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With great effort, Bond pulled Patrice over the ledge, dragging him across the broken glass of the window and slamming his face onto the floor. His knee met Patrice’s back and held him there, slowly squeezing the air out of his lungs as he leaned his weight on the middle of the other man’s spine.
“Who are you working for?” Bond shouted, quieter now that Patrice no longer dangled over the side of the building.
Patrice squinted up at Bond. Blood made its way to the skin, filling in the grazes where he’d been scraped across the glass. He glared through the blood, but said nothing. For that Bond grabbed the back of his shirt and slammed his head harder against the floor.
“Tell me who you’re working for!” he demanded.
Patrice turned his head again, looking across the chasm between the two buildings, to a woman standing in the now empty room, looking back at them.
*
Séverine recognised the man as he approached the counter, but it was impossible to be certain that it was him. He’d been in the shadows, and all she’d seen was the incomplete image of the man who took Patrice. Still, she was confident that she was right. The signs were all in how he walked and held himself; even without a clear vision of his face she could recognise a man who was dangerous, and there were very few who were dangerous like this one.
“This is him?” her guard, Adriano, asked.
“Yes,” Séverine said.
“You’re sure?”
She watched, straightening her back as he looked up at her while he waited for the chip to be cashed. The recognition on his face was unmistakeable, and in a way it set Séverine’s mind at ease, but only just.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m certain.”
He wasn’t here only for the money; he wanted something else, or else he would not have taken Patrice alive. Answers, she supposed; Patrice wouldn’t talk, no matter what anyone did to him, and so she could only imagine now that he wanted something from her. Things like this happened before – how many people wanted answers about what Raoul was doing? Most weren’t as bold as this, though, but really it was really only a matter of time before someone tried this.
It would be enough, in Raoul’s eyes, if she found him and killed him. That was what he told her to do: tie up every loose end before it became a hindrance, never mind Patrice (‘He won’t talk,’ Raoul assured her, and that was all Raoul cared about). If she killed him now it would be enough for Raoul.
But it would not be enough for Séverine, no matter how easy it would be now for her to order Raoul’s men to execute the man.
Adriano raised a hand to his earpiece. “Shall I alert the others, Séverine?”
“Not yet,” Séverine said, turning her back to the rest of the casino. She needed to think carefully about what she would do from here. She needed to keep her wits about her, if she wanted to see Patrice alive and not raise Raoul’s suspicions, or the suspicions of his men
“Our orders were to kill him.” Adriano’s tone was gentle, but Séverine knew him well enough to know that he was not.
“I need to find out what he wants,” Séverine said. Her hands were shaking, and so she clenched them around the banister, then looked to Adriano. “Then you kill him.”
*
“I am correct in assuming you have Patrice?” Séverine asked.
Bond nodded. “Yes.”
She spared a glance across the table towards two of her guards, hoping they didn’t understand. She still needed more information about Patrice, but without letting them know what it was that she was after.
Her eyes returned to Bond, and with a perfectly practised voice that she’d used for years, Séverine said, “Might I ask why?”
“I want to meet your employer,” Bond said.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Séverine said. She squinted, trying to read his face but finding nothing. “What has Patrice said to you?”
“He’s said nothing,” Bond said. “I hoped you’d have more answers for me.”
Séverine’s hands shook; she reached for a cigarette, trying to buy herself a moment to collect her thoughts. This would be harder than she thought, and she had precious little to gamble with. She studied him for a long time, her thoughts scrambling to take hold. It was two days since this man went missing, disappearing from under her nose with Patrice in tow. That was long enough to wring answers out of him, or to try.
She wanted to ask Patrice was still alive, but that would be playing her cards too early.
Oh, she knew what a vulnerable position she’d allowed herself to fall into, how stupid she’d let herself get because of this man, but thinking about him now, her choice was clear. She had to retrieve him. To rescue him.
(How the roles had reversed; every time she and Patrice talked about rescue, it was never he who needed it.)
“You’re scared,” Bond said. “You put on a good show, but ever since we sat down you haven’t stopped looking at your bodyguards. Now, three of them is a bit excessive. They’re controlling you; they’re not protecting you.”
Séverine stared at Bond, helpless as he lay her cards out before her.
“They work for your employer, not for you,” Bond went on. “The tattoo on your wrist is Macau sex trade. He saved you, and now you owe him. Or at least, he thinks you do. He might even think you love him. But if you did, it was a long time ago. Now, you love Patrice, and you and your employer have very different ideas about what should happen to him.”
To her horror, all Séverine found herself able to say was, “Is he still alive?”
Bond nodded. Simultaneously, relief flooded through her at the same time as a new dread began to grow in the pit of her stomach.
“I can help you,” Bond said when she remained quiet.
“Can you kill him?”
“I can try.”
In the past, every time she and Patrice talked about what it would entail to leave Raoul together, the conversation always seemed very far away. There was a threshold situated somewhere in the future, somewhere very far from where they sat in their respective timelines. Eventually they would reach it, and after they crossed it there would be no returning. Until they reached it, however, they both belonged to Raoul.
Now, she was looking at the threshold. The choice was hers whether or not she wanted to cross it.
“When I leave, they’re going to kill you,” she said. “If you survive, I'm on the Chimera. North harbour. Berth seven. We cast off in an hour. Bring Patrice, and we can talk.”
*
After the Chimera left, the door opened. Séverine looked up, unsure if it was to her great relief or disappointment that she found Bond standing in the doorway, looking in at her.
“I didn’t think you’d make it.”
“I didn’t think you’d hold the boat.”
The door opened wider as Bond slipped inside, Patrice following.
