Lazlo's Last Stand

It was his worst nightmare. The woman he realized had a very important place in his life was struggling for hers against an armed assassin. His assassin. And he could do nothing. Couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. Could only watch helplessly while the battle played itself out.

Lucia’s initial attack had the advantage of surprise. Her flying kick slammed into the assassin as he stood over Corbett’s body, the gun pointed down at his target’s head…hesitating, inexplicably, although she didn’t recall that until later, and was only unquestioningly grateful for the extra second or two that meant the difference between Corbett’s life and the unthinkable. His death.

The kick sent the gunman crashing to the sidewalk. The gun flew from his hand and went spinning across the wet pavement. Lucia dove for it, not noticing nor caring that her bare legs scraped the concrete, or that what was left of her gown barely covered the rest of her. All she knew was a fierce sense of triumph when she felt the shape of the gun in her hands, still warm from the assassin’s hands.

She managed to twist her body around barely a split second before the man was on her, his full weight pressing her down.

He was strong. Stronger than she was. Bigger than she was. And now he had the advantage, his upper body strength pitted against hers, as he struggled to force the gun from her hands. She could feel it slipping…slipping from her grasp. But now she could feel his weight easing off the lower part of her body as he concentrated all his efforts on retrieving the gun.

Yes—her legs were free! And she brought one knee up, hard, between his legs.

In that same second there was a deafening explosion.

Then everything went still.

For Corbett, hearing the gunshot was a thousand times worse than getting shot himself. His reaction was instinctive; he tried desperately to get up, go to her, see if she was all right. Help her any way he could. He managed to lift his upper body a few inches before crushing pain slammed him back down. He dragged in a breath, and that hurt, too. He gritted his teeth and got out one word: “Lucia…”

“Take it easy, mate. Don’t try—”

“Adam—Lucia—I heard…”

“She’s okay. Can’t you hear her? She’s the one swearing a blue streak over there. Lie still, you bloody fool, don’t you know you’ve just been shot? Point-blank range, too. If it hadn’t been for that armor you’re wearing, that slug would’ve put a hole through your chest as big as my fist. Where’d it hit you? Oh, crikey. Damn good thing it wasn’t a couple inches higher, it would’ve stopped your heart for sure. As it is, I’m bettin’ you’ve got some busted ribs, at the very least.”

“Yeah…hurts to breathe. Feels like…I’ve been kicked by a mule. Where the hell’s our shooter? Did Lucia—” Corbett grimaced and put a hand over his eyes. He swore under his breath, then said, “Please tell me she didn’t kill him. Damnation—we needed him alive.”

Adam glanced over his shoulder. “Nah, he’s not dead—not yet, anyway. Bleedin’ pretty badly, though. Our girl’s doing what she can for the blighter.” He looked back at Corbett, grinning. “Wish you’d seen her. I’ve never seen anybody move that fast in my life. She was like a whirlwind—like that cartoon—crazy little guy, that tasmanian devil, you know? Came out of nowhere. Poor sod never knew what hit ’im. Not at first, anyway. Dropped his weapon, they both went for it, and that’s when she shot him. Might’ve been an accident, I don’t know. Either way, she didn’t have much of a choice, mate, so you’d better not be blamin’ her for whatever happens now. You know she saved your life, right?”

“I’m not blaming her…or anybody else.” He set his teeth and struggled up onto one elbow. “My fault. Should’ve given the go-ahead sooner…”

“Damn straight,” Adam said.

He’s just a kid.

It was the first thing Lucia thought when she rolled the inert body off her. His body was lithe and strong, but slender, slim-waisted, like a boy’s. She pulled back his hood and pressed her fingers against his neck. It was smooth and warm, and she could feel his pulse tapping rapidly against her fingers. Corbett will kill me if he dies. Don’t die, damn you.

But, my God, where was all the blood coming from? The front of his jacket was soaked with it already. She looked around frantically for something to stem the flow, but except for the clothes they were wearing, there was nothing. Her dress was useless, so she rolled the bottom half of the boy’s jacket and shirt into a wad and pressed it against the wound high up on his chest. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that it came as something of a shock when she looked at his face and saw that his eyes were open. Fierce blue eyes, wide with shock and fear, and staring straight up into hers. His lips moved, his mouth opened, but no sound came.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said, forgetting he probably wouldn’t understand English.

But he was still struggling to get words out, so she leaned closer. And heard, garbled but unmistakably in English, “Don’t…want to die…”

She lifted her head and yelled, “Adam—I need help!”

She heard Corbett say in a grating voice, “Go on. I’m fine. We can’t…lose him. He’s the only lead we’ve got to…whoever’s responsible for this damned vendetta. We have to get him to our medical facility. Can’t let the French authorities—”

“Too late, mate,” Adam said.

Lucia heard it then, too—the raucous seesaw braying of incoming emergency vehicles, so markedly European and so different from the wail of sirens she had grown up with in the States. She saw Adam and Corbett exchange looks of helpless frustration, and she knew the other agents on the spot had already melted away into the night. She became aware of shouts and running footsteps. Embassy security reached them first, along with the few pedestrians out in the chilly evening. People crowded around the four of them; hands reached to offer aid and comfort. Lucia looked down one last time into the terrified eyes of Corbett’s would-be assassin, and with a small sob of gratitude, gave her desperate fight to keep him from bleeding to death into more capable hands.

