“Did you have to do that?” Taggert demanded irritably.
“Do what?”
“Try to seduce her. She’s harmless, but she has connections. If you wanted to fuck her that badly I could have cancelled this and you could have picked her up at a café. At this point if you shagged her you’d probably screw her up for life. You gave her quite a convincing picture of our lives, though a bit more colorful and imaginative than the truth. But why the hell did you let her tape you?”
Constantine frowned. “I did, didn’t I? In fact, I didn’t intend to be that helpful. She was just so damned gullible that I kept pushing.”
“You forget how long I’ve known you. You were just so horny that you kept pushing. You need to keep away from her, my friend. I don’t think the tape is important, though I might see if I can send someone to get rid of it.”
“I know the kind of men you hire – they’re clumsy. It would … annoy me if they ended up accidentally killing her.” His voice was light, almost airy. “It would annoy me a great deal.”
Taggert snorted, unimpressed. “Get it yourself. You’ll be seeing her again.”
Con rose in one fluid gesture, his innate grace causing more than one man to mistake his devotedly heterosexual orientation. “I don’t know what she looks like, I don’t know her name, and I have no interest in finding out. I’m enjoying the most deliciously salacious fantasies about her, I admit. I doubt reality would come even close.”
“It seldom does,” Taggart said morosely. He finished packing up the case and locked it. “Today didn’t happen.”
“It seldom does,” Con replied.
Maddy wasn’t sure how she made it out into the bright sunshine. It was a hot day, and she still shivered. She was walking, fast, a New York City walk, not a Parisian stroll, and she forced herself to slow down, take deep breaths. She looked at the digital recorder she was still clutching. She could throw it into the busy street, watch it get crushed beneath the wheels of the cars. She could slam it against the cement pavement, hard, and see the plastic shatter.
She took another breath. She wasn’t going to start making melodramatic gestures. She wasn’t her mother. This had been her choice of a story, and she could just as easily choose not to write it. Except that she had to get it out of her head.
Beneath the distortion of his voice he’d sounded oddly gentle. That, perhaps, was part of the horror. That he could recount such acts with the air of a guest at afternoon tea, or some kind of charity benefit, champagne glass in one hand, plate of canapés in the other. Flirting with her. Coming on to her. He had to be in his mid-sixties to have committed some of the crimes he described. She’d mocked him, but maybe he really had done something to Jimmy Hoffa, assuming he’d been a child prodigy.
Prodigy of death. She needed a shower. She would probably never eat again, certainly not for the next twenty-four hours, but she wasn’t a baby. She’d had Drake call in favors for this, and she couldn’t throw it away because she was afraid to pull up her big girl panties and get on with it.
She’d write the story, and she’d write the hell out of it.
It wasn’t until she was under the pounding, hot water of the shower in her small, crowded apartment that she realized what it was about the man that had been so disturbing.
Despite the stories, the details, the cool detachment as he catalogued the measured ending of countless lives, she’d been aware of something else in the subdivided cocoon of darkness. She’d been aware of him. Of a sinuous thread of charisma, drawing her, calling to her. Like looking into the eyes of a cobra about to strike and being too mesmerized to move. She’d listened to his voice, his distorted, heavily-accented voice, and she’d despised him. And felt the insane, irrational stirrings of sexual desire.
She sank to her knees in the old tub, wrapping her arms around her shivering body. Closing her eyes, she drew in the blankness. In a moment she would get up, turn off the shower, brush her teeth and reapply her makeup. She’d go out and meet Drake at the ambassador’s party and she’d smile and laugh and shrug off her silly little reaction.
But for now, she wasn’t going anywhere.