He was in quite a state, with bruises and grazes covering his face and blood dried around the cuts. Séverine noted a slight limp as he made his way across the room to sit beside her, giving a glare over his shoulder to Bond as he took a seat beside her on the sofa. Despite herself, she reached her hand out to land on his thigh. She didn’t miss the way his muscles tensed under her, a signal undetectable to anyone except to her, who knew him well and was almost apologetic for her sudden movement.
“I suppose,” Séverine said, careful not to look too hard at him, “that I had some reason not to.”
*
Later, with Bond in the shower, Séverine leaned over Patrice, picking out pieces of glass that were embedded in his face and dabbing at the injuries on his face with an alcohol wipe.
“What did he do to you?” Séverine asked, her voice low. She spoke in French, both hers and Patrice’s native tongue, but she suspected that Bond would understand what she said if he returned.
“Don’t worry about me,” Patrice murmured.
“I need to know,” Séverine said. “Especially if it’s serious.”
One of the cuts she was cleaning began to bleed. Besides needing stitches, she could see some of the wounds already beginning to get infected. Thankfully none looked too deep, but it was worrying all the same; some were bad enough to need stitches, and while she could do that she would hate for the responsibility to fall to her, especially for the wounds on his face.
“It’s not serious,” Patrice said. “The cuts on my face. Bruises. Two broken ribs, on my right. I think I twisted my ankle. Not too bad.”
Not by comparison to what she knew he’d been through before, but she wouldn’t say that aloud to his face. Instead she said, “I know. But going back to Raoul, we need what help we can get.”
“I’m fine,” Patrice said. He was watching her now, holding her gaze as she hovered over him. “You shouldn’t have done this.”
Séverine looked down, pretending to distract herself with a needle and thread that she would use to stitch some of the worse injuries. “What choice did I have, Patrice?”
“Go back to Raoul. Protect yourself.”
“I don’t think you understand what you would ask of me, to leave you.”
“I’d either live, or I wouldn’t. This is always a risk for us.”
Séverine’s chest tightened. Did Patrice not know what it was he was implying? What she would be giving up? Once she would have lived with it; she would have said it was not the worst thing she’d been through, that during the worst moments of her life she was alone, with no one to comfort her or to give her hope. That was before she met Patrice, before she realised she didn’t have to endure her fears alone.
He was a man of few words and always had been, but there weren’t many words needed to voice the recognition evident on her face. Patrice knew what happened to her, even if they never talked about it. He knew what Raoul was to her, because in a way – a way that she didn’t understand, because they never talked about that, either – Raoul was a saviour to him, as well. She recognised how Patrice revered the man, even through his revulsion. And he knew that Séverine was afraid, that the only reason she faced Raoul was because it frightened her terribly to think of what he’d do to her if she showed him her back.
To leave him behind would be to face Raoul alone, without the only person in the world who understood why she was so afraid.
“I couldn’t do that,” Séverine said. “I couldn’t leave you.”
“You would risk angering Silva for a dead man.”
“I couldn’t face Raoul again, without you.”
“Stupid,” Patrice said, shaking his head and pushing her away as she tried to dab at the injuries on his face.
Séverine stood up, looking down at him. “Why are you giving me such a hard time about this?”
“Because,” Patrice snapped. “You’d be fine without me. You’d live. I’m not worth dying for.”
*
As the Chimera approached the island, Séverine walked up to the deck to look on at the island in front of them. If she was worried in the casino, it was nothing compared to how she felt now, looking around herself and squinting hard against the sunlight.
Behind her, she heard as Bond stepped onto the deck with her.
“It’s too late to turn back now,” she said.
She didn’t look over her shoulder to know that her men – Raoul’s men, who were sent to guard her and to ensure the mission was completed – were cocking their guns. They’d fire, if necessary.
When she looked around herself, she could see Bond, but Patrice was nowhere in sight.
*
“Time to redeem your marksmanship scores,” Silva said to Bond. “Let's see. Who can be the first to knock the glass from her head? And just to be a good sport, I'll let you go first.”
One of Silva’s men that Bond didn’t yet recognise cocked a gun behind him, aiming it at his head just in case he thought about doing something funny. The guns they were using weren’t anything to brag about, either; Silva had the advantage here, and Bond knew it.
Bond looked at Séverine. She stared back at him, blank-faced.
He knew this was a possibility. That things might end up like this, that things could go wrong. It was a risk he always ran in this line of work. Most of the time he didn’t let it get to him. Now especially he knew that it shouldn’t; Séverine knew what risk she was taking when she agreed to help him, to help Patrice.
Silva slipped a hand around his side, drawing himself uncomfortably close for Bond’s liking.
“Let’s see who ends up on top,” he said, moving his hand down and squeezing Bond’s ass.
Bond drew a deep breath shocked by Silva’s movements. He had to focus.
He looked back to Séverine. There was something about the situation that rang painfully familiar – a woman willing to risk her life for the life of her lover, all because she found herself in a situation that she never really wanted to be in in the first place. Oh, he didn’t feel bad – the days of feeling bad about these things were over, and there was no point letting guilt eat at him when there was nothing he could do about it.
Except he could. He could end this. He could save her.
“Oh, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!” Raoul was saying; despite himself, Bond couldn't ignore him entirely. “Did you really die? Is there any, any of the old 007 left?”
Bond’s hand was shaking; if he wanted to do anything, he had to act.
He fired a shot, watched as Séverine flinched and his shot took out a chunk of the fallen statue behind her.
Next to him, Silva shook his head, drawing his own gun and getting into position. “My turn.”
Before he could fire his shot, another shot came out from across the courtyard, this one hitting Silva’s chest. Almost immediately Bond could see as the blood from the wound began to stain his white jacket. He only saw Patrice for a second, out of the corner of his eyes; it was just the distraction Bond needed if he wanted to catch Silva and his men off guard, and he really only needed the one opportunity.