On Thin Ice by Anne Stuart Read Free Book Online

piece of tail,” the teenager said. “You feel like sharing?”
    “I’ll let you know,” MacGowan said, faint amusement in his voice. “In the meantime, keep your mouths shut and follow me. I want to get as far away as we can by first light.”
    “Where are we going, exactly?” the German demanded, still eyeing her uneasily.
    “If I told you it wouldn’t mean anything, exactly,” he mimicked. “And Junior, keep your hormones to yourself. She’s tougher than she looks, and she’s had enough of horny teenagers to last her.”
    “Dude!” the kid protested, but a sharp gesture shut him off.
    “Okay, darlin’,” he said. “You follow me, then Froelich, then Junior. I figure he’s not worth as much as the rest of you, and if his father has any sense he wouldn’t pay a dime to get him back, so he’s expendable.”
    “Harsh, man,” the kid said.
    “Shut the fuck up and start walking,” he said. And they did.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    The home offices of Bradley Manufacturing and Import, Ltd., were still and quiet in the late November morning. Peter Madsen sat back in his chair, staring at the computer screen abstractedly, barely listening as the rain clicked against the windows with icy insistence. He was used to the cold of English winters. Only his bad leg protested, and he ignored it, as he ignored anything inconvenient.
    He liked working in a vacuum. The board that oversaw the covert work done by the organization he headed left him alone, and it seemed as if even the CIA had stopped hounding him. It was always possible that they’d finally given up looking for the former head of the Committee, Isobel Lambert, and her lover and former CIA operative Thomas Killian, but he didn’t believe it. In four years they’d been unable to get any closer to finding them, and if Peter had his way they never would. Nor would the various other international groups that desperately wanted to take out Killian, or Serafin the Butcher as he’d once been known during his undercover work. Both Isobel and Killian were experts at getting so lost no one could ever find them. Not even the best in the business, which was, frankly, himself.
    The fact that he knew exactly where they were, and always had, was due to Isobel’s choice and not any brilliance on his part. If anyone decided he held the answers and tried to get them out of him, Isobel knew that he was, simply, unbreakable.
    There were no family photos on his desk or on the computer or in his wallet. He didn’t need them – he had a photographic memory. And there was no way he’d put them at risk. Their existence was no secret, but his reputation as the Iceman was so widespread that no one would dare touch them. He’d done just enough to terrify the most hard-boiled assassins. He’d installed other security measures as well, just to be on the safe side, and he’d made sure Genevieve knew how to shoot, and shoot well. Mahmoud, once a child soldier and now a seventeen-year old with the arrogant attitude of a teenager and the cold-eyed determination of a killer, would keep the only mother he’d known safe, as well as the two babies, six month old Sasha, and Isobel, nearing three. They were as safe as anyone could humanly be, and normally he didn’t even think about them when he was at work, compartmentalizing everything neatly.
    But today he couldn’t help it. The message had flashed across his computer screen, the ghost messages that came from Isobel, merely a passing cloud of phosphors that vanished the moment he touched the computer. He had no idea where she got her intel. She and Killian were so far off the grid that they could have been on another planet. The tiny island in the middle of the Southern Pacific was almost impossible to find, like something out of a dream, and he liked to think of the two of them living alone there, dispensing with clothing and even conversation most of the time.
    At other moments he wondered whether they’d ended up killing each