She folded her arms across her breasts and stared at me. I wasn’t able to separate lies from any truth she may be telling me. I was no doubt asking all the wrong questions but her non-responses and short, evasive answers were grating on the little patience I had left this evening.

I didn’t normally start even my best day with a lot of composure and this wasn’t my best day. Most mornings, I filled my back pocket with some calm and self-control when I could find my pants and that was it for the day. When it ran out, it ran out. Maybe the British Secret Service could squeeze something out of her.

She glanced at her purse again.

“What is so important about your purse?” I asked, in total exasperation.

I turned to pick up the tiny handbag. As I released the snap, Therese Bertrand delivered a savage kick above the small of my back. I smashed against the mirror, cracking it diagonally. There goes the last of my luck, I thought. I already had one ass-kicking in the last fifteen minutes and I was about to get another. At this rate, I wouldn’t live seven years until the bad luck wore off.

The woman ripped the purse from my hand and the contents flew everywhere. I caught her wrist as she came back at me. Bertrand was still naked, presenting a major distraction to getting angry and focusing on the matter in front of me. I completely missed the other hand as it swung around from the blind side to clap my ear. The impact of the airtight slap caused my head to ring and eyes to water.

As she struggled back from the wrist I was holding, I lashed out with a sidekick that landed with a glancing blow above her right knee. I felt the joint hyper-extend and she went down, pulling me on top of her.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been an altogether unpleasant position but I didn’t want to risk her leaning into me with a knee to the privates or something worse. I hit her with a close-in arm punch to the jaw and it was enough to end her day poorly. Her eyes rolled up in the sockets and she was soon dreaming about fairy-tale romances in a land of wishes and rainbows. I rolled off her and lay on my back, continuing to breathe unsteadily.

“I hope you didn’t just add necrophilia to your list of crimes?” I squinted at the figure silhouetted in the doorway. Zita was smiling.

“She’s not dead,” I panted.

“Rape then, unless you were introduced and fell in love while I was gone for 10 minutes? Fainted with ecstasy, has she?”

“I can assure you Madame that I’ve never managed to make anyone pass out from ecstasy. I punched her lights out.”

“Need I ask if you got anything from her? No, let me rephrase that. Did she tell you anything about Calderón or Chaban?”

The Hollow Man Excerpt 4

The Hollow Man   |     The Hollow Man Series, International Espionage​

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