Time passed. It could have been days or minutes, for all Lucia knew. She spent it in a dreamlike state where time could stretch or compress without rhyme or reason. An eternity filled with the press of people and the cacophony of voices giving orders, asking questions, demanding one thing or another all faded seamlessly into the quiet efficiency and muted murmurs of medical personnel in a well-equipped emergency van. Over her strenuous protests she was checked for trauma, treated for shock and released; then, in another blink of an eye, she’d found herself transported through time and Paris streets to a hospital waiting room where, in the manner of such places the world over, time seemed to pass with the speed of glaciers.

At some point Adam joined her, bringing her strong bitter coffee in a foam cup. She sat and held it, warming her cold hands while two policemen came and questioned them about the shooting.

Just a formality, they assured her. It was clearly a case of attempted robbery gone wrong, and witnesses all seemed to agree that Lucia had acted in defense of her own life and her escort’s, and that the shooting of the would-be robber had been accidental, taking place in the course of the struggle for control of the gun.

“Zere is just one sing I do not understand,” the older of the two policemen said in his heavily accented English, as he tucked his notebook and pen back into his pocket. “Do you know ze reason why Monsieur Lazlo was wearing body armor? Was he expecting some kind of trouble?”

“No, I don’t,” Lucia whispered. Then she cleared her throat and added in a normal voice, “Corbett is a bit eccentric….”

Adam grinned. “Rather like what’s ’is name—Howard Hughes, I guess, eh? Or Michael Jackson.” “Not at all like Michael Jackson,” she retorted, turning to glare at him, and the younger policeman chuckled.

“Zere is just one sing I do not understand,” Lucia said to Adam sotto voce after the two law officers had departed. “Your story about being a passerby who just happened to witness the incident and stopped to help seemed to satisfy them all right, but I happen to know you had a gun. What on earth did you do with it?”

He gave her an enigmatic look, then after a moment relented. In a seemingly casual movement, he lay one ankle across the opposite knee and gave his pantleg a twitch—just enough to reveal the holster strapped to his leg. He muttered out of one side of his mouth, “Cops’d have no reason to pat down an innocent bystander who’s just tryin’ to be a Good Samaritan, now, would they?”

Lucia began to laugh, silently at first, with one hand over her eyes. When, to her shock, the laughter became a sob, she clamped the hand over her mouth, but it was too late to stop it. She gave Adam one brief, horrified look, then closed her eyes on the streaming tears. And after a moment she felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder, then begin to pat her, awkwardly, tentatively. The rather touching sweetness of the gesture turned the tears back into watery laughter.

She dabbed at her cheeks with the blanket the emergency medical team had given her, since what was left of her gown was a bit gory and left a good deal of modesty to be desired. She had no idea what had become of her fur wrap and shoes.

“Sorry, luv, haven’t got a hanky, I’m afraid.” Adam didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed she’d turned off the waterworks. Not that he minded being cast in the role of comforter, but his usual methods of dealing with female tears seemed far too dangerous in this particular circumstance.

“That’s all right.” She sniffed, blew, wiped, then asked, “How soon will we know something?”

“Haven’t a clue. But no worries, Laz is gonna be fine. He’s just got some busted ribs. They’re probably running tests and monitoring his condition to make sure there’s no damage to his heart. He took a pretty good hit to the chest, you know. Bullets can do some damage, even with a vest on. Believe me, I know.”

She just looked at him for a moment with those aquamarine eyes of hers—reminded him of the color of the water off the Great Barrier Reef from the air—then said in a voice he could barely hear, “I know all that. I was asking about the boy.”

Adam actually rocked back a bit when she said that, as if she’d gobsmacked him. “The boy—you mean the shooter? You’re askin’ me about the devil that almost killed—”

“He’s not a devil, Adam, he’s not even a man. Didn’t you see him? He’s just a kid.”

“Yeah, a kid with a bloody big gun.” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could he be wrong about her feelings for Laz after all?

“Corbett didn’t want him dead,” she went on in that hushed, almost fearful voice. “What if he dies, Adam? What if I killed him? Corbett’s going to be so angry with me.”

He snorted. “I seriously doubt that. Especially considering the alternative.”

“The…alternative?”

“Yeah—you dead instead of ‘the kid.’” He shoved himself to his feet, because he felt as if some sort of giant spring inside of him was getting ready to let go. “Look—you stay put. I’ll go and see what I can find out, okay?”

All he knew was he had to get away from her before he said or did something that was going to embarrass the hell out of both of them.

He found Corbett in a curtained cubicle, hooked up to a monitor of some sort and looking none too happy about it.

“Thank God,” he growled when he saw Adam. “I was about to abandon all hope of rescue. Help me up, will you?”

Adam was about to question the wisdom of that move but changed his mind when he saw the look on Corbett’s face and instead simply offered his arm.