The one problem with Paris, Con thought several hours later as he put his arm around the tiny waist of Tessa Parker, aspiring actress, Vogue cover model and not so coincidentally the great-niece of the deposed king of Batavia, was the fucking paparazzi. They shouted in a dozen different languages, most of which he understood, the camera flashes were blinding, and security in Paris was lax. He smiled genially as he ushered Tessa into the party, wondering which tabloid his face was going to adorn tomorrow. He’d be background for Tessa’s startling beauty and vivid camera presence. Hide in plain site had always been his modus operandi, something Taggart never ceased to wonder at, but it served him well. As the elegantly handsome Euro-trash, D’Angelo, he went to the best parties, drank and gambled with the best people, and Tessa was the perfect foil. In her case heroin-chic was accurate. She injected it under her tongue, between her toes, anywhere on her rail-thin, perfect body that wouldn’t show, and she moved through her round of parties and photo-shoots in a compliant daze.
She was dazzlingly beautiful. He had no idea if she had a brain in her head beneath the steady supply of drugs, and he didn’t care. She was a means to an end. All he had to do was lead her around, point her in the right direction, and she was so pretty that conversation wasn’t required of her. She would listen and smile and nod her head and everyone would be mesmerized, and he would move through the rarified world at her side, seemingly just as vacuous, as he waited for his next job.
She required nothing from him but company. She had no interest in sex, which was just as well. He could fuck on demand, but her bone-thin, ravaged body reminded him too much of famine victims, and he could control his sexual appetites. She spent her days, when she wasn’t working, being maintained like a thoroughbred horse. Groomed and exercised, every square inch of her body, every inch that could be seen, was perfect, and it cost a great deal of time and effort to keep her that way. She had no time to consider her high profile boyfriend or where he had first appeared. She probably didn’t even remember the meeting he had arranged.
Tessa stumbled slightly as they walked into the party, blinded by the flashing lights, and his arm tightened. She smelled like chemicals, he thought, leaning down to nuzzle her ear as the cameras flashed. She’d shot up before they left, and the initial buzz was just beginning to wear off. She had no idea her elegant, lazy boyfriend knew what she was doing in the loo right before they left her hotel suite, no idea that he’d gone to her supplier not long after he’d chosen her as his mark and made it very clear that Tessa was only to have the safest, most consistent supply of heroin available. She was never going to be able to buy too much and make a fatal mistake, she was never going to get a dangerously strong batch. She would have the best, a safe, careful source. He hadn’t even had to touch the hardened drug lord behind the dealer Tessa usually used. Even Rabard knew a worthy opponent when he saw him.
Not that he particularly cared if she died, he told himself. But he’d chosen her for a reason, because she could be easily controlled and used. A drug overdose would be unpleasant. With her political connections her death would be scrutinized, as would her playboy lover. And the last thing he wanted was to answer questions.
Besides, she was pretty, sweet and harmless. Either her addiction would overcome her and she’d die, or she’d eventually get clean. There was no way he could influence the outcome – he’d be someone else by then.
But for tonight she looked up at him like a lover, even though they’d actually only fucked a handful of times. He had the feeling he was about to add to that handful. Maybe even double it. This was his second job since he’d become D’Angelo, and Tessa’s lover, but for some reason his blood was running hot.
Not for some reason, he reminded himself, guiding Tessa in the direction of the ambassador, her second cousin twice-removed. It was that fucking reporter. It was the v
oice on the other side of the glass. He tried to tell himself she was a middle-aged troll. She was certainly no match for Tessa – few people were. If she were anywhere close to the kind of female beauty D’Angelo had associated with she wouldn’t be working for a newspaper.
It didn’t matter. He heard her voice in his head, the horror he’d done his best to ingrain in her, her refusal to be cowed, and he burned.
They mingled, a graceful dance of conversation and flirtation, all subtext and nothing substantive. He sipped his Moet et Chandon, kept his hand on Tessa’s skinny arm, glancing around the crowded room.
Embassy parties were usually too tame for Tessa, who liked loud rock and roll and coke for entertainment, but the elderly ambassador was family, and she’d insisted they stop here first. Which was fine with him. All he had to do was wander around and look pretty.
