An Affair of Vengeance (13 page)

Like lovemaking, but not nearly as good. It was as close as they were going to get, though, and he wasn’t about to stop.

He pulled her closer as the beat slowed and morphed into an R&B tune with a sensual bass line. He rested his chin on her head, liking how the curves of her body fit into his. She was at least a foot shorter than he was, so her breasts hit his belly and her cheek rested against his chest. He liked her size, relished the sense that he could pick her up and carry her, if need be. To safety, or to bed. Or he’d take her standing, with her delicate ankles crossed behind his back, her lithe arms wrapped firmly around his neck. Her lips on his. His hands hard on her ass, picking her up and pulling her down again upon him, as hard and as fast as she’d have it.

If only they could tell each other the truth, he’d take her a thousand times in a thousand ways…

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“I told you. McCrea.”

“Liar.”

“What’s yours?”

“I told you. Evangeline.”

Her soft hand pulsed in his. He looked down and saw her smile. He should—would, at some point, perhaps—take her someplace private to figure out who she was and what she wanted,
but not yet. The spell was too enchanting to break. Besides, she wasn’t exactly prodding him for information. She just danced with him, and the feeling was so sweet and liberating that he nearly wanted to tell her exactly who he was and why he had submitted his soul to the worst kind of hell for the last five years.

“McCrea really is my name,” he said, surprised at himself.

“Your surname?”

“Yes.”

“And your first?”

“Oliver.”

“Oliver,” she repeated. “Ollie?”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s too bad. It’s a cute name.”

He spun her around so she danced with her back to his front, his mouth close to her ear. “And you? What’s Evangeline’s real name?”

“She doesn’t remember.”

His breath left his lungs. Such blunt honesty was rare in his world. “Does she have a surname?”

“No. Just one name. Like Madonna.”

“The saint or the singer?”

The rapid sensation of her chest rising and falling as she laughed was a purr against his chest. “She’s not much of either.”

“Maybe she’s a superhero.” He nuzzled her ear, whispering, “Evangeline the Avenger.”

Her body stiffened in his arms. She stopped dancing, her back hard against his belly. “Why’d you say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a joke.” He turned her around. Tears pooled heavily in the corners of her eyes. He brushed her hair off her forehead, letting his palm linger against her cheek. “Don’t cry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t cry.” She wiped underneath her eyes, smearing black makeup in two symmetrical arcs across her cheekbones.

“Don’t lie to me.” He pulled her tight to his body. Together they swayed to the slow beat.

“Why stop now?” Her breath hummed against his jacket.

“Don’t lie about the important things.”

“What are the important things?”

What were they? For him, what he’d left behind. For her, they must be the same. “The things you’ve lost, as you said. The things that vanished.”

Her dark eyes filled again. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

“Dancing with you. I was going to ask you that question.”

“I mean here, in Marseille. With these assholes.” She ignored his question and shook her head. “You’re not one of them.”

“I’m not?” he said, oddly breathless.

“No. You’re a good guy.”

“Am I?” He spun her around twice. Thick spirals of her hair brushed against his face as she twirled.

“Maybe you’re not all good,” she said, smiling when she faced him again, “but you’re not all bad, either.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you enough.”

Deep house beats segued into a rumba. Here and there, couples moved closer together, creating their own private worlds on the dance floor. McCrea and Evangeline were already close, and together they rocked to the slow, quick-quick, slow rhythm of the rumba. Every step intensified the connection between their bodies. Her small, soft breasts pressed against his ribs. Her nose nuzzled into his chest. Her whole body was his, and her heat filled his mind. It overtook him.

He lowered his head and found her lips, warm and soft, opening at the touch of his tongue. He played, gently at first, and then fiercely as his passion found an equal and willing partner in her. Her fingertips dug into his back, urging him closer, encouraging exploration. He cupped her head in his hands, caught his
fingers in her thick hair, and breathed her in. She smelled warm and bright, like fresh sheets on a bed.

“McCrea.”

