Malloy swallowed visibly. "You are Rousseau, aren't you?" he asked in a dry voice.
Catlin waited silently, staring at Malloy out of predatory yellow eyes.
"All right, yeah, I do a little raiding," said Malloy. "But never from friendlies. I don't mind dumping on the Commies when I get the chance know what I mean?"
"Who had the pipeline to Xi'an?"
Malloy shook his head. "Uh-uh. No way, no how. I'm; gonna live long enough to sponge off my kids."
"Bullshit, Malloy. I heard you were planning to steal the charioteer from the dealer who smuggled it in. The word was all over the street."
"Not the dealer," Malloy denied quickly. "I may be crazy but I ain't stupid! I was gonna lift it from his customer. But the deal never went down."
"What was the dealer asking for the charioteer?"
"Half a million."
"I'll pay twice that."
Malloy let out an explosive breath. "Shit, man, I'd give my left nut to broker that deal, but I don't have the goods."
"Get them."
"Can't be done."
"Then introduce me to someone who can do it. I'll make it worth your while."
"How much?"
"Three points of the final deal."
"Five."
"Three."
Malloy studied Catlin, shrugged and said, "Three."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes. I'm not exactly in the man's family-know what I mean?"
"One week. After that you lose a point a week."
"Hey, that's hardly-"
"Take it or leave it," Catlin said, turning back to his meal.
There was a moment of silence followed by Malloy's forced laugh. "You're on." He fiddled with his empty wineglass, adding more greasy fingerprints to the ones already there. "Well now, this calls for a celebration. How about a little champagne? We're gonna have a great night. You won't regret it will he, Missy?"
Malloy read Missy's wide, damp smile as agreement all around. He signaled a waiter, ordered a bottle of "the best goddamn champagne in the house" and then settled back into the booth with a satisfied smile. Under the table his thigh rested heavily against Lindsay's. He began jigging his knee, rubbing away at her leg as though he were a boy scout with two sticks and a cold night ahead.
"Isn't it exciting?" offered Missy, looking up into Catlin's eyes. "Oh, I just love helping Mitch with business. I'm going to look forward to seeing more of you. A whole lot more."
Catlin's smile was not encouraging, but subtleties eluded Missy. She snuggled her abundant breasts against his arm as she walked her fingers up and down his tie, counting the stripes. When the tie-fiddling failed to elicit a reaction, she managed to lose one of her diamond clip earrings between Catlin's legs. She shrieked in mock dismay, then giggled and began to grope around industriously, missing no possible hiding place, however unlikely that place might have been. As she explored Catlin, she apologized in a breathy little voice that became a squeak when she looked up and saw the boredom and contempt on his face.
"It isn't going to happen with you," Catlin said flatly. "Ever."
Malloy's hand had joined in the campaign on Lindsay's thigh. Suddenly she felt nauseated enough to make another trip to the rest room seem inevitable. She had managed to sit down to dinner with maggots, but she hadn't yet learned not to gag.
"Let me out," Lindsay said, turning toward Malloy without meeting his eyes. "I have to "
The sentence was never finished because Malloy was standing up and pulling Lindsay out of the booth.
"Me too, babe," he said, sliding his arm around her waist, digging his fingers into her hip. "C'mon," he said against her ear. "I know a place where the sheets are hot and the movies are in color know what I mean? And don't worry about Catlin. Once Missy goes to work, he won't even know you're gone."
Lindsay's control snapped. She made a choked sound and tried to push free of the drunken art dealer. It didn't work. He was taller than she was, thick bodied, strong.
"Malloy." Catlin's voice was oddly toneless. When Malloy glanced over, Catlin smiled. "Come here, Lindsay-love," Catlin said softly.
For an instant Lindsay was too shocked to move. It wasn't the endearment Catlin had used that paralyzed her, it was the smile he directed at Malloy. She had never seen such a naked promise of violence.
Malloy had seen it, too. He let go of Lindsay and stepped back quickly. Catlin slid out of the booth and stood with predatory grace.
"Hey, man, I was just kidding," Malloy said quickly, holding up his hands as though to show that he was weaponless, no threat at all.
"I told you once before. I don't have a sense of humor. I've never had to tell anyone a third time. Know what I mean?"
