That alone was enough to make Mallory wish she had more to give them as a parting gift than the bottle of Calvados from Monsieur Villieu’s private stock.
They, in turn, presented a hibiscus-colored shopping bag with gold cord handles and an instantly recognizable logo. A shoebox sat inside the bag.
“These are from madame’s spring collection,” Gilbért said. “She hopes you will accept them with her apologies that you should come to harm while a guest in her home.”
Lust and guilt battled for Mallory’s soul. “I can’t accept such an expensive gift.”
“But you must,” the butler insisted, pressing the bag into her hands. “Madame wishes you to have them.”
She suspected it was Gilbért and his wife who wanted her to return home with something other than a mixed bag of memories and the bruises she’d collected from Remy.
“Thank you.” Going up on tiptoe, she kissed his weathered cheeks. “And you, Madame Picard.”
“Au revoir, mademoiselle, et bonne chance.”
Cutter stowed his carryall and the small tote holding the items Mallory had purchased in town in the backseat of his rental car. After shaking hands with Gilbért and dropping kisses on Madame Picard’s apple-red cheeks, he settled Mallory in the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel. She twisted around to wave as the car rattled through the arched passageway. Once they were on the sweeping drive, the château dwindled to a fanciful, turreted image in the side mirror.
Mallory said little during the long drive to the airport on the outskirts of Paris. Cutter, by contrast, was a whirlwind of activity. Dividing his attention between the traffic ahead and the road behind, he eliminated every obstacle Mallory had been tripping over for the past week. By the time they nosed into the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the airport loop, he had everything arranged.
“Your temporary passport was delivered to the Delta Business Class reservations desk. It’s waiting for you with your ticket.”
“Okay.”
“There’s an American Express kiosk inside the terminal. They’ll reissue your traveler’s checks.”
Horns blared as he cut the wheel and pulled onto the ramp for short-term parking.
“The rental-car company wants you to sign a release of liability, but you can take care of that when you get home. Mike Callahan will be at the gate when you deplane. Look for a big bear of a man, almost as ugly as I am.”
She smiled dutifully at the sally. She could think of a whole slew of adjectives to describe Cutter Smith. Ugly wasn’t one of them.
Scarred, yes. Rough around the edges, definitely. Yet capable of such incredible tenderness that Mallory’s heart ached with the memory of it. Wrenching her gaze from his profile, she let it drop to the filigree band on her finger.
“Mike will be wearing a windbreaker with the insignia of the Military Marksmanship Association on the pocket. Rifles crossed over a bull’s-eye.” He shot her a quick look. “Got that?”
“Rifles crossed over a bull’s-eye. Got it.”
The short-term parking garage was jammed, but Cutter lucked out and found a slot only a few yards from the second-story walkway to the departure terminal.
He carried the tote, Mallory the brightly colored shopping bag. She couldn’t believe she’d crossed this same walkway less than a week ago, blithely unaware she was being stalked by the man at her side. Her little burst of resentment quickly fizzled. Too much had happened, and her feelings for Cutter were too confused, to work up much of a mad at this point.
The replacement passport was waiting at the Delta Business Class desk, as promised, along with a revised return ticket.
“We bumped you up to Business Class,” the helpful clerk advised after issuing a boarding pass. “Do you have any luggage to check?”
With a strangled laugh, Mallory shook her head. “Not this time.”
“Very well. Your aircraft will begin boarding at Gate 42B in approximately one hour. Have a good flight home, Mademoiselle Dawes.”
“Was Business Class your doing?” she asked as Cutter took her arm to weave a path through the throngs of travelers toward the shops at the end of the concourse. The distinctive blue-and-white sign above the American Express kiosk stood out like a beacon.
“I figured you deserved at least that much of a break after…”
He broke off, his grip tightening. When his eyes narrowed on something beyond her, Mallory twisted around to see what had snared his attention. Shock rippled through her as she spotted her face staring back at her from the giant TV screen mounted above the heads of the travelers.
