by Kaylea Cross
“In time,” he murmured as he stared at her polished image on screen. “All in good time.” Right now he had to give his brother the final, dignified sendoff Dom deserved.
Twenty minutes later he was talking to his priest on the phone when Jean-Pierre walked in. One look at his head of security’s face, and Guillaume knew they had a lead.
His heart rate quickened. He excused himself, ended the call, then motioned for Jean-Pierre to sit in one of the chairs positioned in front of the desk. “Well?”
“The woman might have caught a train to Strasbourg last night. Facial recognition said it’s a sixty-five-percent chance it’s her.”
Guillaume glanced at the door, but of course, Jean-Pierre would have locked it on his way in. He never had meetings like this at home, preferring to keep all…gray area aspects of his business dealings away from his family. “Was she alone?”
“I thought so at first. But now I think not.” He pulled out a tablet and brought up some images on screen. “I think she might be with this man. He boarded the same train car as her in Paris. Here on the platform in Strasbourg he follows her before he walks out of range.”
A dark-haired, muscular man in a brown leather jacket. “Who is he?” He studied the image. “He’s too far away to be a bodyguard. Maybe an accomplice, or someone following her?”
“We don’t know yet. And we don’t know where they’ve gone either, but we’re monitoring everything we can. If this is the same woman who posed as Gabrielle, she changed her appearance with a disguise. The hat she wore made it hard to see her face, and with her ears covered it makes it more difficult to say for sure if it’s her. But it’s the best lead we’ve got at the moment.”
“It’s her.” He’d studied her image enough now to recognize her profile and the way she moved. “Have you called in favors from our contacts?” He had everything from National Police to some military officers, intelligence officials and politicians in his pocket. Someone would be able to lend assistance.
“Yes. And thanks to new voice recognition software one of them got a possible hit an hour ago. We may have found our break.” He switched screens and brought up an audio clip. “The voice matches hers, and the cell signal was intercepted near Strasbourg.”
Guillaume listened as two women spoke in English. A very strange, definitely coded conversation that didn’t make any sense. “She’s either Canadian or American.” He met Jean-Pierre’s gaze. Everything he’d learned thus far said the rumors might be true. “A Valkyrie,” he whispered, the hairs on his nape standing up. She had to be. Incredible as it seemed, she had to be.
Jean-Pierre nodded, his gaze intent. “Maybe.”
No. Guillaume’s gut was certain of it. “Who sent her?”
“That program was shut down completely a long time ago. It’s possible she’s operating on her own.”
“Why did she target Dom? Because of the women?” He sneered. They were such a small part of the business. Uneducated, illiterate women who barely spoke French, looking for a better life and easily manipulated into thinking they would get it.
He was doing his country a service by keeping them out of the system. If he and Dom hadn’t purchased them, they would have all landed up on welfare eventually, sucking money from French taxpayers’ pockets because they were too stupid and lazy to support themselves and the fatherless children they would inevitably have. A drain on a society already sagging under the weight of the burden it bore.
“I don’t know, but when we traced the other number involved with this particular call, the only thing we could find was that it originated somewhere in the UK. It was that heavily encrypted.”
Guillaume grunted. Maybe the Brits had sent “Gabrielle”. He didn’t want MI6 sniffing around. “So she’s still in Strasbourg?”
“As best we can tell.”
He wanted to kill her. Instead he’d make her wish she was dead. “Do you have an exact location?”
“Yes.” He pulled up a satellite map showing a quiet, residential neighborhood.
Righteous anger punched through him. She thought she could kill his brother and then walk away? “I want a team dispatched there immediately. Find her and bring her to me. If she’s with the guy, kill him and make it look like she did it.” The fewer strings, the better.
“Of course. I’ve already alerted our special tactics officer contact in Strasbourg. He’s getting a team together now, using the story that the woman and the man she’s possibly with are terrorists.”
“She is a terrorist,” he snarled. “Tell him I want a live feed to their helmet cams.” He wanted to watch the operation in real time.
“I will.” Jean-Pierre stood. “I’ll alert you—”
“Sit down, Jean-Pierre. We’ll do this here. And when the team goes in, I want to ID her myself.”
Guillaume didn’t care if she was deadly in her own right. He would find her, no matter how long it took. And he would make her suffer.
No one fucked with his family and lived. There was no safe place on earth for her now.
****
Well, he was no fun.
Chloe pouted in disappointment and stared up at the ceiling from the couch rather than look over at Heath. After her loaded innuendo she’d only been partially kidding about, Heath had merely given her a long, warning look before setting to work transferring all his contacts into his new phone.
Lame. No shock, no bulging eyes or even an interested look for her efforts. He could have at least given her something interesting to work with, but nope, he was all standoffish, cool and collected. And apparently determined to ignore her.
That kind of quiet vibe had never done anything for her before, but on him, she had to admit it was pretty damn hot. And for some reason she was even more interested now that he seemed intent on resisting her.
Since he was still ignoring her, she got up and sauntered over to the fridge. Pulling out another energy drink and a Pop Tart, she popped the top on the can and raised an eyebrow when she caught his censoring look. “What? Keeps me sharp mentally.”
