out the door. There was always a possibility she’d make it. And a possibility she wouldn’t.
She backed up, her hand still poised at the top button of her blouse. In the small bathroom, her fast, uneven breathing echoed back over her. The sound of it made Remo smile. Seeing this, Whitney struggled for control. She’d come so far, worked so hard, and now she was cornered. Her fingers closed over the porcelain of the sink. She wouldn’t whine. That she promised herself. And she wouldn’t beg.
At the movement behind Remo, Whitney shifted her gaze and looked into Barns’s idiotic, amiable eyes. She learned fear could be primitive, mindless, like the terror a mouse feels when a cat begins to playfully bat it with its paws. Instinct told her there was a great deal more danger in him than in the tall, dark man who leveled a pistol at her. There was a time for heroics, a time for fear, and a time for rolling the dice. She forced her fingers to relax, and prayed.
“Remo, I presume. You work fast.” And so did her mind, beginning to rapidly tick off angles and escape routes. Doug had been gone no more than twenty minutes. She was on her own.
He’d hoped she’d scream or try to run so that he would have a reason to put a few bruises on her. His vanity still smarted from the scar on his cheek. Vanity aside, Remo feared Dimitri too much to put a mark on her without provocation. He knew Dimitri liked women brought to him unmarred, whatever condition they were in when he was done with them. Intimidation, however, was different. He put the barrel of the gun under her chin so that it pressed into the soft, vulnerable point of her throat. At her quiver, his smile spread.
“Lord,” he said briefly. “Where is he?”
She shrugged because she’d never been so frightened in her life. When she spoke her voice was deliberately even, deliberately cool. Every drop of moisture in her mouth had dried up. “I killed him.”
The lie came so easily, so swiftly, it nearly surprised her. Because it had, and easy lies carried the ring of truth, Whitney went with it. Lifting a finger, she nudged the barrel away from her throat.
Remo stared at her. His intellect rarely dipped below the surface to subtleties, so that he saw the insolence in her eyes without seeing the fear beneath. Grabbing her arm, he dragged her into the bedroom and shoved her roughly into a chair. “Where’s Lord?”
Whitney straightened in the chair, then brushed at the already tattered sleeve of her blouse. She couldn’t let him notice her fingers were shaking. It was going to take every ounce of guile at her disposal to pull it off. “Really, Remo, I expected a bit more style from you than from a second-rate thief.”
With a jerk of his head Remo signaled to Barns. Grinning still, he approached her with a small, ugly revolver. “Pretty,” he said and nearly drooled. “Soft and pretty.”
“He likes to shoot people in places like kneecaps,” Remo told her. “Now where’s Lord?”
Whitney forced herself to ignore the gun Barns aimed at her left knee. If she looked at it, if she even thought about it, she’d have collapsed in a puddle of pleading. “I killed him,” she repeated. “Do you have a cigarette? I haven’t had one for days.”
Her tone was so casually regal, Remo was reaching for them before he realized it. Frustrated, he aimed the gun at a point just between her eyes. Whitney felt the light, rapid pounding begin there and spread. “I’m only going to ask nice once more. Where’s Lord?”
She gave a sigh that was short and annoyed. “I’ve just told you. He’s dead.” She knew Barns was staring at her still, lightly humming. Her stomach rolled once before she glanced critically at her nails. “I don’t suppose you know where I can get a good manicure in this dump?”
“How’d you kill him?”
Her heartbeat accelerated. If he asked how, he was close to believing her. “I shot him, of course.” She smiled a bit vaguely and crossed her legs. She saw Remo jerk his head so that Barns lowered his gun. She didn’t allow herself a sigh of relief. “It seemed the most foolproof way.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She blinked. “Why what?”
“Why’d you kill him?”
“I didn’t need him anymore,” she said simply.
Barns stepped forward and ran one pudgy hand down her hair. He made a sound in his throat that