There she was, backdropped against the stark, modernistic portrait in Madame d’Marchand’s library. Same shoulder-length blond bob. Same wary brown eyes. Same navy blazer. The commentary was in French and muffled by the noise in the terminal but Mallory got the gist of it when the screen split to display Congressman Kent’s image alongside hers. A moment later, both were replaced by a mug shot of Remy Duchette.
“Didn’t take long for them to get the footage on-air,” she commented, her throat tight.
“That was the idea,” Cutter reminded her. “The story’s probably been running every half hour since the interview.”
“Hold this a moment, would you?”
Passing him the shopping bag, she fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses. She hadn’t hidden behind them in days. Something inside her died a little at having to resort to their shield again.
The clerk in the American Express kiosk responded with the same efficiency as the airline representative. It was obvious he’d seen the news flash. Curiosity prompted several sidelong glances, but he refrained from comment except to request Mallory’s signature in several places. She walked out of the kiosk fifteen minutes later with money in her purse for the first time since the day she’d arrived.
“Wonder what happened to the flag on my accounts?” she drawled while she and Cutter once again threaded through the crowds.
“Beats me.”
His totally fake innocence scored a huff from Mallory. A moment later, she bumped to a stop.
“Look.”
Her pointing finger drew his attention to a display of plastic snow globes in the window of a souvenir shop. Amid the bubble-encased Eiffel Towers and Arc de Triomphes was the cathedral of Mont St. Michel, rising from a blue plastic sea.
“I have to get one of those.”
She found a boxed globe easily enough, but the long line at the register moved at a snail’s pace. The business with American Express had eaten a chunk out of her hour prior to boarding. The long lines at security would devour the rest. Disappointed, Mallory put the globe back on the shelf.
“I’ll pick one up after I see you aboard the plane,” Cutter promised. “Do you need to make a pit stop before we hit security?”
“I’m okay.”
She assumed they’d say goodbye at the security checkpoint, since only ticketed passengers were allowed beyond. Cutter, evidently, had other plans.
When they approached the checkpoint, he produced an ID and an official-looking document and pulled one of the security inspectors aside. That worthy individual skimmed the paperwork, pursed his lips and gestured to a fellow officer. Mallory caught only snatches of the intense conversations that ensued, but picked up several references to Interpol. Cutter finally broke away and strode back to her.
“Seems to be a problem here with my permit to carry concealed,” he said, his voice low and for her ears only.
“You’re armed?”
His hooked brow made her realize how stupid that sounded. Of course, he had his gun strapped to his ankle. This was his job. She was his job.
“I need to talk to the director of security,” Cutter told her. “Wait for me here. Right here.”
“It’s getting close to boarding time.”
“I’ll square this away as quickly as I can. If I’m not back in ten minutes, go on through. I’ll meet you at the gate. If they call your flight, get on board. You know what to do
when you deplane.”
She covered her sudden, sinking sensation with a brisk nod. “Look for Mike Callahan. Big. Ugly. Crossed rifles. Bull’s-eye.”
“Be sure to tell him about the ugly part.”
“I will.”
“Just in case, you’d better take this with you.”
She assumed he was referring to the tote he’d carried through the terminal with her. Before she could reach for it, however, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms and pulled her forward for a long, hard kiss.
“Wait here,” he growled, when he released her. “Ten minutes.”
Cutter stalked back to the two security officials, torn between the need to get Mallory on that plane and the equally fierce need to keep her in his sight until she was aboard.
It took one call to Interpol and another to OMEGA to untangle the confusion over the permit. By Cutter’s watch, he was back at the security checkpoint in nine and a half minutes. His brows slashing together, he skimmed the entire vicinity. Mallory wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Spotting the official who’d stopped him in languid conversation with another employee, he thrust through the crowd. “The woman I was with,” he bit out. “The blonde. Did she pass through security?”
