Hot Ice

felt the little pulse in her right thumb throb. “Fascinating.”
    “Sure, Dimitri’s a real fascination. He has an affection for soft, pretty things. Both of his wives were stunners.” He gave her a long, level look. “He’d like your style.”
    She tried not to shudder. “So, he’s married.”
    “Married twice,” Doug explained. “And tragically widowed twice, if you catch the drift.”
    She did, and bit into the fruit thoughtfully. “What makes him so… successful,” she decided for lack of a better term.
    “Brains and a streak of ice-cold mean. I’ve heard he can quote Chaucer while he’s sticking pins between your toes.”
    She lost her appetite for the fruit. “Is that his style? Poetry and torture?”
    “He doesn’t simply kill, he executes, and he executes with ceremony. He keeps a first-class studio where he tapes his victims before, during, and after.”
    “Oh God.” She studied Doug’s face, wanting to believe he was weaving a tale. “You’re not making that up.”
    “I ain’t got that much imagination. His mother was a schoolteacher, I hear, with a few wires crossed.” Juice dribbled down his chin and he wiped at it absently. “Story goes that when he couldn’t recite some poem, Byron or somebody, I think, she hacked off his pinky.”
    “She—” Whitney choked, then forced herself to swallow. “His mother cut off his finger because he couldn’t recite?”
    “That’s the story on the streets. Seems she was religious and got her poetry and theology a little mixed. Figured if the kid couldn’t quote Byron, he was being sacrilegious.”
    For the moment she forgot the horror and death Dimitri had been responsible for. She thought of a young boy. “That’s horrible. She should’ve been taken away.”
    He wanted her to shy away from revenge, but he didn’t want to replace it with pity. One was as dangerous as the other. “Dimitri saw to that, too. When he left home to start his own—business, he went out in a blaze. He torched the whole damn apartment building where his mother lived.”
    “He killed his own mother?”
    “He got her—and twenty or thirty other people. He didn’t have anything against them, you understand. They just happened to be there at the time.”
    “Revenge, amusement, or gain,” she murmured, remembering her earlier thoughts on killing.
    “That about sums it up. If there’s such a thing as a soul, Whitney, Dimitri’s is black with boils running on it.”
    “If there’s such a thing as a soul,” she repeated, “we’re going to help his into hell.”
    He didn’t laugh. She’d said it too quietly. He studied her face, pale and tired in the bright moonlight. She meant what she said. He was already indirectly responsible for the death of two innocents. In that moment, he took responsibility for Whitney. Another first for Doug Lord.
    “Sugar.” He shifted so that he sat next to her. “The first thing we have to do is stay alive. The second is to get to the treasure. That’s all we have to do to make Dimitri pay.”
    “It’s not enough.”
    “You’re new at this. Listen, you get in a kick when you can, then you back off. That’s the way to stay in business.” She wasn’t listening. Uncomfortable, Doug came to a decision. “Maybe it’s time you got a look at the papers.” He didn’t have to see her face to know she was surprised. He could feel it in the way her shoulder moved against him.
    “Well, well,” she said softly. “Break out the champagne.”
    “Get smart and I might change my mind.” Relieved by her grin, he reached in his pocket. Reverently he held the envelope. “This is the key,” he said. “The goddamn key. And I’m using it to get through the lock I’ve never been able to pick.” Drawing out papers, one by one, Doug smoothed them.
    “Mostly in French like the letter,” he murmured. “But someone already translated a good bit.” He hesitated another moment, then handed her a yellowed sheet enclosed in clear plastic. “Look at the signature.”
    Whitney took it, skimming down the text. “My God.”
    “Yeah. Let ′em eat cake. Looks like she sent this message a few days before she was taken prisoner. The translation’s here.”
    But Whitney was already reading the leader written in the tragic queen’s own hand. “Leopold has failed me,” she murmured.
    “Leopold II, Holy Roman emperor and Marie’s brother.”
    She lifted her gaze to Doug’s. “You’ve done your homework.”
    “I like