Whistleblower and Never Say Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

tolerated. Not on my terrace. Are you a guest? You’re not?” He turned to one of the waiters. “Call the police. I want this man arrested.”
    “Are you all blind?” yelled Guy. “Didn’t any of you see he was trying to kill her?”
    “What? What? Who?”
    Guy poked around in the broken crockery and fished out the knife. “Not your usual cutlery,” he said, holding up the deadly looking weapon. The handle was ebony, inlaid with mother of pearl. The blade was razor sharp. “This one’s designed to be thrown.”
    “Oh, rubbish,” sputtered the Englishman.
    “Take a look at her arm!”
    The manager turned his gaze to Willy’s blood-soaked sleeve. Horrified, he took a stumbling step back. “Good God. I’ll—I’ll call a doctor.”
    “Never mind,” said Guy, sweeping Willy off the ground. “It’ll be faster if I take her straight to the hospital.”
    Willy let herself be gathered into Guy’s arms. She found his scent strangely reassuring, a distinctly male mingling of sweat and aftershave. As he carried her across the terrace, she caught a swirling view of shocked waiters and curious hotel guests.
    “This is embarrassing,” she complained. “I’m all right. Put me down.”
    “You’ll faint.”
    “I’ve never fainted in my life!”
    “It’s not a good time to start.” He got her into a waiting taxi, where she curled up in the backseat like a wounded animal.
    The emergency-room doctor didn’t believe in anesthesia. Willy didn’t believe in screaming. As the curved suture needle stabbed again and again into her arm, she clenched her teeth and longed to have the lunatic American hold her hand. If only she hadn’t played tough and sent him out to the waiting area. Even now, as she fought back tears of pain, she refused to admit, even to herself, that she needed any man to hold her hand. Still, it would have been nice. It would have been wonderful.
    And I still don’t know his name.
    The doctor, whom she suspected of harboring sadistic tendencies, took the final stitch, tied it off and snipped the silk thread. “You see?” he said cheerfully. “That wasn’t so bad.”
    She felt like slugging him in the mouth and saying, You see? That wasn’t so bad, either.
    He dressed the wound with gauze and tape, then gave her a cheerful slap—on her wounded arm, of course—and sent her out into the waiting room.
    He was still there, loitering by the reception desk. With all his bruises and cuts, he looked like a bum who’d wandered in off the street. But the look he gave her was warm and concerned. “How’s the arm?” he asked.
    Gingerly she touched her shoulder. “Doesn’t this country believe in Novocaine?”
    “Only for wimps,” he observed. “Which you obviously aren’t.”
    Outside, the night was steaming. There were no taxis available, so they hired a tuk-tuk, a motorcycle-powered rickshaw, driven by a toothless Thai.
    “You never told me your name,” she said over the roar of the engine.
    “I didn’t think you were interested.”
    “Is that my cue to get down on my knees and beg for an introduction?”
    Grinning, he held out his hand. “Guy Barnard. Now do I get to hear what the Willy’s short for?”
    She shook his hand. “Wilone.”
    “Unusual. Nice.”
    “Short of Wilhelmina, it’s as close as a daughter can get to being William Maitland, Jr.”
    He didn’t comment, but she saw an odd flicker in his eyes, a look of sudden interest. She wondered why. The tuk-tuk puttered past a klong, its stagnant waters shimmering under the streetlights.
    “Maitland,” he said casually. “Now that’s a name I seem to remember from the war. There was a pilot, a guy named Wild Bill Maitland. Flew for Air America. Any relation?”
    She looked away. “Just my father.”
    “No kidding! You’re Wild Bill Maitland’s kid?”
    “You’ve heard the stories about him, have you?”
    “Who hasn’t? He was a living legend. Right up there with Earthquake Magoon.”
    “That’s about what he