Dangerous to Know

by Merline Lovelace

  As she inched around the hairpin turns, Paige sighed again. She’d left the careful list of shops in L.A., knowing that she wouldn’t be shopping for her trousseau. She’d just have to find something suitable on her own before the shops closed for the afternoon.

  Two hours later she pushed open the door of yet another boutique. The store window displayed only one item, a sequined ball cap in lavender on a black marble stand, so Paige wasn’t quite sure exactly what she’d find inside.

  As soon as she saw the single rack that ran the length of the small shop, she almost turned around and walked back out. A quick glance told her the beaded and jeweled garments weren’t the kind of clothing she wore. What was more, she knew they would be well out of her price range.

  Paige paused with her hand on the door latch. She was tired and hungry and absolutely appalled at the prices she’d encountered. Unfortunately, she was also smotheringly hot and not in the mood to search for the kind of shops David had indicated carried items more to her taste. Gritting her teeth, she closed the door and walked over to the rack. Maybe they’d have something on sale.

  The shop attendant called out a musical greeting, advising Paige that she’d be right with her. A moment later, the dark-haired woman glided into the back room in search of some item for the only other customer in the boutique, a tall, leggy blonde in a short tomato-red jacket worn over a gold mesh halter.

  Paige flipped through the few padded hangers on the rack, without much hope. She suspected that the prices for these sequined, Madonnna-ish corsets and lacy see-through tank tops would be in direct inverse proportion to the amount of material that went into them. The skimpier the article of clothing, she’d discovered in the past hour, the more outrageous the price.

  She lifted a hanger from the rack and gazed at a narrow band of gold lamé. The stretchy loop couldn’t be more than a couple inches wide. Steeling herself, she glanced at the tag.

  “Good Lord!”

  The sound of a soft chuckle brought her stunned gaze from the handwritten tag to the shop’s other customer.

  “Kind of hits you right in the solar plexus, doesn’t it?”

  Surprised and unaccountably pleased to hear another American accent after so many days on her own in France, Paige sent the stunning blonde a weak smile.

  “Is this the price or an inventory number or something?”

  The American’s vivacious laughter added a gemlike sparkle to her green eyes. She strolled out from behind the rack, and Paige blinked at her short—extremely short—shorts, which were in the same eye-catching shade of red as her jacket.

  “It’s the price. The starting price. One doesn’t pay that, of course.”

  “One doesn’t?”

  “No. Don’t you know that Cannes is the world’s most opulent bazaar? You don’t quite haggle like a street merchant, but you certainly don’t pay the asking price. For anything!” She nodded toward the tag still clutched in Paige’s hand. “Besides, that figure includes the TVA.”

  “The TVA?”

  “Taxe à la valeur ajoutée. A luxury tax. About forty percent on that little piece, I’d guess. You have to deduct the TVA when you calculate the cost, since you’ll get reimbursed for it when you leave the country.”

  “Oh.” Paige stared down at the tag dubiously. She’d never been good with numbers, and the simple mathematical exercise required to estimate the price of this strip of gold daunted her.

  “It’s not that difficult,” the other woman assured her with a grin. “Really. Just divide that figure in half to incorporate the TVA and a ten percent-discount, then convert to dollars, and you have the approximate cost.”

  Scrunching her forehead, Paige struggled with the mental calculation. “So this…this…”

  “I call it a boob tube, but I think a more polite term is bandeau.”

  “So this bandeau only costs the equivalent of my monthly car payment, and not what we’re planning to put down on our house in—”

  Paige broke off, biting her lip against a wash of pain. The realization that she’d never live on the hillside home she and David had made an offer on just two weeks ago closed her throat.

  The other woman cocked her head. She didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t have missed the sudden, bleak expression on Paige’s face.

  Shy and somewhat withdrawn, Paige rarely confided in her few friends. To her shame, she couldn’t even fully express herself to David. He was so self-contained, so confident, that she’d always felt a little intimidated by him. Yet she found herself responding to the unspoken question in the other woman’s eyes. Drawing in a slow breath, she articulated the decision she’d come to so painfully over the past few days.

