Having been obsessed with revenge, he’d not reckoned for the ensuing guilt that now clung to him like a second skin. Killing his enemy in cold blood was supposed to set him free. But, instead, he discovered that you take everything from a man when you kill him. And he, in turn, steals everything from you. Gin was simply the most expedient means of dulling the pain.
How pathetically trite. A man drowning his sorrows in a bottle of distilled spirits.
Knowing that his battle with the bottle trivialized Juliana’s death, Cædmon ran his thumb over the glass rim, wondering if he should, if he could, pour the remaining contents down the drain. After two years, surely the time had come to put his life in order?
He raised the glass to his lips. Shag it. What was the point? So he could return to the infantile enthusiasm of his youth? At forty years of age, he was too jaded to believe in a Second Coming.
‘Rack and ruin. The measure of this man.’
Hearing a chime emanate from his laptop, Cædmon, glass in hand, wandered into the other room. Curious about his old lover, he first opened the attachment marked ‘Katsumi Rosamund Bauer’. Rosa Mundi. The Rose of the World, as he used to affectionately call her. He quickly scanned the particulars of the dossier. As he neared the bottom, his stomach clenched, horrified to read that two years ago Kate’s infant son had died of SIDS, cot death.
We are kindred after all, Rosa Mundi.
Cædmon opened the next attachment.
‘Shite,’ he muttered, utterly astounded. While the ex-Delta Force commando didn’t fit the typical stereotype of a RIRA terrorist, the connection was there. Even more worrisome, the man was a fugitive from the law, accused of committing two heinous murders.
The skin on the back of his neck prickled, as though a ghost from his old life had just flitted past.
Concerned for Kate’s safety, Cædmon snatched his car keys out of the crystal bowl on top of the cabinet and stuffed them into his trouser pocket. That done, he opened the top drawer and removed a leather holster, quickly strapping it on to his shoulder. Spinning on his heel, he rushed out of the room, grabbing a tweed jacket off the arm of the sofa on his way to the door.
Just you wait, you bloodthirsty Irish bastard.
25
Finn turned the ignition key, the Vespa thrumming to life.
Clambering on to the back of the scooter, Kate adjusted her hips so that she wasn’t pressed so intimately close to Finn’s rear end.
‘Since we can both use some shut eye, as soon as we finish buying the supplies I’ll find us a secure hotel room.’
The offer came as something of a surprise, with Kate beginning to worry that Finn was the product of a clandestine military experiment, reprogrammed to function on little to no sleep.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome, Katie.’ Finn turned his head a few more inches in her direction, his whiskered cheek brushing against the side of her face. ‘Okay. We’re ready for takeoff.’
Warning issued, he steered the Vespa down the rutted alley, merging on to a narrow street jam-packed with parked cars and Greek cafés.
Kate glanced back at L’Equinoxe. At the gently swaying sign emblazoned with The Fool. She’d never dreamed that she’d see Cædmon again, had long since shoved recollections of their time at Oxford to the wayside of her youth. Seeing him after so many years brought it all back. So many endearing memories. The chiaroscuro light and early-morning mist that suffused Oxford. The silliness of trying to learn the meaning of a ‘quid’ and a ‘crisp’. The challenging debates that lasted well into the night. The lazy Sunday afternoon picnics along the River Isis.
Hard now to imagine herself ever being that young. That naive about relationships. About love. Betrayal. The evil that men do.
With a forlorn sigh, Kate leaned her cheek against Finn’s broad back. So strong and dependable. Her bulwark against all that evil. And while Finn McGuire was an unrepentant smart-aleck, he would never harm or demean her in any way.
Maybe her strange attraction to Finn McGuire wasn’t a form of Stockholm Syndrome so much as an actual stirring of the heart. Not only was he a physically fit male, but he was honourable and courageous. And much smarter than he let on. The fact that he didn’t preen or showboat made him even more attractive. Attractive like a standing stone. Or a towering oak tree. Beautiful and solid and wildly primitive.
But he is so not my type.
Having always dated ‘academic’ types, it made Kate think that it might be a case of opposites attracting. Like positive and negative poles on a magnet. Or the Yin and Yang of Chinese –
Finn elbowed her in the ribs. ‘We’ve got a crotch rocket on our six!’
‘What?’ Kate had to screech to be heard over the top of the sudden roar of a loud engine.
‘I’m going to make a sharp left up ahead.’
Uncertain who or what a ‘crotch rocket’ was, Kate tapped him on the shoulder. ‘But, Finn, that’s a one-way street. If you turn left, we’ll be headed in the wrong –’
She grabbed his waist as the scooter suddenly made a very tight turn, the illegal manoeuvre inciting a loud horn blast from a passing motorist. Craning her head, Kate caught sight of a silver motorcycle about thirty yards behind them, its rider decked out in head-to-toe black leather.
Menacing? Yes. Dangerous? She hoped not.
Wrapping her arms around Finn’s torso, Kate clutched her left wrist with her right hand, locking herself into place. Terrified, she couldn’t tell if her heart was beating too fast or too slow.
Finn glanced in the side mirror, his expression grim. ‘Hold on tight,’ he ordered as he opened the throttle, the Vespa quickly picking up speed.
But not enough speed; the motorcycle was no more than fifteen feet behind them. And gaining.
Accelerating, Finn crossed the heavily-trafficked Boulevard Saint Germain to the accompaniment of blaring horns and foul-mouthed yells. Certain they were going to be hit by a delivery truck, its driver wildly gesturing at them, Kate wrapped her arms even tighter around Finn’s waist.
Somehow, miraculously, they crossed the busy thoroughfare without incident.
Glancing behind her, Kate saw that the driver of the hotrod motorcycle had been the recipient of the same miracle.
Directly ahead of them, the view wasn’t much better, a green street-cleaning truck hogging the entire lane. In a manoeuvre Kate didn’t see coming, Finn jumped the kerb to the right of the truck and passed it on the pavement. The motorcycle also jumped the kerb, its front wheel coming off the ground at least two feet as the driver gunned the engine. The sinister theatrics elicited a cacophony of terrified screams, pedestrians running pell-mell to escape the two vehicles.
Seeing a small cluster of people gathered around a vegetable stand, Kate hollered, ‘Watch out!’
‘I know!’ Finn yelled back at her, both of them flinching as someone threw a head of lettuce, the green projectile bouncing off the scooter’s windshield with a resounding thud.
Having successfully navigated around the vegetable stand, Finn took a hard right, narrowly missing a bicyclist. The sudden turn put them on a cobbled street, one of the tiny lanes that made up the labyrinth of pedestrian streets bordering St Séverin Church. Motorized vehicles were forbidden, but Finn clearly didn’t care about Parisian road regulations.
The same could be said of the driver on the motorcycle, Kate glimpsing a silver flash to the rear of them.
‘Oh, God! Don’t hit the pigeons!’ she screamed a few seconds later as they sped down a minuscule street that was little more than a fissure between two adjoining buildings.