He saw the woman from a distance, and his eyes narrowed, suddenly alert. She was sitting at one of the little tables with a man a few years older than she was, and he knew he’d never seen either of them in his life. The man was speaking to her earnestly, holding one of her hands, and she was listening with the air of a patient mother.
He knew how to watch someone without people noticing. He smiled, and circulated, and guided Tessa across the room with masterful ease. Who the hell was the woman?
She was young, maybe a few years older than Tessa, with a badly-cut mane of red hair to her shoulders, wire-rimmed glasses, a soft pale mouth and dark eyes, vulnerable eyes in an otherwise ordinary face. There was a slight softness around her jaw, suggesting she carried a few extra pounds that were hidden by the flowing black dress she was wearing. Expensive dress. Vintage couturier. Expensive earrings. The infomercials were full of crap – you could tell good diamonds even from a distance and those were impressive.
She had something on the table beside her, and she pulled her hand free to tap it while she was continuing to talk in an intense, inaudible voice.
“Is something wrong?” Tessa murmured, following his gaze.
“Of course not, cara mia,” he said gently. He usually spoke Italian with her, but tonight he couldn’t be bothered with more than the accent and the endearment.
“Do you know that woman?”
He wasn’t usually so gauche. If a drug-addled woman noticed his fascination then anyone else might. He shrugged. “She looks familiar, but I can’t place her.”
“Do you want me to ask?” Tessa murmured. “Do you want me to see if they would like to join us?”
“No.” He smiled down at her. “You’re all I need.”
She blinked. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” He could find out soon enough who she was, if his interest held for longer than the next five minutes.
Except, of course, that he knew who she was. Without hearing her voice, without ever having seen her face he knew exactly who she was. The woman who’d spent an hour locked in darkness with him. The woman he wanted.
“Who is that man?” Maddy leaned forward and whispered to Drake.
“Darling, there are a great many men here. Which one in particular?”
“The handsome one. He’s with some model.”
“Again, that doesn’t narrow things down much …. Ah,” he said. “I think you mean D’Angelo. Don’t tell me you’re like half the women in Paris.”
“I’m definitely not like half the women in Paris, and in what way did you mean?” she countered good-naturedly.
“They’re all in love with him. He’s just Euro-trash, with no purpose on this earth but to look pretty. I’ve had it on good authority that he’s really gay.”
Maddy shook her head. “No, he’s not.”
“Come on, sweets, you can’t believe your gay-dar is that infallible,” Drake protested.
“He’s not gay,” she insisted. “He exudes sexuality. Hetero-sexuality, in fact.”
Drake laughed. “It’s not like you’re the most sophisticated woman here tonight. I imagine it’s wishful thinking on your part.”
“Hardly,” she scoffed. “I’m here with you – I don’t need another man. Maybe it’s wishful thinking on your part.”
He laughed at that. “You’re all I’m thinking of. And you’re going home with me …” At that moment his phone rang, and his forehead creased in annoyance.
“Answer it.”
“I’m not going to. They’ll just want me to do something and I’ve saved tonight for you and me. You’ve finally gotten the big scoop you’ve been looking for, and we need to celebrate. We’ll go back to your place and drink champagne and have make wild, monkey love and tomorrow you’ll agree to marry me.”
She felt her stomach knot in sudden apprehension. “You know, I’m not sure if wild, monkey love is what I’m in the mood for. The man’s stories were pretty unsettling.”
“Did you believe him? Half of these guys like to lie, puff themselves up.”
“I believed him,” Maddy said. “I wish I didn’t.”
“Well, then, I’ll drive him right out of your mind,” Drake said, still ignoring the insistent ring of his phone. Finally it stopped, and his broad shoulders relaxed. And then tensed, as the phone started ringing again. “God damn it!” he snapped, yanking out his cell phone and barking into it. “Speak to me.”
Maddy winced. She always hated it when he answered the phone that way, but she couldn’t figure out how to tell him. It reminded her of a bad Hollywood movie. Then again, everything was reminding her of the movies, probably because the afternoon felt so surreal. People didn’t really kill other people as easily as some might make a turkey sandwich. Did they?
