Susan Johnson - Hot Streak

The men had armed themselves on the descent. Sylvie's blond hair was easily visible above the parked cars even in the dimly lit garage. Splitting up, each man trailed the two women, flanking their progress.

Carey heard the car ignition before he saw it, realized the woman had stopped with Sylvie as though she were waiting for the car turning the corner of the aisle ahead. Knowing that Ant and Luger would cover him, he stepped out into the aisle and shouted, “Sylvie!” He waved as though he were trying to catch up to her.

As the dark-haired woman spun around, he was already running toward them. He saw the surprise in her expression, saw her toss the towels aside. While her arm was swinging up to aim her pistol at him, he pumped three rounds into her head from hip level. Still rushing forward, he grabbed Sylvie around her waist and they both tumbled behind a parked car just as the black Mercedes applied its brakes.

“Stay down,” he ordered, aiming for the tires and firing the rest of his magazine into the two front tires. Even if the car was bulletproofed with specially equipped tires, you could usually slow it down with a few well-placed rounds in the tires. And Luger was carrying some weapons effective against bulletproof glass. As Carey reloaded, the car moved forward again, its damaged tires diminishing its speed. “Have you got them?” he shouted out, neither Ant or Luger visible.

“I got them,” Luger replied, his voice cool and without emotion.

And as he watched, a barrage of gunfire tracked symmetrical paths down the windows on both sides of the car, shattering the glass. Careening out of control, the car slammed into several parked automobiles before it came to a shuddering stop fifty yards down the aisle.

The men arrived at the Mercedes with poised weapons, but no one moved inside. Both men were slumped in the front seat. Ant opened the doors with gloved hands and double-checked.

“And now we disappear,” Ant said, turning back from his task.

“Right,” Carey agreed. “I'll get Sylvie and call you at home in a day or so. No sense in overloading the police with a lot of paper work.”

Ant grinned. “A true model citizen.”

Luger was repacking his canvas bag, more intent than Carey on avoiding the police since his weapons were all illegal.

“And thanks,” Carey said, his voice subdued. “I owe you.”

“Forget it,” Ant said.

“My pleasure,” Luger quietly retorted, his bag slung over his shoulder. “That TOW was a beaut… lit up half of Rome.”

For a moment it seemed nothing had changed, and Carey was years younger seeing Luger and Ant coming back from a mission with that same elation. Although their worlds had turned full circle countless times, the sense of accomplishment was the same.

“Come to my wedding,” Carey said, putting his hand out.

“Wouldn't miss it,” Ant replied, grasping Carey's hand in a street-smart high sign.

“Carol likes weddings,” Luger said, “so we'll come.” And his hand gripped Carey's in a firm, hard clasp.

They turned then, and melted into the shadows.

H e returned to Sylvie and helped her to her feet. She looked pale and disheveled, but wasn't hysterical.

“Did you get them all?” she asked, glancing at the dead woman lying on the cement. Her voice was more shaken than he'd ever heard.

“I think so… and with Rifat dead-” He shrugged, not able to give her an iron-clad guarantee. “This should be the last attempt.” He looked at the pistol he still held in his hand, then slipped it into his sports jacket pocket.

“You saved my life.” Sylvie's eyes misted with tears, and her pouty mouth quivered.

With Sylvie, one never knew if she was playing a role or was sincere, but neither possibility interested him, so Carey smiled and said, “With a great deal of help from Ant and Luger. About which-” He glanced around, concerned with discovery before he had time to rehearse Sylvie's story. “Listen, darling,” he coaxed, “we've got to get out of here. Ant and Luger don't want to be involved.” Taking her hand, he began pulling her toward the service stairs, hoping no one would drive in or step out of the elevators in the next thirty seconds.

“Why ever not?” she asked, trying to keep up with his rapid stride.

“Mostly because all their weapons are illegal, and the police would take issue with their possession of them. Both Ant and Luger occasionally tread the perimeters of the law.” Opening the stairwell door, he ushered her in.

“But they helped save my life. I'm sure the police would understand.”

“Uh, darling…” He indicated they were going up. “Some police might understand, and then some may not. Neither Ant nor Luger care to take that gamble. Understand?”

Sylvie glanced over at Carey as they ascended the stairs side-by-side. “Well, certainly I do. Why didn't you say your friends were criminals? Sweetheart, my lips are sealed, absolutely.”

Rather than argue with Sylvie's interpretation, Carey quickly agreed. Subtlety escaped Sylvie's comprehension.

“How will you explain the bullet holes in the car, though?”

“I'd just as soon not explain anything.” And he'd prefer to plead ignorance to the entire episode in the parking garage. But he knew Sylvie was seen leaving with the cleaning woman who now lay dead with a bullet between her eyes, and he wasn't going to be able to carry off the denial.

“Carey, dear, I absolutely insist you get the credit for saving my life. You were terribly heroic, and you deserve the kudos.”

“No publicity… I don't want it.”

“Nonsense.” The old Sylvie was back now that she was removed from the scene of bloodshed. “You shot that awful woman and saved me from kidnapping. I owe you my life.” Her voice trembled in a dramatic inflection sure to carry to the last balcony.

“Cut it out, Sylvie. This whole thing has to be played way the hell down.”

“Fine. Protect your friends, if you wish. Say whatever you want about the car. I'll cooperate with your story, but I will not be silent on your extraordinary act of bravery.”

