by Kaylea Cross
She ditched the Audi several blocks from the meeting spot, wiped it down as an added precaution, then took Kaya’s arm and walked her to the RV point. Fleur was already there, her light auburn hair pulled back in a braid as she waited with a worried expression and a warm coat for Kaya.
Chloe had met the government social worker by chance a year ago here in Paris while on another job. After Fleur had vented her frustration with the lack of action by the government against human traffickers over dinner one night, Chloe had checked out her background and vetted her carefully before approaching her about a secret alliance. Now Fleur IDd the victims in need of rescue, and Chloe handled the rest of the details before handing them over to her friend for safekeeping.
Since then they’d saved over thirty women and teenage girls together, but it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
“Are you both all right?” Fleur asked, scanning them both anxiously.
“I’m fine, but I think Kaya’s a little shaken up.” She bundled the young woman into the coat, then pressed a wad of cash into her palm and took Kaya’s chin in her hand. Fleur would get her medical care and a safe place to stay immediately. “You’re going to be okay. You haven’t done anything wrong, and you have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. If anyone questions you, you just tell them the truth. Understand?”
Kaya swallowed and nodded, the fading bruises on her cheeks and beneath her left eye filling Chloe with rage. Dubois’s death had been too quick. He should have suffered more. “Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure.” She turned to Fleur, who looked ready to start wringing her hands, and grinned. Foreign it might be, but it was nice to have someone care about her. “Good to see you, my friend. If anything comes up, you know how to reach me. I’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, yes, now go and get out of here.” She threw her arms around Chloe in a quick, fierce hug. “You’re going to give me an ulcer one day, you know that.”
Chloe made a face. “Then stop worrying about me.”
Fleur pulled back, shook her head. “Somebody needs to.”
Touched but embarrassed at the mushy sentiment, Chloe pushed her toward the waiting vehicle. “Go. Take good care of her.”
“I will.” She ushered Kaya to the car.
Chloe watched until the Renault disappeared around the corner into the night before hurrying to her own getaway vehicle. When she reached the next block, she reached into her coat pocket and hit the second detonator. The Audi’s engine exploded behind her. Chloe didn’t look back.
Killing Dominic put a lot of heat on her, but the thing that had her worried was that he had known her name.
That should have been impossible, and it meant she had a major problem. Because the only way he could have found out was if someone from within the Valkyrie Program itself had tipped him off.
Paris had been her permanent base since the Program shut down, but it was no longer safe for her. She had to get out of the city for a while, and determine who the hell had sold her out.
Chapter Two
“So we have an agreement, then?” the man asked him.
Guillaume Dubois set his wineglass down on the table and considered his options for a moment. They were seated in a private booth in one of the most exclusive restaurants in all of Paris. He was a regular here, and the staff always afforded him the utmost discretion when he was here for business. “If you drop the price by ten percent.”
The man’s smile slipped. “That’s not possible.”
“It is if you want to do business with me.” He injected a hint of steel into his tone, just enough to remind the man who he was dealing with.
Anger glinted in the man’s eyes. “You’re not like your brother.”
“No, and that’s why I’m as successful as I am.” Dom was too flashy. Guillaume preferred to keep things quiet, secret. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d been forced to step in and clean up his younger brother’s messes in order to save their business and reputations. Still, he loved his brother and would do everything in his power to protect him.
The man considered him for a long moment, visibly uncomfortable under the weight of Guillaume’s unflinching stare. “Fine. I’ll sell you the product at the figure you named.” The man held up his glass in salute with a tight smile. “To the first of many successful business ventures.”
I don’t think so. Guillaume knew this man’s type and had already heard things about him that made additional deals too risky. After this one was done, Guillaume would ensure the man met with a fatal accident.
Still, he returned the salute, took a sip and endured the small talk that always followed the conclusion of the business transaction. While he smiled and nodded and paid lip service to what the man said, he was actually thinking of this new shipment of weapons, how much he could get for them, and where he could send them for maximum profit. There were so many conflicts around the globe right now. It amounted to a gold rush for a man careful and connected enough to handle the risks involved.
He held up a hand to stop his dinner companion from speaking when Guillaume’s head of security discreetly interrupted. “Sir, you have an important phone call.”
Jean-Pierre would only interrupt him if it were an emergency. “Thank you.” He smiled at his dinner companion, a rich executive who had arranged transport for the women his brother Dominic was about to buy. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
He took the cell phone from Jean-Pierre, who followed him outside onto the balcony of the five-star restaurant overlooking the Seine. When he saw the name on call display, he frowned and dialed the number back. “Inspector Berdine. How can I help you this evening?”
“Monsieur Dubois, I’m afraid I have some difficult news for you.”
Guillaume paused at the railing, a sense of trepidation building in his chest. It couldn’t be his wife or the girls. He’d just talked to them prior to arriving at the restaurant. They were all home, safe. “What is it?”
“There’s been an explosion at your brother’s townhouse here in Paris.”
Guillaume whipped around, snapped his fingers at Jean-Pierre and gestured for him to hand over his personal phone. “Is he all right?”