  “I was engaged…until very recently. We were planning on buying a house together.”

  “And now?”

  Paige swallowed the constriction in her throat. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t!

  “Now?” She lifted her chin. “Now maybe I’ll buy this bandeau instead.”

  A smile curved the blonde’s generous mouth. “Good for you. I can’t think of any better cure for a broken engagement than a new wardrobe. And Cannes is just the place to acquire one.”

  Paige eyed the woman’s flamboyant red jacket and minuscule shorts. They would look just as stunning when worn with the gold lamé breastband she clutched in her hand as with that glittery mesh halter.

  “Did you get that outfit here?” she asked.

  “The shorts and top? Yes, earlier this morning. This is my second foray into the shops.”

  “I wonder if they have another one, in a size eight. My name’s Paige, by the way. Paige Lawrence.”

  “I’m Meredith,” the other woman replied. “And if they don’t have this in your size, they’ll have something just as sinful.”

  The saleswoman produced the red hot pants and jacket in a perfect size eight. Clutching the bandeau, Paige followed her to a small curtained fitting room that smelled of lavender potpourri and money.

  For the next half hour, Maggie pushed her simmering tension to one corner of her mind and indulged in the serious pleasure of shopping.

  When Paige Lawrence first walked into this shop, she’d wondered if the younger woman could possibly be the contact she’d been waiting for since she’d arrived in Cannes early this morning. A few moments of idle conversation with the younger woman had killed that idea. If Paige had any connection with the ring of high-class hookers that Meredith Ames was a member of, Maggie would eat the pink satin bustier she’d purchased just two shops ago.

  Still, she had to give the slender young woman credit. She’d gulped once or twice, but she’d soon got into the spirit of things. One by one, she’d shed her layers of worsted wool and cable knit. What had emerged was a delicate beauty, less dramatic than Maggie herself, in her carefully orchestrated role, but similar enough to make Maggie feel like a mother hen with a newly hatched chick.

  When they’d finished outfitting her in the jaunty red two-piece outfit and matching three-inch-high platform shoes, Paige struggled with the effort to convert the bill from francs to dollars.

  “Can I help?” Maggie asked.

  “Would you? I don’t do well with numbers,” she confessed.

  Maggie did a quick conversation, skillfully negotiated the saleslady down to a less outrageous commission, and computed the amount of the TVA so that Paige could complete the necessary forms.

  The younger woman managed not to flinch at the total, although she did turn a little pale and her fingers fumbled with the pen as she signed the traveler’s checks.

  “Shall I have your packages sent to your hotels, ladies?” the attendant asked.

  “Yes,” Maggie replied. “I have more shopping to do yet.”

  The real Meredith Ames had indicated that she’d been instructed to stroll the shops that lined Cannes’s world-famous boulevard, the Croisette, until the nameless, faceless individual who’d arranged shipment of the stolen technology made contact. Maggie had followed the s
ame routine, secretly delighting in the fact that she’d been forced to purchase an item or two to keep up her cover. Still, she’d be glad when she finally made contact and got this mission under way.

  “Send my things to the Carlton, suite 16,” she told the attendant.

  “I’ll take mine with me,” Paige murmured as she stuffed her traveler’s checks into her purse. Gathering up her various bundles, she tugged self-consciously at the back hem of her shorts to make sure the red material covered both cheeks. It did. Barely.

  “I haven’t found a hotel room yet,” she said with a hesitant smile. “When I do, can I give you a call? Maybe I could buy you lunch sometime, to thank you for all your help.”

  “Maybe,” Maggie returned easily, although she had no intention of responding if Paige called. She wasn’t about to draw anyone else into the games she’d be playing once the operation swung into high gear.

  The tension she’d kept at bay during the interlude in the boutique flickered along her nerves. She should’ve met her target by now. She’d been in Cannes for six hours, and she’d been strolling the shops off and on for three. The sixth sense that had served her so well during her years with OMEGA told her the contact had to come soon.