He didn’t comment, just went back to work on his phone.
Stretched back out on the couch a minute later, she ate her snack, being purposely noisy. She hid a grin when she earned an annoyed side-eye from him.
After she ate, she checked her phone for anything new. Megan texted to say she and Ty were on the way to their plane, and gave her an updated ETA. There was nothing from Fleur. Several news stories were talking about the explosion at Dom’s place and that he was missing. No one had confirmed his death yet. But Guillaume had to know by now.
Then an alert popped up on her phone that made her sit upright. “Hey,” she said to Heath, staring at the screen.
“What’s wrong?” He strode over.
“We got a problem.” Chloe’s pulse thudded in her ears as she used an app to check the perimeter cameras surrounding the rental unit. The one on the west side of the house showed a tactical team lined up on the sidewalk across the street and two doors down.
Heath came to stand behind her, watching over her shoulder as the team of cops dressed in tactical gear approached the side door of the house. “Where’s this?” he asked.
“Across the street and two houses down.” Damn, they must have somehow tracked her phone’s signal. If she hadn’t had the encryption on it, they wouldn’t have hit the wrong house.
Chloe was already on her feet when the first man in line rammed a breaching tool into the door, breaking it open. A second later the team rushed inside, weapons up.
“We gotta clear out of here right now,” she said, and they both rushed to gather their stuff.
They had to be here for her. And it had to be because of Guillaume Dubois. Nobody else in France had the resources to track her so quickly. He and his brother had been business partners. Dom had been the fuck-up of the two, with Guillaume doing everything in his power to bail his little brother out of trouble and hide his messes.
Now he was after her.
<
br /> She shoved her gear into her bag, then hurried to the kitchen to gather up any trash, not wanting to leave any easy evidence behind for the forensics team if they wound up searching this place. Heath started for the back door, backpack on.
“No, this way,” she said, killing the lights and hurrying to the closet door. They had to take the secret entrance or risk being seen.
Inside, she shone the beam of her penlight at the floor. “There’s a hidden staircase that leads to a cellar, and that extends to the next building. We’ll go out on the far side of it. Oh, and just in case…” She drew her backup weapon from her waistband and handed it to him.
He took it and edged past her, his aloofness gone, replaced by a quiet intensity that was almost electric. “I’ll get the trap door.”
Chloe drew her own weapon and stood back to aim the penlight at the trap door in the closet. She liked that he was quick and didn’t argue or ask questions. She could feel his frustration over this situation and didn’t blame him. She actually felt bad about not being able to tell him everything at this point, and hoped things could be cleared up once they saw Megan and her man.
Heath raised the trap door, weapon pointed inside the hole. He leaned down to do a visual sweep, then straightened. “Clear.”
Not that she’d expected anything else, but she was glad he was being thorough. “Ready?” At his nod, Chloe stepped past him and angled her body to fit through the hole, the thin, powerful beam of light cutting through the darkness.
Heath waited until there was enough room for him, then shut the closet door and came through the opening after her. As soon as he was inside, he closed the trap door above them.
“This way,” Chloe said, and hurried across the old stone floor beneath the buildings, listening for the telltale sound of footsteps on the concrete sidewalk above them.
She ducked beneath the ancient timbers acting as pillars and supports, heading for the opposite side of the cold cellar. By now the tactical team would have cleared the building across the street, and realized they’d hit the wrong one. The next step would be to check the neighboring ones. Chloe intended to be long gone before then.
The trap door on the far side didn’t have any stairs up to it, and it locked from the inside. There were no boxes or crates for her to stand on and they didn’t have a second to waste. “Boost me up.”
Heath slid his weapon into the back of his waistband and came up behind her to wrap his arms around her hips, his grip sure and warm, sending an unexpected tingle through her. He lifted her off her feet with ease, held her steady while she reached overhead to fight with the iron peg jammed into the locking mechanism.
It was old and rusted and took several shoves to slide free, each creak of the metal making her wince. They had minutes, maybe less than five, to get out of here unseen, or things were going to get ugly. “Okay, I’m pushing the door open now.” She switched off the penlight, slid it into her pocket, then eased the hatch up a few inches.
Dark and quiet greeted her on the street above. She paused there for a few moments, Heath holding her steady as she checked to make sure they were still in the clear. Thankfully there was no sign of the cops. Yet. If they even were real cops. For all she knew they could be a hit squad hired by Dubois.
“We’re good, but hurry,” she whispered to him, then pushed the hatch open all the way, planted her hands on either side of the opening and pushed upward. Heath boosted her up from below, making it easy for her. She moved to the side and stayed perched on one knee to draw her weapon and keep watch.
Heath’s hands curled around the sides of the opening. A second later he levered his upper body through it, climbed out, then mirrored her positioning on the other side, weapon in hand as he scanned the alley.
“Still clear,” she whispered. “Let’s move.” She closed the trap door as quietly as she could, pushed to her feet and stuck to the shadows of the buildings as she hurried to where she’d left the rental car, Heath right behind her.