“We don’t know.”
He gulped in a breath. “How bad is the damage?”
“Bad.”
Guillaume quickly brought up a local newscast on Jean-Pierre’s phone, currently broadcasting a breaking story. The picture showed fire crews in front of Dom’s townhome as flames and smoke poured out of the lower floor windows.
He swallowed. This hadn’t been an accident. Not with the lifestyle his brother led. “Was my brother inside?”
“We’re not sure. A neighbor reported seeing his car leave just seconds before the explosion, but we have been unable to reach him so far.”
“I’ll call him.” He handed Jean-Pierre’s phone back. “Keep me updated?” he said to the inspector.
“Of course.”
Guillaume dialed his brother, left a voice message and then texted him for good measure. Are you all right? He was concerned, but not overly worried if Dom had left prior to the explosion. What had caused it?
His brother’s head of security had no answers. Dom had apparently held a private meeting at his office a little over an hour before the explosion. No security had been involved, and Dom’s home alarm hadn’t been triggered afterward.
Unable to shake the worry, Guillaume finished his dinner, then paid the bill and started for his car without having heard from his brother. His phone rang just as he was getting into the backseat. Not Dom. Berdine. “Inspector. You have an update?”
“The fire’s out, and the investigative team is starting their work. But…I’m afraid they found a body in the kitchen.”
Guillaume’s heart leapt into his throat. “Not Dominic, though. You said he was seen driving away prior to the explosion.” Although it made no sense that his brother would kill someone in his own house. Zero.
&
nbsp; “Unfortunately, the remains are in such a state that they will require dental analysis to determine their identity. But from the positioning of the victim, he or she was bound at the time of their death. We also found your brother’s car several kilometers away, blown up at the side of the road. A forensics team is trying to pull prints but it’s likely not possible.”
Dammit. Guillaume rubbed at his forehead, his mind spinning. This didn’t bode well. He’d warned Dom again and again to be careful to distance himself from the…seedier side of their business, but his brother couldn’t seem to do it. Dom was addicted to the rush of it, especially with the women and drugs. Guillaume would have to pull him from it. “I’ve reached out to him but he hasn’t responded.”
“His cell phone has been turned off.”
Guillaume’s insides clenched. Dom never went anywhere without his phone, and he never shut it right off. What if the body was Dom’s?
Ice slid through him. “I’ll come down to the morgue. I’ll pay privately to have the dental analysis done immediately. Find me someone and tell them to name their price. I need answers.”
“I’ve already made inquiries.”
Guillaume couldn’t go home now. He texted his wife to say he had a late meeting so she wouldn’t worry, then had Jean-Pierre drive him to the hospital where the remains were waiting. Berdine met him there, but refused to grant him access to the body because it was in such bad condition.
He sat in the hallway for nearly four hours waiting for the private forensics team to process the dental records. Berdine finally exited the exam room and walked toward him, his expression grave.
And Guillaume knew.
He shot out of his chair, his heart threatening to explode. “Who is it? It’s not Dom. Tell me it’s not Dom.”
Berdine stopped several feet away and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Guillaume.”
“No!” He bellowed it, grief and denial punching through him. He took several staggering steps up the hallway then pivoted and paced back the other way, raking his hands through his hair as the horrible finality hit home. “No, no, no…”
His only brother was dead. Tied up and burned to ash in his own house, without any alarms being triggered. How was that possible? How?
He lurched toward the door his brother’s body lay behind. Berdine blocked his way. “No. I can’t let you see him like this. It’s best if you don’t see him.”
Guillaume stared up at him, struggling to hold his grief inside. He was going to be sick. “I can’t… I can’t accept this,” he croaked, his voice breaking.
Berdine gently took him by the shoulders and steered him back into a chair. Guillaume collapsed into it like a doll. And then he broke.
Painful, ragged sobs burst out of him, each one searing his chest, his lungs. He buried his face in his hands and cried for his little brother, a charred corpse lying in the room across the hall.
I failed him. I failed him!
Jean-Pierre got him into the car. Guillaume alternated between a fog of shock and piercing grief on the drive to his home. His young daughters were asleep in bed but his wife was there to meet him at the door, her heartbreak written all over her face. Without a word she enveloped him in a comforting embrace that made him break down again.
Once he had regained control, he sent her to bed and immediately locked himself in his office with Jean-Pierre. “I want to know who Dom met with,” he bit out, rage beginning to burn through the terrible, suffocating pain. “Get me all the surveillance footage from his office and townhouse. Get me whatever I need to find out who did this.”
In less than an hour, Guillaume had his suspect.
He stared in shock at the attractive woman captured in the security feed. The only footage they’d been able to get was when she’d first entered the building. Gabrielle Boucher, representative of the wealthy Monsieur Roche, who Dominic’s company had done several business deals with over the past few months—buying and selling women in the skin trade.
There was barely any background on her, making her ten times as suspicious.
But there was more. So much more.