Not hers, but a man’s voice, insistent, coming from behind him, followed by a sharp tapping at his shoulder. McCrea turned. A dark-haired man with a dramatically hooked nose stood, waiting for a response.

“Who are you?” McCrea said.

“Ménellier sent you a message. He’s outside. Waiting.”

McCrea bit his tongue, wanting to command the emissary to tell his boss to cool his heels. “Good.”

“Come on,” the man said, and started to walk toward the door.

McCrea turned to face Evangeline.

“You’ve got to go,” she said with a shrug and a smile. “It’s OK.”

He struggled with what to say to her. He couldn’t keep in touch and didn’t want to encourage her further involvement with him. “Stay safe.”

“In this town?” she said sarcastically.

“Please. Try.”

She pressed a gentle hand to his abdomen. “I’ll try. I can’t promise anything. You try, too.”

“Don’t worry about me. Don’t even think about me.” He took her hand in his and grazed her knuckles with his lips. She tasted sweet, like honey. “And for God’s sake, stop following me. Go far away and never look back.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“No, Evangeline, I mean it,” he called, reaching for her as she spun away and melted into the crowd.

He couldn’t follow her. He had a job to do. So he left, too, following Ménellier’s lackey out the main door. Once outside, the hook-nosed man gestured to a black Jaguar with thoroughly blackened windows parked at the end of the block.
McCrea walked to it, but paused outside the car to check his pockets for toothpicks, fully expecting to find one. He didn’t.

But he did turn up a loose button, small, black, and plastic, that didn’t belong to him. It barely registered; he’d expected Evangeline to tag him again. If he hadn’t found something, he’d have been more concerned and wondered where she’d hidden it.

After crunching the button underfoot, he kicked it into a storm drain. Satisfied, he stepped into the sedan’s slick back compartment, unsurprised to see Ménellier already inside.

“What happened in there?” the Frenchman said, chuckling.

McCrea straightened his cuffs. “You’re late.”

Ménellier shrugged. “My contact can’t be rushed. Sounds like you didn’t have trouble passing the time, at any rate. Who was she? Did you really fight Penard for her hand? How gallant of you.”

“Do you have my answer?”

“Ah, that. Yes. He won’t talk over the phone. You must conduct your business in person.” Ménellier shook his head, surprised. “He’ll see you. I don’t know why, but he will. You’re a lucky man.”

“No such thing as luck. Give me the details.”

Ménellier spoke low. “I’ll text you directions for your meeting, along with a link to the bank account to which you can wire money for my services. This is a favor, of course, but I trust you’ll send a reasonable amount to compensate me for my trouble?”

“Of course.”

“Good. And my friend, when you visit this man, don’t bring anything he might find objectionable. He’s rather particular about who he sees.”

“I’ll be meeting with Lukas Kral? No more middlemen?”

Ménellier smiled, his perfect teeth twinkling like fairy lights in the shadowed backseat. “I cannot say. I’m sorry, but those are the rules. His rules.”

“I don’t like meeting with ghosts.”

“If I told you any more, I’d be a ghost myself before sunrise.”

McCrea departed after a handshake. He found his own driver and car waiting nearby. After directing the man to take him back to the hotel, he sat alone in the back, glad to have achieved this next level of knowledge regarding the smuggling ring, although unnerved by his dance with Evangeline. For her sake, he hoped she’d heed his advice and stay away, but he doubted she would. The CIA never gave up once it got a bone between its teeth.

Evangeline’s footfalls reverberated in the narrow street as she trotted around the factory from one of Avarice’s many back doors. She touched the rawness of the skin around her mouth from the sandpaper of McCrea’s half-day-old beard. The sensation heated her core.

It shouldn’t. But it did.

She liked him, that’s why. Pure and simple. When she was with him, she didn’t feel so alone. In all the nights she’d lain by herself in her bed, wondering if anyone would ever understand the life she led, she never imagined she’d find companionship in the arms of a criminal.

