Page 18 of You Only Love Twice
A chill ran down her spine as she heard the swish of a light footstep behind her.
Just nerves, you fool.There's no one here.
And yet, she could feel all the hairs on her spine lifting.
Gemma took a breath. "Hullo?" she called, taking a cautious step forward. "Is anybody there?"
Silence.
The faintest shift of leather on the marble floors caught her ear. Gemma froze. She'd thought she was imagining things, but that was definitely the sound of someone else.
"Gemma?" Charlie muttered in her ear. "What's wrong? I'm getting some... static interference...."
"Keep your eyes on the target," she whispered, taking several more steps. Stillness radiated through the darkened room.
This was ridiculous.
You took a fright. It doesn't mean anything. The Chameleon isn't afteryou, after all.
But what if it wasn't the Chameleon?
Someone had been following her.
Someone had saved her life in this very room.
As if to prove her wrong, something small and round rolled across the floor. Gemma drew her pistol, spinning in that direction, her heart hammering in her chest. A child's marble bumped against the side of a case, and spun to a halt.
"Curse you, I know you're here. You healed me," she whispered, turning in slow circles, hunting for him. "I should have died but I didn't, and I couldn't understand why...."
A listening sense of silence this time.
"I know you're following me. What do you want from me?"
Nothing.
Nothing but silence.
"I want to see you," she suddenly demanded, her voice ringing out loud and sharp. "Damn you, show yourself!"
"Gem...sha..." Charlie's voice gave a high-pitched whine in her ear, and then shirred into unintelligible static.
Gemma whipped her earpiece free, wincing at the sound. What on earth was wrong with her communicator?
Movement shifted out of the corner of her eye. She spun around, her skirts whisking against her ankles.
Something sharp bit into her neck.
Gemma slapped a hand there, feeling the tiny dart that stuck out of her skin.
A man stepped out of the shadows. Gemma's breath caught in her throat as he took a step toward the light. First his shoe appeared, and then his slacks, and then hands gloved in black leather.
Broad shoulders. Pale, brown hair that brushed against his collar. And that breathtaking, oh-so-familiar face. A face that mimicked those she'd once seen on a painting of Lucifer's fall.
"Dmitri," she breathed, heat flooding from her extremities and centering in on her heart like some sort of protective mechanism. Her body was stiffening up, her legs losing all feeling. Hemlock. He'd used hemlock on her.
Everything flashed before her eyes. Saint Petersburg. Dancing under gilded lights. The taste of his mouth the first time she kissed him, her gloved hands sliding over his roughened cheeks.
The shock of the bullet ripping through her chest, and the icy plunge she'd taken into the river that literally stole her breath.