Dom had kept a woman in his townhome. A captive he’d bought off a skin trader in a recent shipment from North Africa. She was missing. And Dom’s main business account had been drained just minutes prior to his death.
Gabrielle. She’d done this. She’d taken Dom’s money and then taken the woman and killed him. Now the captive woman was out there somewhere too, about to tell what Dom had done.
Shaken, sick to his stomach that his brother was gone, Guillaume swallowed the bile burning the back of his throat and spoke to Jean-Pierre. “Find her. Find her and bring her to me.”
“Yes, sir.” New orders in hand, Jean-Pierre left the room to begin the hunt.
Guillaume sucked in a painful breath and continued to stare at the woman’s image on screen, memorizing her features. The only consolation in all of this is that Dom had died fast. He’d likely suffered before dying, but in the actual moment of his death, he wouldn’t have known what hit him.
But the same couldn’t be said for the woman who had killed him.
“Gabrielle Boucher” would suffer for what she’d done. Once Guillaume got back what she’d stolen from them, he would double his profit by selling her to the most sadistic bastard in the skin trade.
In the end, she would beg for death, but find no mercy.
****
After reading her sister’s text, Megan rushed from the stables and into the manor house. She loped up the stairs and hurried to the bedroom at the end of the hall that now served as her sister’s office.
As expected, Amber was seated before a bank of monitors, her precious laptop, Lady Ada, front and center on the desk, her chocolate-brown hair swept over one shoulder.
“Have you got something?” Megan asked. After being separated as kids and funneled into the Valkyrie Program, they’d finally been reunited a few months ago. She appreciated every moment they spent together now, united in this common cause.
“Think so. Come take a look.”
Her heart beat faster. They’d been searching for the other remaining Valkyries together for the past several weeks. They’d managed to rescue one other so far—Kiyomi, who was staying here at the manor with them. But there were others, and time was running out.
Megan stood behind her sister as Amber pulled up a news story on one screen and security footage on another. “What am I looking at?” A burning house, and a train station.
“A Paris businessman with suspected ties to the criminal underworld was just blown up in his own house. It’s the fourth incident of its kind over as many months. All of them involving men connected with organized crime, and all of them small, controlled explosions with no collateral damage.”
“Is it Chloe?” She desperately wanted it to be Chloe, a fellow Valkyrie trained as a demolitions expert. It had been so many years since Megan had seen her former friend and roommate—she wanted to bring Chloe in safely.
“Odds are high it’s her. If it is, she’s been taking out risky targets.”
“Chloe always loved breaking the rules.” A memory surfaced, something she hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.
Exhausted from a long day of training, Megan groaned as she flopped onto her bunk. Her hand touched something beneath the pillow. Sitting up, she lifted it to reveal a giant candy bar—and it was her favorite kind.
Immediately she rolled over to peer over the edge of her bed at Chloe, stretched out below on the bottom bunk. “You know we can’t have that in here. It’s contraband.”
“Yeah. So?” The crinkle of a wrapper sounded as Chloe ripped open her own.
“So we’ll get in trouble.”
“Only if we get caught. And we’re not going to get caught, because you’re not gonna say anything.”
Megan chewed her lip. Her stomach growled, the thought of sinking her teeth into the chocolate pure torture, making her mouth water.
“Co
me on, live a little. Be a rebel with me, Itch.”
Megan smiled at the nickname. She was Itch, because she was always restless and itching to be on the move. Chloe was Twitch, because she was…well, twitchy, and high-octane. Sometimes she thought Chloe was actually a little crazy, yet there was talk that Chloe might be put into the demolitions program. A terrifying thought.
A partially-unwrapped chocolate bar appeared at the side of her mattress. Chloe waved it around. “Come on. Cheers me.”
Laughing under her breath, Megan tapped her bar to Chloe’s. “Okay. Race you.” They had to make them disappear fast in case there was a lights-out inspection.
“Game on.” The bar disappeared back to the lower bunk. “Ready? Go.”
They wolfed down the huge chocolate bars. Megan barely tasted hers, didn’t even enjoy it really, because she was too worried about one of their instructors coming in for an unannounced inspection.
Footsteps in the hall outside their room made her freeze. “Shit, they’re coming,” she said around a mouthful of chocolate.
“So hurry up and hide the wrapper.”
Megan nearly choked getting the last bite down her throat, then quickly shoved the wrapper under her mattress and flopped down on her back just as a key turned in the lock. The instructor came in, did the inspection, and left without incident.
Smiling up at the ceiling in the darkness after the door closed, Megan reached a hand down over the edge of her bunk. “You’re a bad influence.”
“I know. You’re welcome.” Chloe curled her pinkie around Megan’s in a finger shake, then let go. “Night, Itch.”
“Night, Twitch.”
“Take a look at this,” Amber said, pulling Megan back to the present as she typed in some commands and shifted aside to give Megan a better view. “I’ve been using a new facial recognition program and got a hit.”
Megan leaned closer to the second screen showing a paused surveillance video Amber must have hacked into. The things her sister could do with a computer were downright scary.