Honor twitched her left eye socket's muscles, bringing up the lowest telescopic setting on her cybernetic eye to watch his face. She saw his snarl, but her own expressionless face mirrored the hollow, singing stillness at her core as white cloth fluttered at the edge of her vision. Tension crackled in the morning air, and even the newsies fell silent as they stared at the motionless tableau.
Castellano opened his hand. The handkerchief leapt into the air, frisking in the playful breeze, and Denver Summervale's brain glowed with merciless fire as his hand came up. The pistol was an extension of his nerves, rising into the classic duelist's stance with the oiled speed of long practice while his eyes remained fixed on Harrington. His target was graven in his mind, waiting only to merge with his weapon's rising sights, when white flame blossomed from her hand and a spike of Hell slammed into his belly.
He grunted in disbelief, eyes bulging in shock, and the fire flashed again. A second sledgehammer slammed him, centimeters above the agony of the first shot, and astonishment flickered through him. She hadn't raised her hand. She hadn't even raised her hand! She was firing from the hip, and—
A third shot cracked out, and another huge smear of crimson blotted his black tunic. His pistol hand was weighted with iron, and he looked down stupidly at the blood pulsing from his chest.
This couldn't happen. It was impossible for him to—
A fourth shot roared, punching into him less than a centimeter from the third, and he screamed as much in fury as in agony. No! The bitch couldn't kill him! Not before he got even one shot into her!
He looked back up, staring at her, wavering on his feet, and his gun was back at his side. He didn't remember lowering it, and now hers was up in full extension. He stared at her, seeing the wisps of smoke blowing from her muzzle in the breeze, and bared his teeth in hatred. Blood bubbled in his nostrils, his knees began to buckle, but somehow he stayed on his feet and slowly, grimly, fought to bring his gun hand up.
Honor Harrington watched him over the sights of her pistol. She saw the hate on his face, the terrible realization of what had happened, the venomous determination as his pistol wavered up centimeter by agonized centimeter. It was coming up, rising toward firing position while he snarled at her, and there was no emotion at all in her brown eyes as her fifth bullet smashed squarely through the bridge of his nose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Earl of North Hollow hunched in his armchair, face white, and clutched a glass of Terran whiskey. Quiet music played from his luxurious suite's hidden speakers, yet he heard nothing but the terrified thudding of his own heart.
God. God! What was he going to do?!
He threw back a swallow of the expensive whiskey. It burned like raw lava and exploded in his belly, and he closed his eyes and scrubbed the cold glass across his sweating forehead.
He couldn't believe how wrong things had gone. That traitorous bastard Tankersley had gone down exactly as planned, and he'd exulted as he savored his triumph over the bitch. He'd hurt her this time. Oh, yes, he'd hurt her, and he'd tasted her pain like sweet, sweet wine. He'd known when Agni departed to take her the news, and he'd counted the hours and treated himself to supper at Cosmos and a celebratory night with Georgia on the day he calculated word had reached her, then waited in tingling anticipation for her return.
But then she had returned, and the disaster had begun.
How? How had the bitch guessed he'd hired Summervale? Even the media hostile to North Hollow had handled that part of her initial confrontation with the assassin with unwonted care—possibly from an unwillingness to let the bitch use them against him, but more probably from the monumental damages any court might award for libeling a peer. Yet her charges had leaked anyway, and when it reached North Hollow's ears, he'd reviled himself with every curse he could think of for having met personally with the bungling incompetent.
Someone must have seen them. Someone must have known and given—or sold—the information to the bitch or one of her ass-kissing friends. He'd known it was dangerous, but Georgia had assured him Summervale was the best, and his record had certainly seemed to support her claim. When you wanted the best, you had to play by their rules, even if there was an element of risk. That was what he'd told himself when Summervale demanded to meet him face-to-face to close the deal, and he'd done it.
Damn it. Damn it to Hell! He'd been certain someone had seen them and whispered the news in Harrington's ear, but now it might be even worse than that, and the icy breath of space blew through his bones at the thought.
He'd watched the duel. He'd regretted the newsies' failure to get to Harrington sooner, for he'd looked forward to seeing her face and savoring her pain. But he'd told himself it was even better this way. Her elusiveness had been the last ingredient the media needed to whip up a hurricane of speculation and innuendo. They'd played the avenging lover angle to the hilt, turned her into some sort of tragic heroine as she prepared to go up against the fearsome duelist who'd killed the man she loved. North Hollow had laughed out loud at their tear-jerking coverage, because underneath all their emotional blather they'd been working the story for all it was worth. They'd actually taken crews out to the dueling grounds, and he'd leaned back with a glass of fine brandy to watch her destruction in full, glorious color.
But it hadn't worked out that way, and he shuddered as he recalled what had happened. Summervale had moved like a striking serpent while the bitch hadn't seemed to move at all. She'd simply stood there, facing her killer—and then she'd fired before Summervale's gun was halfway into position.
North Hollow's jaw had dropped, his face blanching, as Summervale staggered. The whole thing had happened with blinding speed, yet time had crawled, as well. He'd heard each shot, each separate, explosive burst of sound. He'd seen his highly-paid killer jerking like a marionette as the bullets slammed home, and his eyes had been wide and shocked as Summervale's head exploded with the last round.
It was impossible. It couldn't have happened. Harrington was a Navy officer, for God's sake! Where in hell had she learned to shoot that way?
The question had boiled through his brain, but then one of the news services had replayed the entire event even as the medics hurried forward to do their useless best, and he'd seen something that replaced his shock with terror. One of the cameras had been focused on Harrington, bringing her face so close it filled the HD tank, and North Hollow had seen her expression. He'd seen the icy control worse than any raw hatred, the implacable purpose drained of all emotion, and known he looked upon the face of Death itself.
He'd sat there, trembling, trying to understand, and then the newsies had swarmed onto the field like scavengers. They'd boiled about her, shouting questions and thrusting microphones at her despite the best efforts of the police and her own fucking bodyguards, and she'd handed her pistol to the Marine colonel at her side and looked squarely into the cameras and held up her hand like some sort of goddamned queen.
The newsies' babble had died into silence, and her eyes had seemed to leap out of the HD. They'd stared straight into his soul, and her voice had been just as cold, just as hard, as those liquid helium eyes.
"I'm not taking any questions, ladies and gentlemen," she'd said, "but I do have a short statement."
Someone had tried to shout another question, but even his own fellows had hushed him, and then she'd said it.