“No, monsieur. She waits for you, then goes back to the concourse.”
“Dammit!”
If Mallory had decided to use the delay to buy that snow globe, Cutter would rip her a new one.
“She comes back soon,” the inspector added helpfully. “I hear her tell her friend she has not much time.”
“What friend?”
“The woman who greets her. She carries a shopping bag, too. The same as mademoiselle’s.”
Cutter whirled, his mind racing. Who the hell had Mallory hooked up with? A fellow shoe addict? A representative of Yvette d’Marchand, bearing more gifts? Yvette herself, driven by curiosity about the houseguest who’d generated such a spate of publicity?
Or someone else? Someone who’d tried to use Mallory’s connection to d’Marchand once before to get to her?
His stomach clenching, Cutter barged around clumps of travelers and swept through the gift shop on the run. Customers scattered. The clerk at the register shouted a protest. A string of muttered curses followed him out again.
His heart jackhammered against his ribs when he burst onto the cavernous concourse and skidded to a stop. He spun left, searching the crowd, praying for a glimpse of Mallory’s navy blazer or pale gold hair.
He swung to the right and had started for the Delta reservation counter when he spotted her through the glass windows. She was on the walkway leading to the parking garage, arm-in-arm with a slender brunette in designer jeans and a mink vest. They moved at a good clip but both, he saw with a jolt of disbelief, were laughing.
Cutter’s step slowed. Ice coated his veins. The noisy terminal faded, replaced in his frozen mind by a dark, silent munitions warehouse.
Eva had left an urgent message for Cutter to meet her there. Said she’d put the squeeze on one of her sources and learned that the stolen munitions they’d been tracking were in a crate hidden inside the warehouse. He’d slipped over the wall an hour early, intending to reconnoiter. A half dozen yards from the entrance to the warehouse he’d picked up the murmur of voices…accompanied by the unmistakable timbre of Eva’s low, rippling laugh. Then a truck had rumbled up, the warehouse doors opened and she’d walked into the spear of headlights.
Cutter never knew which of them fired the shot that ignited the munitions stored inside the warehouse. He wasn’t even sure she’d screamed his name before the explosion knocked him on his ass and the flames consumed him.
Now, with the echo of her laughter ringing in his ears, the agony of those months in the burn ward gripped Cutter like a vise. Needles of pain seemed to shoot through his jaw and neck. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t force any thought through his frozen mind except one. Mallory was walking away from him. Arm in arm with a stranger. Laughing.
“Keep walking.”
The woman in the mink vest reinforced the soft command by digging her gun in deeper.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Mallory said desperately. “I don’t have the damned disk.”
“So you wish me to believe.” The brunette’s smile belied the menace in her eyes. “I saw your performance on TV. It was worthy of the Bolshoi. How fortunate that I was in Paris and could intercept you at the airport.”
Her English was as flawless as her face, but the reference to the Bolshoi generated the sickening suspicion that she worked for the nameless, faceless Russian Cutter was after.
“I wasn’t performing! I did lose my suitcase to the riptide at Mont St. Michel. I am going home.”
“You’ve caused me considerable inconvenience, Ms. Dawes. Please don’t try my patience further. Walk.” The gun gouged into her ribs. “And smile for these nice people.”
Mallory stretched her lips at the travelers hurrying in the opposite direction, but inside she screamed with frustration and fear and a fast-growing fury.
She’d been standing less than a half dozen yards from the security checkpoint when this svelte brunette had sauntered by. Catching sight of the gold-embossed shopping bag, the woman held up a similar one of her own and strolled over. To talk shoes, Mallory assumed. The next thing she knew, she had a gun sticking in her side and was being hustled toward the exit.
She could guess what Cutter would think when he discovered she’d skipped. He’d believe she knew about the disk all along, that she grabbed this opportunity to escape.
