by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair
“How do you mean?” she asked, riveted by the deeper side of him.
“Oh, just how I navigate the world. I’m grateful for what I have, since I know what it is to have lost.”
“Right,” she said, taken in by his trust. “But it’s still a big giant hole in your heart, right? I feel sometimes like something started the day my dad died, something got put into motion, and it’s never stopped since.”
“Wow,” he breathed. “I feel the same.”
“What doesn’t kill you . . . right?”
He laughed. “Right.”
“Since that day,” she said, moving closer to him, “I think my life has been one long series of lessons. Recently I started saying a new mantra: enough with the lessons, just give me the candy!”
“God, I know,” he groaned. “Life can really kick you in the ass, can’t it? And just when you’re hoping for a little comfort . . .”
“You get kicked a little harder.”
They sat in stillness for a moment, just studying each other. Then Susannah said, “So do you still try to figure out what happened to him?”
“No,” he said abruptly, “it’s not something I want to talk about.”
“Oh,” Susannah said as she could almost see his walls rise up around him. Just when they were getting somewhere! “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Not at all,” he said, seeming like he was covering. “It’s just that I don’t really think about them much. Maybe we can enjoy each other a bit more before getting serious?”
“Sure,” she replied, “love to.” In truth, she was a bit put off. He clearly had his guard back up, and just when they had almost gotten to a deeper level of conversation. It was totally frustrating. They engaged with each other again but this time at a cautious distance. Susannah looked into his eyes and felt he was only partly there. After they both climaxed and lay down to sleep, she wondered if she’d ever really get to see his true self; then she immediately wondered if she was really thinking thoughts like these. Had he literally screwed her brains out? Frankly, this was the first time in years that her mind had actually begun to think about the possibilities. She began to imagine this time with Chas as more than just the sex she’d come to seek—could this be something real? Or was this simply another casual affair that would bring a moment’s peace and nothing else? If she had her head on straight she’d view this as only a job perk, a bonus in the midst of working a case. As she fell asleep, she ignored the voice inside that longed for something more.
‡‡‡
SHE WOKE A BIT later to the ringing of her cell phone. Chas was nowhere in sight. She let the call go to voice mail, then noticed the rose on the pillow next to her and the note beneath it:
Legs. I had a beautiful time. Sorry to run. Business calls. Thank you for such an enchanting evening. Hope we get to do it again. Make yourself comfortable, and stay as long as you like. Tex
“Dammit,” she said as her cell starting ringing again. “Lost him.” Turning to the phone, she saw it was the Boss calling, and she picked it up on the third ring.
“Bossman?”
“Well, it’s about goddamn time. Have a nice night?”
“It was okay. But now he’s gone for the day, I think.”
“Legs, it’s more than that,” said the Boss, with frustration in his voice. “Looks like he’s on his way out of the country. We put Jackson outside his brownstone in the middle of the night just to have backup in case you called an SOS. Jackson then followed him to JFK and found him getting on a plane to Paris.”
“Paris?” she exclaimed, sitting straight up in bed. “What the—”
“No time for niceties, babe. This is our one chance to catch him. And you’re our only hope.”
She caught her breath. “Meaning?”
“Put on some clothes, Legs. You’re on the next flight to Paris.”
‡‡‡
CHAS STEPPED INTO his regular suite at the Hotel George V in Paris. Personally, he preferred something less ostentatious, but he always stayed at five-star hotels to impress his clients, and these gentlemen were no exception. If one stooped to call them gentlemen, that is. He bristled at the thought of meeting with Pierre and his cronies. The only reason he associated with them was that he knew with each step he came closer to figuring out the story behind his father’s murder, the cover-up that followed it, and the people involved. He knew Pierre was integral to the plot, but he didn’t quite know how. All he knew was that he was getting closer. He felt it in his gut.