  “Well, thanks again,” Paige said shyly. “I’d…I’d better go find a hotel.” She flicked an uncertain glance at the front door and tugged once again at the back hem of the shorts.

  Maggie hid her amusement at the younger woman’s obvious reluctance to step outside in her new, abbreviated look. Slipping a pair of star-shaped sequined sunglasses off the top of her head, she held them out.

  “Here. You need a finishing touch. Try these.”

  Paige slid on the bright red shades with barely concealed relief.

  “Perfect,” Maggie told her, grinning.

  An answering smile tugged at the other woman’s lips as she glanced at herself in the wall of mirrors behind the rococo desk that served as a sales counter.

  “Perfect,” she agreed.

  With a rustle of tissue paper and a final farewell, she gathered her bags in one hand, opened the shop door and stepped out into the late-afternoon sunshine.

  She was still smiling when she turned left to walk along the palm-lined boulevard.

  And when the long, sleek Rolls-Royce slid to a halt beside her.

  Her smile slipped a bit when a dark-haired chauffeur stepped out of the car and took her arm.

  It disappeared completely when he hustled her toward the rear passenger door.

  Watching through the shop’s tinted window, Maggie gave a sudden gasp. “Oh, my God!”

  She raced for the boutique’s door and dashed into the street just as the Rolls merged into the traffic flowing along the Croisette. Before Maggie could catch more than a few numbers on its license tag, it disappeared into the streaming flow.

  “Dammit!”

  She stood on the sun-washed pavement, her mind racing with a dozen different possibilities. Unfortunately, only one of them made any sense.

  Unless she missed her guess, Paige Lawrence had just made the contact Maggie had been waiting for all afternoon!

  Chapter 3

  Great! Just great!

  Grinding her teeth in frustration, Maggie searched the lanes of traffic for a likely pursuit vehicle. Just as she stepped off the sidewalk, intending to flag down a sleek German sports model, the flow of cars slowed. To her intense disgust, traffic quickly ground to a halt.

  She’d seen some horrible traffic snarls in her lifetime, but few to match those of the Croisette. In the short time she’d been in Cannes, she’d discovered that these hopeless backups occurred frequently, usually when carloads of tourists slowed to gawk at the sun-bronzed, topless and often bottomless bathers on the beach.

  While she waited with mounting impatience for the tangled, honking vehicles to sort themselves out, half a dozen possible courses of action flitted through her mind, only to be immediately discarded.

  Given the sensitivity of her mission, she couldn’t involve the local authorities and ask them to track the Rolls for her. Only two French officials at the highest government levels knew OMEGA operatives were in place on the Riviera. One was the French president himself. The other was the chief of security, who would supply any assistance Maggie might need in-country.

  She’d have to work through OMEGA control to extract Paige Lawrence from this situation without compromising her own or Doc’s cover. And she had to do it immediately, before the shy, innocent tourist was harmed!

  To her intense relief, the traffic began to flow again. Hailing a cruising cab, she flung herself into the back seat and instructed the driver to take her to the Carlton, fast! While the swarthy Mediterranean weaved back and forth across three lanes, gesturing obscenely but good-naturedly at every angry honk, Maggie dug in her purse for her diamond-studded compact. Flipping open the lid, she pressed the square stone in the center of the lid with one finger.

  “Doc, do you read me?” she murmured. She doubted the driver would hear her or notice her talking to her own reflection, seeing as he was engaged in a shouting match with a trio of youngsters on motor scooters who seemed to think they had some right to use the road, as well. Just to be authentic, however, she stabbed at her nose with the powdered sponge.

  Pressing the stone once again to shift the communications device in the compact’s lid into the receiver mode, Maggie waited impatiently for Doc to respond. His own device, an elegant gold cigarette case, would hum with an ultralow-frequency resonance only he could hear until he acknowledged her transmission. While she waited, she searched her mind, trying to remember just where he would be at this moment. He’d given her a detailed schedule to memorize, then destroy. She hoped he hadn’t yet left for the international symposium that was providing his cover.