“Who’s after you?” he demanded in a low voice as he got into the passenger seat and shut the door, his expression tight.
“Not now,” Chloe answered, checking around her before starting the engine. The street was empty but the cops would have a perimeter set up nearby, so she had to pick the right route out of here.
The heat was on, and would only get hotter. She’d managed to stay ahead of Guillaume Dubois and his many tentacles thus far, but he’d earned his ruthless reputation for a reason.
She’d taken his brother from him. He wouldn’t rest until he got her.
Not that he would get the chance, because she was going to kill him first.
Chapter Seven
Heath was done with this shit. First dropping everything in the middle of his holiday to help this woman, then the knife thing and his phone, and now a tactical unit might have been sent to arrest her?
With effort he tamped down his annoyance and braced a hand on the door when Chloe took a fast right, winding her way out of the residential neighborhood. As soon as she turned the corner, he spotted the police vehicles lined up behind them down the street. The start of the secure perimeter the cops would have set up prior to the team approaching the target house.
“Who’s after you?” he repeated in a hard voice. He was used to rules and regulations, SOPs and chain of command. This chaos was making him insane.
“Someone with a lot of power and influence,” she answered, taking a quick left onto a main road.
It made him itch not to be behind the wheel in a situation like this, but she seemed to have everything in hand, and no cops were coming after them. Yet. Maybe they were in the clear for now. “Bullshit. I’ve put up with everything so far, but this is bullshit.” He was supposed to be on his hard-earned holiday right now, not on the run from the law with a crazy and infuriating woman. “Who is it?”
“Guillaume Dubois.”
Heath had never heard of him.
“He’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in France. And he didn’t get that way by being a good boy and playing by the rules, if you know what I mean.”
“So why’s he after you?”
“That’s gonna have to wait until we meet up with the others. Can you call them, by the way? We need to set up a new RV point.”
“Where are we going?”
“Zurich.”
What? “That’s like, two hours away.”
“More like just under three, actually. But it’s in the opposite direction that anyone tracking me is likely to look. They’ll expect me to head across into Germany, because it’s closer.”
Heath stared at her profile in the flicker of the streetlamps they passed. What the hell had she done? “Does Ty know what you did to land on this guy’s radar?”
“Not sure, but Megan might. Call them.”
Pushing out a breath, Heath pulled out his new phone, scowling as he dialed Ty. It went straight to voicemail, so he texted his friend instead. “Where in Zurich?” he asked her.
“Tell them we’ll let them know when we get there.”
He relayed the message, set the phone in his lap and checked the side mirror. Still no cops. Chloe seemed to have everything under control. There were no flashing lights, no wail of sirens coming after them.
“Look, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time before. Megan and Tyler will help clear things up soon.”
He glanced over at her. She was gorgeous, confident and capable, but also unsettling and intense. Heath didn’t know what to make of her. While he admired her abilities, it pissed him off to be kept in the dark like this. “How does Ty know about you? From Megan?”
“Looks like.”
His new phone buzzed with an incoming message. “He says they’ll meet us in Zurich in three hours.”
“Perfect.” She smoothly merged onto the freeway. There were barely any cars on the road at this time of night. “So, why a PJ?”
The abrupt change in subject threw him for a sec. He didn’t feel like
talking if he wasn’t getting anything back, but the alternative was spending the next three hours in a brittle silence. “I liked the job description. I didn’t know about Pararescue when I first joined up, but once I heard about it, there was nothing else for me.”
“Did you get through the pipeline the first try?”
He blinked, surprised that she knew about the pipeline. “No. I failed the pool section the first time.” They called it Superman school for a reason, and it had taken all of his effort and mental toughness to get through that section—especially since he knew what was coming the second time around.
“That’s pretty common. The water’s always the great equalizer.”
She made it sound like she knew that firsthand. “And you know that because?”
She shrugged. “I went through it too.”
No way. He stared at her. Was she screwing with him? Why the hell would she have gone through that course? “For what?”
“For my training.”
Okay. Seriously. He frowned. “Are you Israeli Special Forces?”
She laughed. “No.” Then she shot him a smug grin. “Better.” She faced the road once more. “But I still can’t tell you everything yet. You’ll just have to be patient.”
He was starting to believe she wasn’t kidding. About any of this. “What were you training for?” he couldn’t help asking.
The hint of a smile tugged at her mouth at his persistence. “To be prepared for anything.”
“Like a life of crime?” he said, a sardonic bite to his words.
She chuckled under her breath, and it sounded a little evil. “You could say that.” She shifted in her seat, easing back, and he could see the tension drain from her as they drove away from Strasbourg. “I love how they call it ‘water confidence’. Confidence my ass, they just throw you in the deep end and then do their best to drown you. The only way you get confidence is if you survive to pass.”
“And you obviously did.” He was still trying to envision it. Some instructor throwing her, feet bound together, hands bound behind her back, into the deep end of a pool and then holding her under. He didn’t like the images that put in his head. Not at all.