He also knew Susannah would track him. He had left a trail of breadcrumbs as big as sofa cushions for her colleagues and knew she’d be onto him. That’s how he wanted it. He was enjoying this game very much, but there was something more. He was enjoying her, every single aspect of her. Her wit, her strength, her heart, her body. And there was something else: her soul. He was enjoying how natural it was to connect with her on this level. He wanted to impress her, and dammit, he wanted to woo her like the lady she was on the inside and on the outside. He wanted to taste her on top of satin sheets while looking out at the Eiffel Tower. He wanted to share fine champagne while he licked French chocolate off her sumptuous nipples. He wanted her lips on every part of him as he ran his fingers through her silken red hair, fanning it all over his . . .
Whoa. What was happening to him? Time to cool down. He had a job to do, and it required all his concentration, effort, and grit to do it. Chas put his suitcase down and picked up the manila folder that was waiting for him on the coffee table. As usual, it was addressed in the same beautiful cursive he’d come to find revolting.
Dear Mr. Palmer,
We are so glad you have joined us for another tour. All the information you’ll need is in this file. We’ll see you at the usual spot for drinks and conversation. Once you meet everyone, we’ll get right down to business. Happy to have you with us. And remember, leave your weapons at the door.
Warmly,
G
Chas gritted his teeth. He didn’t know who “G” was, and he didn’t care. He was always given the same packet, with the details, the orders, the disingenuous niceties in the cursive. Opening up the packet, he looked at the info. He always expected it would explode after he read it, but then this wasn’t Mission: Impossible. No, this mission was very possible, albeit difficult, and this job looked to be one of the nastier ones. He looked at the pictures and faces of Pierre’s crew members, all of whom needed forged papers to access the mansion. He knew some of them and noticed the new ones were cut of a similar and equally rough cloth. He wondered about them, wondered who, if any, might give him the clues he’d need to solve his case. It was early in the morning, Paris time, and he hadn’t slept much, but no matter. Taking his hard drive out of a hidden compartment in his briefcase and connecting it to his laptop, he rang for a pot of coffee and got to work.
‡‡‡
SUSANNAH GOT TO HER B and B in Montmartre and was immediately struck by how tired she was. It had been a long, tough couple of days. Thankfully, the Boss had put her up in a beautiful place, run by a mother-daughter team and decorated like a Victorian town house. Her French was more than passable—a gift from her father’s side of the family—and she had been to Paris several times in her youth. She remembered with fondness splitting her time between her grand-mère’s cottage in the Dordogne and a family apartment in Paris, eating croissants with fresh jam and drinking tea out of beautiful china cups. And the conversations! Her grand-mère had a bunch of female friends (Les grandes dames, her father called them) who spent nearly every night together, laughing, drinking wine, and talking about men. Her grand-mère was famous for saying that men were like kitchen appliances: useful and very important, but ultimately, quite dull.
Not having been back to Paris for several years, she realized suddenly how much she missed it. It was a second home to her and the place where her heart rested. She often thought that she would move there if and when she could figure out how. It just seemed like things wor
ked better in France: the lifestyle was easier and filled with leisure; the men were well dressed; the women stayed stunning well into their later years. In France, Susannah thought, life was the way it ought to be. She opened the dormer windows to let in the fresh spring breeze. Looking out over the whole of Paris, she smiled. Well, it wasn’t luxury, exactly, but it was perfect for her. Setting her belongings down, she put her laptop in her bag and went to get coffee and Gauloises. She smoked only when in France, and it was one of her treasured vices. Screw sleep—I’ll sleep when I’m dead—she had a job to do.
Walking down the Parisian side streets to grab a café au lait and a brioche, she vibrated with the anticipation of seeing Chas again.
‡‡‡
THEY WERE MIDWAY through the meeting when Chas went to take a breather. They were in the back room of an old art gallery in the Marais, a perfect cover for this group of unmentionables. The table was littered with cigarettes, coffee cups, maps, floor plans, and bottles of liquor. He grabbed a pack of Gauloises and raised his voice over the din of several accents. “I’m going to take some time to clear my head, gentlemen. Take a walk around the neighborhood. Back in a bit.”