  “Doc here,” he replied calmly a few moments later. “Go ahead, Chameleon.”

  Maggie threw a quick glance at the cab’s rearview mirror. The driver was still too engrossed in his vociferous argument with the teens on the scooters to notice her prolonged preoccupation with powdering her nose.

  “Doc, get hold of control, quick. Have Cyrene run a check through the IIN on a silver Rolls, 1991 or ’92 make, French tags, the first two digits of which are 74.”

  “Will do.”

  That was Doc, Maggie thought with a surge of sheer relief. No questions, no panic. By the time she got back to the Carlton, he’d have all the information immediately available on the owner of the Rolls through the IIN, the International Intelligence Network. And probably have it synthesized into a list of possible connections with all known fiber optics firms in Europe and North America. What was more, Claire would have started a psychological profile on the possible target.

  “I’ll be back at home base in five minutes. Make that three,” Maggie gasped as the driver swung recklessly across two lanes of traffic, cutting ahead of the motorbikes and a rather large truck in the process. “Meet me in my suite.”

  “Roger.”

  “Oh, and ask Cyrene to check out an American by the name of Lawrence. Paige Lawrence. I think our friends have just picked her up by mistake.”

  Maggie grabbed at the handgrip as the cab swerved around a corner. Righting herself with some effort, she pressed the stone again.

  “Doc?”

  There was no response. She pressed the transmit button again.

  “Doc, did you copy that last transmission?”

  “I copied it.”

  Frowning, Maggie stared down at the compact. She’d never heard quite that element of savage intensity in Doc’s voice before. It was clearly audible, even after being bounced off a communications satellite orbiting some two hundred miles overhead.

  “Where are you?” he growled. “Right now.”

  Maggie glanced through the windshield. Just ahead, the distinctive twin cupolas of the Carlton rose above a wavy line of palm fronds. Supposedly modeled after the breasts of a gay French mistress of the Prince of Wales—before he became Ki
ng Edward VII—the conical domes crowned either end of the hotel’s fanciful facade.

  “I’m about a half mile from the hotel,” Maggie responded.

  “Get the hell up here. Fast! Out.”

  She blinked at the abrupt termination, then shrugged and tucked the compact in her bag again. She wasn’t any more pleased than Doc at this complication in their mission before it even got started. She only hoped she could extract Paige from this damnable mix-up before the players in this deadly game of industrial espionage discovered they had the wrong woman.

  Clenching both hands around her purse, she scooted to the edge of her seat and waited for the driver to sweep to a halt in front of her hotel.

  A preposterous, thoroughly marvelous wedding-cake structure, the Carlton had been built just prior to World War I. White-painted bricks set in intricate patterns decorated its caramel-colored facade, and gleaming marble columns rose in majestic splendor at the colonnaded entrance. A stately, liveried doorman marched forward to open her door, but before he reached it, Maggie was already out of the cab and rushing for the entrance.

  She thrust a wad of francs into his gloved hand, asked him to take care of the fare and add a substantial tip, and hurried inside. Wrought-iron elevator doors clanged shut behind her as she waited, foot-tapping in impatience, for the old-fashioned cage to take her to the fifth floor. She had barely thrust her room key into the lock when her door flew open and a hard hand yanked her inside.

  Years of intense training kicked in immediately. Without thought, without hesitation, Maggie swung at her attacker.

  Luckily, Doc had undergone the same training she had. He threw up an arm to deflect her blow just in time, then hauled her inside and slammed the door.

  “What in the world—?” she exclaimed in astonishment.

  Frustration, and an emotion Maggie couldn’t quite identify, blazed in his gray blue eyes as he swept the sitting room. She knew he was searching for a place where they could talk undisturbed. A place where he could be sure they wouldn’t be “overheard” by the anonymous individual who’d reserved this opulent, high-ceilinged suite for Meredith Ames in the first place.