. Tamar. No.
The shocked gaze of the man holding the gun on him skittered over to the spectacle. Val felt the relentless pressure of the gun barrel against his head waver for an instant—
Val flung himself backward against Henry, ignoring the flare of pain, forcing the man to shift his bulk, brace himself—
Now!
Val ran up the wall in three big steps, and flipped his body over Henry’s head. Henry shouted, and tumbled backward. They crashed to the ground together. The impact knocked Henry’s grip loose.
He grappled for Val, flipping him over with a roar of rage, and pinned Val beneath his huge, muscular bulk. Val heaved, struggled…and pushed with his thumb against the stone on the ring he wore, Tamar’s ring, that released the spike. Short, but razor sharp and wickedly pointed.
Henry’s grip slipped on Val’s bloody wrist. Val wrenched it loose with a shout—and stabbed the small spike into Henry’s carotid artery.
Gouts of hot blood splattered him, rhythmically. Henry choked, convulsed, stared down into his face, a look of betrayal in his eyes.
Val crawled out from under him, grabbed Henry’s gun, and clambered to his feet, blood-drenched and swaying.
He pointed it at the man whose job it had been to hold the gun to his head and asked a silent question with his eyes.
The gunman shook his head in reply. His wide eyes darted, from Georg’s corpse to Henry’s, to Tamar, and back to the gun in Val’s hand. The place was silent, but for Val’s breath sawing in and out of his mouth, and the moaning whisper of the wind. Heavy brocade drapes billowed and swirled. Candle flames leaped and flared.
He lifted his hands, pointing his gun in the air, and began to back warily toward the door, boots crunching and sliding on the broken glass. He stumbled over his colleague’s dead, bloody body. Caught himself, without even looking down.
“I’m gone,” the gunman said. “I’m out of here. I was never even here at all.”
Val nodded, and waited until the other man had slunk out the door. His running footsteps retreated. The silence was absolute.
Val turned to Tamar. She sagged in her ropes, eyes closed, face deathly pale. Blood streamed from her nose. More trickled from the corners of her mouth. Georg lay still, though his feet still twitched. Bloody froth foamed from his mouth. His face was blue, tongue protruding.
She’d pulled some poison trick. A kamikaze move. Ah, God.
All the times in his life that he had numbed himself to endure some atrocious thing had not prepared him for this. He was a helpless child again. Staring at the end of the world, lying on the bathroom floor.
Then, to his astonishment, her eyes fluttered open. They focused somewhere beyond him, and widened. She sucked in a bubbling breath.
“Watch out!” she cried.
He jerked to the side, and the bullet grazed his hip, plowing a deep furrow to join his other wounds. Novak grinned from his pool of blood on the floor, thin neck straining, and lifted his Walther PPK to try again.
Val emptied Henry’s Taurus into the old man and kept pulling the trigger compulsively even after the gun was empty.
He glanced wildly around the room. “Anyone else? Anyone?”
No one moved. No one spoke.
Val stumbled over to the dead man, the young one, who lay on his back with Val’s knife sticking out of his throat. He yanked it out and lunged toward Tamar.
He put his arm around her slender body as he reached up to saw at the rope. Just a few passes of the blade severed it, and her slight weight dropped into his arms. She was covered with tiny rivulets of blood. Small wounds, from the shards of flying glass.
He gathered her up, looking around for a place to lay her down that was not strewn with glass. There was none.
He dropped to his knees and cradled her.
Her eyes opened. Her gaze was still sharp. “Don’t…k-kiss me,” she croaked in a halting whisper. “I’m poisonous.”
Despair slammed through him. “Oh, fuck,” he said, his voice high and shaking. “You are killing me, Tamar.”
Her lips twitched. “Melodramatic,” she whispered. “Idiot.”
Their eyes met, full of pain and longing. She hitched in a shallow breath and said her daughter’s name with a whispering sigh. “Rachel,” she said. “András has her.”
Her eyes commanded him