Except, he didn’t seem that criminal when he’d come running to rescue her from Penard. Had possessiveness or honor propelled him to her aid?

Did it even matter?

She reached the corner of the building and slowed to a walk. Edging around the corner, she peered down Rue Jobin, trying to spot McCrea among the scattered groups of people milling in the street.

The man was a crook, however gentlemanly his actions toward her had been. And even if he wasn’t such a terrible person, it wouldn’t matter. He was her first and best shot at taking down
Lukas Kral. She could have no soft spot for anyone who stood between her and the man responsible for killing her parents.

Evangeline the Avenger, indeed. How right he’d been.

She tugged her bag off her wrist and pulled out her phone to dial Mason.

“Status?” he said.

“At Avarice. Found him. Lost him. Now I’m looking for him.” With her eyes hunting for her prey, her toes splashed into a puddle. Water soaked the leather sole of her designer shoes. “Track the button. I planted it on him.”

“He got rid of the toothpick you pinned on him last night. I retrieved it this morning from a stairwell in his hotel. He’s unlikely to be fooled twice by the same ruse from you.”

She cursed. “Last I saw, he was heading to another meeting with Ménellier. I couldn’t just run after him.”

“Inside the club?”

“No, they left out the main entrance. A man with a hooked nose retrieved him and said Ménellier had already sent him a message.” She took a wide berth around a young woman crouched on all fours in the gutter, a girlfriend holding back her hair as she heaved her insides out.

“We don’t have a line on his cell yet.” Mason paused. “And the button is no longer transmitting, which means he’s found it, and he knows you’re still after him. If his hands aren’t about to close around your throat, then I suspect he’s not who we think he is.”

She scanned the dark block behind her, but saw only drunken revelers. The street ahead was similarly populated. McCrea was gone. “You could be right. He’s not fitting the profile for a gunrunner.”

“You’re sure he’s Scottish?”

“Unless he’s faking that Glasgow accent, which I admit is a possibility. You think he’s MI6?”

“It’s a start. I have a few calls to make. We need to meet.”

“At the storehouse?”

“No. Miel. Two hours. Run a good SDR to get there.”

Running a surveillance detection route at midnight wasn’t the way she wanted to spend the gap between now and the meeting time—she’d rather park near McCrea’s hotel and see if he popped up again—but Mason was right, as usual. With as many risks as she’d already taken today, she needed to be sure nobody tailed her to Mason.

She sauntered toward her car, a cheap silver hatchback that was relentlessly common in the city and earned her no extra attention, at least as long as she kept its little secret under wraps. For although it looked like a starter car, if pressed, the hatchback’s customized turbo engine would outrun any other vehicle on these narrow, old streets. She’d bought it off a club kid when she’d first moved to town. He’d been crazy for street racing. So was she, but as far as the CIA was concerned, the turbo boost was for outrunning hostile operatives. Beating locals in souped-up Toyotas off the line was a side benefit she didn’t bother to detail in her report.

A quick beep of the remote unlocked the door, but more critically, activated two CIA-installed sensors: one that could detect the chemical signatures of nitrogen- and chlorine-potassium-based explosive chemicals commonly used to detonate cars, and another that registered any digital signals originating from the vehicle, which would indicate that a GPS tracer had been installed on her car. The process took seconds, and if the system found anything, it would relock the doors before she could open them. When she grasped the warm chrome handle, the door opened smoothly. No bombs or bugs today, then.

She slid into the driver’s seat and rubbed her bare shoulders against the smooth leather—a nice non-CIA upgrade, courtesy of that club kid. The engine snarled to life with a quick flick of her wrist. She gripped the rounded head of the gearshift and slid the transmission into first. The subcompact tore out of its
parking spot and around the corner, bouncing into traffic without hesitation. Outside, a silver moon shone brightly in the clear, navy-blue sky. The car’s engine rumbled through her seat, punctuated by regular bumps from the subwoofer—another club-kid upgrade. The warehouse district was almost empty at this hour, and Evangeline whipped the little car through the vacant streets.