The brunette must have been reading her mind. “This man you were with. The one you kissed. Does he know about the disk?”
She was damned if she’d tell the woman anything. “No.”
“So it is just you and your Congressman Kent who make this deal?”
“Kent?” Mallory stumbled, numb with shock. “Are you saying Kent burned that data to disk?”
“Do you think you’re the only woman he pawed?” Amusement laced the reply. “He is a pig, that one, and easily led by his dick. And now he pays dearly for his pleasure.” Satisfaction thrummed through her voice. “The data he pulled off your computer is worth millions. My best haul to date.”
Reeling, Mallory realized she wasn’t dealing with an underling. This was the big kahuna. Struggling to overcome her shock, she swiped her tongue over dry lips.
“How…? How did Kent get the disk into my suitcase?”
“I neither know nor care. You’ll have to ask him when next you see him.”
Yeah, right.
The woman’s mocking reply more than convinced Mallory she wouldn’t live to put the question to Kent—or to tip authorities to the fact that the shadowy figure they’d labeled the Russian was a woman. It also fueled her simmering fury into a fast, furious boil.
Enough was enough! She’d been groped by a man she’d admired. Seen her allegations of sexual harassment turned against her. Endured the humiliation of being publicly branded a whore. Been tailed across France by an undercover agent. She was damned if she’d let this bitch hustle her into a car at gunpoint.
Digging in her heels, she dragged the woman to an abrupt halt. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes, you are.” The gun barrel bruised her ribs. “Keep walking, Ms. Dawes.”
“No.”
“Don’t make me hurt you. Walk.”
Mallory’s reply was to twist violently. At the same instant she let swing with the shopping bag gripped in her free hand. The shoebox whipped across her body in a vicious arc and smacked the brunette square in the face.
The woman stumbled, recovered, whirled, caught the thud of pounding feet. Mallory heard it, too. Her heart stuttering, she saw the Russian’s gun jerk a few inches to the left.
Cutter! That had to be Cutter the woman had in her sights!
Terror leaping through her veins, Mallory put every ounce of strength she possessed into another swing.
; Chapter 15
Mike Callahan was waiting when Mallory and Cutter deplaned at Dulles an exhausting thirty-six hours later.
They’d spent most of those hours holed up at Interpol. While Mallory watched through a one-way mirror, Cutter and several very skilled interrogators grilled the woman they soon identified as Catherine Halston, aka Fatima Allende, aka Irina Petrov.
Cool and unruffled, Petrov had admitted to a half dozen other aliases. In exchange for the promise of a reduced sentence, she also offered to provide video of her afternoon trysts with Ashton Kent in a posh D.C. hotel—including segments detailing his reluctant agreement to provide identity data as the price for keeping silent about his illicit liaison.
After the session at Interpol, Mallory had contrived a quick visit to Yvette d’Marchand’s Paris boutique to thank the designer in person for the shoes now adorning her feet. Brilliant aquamarine crystals studded the thick wedge soles and decorated the straps that crisscrossed over her feet, wrapped around her ankles, and tied midway up her calf.
The glittering three-inch platforms gave her the necessary boost to meet Mike Callahan eye to eye. Almost. He was as tall and tough-looking as Cutter had indicated, but nowhere near as ugly. When she told him so, he shot his fellow agent a dry look.
“Thanks, Slash.”
“I calls ’em as I sees ’em, Hawk.”
Cutter used the drive in from Dulles to provide an update on the results of the interrogation. Callahan, in turn, shared the dossier he’d compiled on each of the Russian’s various aliases.
“The woman got around. Remember the op that came apart on us in Hong Kong?”
Cutter let out a low whistle. “That was her?”
“That was her.”
The thick file Callahan passed over his shoulder prompted a question from Mallory.
“Do you have a copy of the dossier you compiled on me?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do I?”
“You might as well show her,” Cutter said. “I’ve already taken a ration of grief over it.”
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