Free Man on Fire by A. J. Quinnell

like many other Italian textile producers, was facing fierce competition from the Far East. He was also known for the beauty of his wife.
    Creasy's thoughts moved to Rika. Quite dispassionately, he considered her effect on him. She had qualities in her looks that he particularly admired in women: a lack of obvious decoration, an uncluttered look, very little makeup. Her hair hung naturally; her fingernails were long and unpainted. She needed no aids, but he had also noted the lack of perfume. She was, he decided, completely female in herself. Her personality was linked to her looks, an extension of them.
    Physically, she had attracted him with a jolt. It was a factor that had a bearing on the situation. He had watched her reaction to him carefully. The initial hostility and irritation, fading into curiosity. In his experience she was the type of woman who would respond to his past, be intrigued by its violence. She liked to dominate and find out the limits domination could take, first mentally and then perhaps physically. He would treat her with great caution.
    He finished cleaning the gun and took a small can of oil and lubricated the trigger mechanism and the magazine release catch. He thought about Maria and Bruno. During dinner in the big, comfortable kitchen they had not been talkative and he had not encouraged them to be. His natural reticence had been obvious and he expected that after a while, once they got used to his presence, they would fall back to whatever their pattern of conversation had been before his arrival.
    Maria, he guessed, was in her middle thirties, stout and cheerful and obviously curious about him. Bruno would be in his sixties, a small man with a brown, pointed face and a placid disposition.
    The food had been good, and homey. Gnocchi Verdi followed by chicken marinated in oil and lemon juice. Although of late his appetite had not been good, Creasy was very fond of Italian food and knew a lot about it. He recognized the Florentine style of cooking and had asked Maria if she was from Tuscany.
    She had been pleased at the question, recognizing its source. Yes, she had originally been from Tuscany but had come to Milan five years before to seek work. He had asked Bruno to show him around the grounds in the morning so he could fix the layout in his mind, and then had excused himself and come up to his room.
    He emptied the gun's magazine of the short, 9 mm bullets and tested the spring and those of the two spares. Then he opened a box of shells and filled all three. That done he picked up the new shoulder holster, and, with a cloth, started working oil into the leather, softening it still further.
    Pinta-she would be the main problem. He was not good with children in general and he guessed this one would be no exception. He had no practice at it. Children had been no part of his life, except as an object of pity. In all the wars he had ever fought, children had suffered the most. Confused, often separated from their parents, nearly always hungry. He remembered them in the Congo, swollen-bellied, eyes uncomprehending. And in Vietnam, looking like dolls, and all too often caught in the middle. Bombed and mined and shot. He had been told that there were over a million orphans in South Vietnam and, at times, he felt he had seen them all. He had grown a shell so he could ignore their suffering. Either you did that or you lost your mind. He had done it early. He saw them, but the message from the eyes to the brain got diverted.
    Of all the brutalizing effects of war, the numbing of compassion was the most acute. But now he was to be put into close proximity with a child for the first time. Certainly not a child hungry, or hurt, or homeless, but for all that a problem to him.
    When Pinta had shown him up to his room, she had stayed behind and chatted while he unpacked. Obviously his arrival was a big event in her life. An only child, she was too often bored. It was natural that she should look on Creasy as