Sylvie and publicity were a natural combination like heart and lung function; one didn't exist long without the other. The question was how to keep her under some semblance of control so Ant and Luger would be protected and his part in the episode limited.

He talked very rapidly on the last flight of stairs. They would deny all knowledge of the men in the car. Carey would admit to shooting the cleaning woman when she threatened Sylvie's life. Perhaps the two dead men in the car were part of some drug dealing vendetta. With the current daily total of murders in Miami, that suggestion wouldn't be unreasonable. He had fired at the car he would admit, only if ballistics tests implicated him, and in the panic of the moment missed, hitting the tires.

So when the police officer hired to guard the door into the west wing questioned Sylvie about her disappearance, her story was intact.

A tear even slid down her cheek when she breathlessly began: “I was almost kidnapped! If not for my dear ex-husband Count Fersten who fearlessly placed his own life in jeopardy to save mine,” she paused for dramatic effect, “I should be this very moment a captive.”

Within twenty minutes the hospital was aswarm with police, reporters, photographers, and television crews. The police were insistent for details, the reporters clamoring for interviews and a press conference.

“No press conference,” Carey snapped.

“Darling,” Sylvie cooed, playing for the audience, “don't be so modest!” And she launched again into her now thoroughly rehearsed version of her heroic salvation from kidnapping.

Carey kept his distance from the press and tried unsuccessfully to pry Sylvie loose, once the police were nominally satisfied with the fabricated story. “Sylvie, that's enough,” he muttered, his jaw clenched tight in restrained anger.

“Just one more question, darling,” she replied with a smile, blowing him a kiss. “Isn't he a darling?” she purred to the crowd of reporters in the hallway. “A modest hero.”

Those words segued into the TV evening news. “Isn't he a darling?”

Then Sylvie came on the screen looking flushed and beautiful, only recently saved from abduction by her ex-husband. She blew him a sultry kiss as only Sylvie von Mansfeld could. Every man in America watching the six o'clock news wished he were the recipient of that kiss from the most sensual, pouty lips in the world.

Molly was grateful Bernadotte and the girls were still out riding; she was saved from having to hide her humiliation from all of them. She had been sitting in the cool, dim study, sunk in one of the soft leather armchairs, feeling sorry for herself even before the news item flashed across the screen.

With Carey gone, so many of the differences in their lives had taken on more forbidding proportions, starting with Sylvie. With time on her hands, Molly had escalated them into enormous differences. The past still haunted her, with all the old residual insecurities intact. She hardly knew Carey. Just how much of a life together could be based on an overwhelming passion, she wondered, when both of them were strangers to each other beneath the all-consuming desire?

Then she would remind herself, her feelings alone weren't at stake. Carrie mattered tremendously, too, and she adored her father. She mustn't be hasty or rash, Molly cautioned herself, swept away by some terrible jealousy over an ex-wife and in so doing harm her daughter. But in the next heartbeat, Sylvie's picture reappeared in her mind, Sylvie with invitation blatant, Sylvie who was more important at the moment than she.

Immature, immature, she chastised herself. Good God, he had to stay… the woman's life was in danger. But the admonition didn't stand up for a minute against her demon of jealousy. Dammit, he was every woman's goddamned hero. He was her daughter's hero. Age was not a consideration in female adoration. Every female who came within ten feet of Carey Fersten adored him. Without exception.

When Carey called, although she tried to behave in a civilized way, Molly's resentment was obvious.

“You made the six o'clock news,” she said. “Congratulations.” But her voice wasn't congratulatory, and she wanted to blurt out more. Is she still hot for you? How does it feel to hold the world's sexiest woman? Do you think of me when she's purring in your ear?

Instead, she said, “Carrie's missing her two weeks of camp we'd scheduled last winter,” she said. “If the danger is over, I'd like to go back home.”

“Leon can drive you. I'll fly into the Cities tomorrow. The police are being,” he paused, not wishing to go into any detail of the abduction attempt, “well… police.”

“I might still be at Kichigoomi tomorrow, dropping off Carrie,” Molly rebuffed.

“I'll wait at your place,” Carey replied.

“I may be very late.”

“I'll keep the light burning in the window.”

She needed some time to herself, Molly decided, to sort out all the Fersten charm against Darian reality, to deal with Carey's terrorist connections impinging on her daughter's normal childhood, to come to terms with the glitz and glamour surrounding an international film director in contrast to her perhaps idealized notions of a peaceful life in an old factory turned home and business.

Seeing Carey's childhood home had reinforced her impressions of aristocratic wealth and privilege. Although Bernadotte was a natural, unaffected man, he accepted all the prerogatives of affluence casually as though living in a mansion surrounded by servants, having one's own stable and airstrip were normal. While she admired his lack of pretention, she perceived a patrician noblesse he didn't even realize he exuded.

How many differences of attitude would surface day after day, month after month, between herself and Carey? Would he think her bourgeois-a Cinderella with cinders on her feet. Would she find him condescending? She embraced the melting pot ethic enough to question why a duke or duchess, a prince or princess was fawned on by society, splashed across the pages of W or Town and Country or People, when in fact, many were, at base, ignorant and boorish. With a reverse snobbery of her own, it annoyed her when wealthy ladies proudly said the millions they spent on couturier clothes were helping the economy and all the charity functions they attended were a noblesse oblige impulse to aid the needy. She found such hypocrisy offensive when children were living through blizzards with their parents in cars, cold and hungry and bewildered. And she was afraid her anger would appear incomprehensible to someone who didn't know the price of anything.