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Page 60.

He said, "I am filled with smoke and explosions and screaming and bloody things to look at. I don't remember everything. I took a hit in the head. Lucky I was wearing a helmet. I woke up with two U.S. Army MPs giving me CPR on the side of the road. Pitch black. Panic. I tried to sit up, ask about my squad, but they shook their heads. All dead. I was the only survivor. They want to string me up in K-Town, cover it up, send me to Fort Leavenworth busted to buck nobody for fifty years, but I am innocent. I'm sure I am. I just don't know that I am. I mean, I don't know how. But that's not my style. Someone sent us there that shouldn't have, and they are covering it up."

She patted his hands. "See, we need each other, Mr. Buchan. Rick. I don't think of you as Mr. Army or Mr. Soldier or Sergeant Buchan. I think of you as a handsome, nice man I'd like to lie on a towel with on a sunny day in Monterey or Half Moon Bay, and just watch the Pacific Ocean curling quietly on the warm California sand."

"You left out the palm trees." He smiled.

"Who thinks about palm trees when you've always lived there? That's for tourists."

"Let's be tourists there."

"No, let's live there."

"You mean that, Hannah? You and me?"

She nodded fervently.

He said, "You are the dream of my life now. Only—"

"I know. Kaiserslautern. It's not only, Richard. I am with you. Whatever happens, wherever you go, there I will be beside you."

"And we only just met."

"It seems like ages."

"I know." It was wonderful. He sighed. "I have someone there who says she is working to help me. Nice lady. JAG officer named Kendra Walsh. Major Walsh. I think she is an honest, brainy woman who cannot stand to see a good guy get the shaft to help a rotten apple."

"That's an equation I can agree with," Hannah said. "Thank you for last night." She embraced him tightly, squeezing the breath out of him. "Thank you, baby. I'll never forget you and Belair."

"Why talk about forgetting?" He teased, "Want to lose us so soon?"

She shook her head. There was a distant something on the horizon in her eyes. "You have Kaiserslautern. I have PAX."

"Yeah, we'll handle that together. I'll be with you all the way."

"That's so nice, for a change. Oh god I need you." She bobbed impatiently to her feet, changing the conversation. "Come on, my prince. Let's saunter. Destiny awaits."

"Isn't that a laundry detergent?" He rose, gently patting her butt.

"Skin cream," she said over her shoulder with a pert squint.

The air was filled with the tinkling of the cathedral's chimes, wafting their delicate way through a melody of sacred music.

They walked hand in hand to the mossy stone stairway, with its greenish balustrade, that overlooked the Rue de Notre Dame about twenty feet below.

They stopped for a moment, leaning on the stone bannister. They looked down toward the cathedral entrance across the street, and to see if Romain's car had perchance cruised to a stop at the curb there.

Rick was just about to gaze over the tiny square, hemmed in by buildings, that led from the street to the main cathedral entrance. His eyes had not yet focused when she jabbed him sharply in the ribs with her elbow.

"No." Hannah pulled on his sleeve. "Stop."

"What?"

She was pale as if she'd seen a ghost and come away even more drained of blood. Her mouth hung open in distress.

Rick saw immediately what she meant. Standing near the curb was Savia, the Cuban woman in Wan's employ—the female killer from behind the Bar-39 in Bagnolet, Paris.

Rick and Hannah whirled and walked quickly from the balustrade back into the square. Sacred music continued tinkling around them like ice in a glass. "Do you think she saw us?"

"I'm not sure," Hannah said, "but does it matter?"

Rick nodded darkly. "If she's here, that means they're actively hunting us and the package that Wan wants at any cost. Yoichi can't be far, and Wan is probably in the city by now also."

Just then, Hannah's phone chirped.

"It's Romain," she whispered to Rick. Then, into the phone, "Are you coming?"

Romain said something.

"No," Hannah said, "swing around and we'll meet you at the other end. I see one of Wan's people in front of the cathedral."

She rang off, took Rick's elbow, and pulled him along. "We're supposed to meet Romain on the Boulevard Royal. That's going to be a snappy ten minute walk. We need to get to Echternach and finish this before Wan finishes us, and it, and everything."

Rick sighed as she towed him along. "I guess the tour is over."

"Back to business," she said with a shudder of dread in her voice.

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