The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (the dot read aloud .txt) 📗

In the hours—maybe days—since, morphine drips and doctors with ventilators had pushed Ben in and out of consciousness. Clara still hadn’t explained where she’d been or why. He didn’t care. Not too much, anyway. She was with him, whether he deserved her or not.

“I’m going to sit you up a bit. The doctors said it would help your breathing. Can you support your weight?”

“Some. I think.” Ben pressed his hands into the mattress, surprised to feel his muscles working so well. “Yeah. I’m good. Let’s do it.”

With an electric whir, the bed tilted, and Ben scooted back into a comfortable position.

Clara adjusted his pillows, supporting his neck, and when she eased his head back again, he turned toward her, crinkling a fresh bandage on his cheek. “Amber.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Clara.”

“I mean your hair color. You didn’t go back to blue.”

“Blue was the Director’s choice, not mine. Your psych profile suggested it would mess with your head. Something about upstaging my eyes.”

Ice-blue eyes.

The morphine muddled Ben’s mind, but not as much as the disease had. He remembered ice-blue eyes under blue bangs in a French stairwell. Ice-blue eyes above a dachshund, unwelcome in Sensen’s kitchen. Ice-blue eyes under a black helmet on a garden rooftop.

Her arm.

Through the sheer sleeve of Clara’s dress shirt, Ben saw a bandage. “You were there. You’re—”

“A Company girl? Good job, Ben Calix. Took you long enough.” She still had her Slovakian accent, though not quite as strong. “Yes, I was there, with you the whole time.”

“But on the roof, you took a bullet for me.”

“A scratch. And I put myself in the line of fire for all the agents on the rooftop, not just you. I did it for them. For the Director. I had my doubts about him for a time, but not anymore.”

Ben fought to recapture images from that night, but he could still only see flashes. When he used Jupiter as a shield, Giselle had tried to flank him, not noticing the armored agents coming over the walls. She’d been seconds from putting a round in Ben’s brain. “So, who shot Giselle?”

Clara poked at Ben’s pillow. “Read the report if you want to know. You have the clearance now.”

“What clearance? I don’t understand.”

“Don’t try. Rest. You still have a long way to go.”

He slept on and off, but every time he woke, he found her there. Was it duty or something else? Clara brought him food and explained his treatments far better than the doctors with all their medical jargon, even though English was their first language and her second. Kidan’s antidote had been the key, just as Tess had predicted. And Jupiter had stocked the building in Norfolk with gallons of it, likely anticipating the need to inoculate his people after releasing the bacteria.

“What about your background,” Ben asked the next day, propped up again and holding a cup of orange Jell-O. “Your dad. Your brother. Was any of it true?”

“All of it. I’m not your average recruit. I didn’t go to the schoolhouse. For this operation, the Company needed someone Jupiter’s spies couldn’t possibly identify. Hale recruited me in Bratislava. No one else knew.” Clara dipped a spoon into his cup, stealing a bite. “He trained me—the retired spy working off the books—while I continued my art studies. For a few months, I had . . .” Her gaze drifted to the window, as if searching for the right word.

“A kind father.”

She sniffed and laughed. “And the world’s meanest uncle all rolled into one. I’m a little mad at him. He kept me in the dark on many of the mission’s details, too many if you ask me. But I suppose that’s the nature of our work.”

He finished the Jell-O and let her take the cup to set it aside. “And your orders?”

“To keep you safe. Get you out of Paris. Notre Dame was Hale’s idea. He created the hole in the security, not the workers. I knew all that, but once we reached Meudon, I didn’t know what would happen next. I’d done my job. The rest was up to you.”

“What about Sensen?”

“Terrifying.” She smacked Ben’s chest. It hurt. “You dragged me to the home of an assassin I knew nothing about.” She hit him again.

“Hey!” He shielded the spot with a jumble of arms and tubes. “Go easy.”

“You never did. You left me in his graveyard, and then his home. And when he left, I thought for sure he’d gone to kill you. I felt responsible.”

“So you followed. You tried to save me.”

She pursed her lips. “Don’t start crying or anything. I’d have done the same for anyone else. But Sensen went to Zürich to protect you, not kill you. And by following him, I crossed a line. Hale pulled me out. My part was done.”

“Not entirely. You showed up at the endgame. You begged to be part of the rooftop assault, didn’t you?”

She laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Ben saw a hint of red in her cheeks. A revelation on its own. He pressed for more. “Come on. Give me details—the play-by-play from the moment you stepped onto the roof. It’s only fair, considering what I’ve suffered.”

She bent close to his ear and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I told you. Read the report.”

For someone who’d never gone through the schoolhouse and who’d worked only one field op, Clara had a knack for keeping secrets. Whenever he tried to steer her toward Jupiter and Leviathan, she deftly redirected the conversation. But he got the sense the Director had things under control, and Ben had come to realize he didn’t need all the answers.

The disease had ravaged his body. Muscle damage. Nerve damage. Ulcers in his stomach and lesions on his organs. The doctors didn’t clear him to leave for another two weeks, and even then, he had months of rehabilitation work ahead.

Clara came the morning of his release too. While she helped Ben pull a hospital gift shop sweatshirt over his head, an extra doctor showed up, adding