Malloy knew exactly what Catlin meant.
Catlin held out his left hand. Lindsay came to him instantly, pressing against the hard length of his body as though that could wipe away even the memory of Malloy's grasping fingers. Dimly she realized that she was trembling.
"I don't " Lindsay said, but her voice thinned until it broke. She closed her eyes and desperately willed herself to be calm. She had come this far. All she had to do was get out of the restaurant without going to pieces. "I don't feel very well, Catlin," she said carefully. "Too many late nights, I guess." Her smile was as pale as her face. "Would you mind very much if we skipped dessert?"
"You're all the dessert I ever need," he said softly, smiling down at her.
It was a real smile, promising comfort rather than violence. Lindsay tried to smile in return. Catlin's arm squeezed gently. He bent down and brushed his lips over her hair.
"Hang on," he breathed against her ear.
Her only answer was the painful tightening of her fingers on his wrist.
"Call me when you have something to sell," Catlin said over his shoulder.
He didn't wait for an answer. He simply picked up Lindsay's cape and led her out of the restaurant and into San Francisco's crisp, damp summer night. He felt her shoulders shake with each deep, almost desperate breath she took and he felt the fine trembling of her body as he settled the black wool cape around her.
Part of Catlin's mind wondered almost dispassionately whether the bronzes would be found before Lindsay shattered into useless fragments. She was sleeping no more than four hours a night, and she spent part of that time deep in nightmare, crying out for a childhood long dead.
Not that Catlin was doing much better. He wasn't crying out for the past, but he lay awake cursing the present with a rage that grew greater each tune Lindsay returned from her midnight shower and crawled into bed next to him. He hadn't needed to turn on the light to know that her eyes were swollen from crying. Spent tears clogged her breathing and made her movements clumsy. It had been all he could do not to gather her up and warm her with his body, to breathe reassurance and peace into her until she slept deeply within his arms.
But he had neither reassurance nor peace within himself, so how could he give either to her? And without that, how could she survive long enough to do what must be done?
Is
that what Chen Yi meant when he told me to protect Lindsay? Catlin asked silently, savagely. Am I somehow supposed to protect her from herself? Because sure as hell I can't protect her from anything else. Not from Wu's righteous cruelty. Not from Malloy's clumsy slobbering. Not even from Stone's constant, subtle pressure to turn informer. What Lindsay really needs is a massive dose of tender loving care and nobody ever accused me of being tender or loving.
So what the hell good am I to her?
Lindsay shivered, drawing Catlin out of Ms bleak thoughts.
"Cold?" he asked, the only thing he could say because there were too many people around them.
"Just tired."
"Want to get a taxi instead of walking these hills?"
"No. I like being outside. It makes me feel
free. Clean." She laughed. The sound was as brittle as her smile. "What a silly thing to say. Must be the wine."
Absently Lindsay nibbed her hands up and down her arms, both warming herself and enjoying the softness of the wool jersey cape.
Catlin unbuttoned his suit coat, preparing to give it to her in addition to the cape.
"No," Lindsay said quickly. "Your gun will show."
"So what? Everyone who matters knows that I'm always armed."
"You? Or Rousseau?" Then, quickly, "Never mind. It doesn't matter. They're the same man."
Once Catlin would have agreed with her. Now he wasn't sure. The man called Rousseau would not have had rage turning in his gut like molten steel every time he thought of the pressures being brought to bear on a woman whose only fault was in being more gentle than the world around her. Rousseau would have done what he could and not lost any sleep over the results.
But the man called Catlin wasn't sleeping very well lately.
"I'm sorry," whispered Lindsay. "I have no right to "
Her words were cut off as he stepped in front of her and wrapped her close. Even as his body registered her softness and warmth, his half-closed eyes looked past her, seeking the FBI surveillance team that had been behind him now for a week.
They were nowhere in sight.
After a moment, Catlin led Lindsay slowly down the street. He stopped to admire a display in a store window, drawing her to a halt beside him. After he looked at the fall clothing on the half dozen mannequins, he glanced back down the street casually. Still none of the shadowy, anonymous figures who had become familiar in the past week.
But there was a new shadow, a wiry Chinese man who was all the more remarkable for his loitering outside a restaurant that was blocks from Chinatown.
