Consumed by Fire Read Online Free PDF

as he fulfilled his part of the plan, nothing else mattered.
    Ah, but it did matter. James needed to remember why he was here, as an adjunct to someone who knew him as well as anyone. Which wasn’t much—James kept his secrets as did she, and he wasn’t about to cozy up to her and confess all. That thought was horrible. For now she simply took him at his word.
    Not that she cared. He could just as easily have been sent as the active agent, with her as backup, but the sad fact was he lacked her total ruthlessness. He let ridiculous things bother him, like compassion, and mercy, and forgiveness. Those things were weaknesses, and it was little wonder she’d been put in charge of this job. He might have seen Corsini with a child and suddenly decided he deserved to live.
    As for Claudia, she didn’t know why they had been charged with getting rid of Corsini, and she didn’t care. The Corsini family was involved in a dozen illegal operations, from drug smuggling to sex trafficking, but the old man was simply an accountant, an important cog in the machine, but not the capo dei capi . The organization that she and James served, ingenuously called the Committee, believed in compartmentalizing information. Things worked better that way. James held one piece of the puzzle, she held another. Solving puzzles was a game for children. As long as she could use her skills and ply her trade, the rest was for other people to work out. She was a weapon. All they had to do was point her.
    The Committee provided her with an outlet for her complicated desires. A covert, multinational organization centered in London, it ostensibly sought to stamp out terrorism and international crime in ruthless ways no public organization could ever get away with, supposedly making the world safe. Claudia didn’t give a damn about politics, and she knew the world would never be safe. She preferred it that way.
    She waited until the hall was empty. James had already baited his trap, and no one would be up here roaming the corridors. No one would see if she slipped into the girl’s room. She might not care about the people she was sent to kill, but those she chose on her own were different. Besides, she might have to answer to Madsen if it were traced back to her, and it always helped to know a little bit about her self-appointed victims. She might need a plausible excuse, and target practice wouldn’t do.

    Evangeline was the last person down for dinner, late as usual, and she liked it that way. Most of the evening crowd was already seated, busy in conversation with dinner partners, and there was no sign of James Bishop. If he stood her up she’d be overjoyed, she told herself.
    She glanced at the restaurant in the atrium of the small hotel. It was a Saturday night and the place was jammed—it was one of the best places to eat in Cabrisi and they took in guests from the various B and Bs in the town, even stealing diners from the Americanized hotel in the business district. There were a number of couples who were unfamiliar to her, and then the usuals. The American couple was on a trip to celebrate their retirement, and they held hands, so she assumed it was a second marriage. No one held hands after ten years. In fact, she couldn’t imagine her cool, practical parents getting close enough to each other to spawn two children, but in fact they had. The physical resemblances were indisputable, even though as a child she’d often daydreamed that she was adopted.
    The two British matrons were arguing, as they always did, in their crisp, bird-like tones. They wore tweed skirts, twinsets, and sensible shoes, and she imagined the British matrons, or spinsters, or whatever they were considered, had worn the same uniform for the last eighty years. They tended to fight about money—one of them was frugal, the other a spendthrift—and she wondered if they were lovers. She hoped so. They certainly treated each other with the air of long-term partners. Though they