by Michele Hauf
“I know you don’t want them stealing your case,” Marjorie said. “Maybe they’ll allow you to work with them?”
“Doubt it. Me and the CIA—it’s bad blood, Marjorie. Agent Bay shouldn’t have said what he said earlier. But I’m not going to pull a hissy fit. If they want to take over, it’s their case. But until they get here—and I’m predicting the storm will hang them up somewhere around Hinckley...”
“Good eats in that town,” Marjorie said.
“They’ll have to hunker down at Tobie’s. Best cinnamon rolls this side of the Twin Cities.”
“So speaking of all the things Agent Bay has let slip.” Marjorie walked up to him and wrapped a scarf about her neck. “You going to tell me more about the station closing?”
“I don’t know much, Marjorie. City budget cuts. They plan to close us in March. I thought I could do something, maybe this case would bring attention to us and they’d reconsider, but...” Jason sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Cash. This station has been on its last legs since the iron mine closed. Maybe it’s time I retired, eh?”
“Uff da,” he said.
“Exactly. Bay is down with the prisoner. Not sure what he’s up to, but that’s where he is. Where’s your woman?”
“She’s not my woman, Marjorie.”
“You want her to be your woman.”
“Would you quit calling her my woman? She’s... I like her. Okay?”
“There’s nothing wrong with kissing a woman you want to protect. And now that the prisoner is behind bars, what will she do with herself? Oh, there’s a handsome policeman willing to keep her warm on a stormy night.”
“Marjorie!”
She chuckled and headed toward the door. “It’s not very often I get to tease you, Cash. Let me have this one.” She waved and left the station.
And Jason smiled to himself. He’d let her have that one. Because he had gotten the pretty one.
* * *
“FIVE MINUTES,” THE waitress told Amelie, who sat at the counter nursing a cup of coffee. “I need to let the pie thaw a few minutes before I cut it.”
Amelie had ordered a couple of slices of pie for herself and Jason. A surprise. The Moose was close enough to the station, and she’d scanned the area. Hadn’t felt a sense of unease. She’d be safe by herself for the time it took to finish this cup.
“Pass the sugar.”
Amelie startled when the woman next to her at the counter asked for the condiment. She noticed her sitting at the counter when she’d walked in. Her coffee cup was half-full. She was beautiful. Dark black hair was cut choppy just below her ears, and lots of smoky eye shadow drew attention to her gray eyes.
A perfectly groomed eyebrow lifted in question as she silently stared at Amelie.
“Oh, yes, sorry.” Amelie slid the sugar shaker toward her. “My mind was elsewhere.”
“Probably on the crazy weather, eh?”
She had a definite French accent, Amelie thought. Not unusual in this town, for she’d learned that many passing through came from Canada. French Canadians traveled down to Minnesota to shop because the exchange rate was so good. Add to that, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was a gorgeous vacation site.
“I’m getting accustomed to the weather,” Amelie provided. “What about you? New in town?”
“Just passing through. The hubby and I are headed for Canada. Relatives. You know.”
“That’s the accent I recognize.”
“Yours sounds French, as well. But not Canadian. What part of France you from?”
Amelie felt a sudden and distinct twinge in her gut. That instinct alarm that she had been trained never to ignore. Of course, the woman was simply making conversation. While talking to another woman her age, not from the area, sounded like heaven, it was weird that someone would be passing through during a storm. On the other hand, these Minnesotans were a hardy breed, and a few flakes never kept them in one place for long.
“Refill?” The waitress filled the woman’s coffee cup and then looked to Amelie.
She shook her head. “I’ll be back. I’m headed to the, uh...” She pointed toward the corner that turned into a long hallway leading to the restrooms.
“I’ll go check on the pie right now.” The waitress walked off.
After a sip of her coffee, the woman with the dark hair beamed a smile at her. Amelie felt that grin on her back all the way down the end of the counter. Even after she rounded the turn, it burned up her neck.
Why was she getting this feeling? Simply because the woman wasn’t from around here? Amelie wasn’t, either. Still, most travelers would plan ahead in such weather.
With the bag containing the helmet in one hand, she pushed open the bathroom door and paced before the stalls. The strong lavender air freshener gave her a sudden headache.
The same kind of headache she got whenever she thought about Jacques Patron.
Turning to push open the door, Amelie caught it roughly against her palm. She stepped back to allow the new person to enter. With an “excuse me” on her tongue, Amelie stopped speaking at sight of who it was.
“Hey, sweetie.” The beautiful woman with the smoky eye shadow grinned at her. Except this time, Amelie didn’t need instinct to know that grin was malevolent.
* * *
JASON PICKED UP the list that lay on the desk before him and wandered to the window to peer out. Main Street was clear. Back to the list. Jacques Patron was protecting someone who had been taking bribes or kickbacks. That was his conclusion. It made sense. A date, a location for pickup and a dollar amount.
Of course, the list could not be something Patron had made himself. The only reason a person would make such a list—and put it in the hands of an Interpol employee—had to be for blackmail or push. But why involve Yvette?
