The Last Assassin Read Online Free PDF

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 how could it be? She had known Dov before she was formed, when she was guileless, even defenseless. When she was just a girl, in fact. That girl was long gone, so how could she expect a love like hers?
    But there were elements of what she had with Rain that she hadn’t had with Dov, or with anyone. She and Rain were of the same world. Each understood the other’s habits and didn’t judge the other’s past. They recognized and accepted the weight they each carried from the things they’d done. Both knew that weight irrevocably separated them from civilian society, and at the same time brought them together like some secret sign.
    On top of all of which, she couldn’t deny, was some astonishing personal chemistry, and the sex that went along with it.
    But she didn’t think it was love, exactly. It was more like…the possibility of love. She wondered for a moment what the difference was, or whether she would ever even know the difference, but she didn’t want to think about that now.
    She doubted he was seeing things clearly, and that concerned her. His tradecraft was superb, but as far as she knew he’d never before had to use it when he was this emotionally involved. He could screw up. He could get killed. And for what?
    He was taking a risk in going to see Midori and the child. He’d acknowledged as much. And a man like Rain would never take a risk like that unless there was something serious he was hoping to gain from it.
    She considered for a moment. What do men do when they’re facing a hard decision? They defer it by trying to collect more data. Maybe that’s all he was up to. But it hurt to know there was even a decision to make.
    She tried always to be realistic, to keep her hopes in check. She knew she had no future in her