Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

activated the device, shutting it triggered the timer.”

“Oh.” Trust the CIA to tell you more than you wanted to know.

“You were damn lucky, Bel. It was designed so that most of the explosive force was directed up, or you still might have been killed.”

“Well, that’s a happy thought.” I shivered. “What I don’t get is, why? It’s over. You all said it was over.”

“We thought it was. Or I wouldn’t have pulled off the tail.”

“I’m not blaming you. I just want to know who wants me dead that bad…” I couldn’t go on.

“Did you tell anybody about the computer sheets?”

I frowned, trying to think, not an easy task with bomb echoes still reverberating through my cranium.

“No, no one knew but you.”

Kel stood up, restlessly pacing, his hand kneading the back of his neck. My hand felt bereft and cold.

I frowned. “I drove that car yesterday. It didn’t blow up.”

“The bomb had to have been planted last night.”

Into my scrambled brain filtered the memory of my two, Datsun-related near misses. “I wonder…”

“What? If you know something Bel, you have to tell me, even if it implicates someone you trust.”

“It’s nothing like that. It’s just that, well, yesterday there were a couple of tiny accidents that could have killed me.”

Kel’s face hardened to grim. “What happened?”

I told him about the parking lot at church and the freeway near miss. He frowned.

“I can see why you weren’t sure. Could have been accidents—if it weren’t for the bomb.”

I didn’t want to think about the bomb, so I asked, “Did you find out what those papers I found meant?”

Kel stalked to the window, then back to my bed, a caged frustration to his movements that really brightened the drab room. He looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t suppose it can hurt to tell you they’re computer models of embassies in the DC area.”

“Embassies? That’s bad.”

“It’s not good. Particularly since we’ve been expecting the Israelis and the Egyptians to be terrorist targets. Now we need to find out how and when.”

For the first time I noticed how tired and drawn he looked. I wasn’t his only worry. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help you.”

He looked at me somberly. “Someone thinks you can help us. Or they wouldn’t be trying to kill you.”

“But I can’t. I don’t know anything.” It was practically the theme of my existence.

“You may not know what it is that you know.” He sat on the edge of the bed and clasped my hands comfortingly. “It could be something that doesn’t even seem part of this, something that seems innocent.”

“If I don’t know what it is that I don’t know, then how can I tell you what it is that someone thinks I know before they kill me?” My head spun with the effort of putting that sentence together. Which made me think of the pasta. I closed my eyes.

“Well, try not to worry about it.” Kel stroked the hair back from my face. I focused on sensation, rejecting any attempt to conjure up a picture of what I must look like after nearly being blown up. “You just concentrate on getting well. If you can relax, maybe you’ll remember what it is.”

The villain couldn’t be someone who knew me. He was seriously overestimating my capabilities. “If they hadn’t tried to blow me to pieces I’d write these bad guys off as buffoons.”

Kel looked suddenly thoughtful, as if I’d said something useful. “There does seem to be a certain lack of cohesion to this whole enterprise. I wonder…”

“What?”

“I’ve been trying to make all the pieces fit into one, big pattern. But what if it’s not one pattern? What if it’s several smaller patterns, each with its own agenda, with only the final objective unifying them?”

Wow, what a torturously devious mind he had.

“You ever been taken in with a shell game?”

I frowned and wished I hadn’t. “No?”

“The thing about a shell game is, what you see isn’t the important part. It’s what you don’t see that matters.”

Then again, he could be cracking under the strain. I knew I was cracking under the strain.

He stood up. “I got some things to check out.”

“You’re leaving?” I stared at him in alarm.

“Just for a bit.”

“You can’t leave me here in a hospital.” I tried to sit up.

He tried not to smile. “Why not?”

“It’s not safe!”

“There’s a guard posted outside the door.”

“Oh, right. Like that’s going to help. Why don’t you just shoot me yourself and get it over with. It would be more merciful.”

“Bel, you shouldn’t get agitated—”

“When you were unconscious and helpless did I take you to a hospital?” Let him answer that, if he could.

“You took me to a vet who gave me dog painkiller. Is that what you want?”

“What I want is to walk out of here on my own two feet. Not be carried out feet first in a black bag.” I flung back the covers but got tangled in the paraphernalia I was hooked to.

Kel pushed me gently back in the bed.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

I became aware of the intimacy of our position. Faces close together, panting breaths and tangled limbs, the only thing left was for our mouths to meet. I’m not sure which of us jumped higher when the door popped open. Or who looked more surprised. Me, Kel, or the two nurses in the doorway.

“Your heart rate shot up so suddenly…” one of the nurses said. The other was too busy looking at Kel.

My color shot up, too. I took my hands off Kel’s shoulders so he could get off my bed. “I’m doing just fine. In fact, I want to go home.”

“The doctor will be in to check you soon, Miss Stanley,” one nurse said, soothingly, like I was a little kid. “Until then, try to stay calm, or we’ll have to sedate you.”

“Oh great, make it easier to kill me.”

Instead of helping me, they swished out again, but not before they gave Kel a sympathetic look. Kel grinned.

“Traitor. Before you abandon me