Jason honestly did not believe she had a clue what she was involved in. She wasn’t lying to him. She couldn’t be. So that meant someone knew she had a relationship to Patron and that upon seeing the list, she’d go to her boss. And he’d known what it meant as soon as she’d shown him.
He felt sorry for Yvette. All her life she’d known the man only as a kind friend of the family. And now he had betrayed her.
Did it matter who Patron was protecting? He could be protecting himself, for all Jason knew. What did matter was that an innocent woman had gotten trapped in the middle, carrying information she hadn’t asked to know in the first place. And now someone wanted her dead.
He tapped the last column on the list. Clickable links? To what? Videos? Of? The person accepting payoffs?
“Makes sense.”
The only people who had any clue what was on the list were Yvette and Jacques Patron.
Jason had heard a gunshot at the end of the message Patron had left him. Yet...he hadn’t heard a human grunt of pain following. Most people vocalized when shot, even if it was just a moan. Which meant...
“He’s still alive.” Had to be.
Interpol was generally open with information when asked through the correct channels. And yet, if an investigation into one of their own was underway, they would likely keep that close to the vest. As Jason had done. But if the CIA had already stuck their noses into this, there could be information that Jason wasn’t allowed to know.
Time to go with his gut.
“Patron is protecting himself,” Jason decided. And he knew it was true.
He checked his watch and frowned. It had been twenty minutes since he’d left Yvette at Olson’s Oasis. He glanced down Main Street again. Where was she?
Jason grabbed his coat and soared out of the office. Only to come face-to-face with a smirking man in a black suit, wearing no outerwear. His shoulders crouched forward against the wind.
The CIA had arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Six
&n
bsp; Amelie came to with a snap of her head upward. Ouch. She sat upright and blinked. Where was she? She had been in the ladies’ restroom at The Moose and—the woman with the gray eyes had walked in and smiled at her so wickedly.
A shiver crept along her arms. She wore no coat, just a sweater, jeans and boots. Taking in her surroundings, she didn’t hear anything, but—what was that? Wind whipped wildly against the windows that filtered in hazy light. The storm sounded angry. The concrete floor was littered with dust and debris. She sat on a wood chair with flat side arms, and one of her wrists was bound to that arm. Her other wrist was free, but her arm sat heavily on the chair. She didn’t feel tied up, not at the ankles or around her waist or chest. And to test, she slid forward on the chair.
“Not so fast, sweetie. I need you to relax.”
Her instincts had been right. The woman had kidnapped her and taken her...somewhere. How much time had passed? How had she gotten her out of The Moose? She must have had help.
Scanning before her, Amelie took in a vast, empty building. Looked like an old garage, the kind used for fixing cars. There were two big doors through which cars could drive in and out, and a small walled-off office toward the front. One window with yellowed glass was frosted over. But no tools or furniture, save the chair she sat on and a wood table beside her. Actually, the table was a plank of plywood sitting atop two wood sawhorses. A makeshift operation.
“Where am I?”
“I honestly don’t know,” the woman replied. “Some abandoned garage. This town is overrun with empty houses and buildings.”
Her accent no longer carried the Canadian cadence.
“Who do you work for?” Amelie had the clarity to ask. She still hadn’t seen the woman. She stood behind the chair.
“None of your business, sweetie.”
“I am not your sweetie. Do you work for Jacques Patron?”
The woman laughed and walked around to the side by the table. She set a pistol on the plank and lifted what Amelie now noticed was a syringe. A spill of black hair fell across her left eye and cheek as she studied the clear plastic tube on the device.
“You haven’t figured it out yet?” the woman asked.
“If I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
“You do have the list in your head. That’s what I’ve been told.”
“I...” She wasn’t going to provide information when it wasn’t clear what the woman knew. “What’s your name?”
“Hey, if you don’t want to be friendly, sweetie, then names are off the table. Let’s quit with the girlfriend chat. It’s cold in here, and I’m sure you’ll want to get some warmer clothes on when we’re done.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to kill me?”
“If I kill you, I’ll never have access to what you know.”
“You don’t have access to it now. What’s going to change that?”
“This.” The woman held the syringe closer to Amelie. “Sodium pentothal. It’ll make you tell the truth.”
A drug used to obtain information from unwilling subjects. “It might relax me and make me tell you who my secret lover is, but how will it extract information you don’t even know about?”
“You tell me.”
“About my lover?”
“I’d slap you, but I’m not as cruel as you think. It was a necessary evil bringing you here on the sly. And as for secrets? The whole town knows you’re sleeping with the police chief. Dieu, he’s a handsome one. Now let’s get serious. You’re going to tell me what was on that list. Line by line.”
A snap of a fingernail against the plastic syringe brought Amelie’s attention up and to the left. She met the woman’s gray irises. She didn’t know what the drug would do to her. It was supposed to relax a person’s inhibitions and even make them suggestible. But would that also unlock the things she stored in her brain? Things she was normally only able to release by writing them down? A physical action that worked as a sort of dictation machine from brain to hand to page.
