Kiss Me While I sleep by Linda Howard Page A

course, she hadn’t been unduly exerting herself, either; she hadn’t been sprinting. So the jury was still out on the heart thing.
    She closed her eyes and in the quiet concentrated on her heartbeat; it seemed normal to her. Thump-thump, thump-thump. With his stethoscope Dr. Giordano could hear a murmur, but she didn’t have a stethoscope and as far as she could tell the rhythm was completely normal. So maybe the damage was minimal, just enough to produce a faint murmur. She had other things to worry about.
    She drifted into a half-doze in which her body relaxed while her mind began to circle around the situation, probing and rearranging facts as she knew them, trying to find answers to the unknown factors.
    She didn’t know what Averill and Tina had stumbled across, or what they’d been told, but it was something they felt strongly enough about to bring them back into a business they’d abandoned. She didn’t even know who had hired them. Not the CIA, she was almost certain. Probably not MI-6 either. While they didn’t live in each other’s pockets, the two governments and agencies maintained a strong degree of cooperation between them, and in any case, there were plenty of active agents available to them, so there wouldn’t have been any need to bring in two inactive ones.
    In fact, she didn’t think any government had hired them; instead, it looked like a private hire. Somewhere along the way-hell, all along the way-Salvatore Nervi had stepped on toes, bullied, brutalized, and killed. Finding his enemies wouldn’t be difficult; sorting them out could take a year or longer. But who had gone to the trouble of hiring two professionals, albeit retired ones, to hit back? Moreover, who had known about her friends’ backgrounds? Averill and Tina had lived ordinary lives, had gone out of their way to provide that kind of life for Zia; they hadn’t exactly advertised their pasts.
    But someone had known about them, known their capabilities. That suggested someone who had been in the business, too, she thought, or at least been in a position to know names. Whoever it was had also known not to approach an active contract agent, not to bring attention to himself or herself in that manner. Instead the unknown someone had picked Averill and Tina because… why? Why them? And with Zia to consider, why had they accepted?
    Her friends had been young enough to still be in good physical shape-that was one possible reason for their selection that came to mind. They had also been skilled at what they did, coolheaded, experienced. She could see why they had been tapped, but what had swayed them to get involved? Money? They had been doing okay, not rich but not hurting for cash, either. A truly astronomical amount could have swayed them, but over the years they’d developed the same casual attitude about money that she had. From the time she’d begun her career, money had always been there. She didn’t worry about it, and neither had Averill and Tina. She knew for a fact that between them the two agents had salted away enough cash to live in relative comfort for the rest of their lives, plus Averill had been doing okay for himself with a computer-repair shop.
    She wished one of them had picked up the telephone and called her, told her what they were considering. Their motivation had to have been strong and she wanted to know what it was, because then she’d know how to attack. Her revenge wasn’t complete just because Salvatore was dead; he was just the first act. She wouldn’t be satisfied until she found out what was bad enough that her friends had become involved, something that would make the entire world turn against the Nervi organization, and even the people in power who had been in Salvatore’s pocket would rush to distance themselves. She wanted to bring down the entire rotten deck of cards.
    She had the fleeting thought that if Tina had told her about the job they were taking, if it had been something important