"We've got company," Catlin murmured.
"We always have company," Lindsay said, trying and failing to control a ripple of fear. That, too, was part of her nightmare. She had been followed like this before, shadows sliding soundlessly behind her as she ran toward something, driven by a child's heedless anticipation of a gift. Lindsay knew one thing with a certainty that transcended rational memory: as a child, she had been followed and then something horrifying had happened, something that had been her fault. She knew that, too, even though she remembered only in nightmare what the incident was.
"This one's new," muttered Catlin.
Lindsay put her arms around him, resting against him for the space of a long breath. "Is that good or bad?"
"How are your feet?"
"Same way yours would be if you spent eight hours a day on tiptoe," she said, looking down at her high heels.
"Are you up to taking the long way home?"
"Catlin, I'll take any way home that will get me there," she said flatly.
"That's my honey cat," he said, smiling and kissing Lindsay's mouth softly. "Equal parts of claws and sweetness. Ready?"
Lindsay tried to ignore the sensations of heat sliding through her blood as Catlin smiled down at her and nuzzled her lips with his own. It was just an act, and Catlin-Rousseau was a consummate actor.
"Ready for what?" she asked.
"I want you to get a good look at the Chinese who's following us. No. Not yet," Catlin said, holding Lindsay's face immobile against his chest. "He's hanging way back. We're going to turn at the next corner, find a shop with a foyer and wait to see who comes looking for us. The man we want is about five feet six. He's wearing a dark, long-sleeved zipper jacket with no logo and dark slacks."
"Won't he know he's been discovered?"
"If you walked past a couple who had ducked out of the light for a bit of heavy breathing, would you worry about attracting their attention?"
Catlin kissed Lindsay swiftly before he turned and took her hand, kissed it and then kissed it again. As they walked along, he brought her hand to his lips many times, nibbled teasingly on her fingers and tested the softness of her inner wrist with his teeth, playing at being the impatient lover.
The instant they turned the corner, Catlin's legs stretched out in a fast, smooth stride, making for a doorway halfway down the block. He quickly discovered that the spot was even better than he had hoped. The sidewalk was illuminated from two sides from the store itself and from the streetlight nearby. He pulled Lindsay close.
"Catlin?"
"Yes?" he whispered, sliding his hand deeply into the silky warmth of Lindsay's hair.
Lindsay wondered how to voice her fears without revealing too much to him. Then she realized with a rising sense of panic that it no longer mattered. All that mattered was the act and surviving it.
"If you really kiss me, I won't be able to concentrate on the man who's following us," she said flatly.
Catlin's hand tightened in Lindsay's hair as the implications of her words went through him in a hot wave of desire.
"Close your eyes almost all the way," he whispered. "Just keep them open enough to catch a quick glimpse."
Long, thick lashes lowered over Lindsay's dark eyes. Catlin had to peer closely to be sure that she was looking at him.
"Like this?" she asked.
"Can you see?"
"Yes."
"Then it's perfect."
In the side light from the street, Lindsay's lashes threw mysterious shadows across her cheeks. Catlin looked at her for a long moment before he turned her, pulled her back against his chest and thrust his left hand through the overlapping front of her cape. He felt her silent gasp as his palm smoothed deliberately up the front of her body, shaping her thighs and stomach, coming to rest finally just below her breasts. The startled sound Lindsay made was muffled as his right hand settled firmly over her mouth, tilting her head back against his chest, subtly arching her body, holding her in place for his touch. He bent and closed his teeth on the rim of her ear.
"Easy, honey cat," he breathed against her ear. "This is the only way I'll be able to see him, too."
Catlin felt the wild beating of Lindsay's heart beneath his hand and knew her trembling came from more than fear. He swept aside the knowledge, because the demands of the act were more important; he needed to identify the Chinese man who should be turning the corner at any moment, his black eyes seeking the silhouette of two lovers strolling up the street. But the man would see nothing. That would worry him. He would hurry ahead, checking all the shadows, forgetting to conceal himself in his driving need to find the lovers he was following. As he stepped into the streetlight's revealing golden pool, he would see two people tangled together in the recessed doorway. He would hesitate, peering into the darkness, trying to see whether the couple was the same one he had been following.