“I don’t think it’ll work,” Amelie said as firmly as she could.
By all means, she’d like to stay alive. And if retaining the list in her brain could do that for her, then she would talk her way around it until they were both shivering from the cold.
Where was Jason? Could she hope he’d sense something was wrong and find her? The town was small, but as the woman had said, there were many abandoned buildings and houses. Too many for Jason to go through one by one, and in the storm.
How long had she been out? He must have missed her by now.
“I have to actually write out the information,” she tried. “Which means I’ll need paper, a pen and probably a whole pot of black coffee.”
“That’s not the way this is going down.” The woman’s grip on her arm felt like an ice princess personified.
Amelie struggled. She was basically free, save for her left arm being tied down to the chair arm.
“Sit still or this needle will end up in your eye!”
A male voice alerted them both. “Leslie Cassel.”
Both women stopped struggling. Amelie squinted to eye the man who stood near an open door, which let in bright light and snow flurries. He was not Jason. Yet she recognized him immediately.
“She’s going to bring you down, Patron,” the woman—Leslie—said. “We’ve been on to you for weeks.” She stabbed the needle into Amelie’s arm.
“Can’t risk Interpol learning about my indiscretions,” Jacques said.
A gunshot sounded. Leslie screamed. And Amelie grabbed for the syringe, still in her arm.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Blood spattered Amelie’s cheek. Leslie had been hit, and she’d dropped to the floor behind her. Had it been a kill shot? She did not groan, nor did Amelie hear her moving. But she wasn’t in position to turn and assess with Jacques Patron standing thirty feet away with a pistol aimed at her.
She glanced at the syringe she’d dropped on the floor. The plunger had not been depressed. Merci Dieu.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, more out of anger than fear, or even a desperation to make conversation and delay the man’s likely goal of shooting her. Out the corner of her eye, she spied Leslie’s pistol that lay two feet away on the wood plank.
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Jacques had a calm manner to his speech when he spoke French. An affectation that had once reassured her. Now it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand upright. “I hired an idiot to do a job I should have taken care of in Lyon.”
Jason had been right. Jacques had been protecting himself all along. Amelie’s stomach performed a squeeze, and her heart dropped. Why Jacques was hesitating was beyond her. He was a skilled operative who had never paused to pull the trigger when called for.
“You don’t want to kill me,” she said calmly. “If you did, you would have done so, as you’ve said, right away in Lyon. Is it because you don’t have the list?”
“Oh, I know what’s on that list. I thought I could make it go away by sending you away. After all, you are Vincent’s daughter. We were friends. But then I got smart.”
“I still don’t know what’s going on, Jacques. And if you think about it, that means you are the only one with all the facts. You can trust me. Let me walk away from this.”
“You may not know.” He redirected his aim toward the floor near her feet. “But they do.” He fired again.
Behind her on the floor, Leslie yelped and cursed.
In the commotion, Amelie grabbed the gun from the table. She stood. Her left wrist was still bound to the chair, but she could take aim and defend herself.
She heard Leslie’s body shift on the concrete floor, as if she were dragging herself.
Jacques laughed and splayed his hands up near his shoulders, the gun barrel pointing toward the ceiling. “Go ahead,
Desauliniers! Take your best shot!”
Never had mockery cut her so deeply. Because he knew...
“Tell me why you did this,” she insisted. Her aim targeted the man’s heart. “What do I know?”
“He’s been taking hush money from the mafia...” Leslie said from the floor. “They’re running guns through the Superior Lakes. Patron is their French connection. You’re our only proof... Amelie...” Leslie gasped. Coughed. “What’s...in your...head. A list with links to security videos showing Jacques accepting payoffs.”
How did she know so much? And she knew her real name. And Jacques. Apparently, she was investigating him. And had tracked his connection to Yvette here to Minnesota...
“She’s with...” Amelie quickly did the math. Jason had mentioned the man they had behind bars was an Interpol agent. He must have had a partner. “Interpol. Because you know her,” she said to Jacques. “You called her by name. And she didn’t kill me because they need me to—” Jacques took aim at the floor again. “No!”
Another bullet fired. With a hard bite on her lower lip, Amelie realized she hadn’t fired the gun she still held in defense. Not even to protect Leslie.
No sounds from behind her this time. Had he killed her?
Amelie stretched out her arm, willing herself to pull the trigger. Yet a tear threatened at the corner of her eye. He’d killed Leslie. The man had lied to her. Had used her. And had sent a hit man after her. The same killer who had murdered an innocent woman. And now Jacques was here to finish the botched job.
Her fingers clutched the weapon surely. Why couldn’t she pull the trigger?
Images of her mother flashed before her. She hadn’t told Jason the entire truth. Scared and wanting to know if her mother was all right, Amelie had sneaked out and into the living room, crawling behind the sofa. The man who had entered hadn’t noticed her. And she’d seen her mother. Kneeling on the floor, head up and pleading with the stranger who Amelie could never see or reconstruct in her memories.
Amelie’s life had never been the same because someone had pulled the trigger and ended her mother’s life.