Pierre looked up from the papers Chas had given him upon entry. He smiled. “Your work is exceptional as always, Monsieur Palmer. Monsieur Bruni will be pleased.”
Bruni. The Italian. Terrifying in his single-minded focus on his goal: power. Power and money. And if challenged? Bruni would kill everything that stood in his way.
Chas nodded, swallowing to cover the bile rising in his throat. “Tell him I send my best.”
“Oh, I will, Monsieur Palmer. Now enjoy the streets of Paris. We have much work to do later today.”
He nodded again and slipped out, feeling a rush of relief at his exit. Once outside, he went to light a cigarette, only to realize he’d forgotten matches. Cursing, he was about to turn the corner to get some when a tall, chiseled blonde held out a lighter inscribed with a pair of red lips. “Need a light?” she asked in an Eastern European accent.
He smiled, eyeing her up and down, lit his cigarette, and took a deep drag. “Is it that obvious that I’m American, and in trouble?”
“Neither is obvious, Mr. Palmer, but I was trying to find you. My name is Tyka. I have been looking for you for some time.”
Chas raised an eyebrow. “Looking for me? Why, if I may ask?”
“We can’t talk here. It’s not safe. Will you walk with me?”
“Certainly. But can you give me a hint?”
She looked him straight in the eye, her light blue eyes gleaming. “Mr. Palmer—I knew your father. He left you a message, before he was killed. I am here to give it to you.”
Chas took a deep breath and another drag of his cigarette. Then, wordlessly, he followed her down the cobblestone street.
‡‡‡
SUSANNAH WAS MIDWAY through her fifth café au lait when the Boss called. “Well,” she answered, “it’s about time. I was about to go take a nap.”
His voice sounded remarkably clear as he responded, “You know that’s the worst thing you could do.”
She looked up to see the Boss standing in front of her, and saw Lisa Bee and Jackson over his left shoulder. “Oh, come on! Really? Why didn’t we all go together, for fuck’s sake!”
The Boss looked haggard, but smiled. “Frankly, Legs, we were gonna have you come on your own. We were in the midst of a quick search of Chas’s brownstone when we realized how dangerous it was.”
“More dangerous than we already thought?” she inquired.
“Differently so,” he said. “While Jackson was looking through Chas’s cabinets, Lisa Bee did a little digging through his email and found out who Chas is meeting with today. It’s rough stuff, Legs, the real stuff. Drugs. Murder. The mob. One of the Italian crime families is involved, and between them and the French they’ve got an international ring that could take on a small country. Maybe Chas Palmer isn’t quite as clean as we thought.”
“What do you mean by that?” She gulped.
“Well, we’re thinking that maybe he isn’t just a computer hacker. That might be the cover. He may be a trained killer, one of the best. Lisa Bee found something that connects him to the Bal du Bois murders that happened last year.”
Susannah choked down the rest of her coffee and stood on shaky legs. Twenty-three innocent people had been killed in the Virginia shoot-out, including a few she knew from high school. What had started as a simple robbery of the Bal du Bois debutante ball had turned into gunplay and resulted in a mass murder. If Chas was really involved with that, he was far more sinister than she’d realized.
FTP only investigated white-collar crime—clean, simple, easy. The nastier stuff they left to the big guns, the FBI itself or other outside agencies more skilled in working with high-profile criminals. If Chas had committed or condoned murder, or in any way contributed to the events that led to the Virginia shoot-out, then this was an entirely different playing field. She was knee-deep in a game, and suddenly the rules had changed. What was she thinking, dallying with this man, letting herself actually feel something for him, and chasing him to Europe? This wasn’t child’s play. He was a criminal, maybe a rougher criminal than they intially thought, and charm was his way of getting what he wanted.
