The Last Assassin Read Online Free PDF

child is mine. But I have to know. You can understand that, can’t you?”
    There was another long pause. Her hand was still on my thigh, but it felt like an afterthought now.
    After a moment, she said, “I can. But from what you’ve said, right now, Midori and the boy aren’t in any danger. If you go to them, you might put them in danger, and yourself, too.” She paused, then added, “But you know that.”
    â€œYeah.”
    She took her hand off my leg. “Well, it’s not as though I was expecting us to figure out our crazy situation in just a few days together. It was going to take time no matter what. So you should do what you have to.”
    I looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
    She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.” Then she laughed. “Things are never easy for us, are they?”
    â€œShould I not have told you? We don’t have much time together, and I didn’t want to ruin it.”
    â€œYou didn’t ruin anything. I’m glad you told me. It was respectful.”
    â€œWhat do we do now?”
    â€œWe enjoy the time we have together. Like always.”
    But I didn’t want it to be like always. I wanted it to be more than that, and so, I was beginning to understand, did she.
    I wanted to tell her all that. But I didn’t. I just said, “Thank you.”
    She shook her head and smiled. “I’m going to take a bath. You want to join me?”
    I looked at her, still wanting to say more, still not knowing how.
    â€œA bath would be good,” I said.

    LATER , Delilah lay next to Rain in the dark. Pale light from a half-moon shone through one of the windows, and she watched him sleep in that almost spookily silent way of his. Most people would be wired all night after a run-in like the one they’d had earlier—she was—but Rain had dropped off almost immediately after they got in bed.
    He could be so gentle with her when it was just the two of them that it was hard to remember what he was capable of. But she’d seen his other side before, first on Macau, then in Hong Kong, and she’d felt it surface again tonight in the Barri Gòtic. She wouldn’t have told him, but she’d interceded with those drunken Brits in part because she was afraid of what Rain might do if she didn’t. She’d noticed him palm something from his front pocket during the confrontation, and assumed it was a knife. She’d hurt that guy badly tonight, it was true. But she was pretty sure Rain would have killed him.
    Before going to bed, they’d made love again in the bath. She was glad of that, and took it as a good sign. They had a new situation to deal with, true, as it seemed they always did, but it didn’t affect their fundamental chemistry. She hoped it wasn’t the situations that were fueling the chemistry. She’d had affairs like that, where it was the illicitness, or the danger, or some similar thrill that kept the thing going. She didn’t want that with Rain. She wanted something more stable. Something…
    She smiled. The word that had come to her, and that she didn’t want to say, was lasting.
    She’d been aware of these feelings before meeting him here, but she hadn’t fully acknowledged them. She’d been afraid to. But now that she was faced with the prospect of losing him, of another woman who’d thrown a trump card down on the table, she couldn’t hide from her hopes, either.
    She realized she was thinking in Hebrew, and that was strange. French was her default setting for matters of the heart. The one exception was Dov, and she realized with a pang that somewhere along the line Rain must have come to occupy a similar place in her consciousness, the place where she kept her first language, her first love, perhaps her first self.
    She watched him. It was good with this man lying next to her, it really was. It wasn’t what she had with Dov, but