She looked back toward the man called D’Angelo, but there was no sign of him or his skinny girlfriend. She would have given ten years off her life to weigh what that girl weighed. Unfortunately it just wasn’t going to happen. She had wide hips, c-cup boobs and curves when curves weren’t fashionable. Then again, curves were never fashionable in Paris. Tant pis. She was what she was.
Drake closed his phone with a snap. “We’re off for tonight, I’m afraid,” he said in a disgusted voice. “Something’s come up and I’m going to be spending the night at the paper.”
She quickly composed her face into an expression of deep disappointment, hiding her secret relief. “Oh, that’s too bad! But we can always celebrate tomorrow.”
He smiled absently, his mind already on his new problem. “We’ll do that,” he said. “In the meantime I’ll take you home on the way to the office.”
“No need. I can get a taxi.”
“Don’t be absurd.” He caught her hand and pulled her to her feet. “I was brought up a gentleman, I’ll have you know. I’ll put you in a taxi first.”
She set the champagne flute back down on the table and picked up the digital recorder, putting it in her vintage Judith Leiber. She’d wanted to talk to him, to use him as a sounding board. Drake was always so sensible, so unsentimental, and he was a journalist born and bred. He could help her sort through the strange, conflicting emotions that had been tormenting her since she left Renard’s house this afternoon.
But that wasn’t going to be tonight. Which was all right – she needed time to get her own thoughts together before she approached Drake. He was going to be really pissed if she told him she didn’t want to use the story. He had nothing but contempt for human weakness, and he’d see her second thoughts as just that.
She smiled at him. “Tomorrow night, then. It’s a date.”
The vast entry hall of the embassy building was a mass of people, pushing and shoving only as extremely well-bred people could. “What’s the problem?” Drake demanded of someone.
“It’s raining, m’sieur,” the uniformed guard said. “This is the line for taxis.”
“Shit.” Drake was looking harassed. “I knew I should have brought my car.”
“The office is just three blocks away, Drake,” Maddy said gently. “You never were afraid of a little water.”
“That’s not the problem. Y
ou’re way over in the Marais. There’s no way you can walk …”
“But I’m in no hurry. I’ll just take a comfortable seat and wait my turn. I’m a big girl, Drake. I just spent an afternoon with a sociopath and lived to tell the tale, I can certainly survive a Paris taxi-ride on my own.”
“Paris taxis are probably more dangerous,” he said dourly.
“Go ahead.” She gave him a little push. “I’ll be fine and you know it. Emily Post will absolve you of your social crime.”
He stared at her with mounting frustration. And then, out of the blue, he grabbed her by the upper arms, yanked her against him and kissed her. “You’re the best,” he said. “And you are going to marry me, you know.” A moment later he was gone.
She found herself smiling after him. She wasn’t any too certain of that, but she’d probably be a fool not to. They cared about the same things, their politics were in tune, they believed in the written word and they were both pragmatists. They were good together, physically as well. He brought her to orgasm most of the time, and when he couldn’t she took care of it herself. He was kind, he was honorable, and he loved her.
She felt someone behind her, taller than her own five foot eight, and she turned, expecting one of the guards. To her complete astonishment she found herself looking at the perfection of an Armani dinner jacket, tailored and fitted, and she knew whose face she would see above it.
The playboy of the month was looking down at her, an amused expression on his face. “Mademoiselle, my girlfriend has a very soft heart, and she has seen that you have been abandoned. She has sent me over to ask if you would like a ride home in our limousine.”
For a moment she froze, feeling a like a deer in the headlights. She wasn’t good with all that intense masculine beauty bearing down on her, that charisma that could make a nun melt. “I … I …” she stammered stupidly. What the hell was wrong with her? She could tackle serial killers with one hand tied behind her back. A brainless piece of window dressing should be child’s play. “That’s … very kind of you, m’sieur,” she said, gaining her self-control. “But a taxi will do me very well.”