This wasn’t the first time she had been wrong about a guy. She had dealt with this kind of man before. Heck, she had dated him countless times. When she was sixteen, she dated a man who said he went to school at Georgetown. It turned out he was a con artist trying to fleece her of her inheritance after her father’s death. When she was twenty, she lost her virginity to a professor, only to discover that he was married with children nearly her age. At twenty-three she had fallen deeply in love with a man who confessed, under her newly learned powers of interrogation, that he was undercover and had an entirely fake identity; shortly thereafter he left town, and she could never find even a whisper of his trail. A string of douche bags followed, each one more aggravating than the last.
Susannah had made the decision—she remembered it quite vividly, in fact, as she was standing in the middle of a Christmas tree farm with her mother and getting all weepy about the upcoming holiday—that she would keep her heart veiled and use sex as a release, nothing more. And she had held to it. For just under ten years, that had been her single MO: she would have affairs, sexual escapades, but her heart would remain locked. That was her intention with Chas, but something had felt different, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She felt more open with him, like the walls she usually put up around herself didn’t even exist.
Had she actually fallen for him? Could it have happened? This was how love always seemed to work—when one was least prepared, or least interested, that’s when it fell into one’s lap. She had made one mistake, and one mistake only: she had let her guard down and fallen for the wrong man. This man was a master manipulator like all the others, and she was just a cog in his wheel. Well, she wouldn’t be. Not now, not after she had risked so much to be the independent, fierce, dedicated agent she was. Oh, no, she wouldn’t fall prey to his tricks. She’d put on her game face and do what she did best.
“Then it’s our job to get the fucker.”
6
“WILL ZERE BE anysing else, madame?” said the waiter as Chas finished his wine and Tyka lit another cigarette.
“Non, merci,” she replied. “L’addition, s’il vous plaît.” The waiter left, then she looked at Chas. “We need to leave soon,” she said. “It isn’t safe.”
They were sitting in the basement room of a Moroccan restaurant on the Rue de Poitou. It was the middle of the day, and it was empty except for them. They sat on mirrored poufs and were surrounded by dimly lit colored lanterns. The scent of sweet Moroccan curry hung in the air, and extra tagines were stored on shelves next to an unmarked door, which led to the office. Chas lit another cigarette and tried to digest what he had learned.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said quickly. “It’s just a lot to take in.”
They had been there for the better part of an hour, and Tyka had much to reveal. His father had, indeed, been murdered by one of Pierre’s henchmen. That confirmed what Chas had always suspected. What he had not known was that Pierre himself had ordered the hit, and his father had known something was coming. He also had not known that his father had died pursuing much the same path that Chas walked now. Chuck Palmer came from humble beginnings in New Jersey, the son of a plumber and a mother who spent all her time taking care of her four sons. Chuck’s brothers all went directly from high school into the family business and believed he would do the same. It was his mother who saw that he was different and against his father’s wishes encouraged him to go to college and eventually to business school. Chuck made good on the risk and the strain it put on his parents and became a financial scion who built PalmStar Equities from an idea into a thriving international investment fund.
In the course of his work he had met Pierre, and through Pierre he met Bruni, the Italian. They asked him to do things with money that were technically illegal, but not a huge risk. Everyone who made more than half a million a year wound up with an offshore bank account at some point. But from there, it was a slippery slope. Chuck had always been a brilliant innovator, on the cutting edge of technology, and a man who liked accessing the world’s secrets. He became a latter-day Midas, able to turn any business into gold. While becoming a renowned international consultant and advisor, he also became the go-between for Pierre and the Italian to expand their business to unforeseen shores. And that’s when the worm had begun to turn. What had once been simply a lucrative career for Chuck had turned dark, his days filled with the knowledge that his actions were contributing to far more than money laundering. Once he began to see the truth, he sought to expose the very men he had once helped. And when Pierre realized what was happening, he told the Italian. The rest was history.