French Twist

  She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes.

  He hated to do this, but he had no choice. He couldn’t stay and wait for the transmissions of the data, and he still needed assistance.

  He glanced at Janine who leaned against the sink with horror in her eyes. He couldn’t trust Janine to read the data; she’d go after the vases herself if she thought she knew where they were.

  No. He needed Lisette. Janine would have to go back to Versailles.

  “I am using Bérnard’s computer to get information that I need, and I must leave soon. I need to be able to contact you over the next few days and have you read this information to me.”

  It seemed brutally insensitive, and he waited for her look of anger. Instead, she reached over and folded him in her arms. “Bérnard loved you like a son, Luc.”

  A stab of agony pierced his gut. He would mourn Bérnard terribly. But mourning had to wait a while. He had to get Benazir.

  “Of course I will help you.” She laid her age-spotted hand on his arm. “I will do whatever you need.” She sighed heavily. “Perhaps you can get the horrible medical examiner in Beaune to release his…him.”

  “I will do everything possible, Lisette,” he promised. “As soon as this project is completed. But I need to ask you a favor.”

  She looked up, a question in her eyes.

  “When anyone shows up here asking about me, you haven’t seen me. Anybody. Even American authorities.”

  Worry deepened her wrinkles. “Are you in trouble, Luc?”

  “Not really,” he said smoothly. “Just trying to find something that I’ve arranged to track on Bérnard’s computer.”

  He heard the sound of an engine, not far away.

  “It’s Arlaine,” Lisette said.

  He couldn’t see any headlights reflected against the garage. Whoever was driving up the hill didn’t want to announce his or her arrival. That would be just like Tristan. “Lisette, I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

  She stood and tilted her head toward the front of the house. “I’ll see who it is and won’t let them in.”

  Tristan might worm his way into the house. When his charm failed, he had a pretty effective steamrolling technique. “Bérnard’s cellar,” Luc said suddenly. No one could find him there, unless they knew the underground room existed.

  For a moment, Lisette looked horrified. “You can’t go there.”

  Of course, the memories would be too much for her, too soon. Bérnard’s favorite place on earth, his wine cellar. Luc went directly to the oversized metal key that hung near the stove. “You don’t have to come down, Lisette. Just pound on the door when it’s clear.”

  Before she could speak, he grabbed Janine’s hand and opened the back door, crossing the courtyard.

  She stumbled a bit as he pulled her toward a darkened corner of the house, then she stopped and literally dug her heels in. “Listen to me, damn it, it’s important.”

  “I will; just come with me to the wine cellar. We don’t have time to stand here.”

  She shook her head. “Your friend died exactly the same way as Albert Farrow. Exactly, Luc.”

  Dread pinged up his spine as the realization hit. “You’re right.”

  “It’s too weird to be a coincidence.”

  He heard the slam of a car door at the front of the château. “Come on.” He put his hand on her back. “Hurry. We’ll figure it out inside.”

  He’d been to the wine cellar dozens of times with Bérnard, and knew where to push the thick shrubbery aside to reveal a great wooden door. He jammed the key into a giant brass lock. “Watch your step,” he warned, as he guided her into the darkness.

  “Hello! Excusez!” The voice carried across the courtyard. “Is anyone here?” The voice was closer, coming around the back of the château.

  Luc closed the door with a thud, blocking out all light, all fresh air, and the familiar voice of his ex-best friend.

  “God, I can’t see a damn thing.” Janine blinked into the pitch blackness and inhaled musty air.

  “I’m right here.” Luc’s powerful arms encircled her, and he pulled her into his chest.

  Instinctively she tucked into the hard warmth of him, burying her face in his shirt to block out the mold and dust.

  “We’re at the top of eight fairly steep stairs.” He slowly turned her around. “Step down.”

  She froze. How could he see? It felt like jumping off a cliff blindfolded.

  “Step, Janine. It’s about a six-inch drop.”

  She had no choice. Slowly, she slid the rubber soles of Lisette’s black loafers forward, until her foot was off the stone. Then she stepped down about six inches, touching something solid. Exactly as he’d promised.

  “Again.” He tightened his arm around her, and she did the same, clinging to his hard torso. She took the next step. Then the next. Then the next.

  “We’re at the bottom now,” he finally said.

  “Can you turn a light on?”

  He let out a quick breath that could have been a laugh. “Electricity is forbidden.” He eased her down toward the ground. “Sit here, on the bottom step. I’ll find the oil lamp.”

  There was something about the smell. Decayed earth and rotten air. Janine hugged herself against the cold. “Something stinks.”

  “That’s for sure,” he muttered. “As soon as I get the light, I’ll open the air vent.”

  She kept hearing Lisette’s words in her head. They found him drowned…with a bullet in his head. “This can’t be.” An invisible weight compressed her chest. “It’s just too weird.”

  From across the basement, she heard scratching and a hinge creak. Peering into jet blackness, fear tingled up her back. “Are you there?”

  “I’m right here. It’s not a big room, just a dark one.”

  She tried to inhale, but her lungs actually hurt. “I can hardly breathe.”

  “I know. I’ll get the vent as soon as I find a goddamn match. I’ve never come down here without a flashlight.”

  With the darkness came cold. A bone-chilling, refrigerator cold. “God, this is like being buried alive. What is this place?”

  “It’s Bérnard’s private tasting cellar,” Luc said. “Four walls, six alcoves, one table, one oil lamp, two chairs, and about a thousand bottles of the best wine in France.” She heard him sigh. “And, somewhere, matches.”

  She’d never been in such disorienting darkness. Even that passageway in Versailles had breathable air. “Keep talking so I know I’m alive.”

  He chuckled softly. “You’re very much alive. I know they’re here somewhere.”

  She pulled her knees up into her chest and hugged her legs, breathing down the loose flannel shirt onto her bare breasts for warmth.

  She tried to listen to the sounds he made, but suddenly all she could hear was a mental replay of Lisette’s announcement, pounding in her head. She rubbed her temples and tried to take another deep breath as a wave of dizziness seized her.

  Then she heard a different voice in her head. “That man—outside. That was an American. Who was it?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Luc?”

  “Right here.” Suddenly a flame flared, flashing orange light on his face. He picked up the glass cover of a hurricane-type lamp and lit the wick. “Merde,” he mumbled. “We have only a bit of oil left.”

  As the golden glow intensified, Janine blinked to adjust. Shadows danced all around, highlighting rows of white cylinders that appeared to be tucked into stone walls.

  “Who was it?” she repeated, as she focused on his face.

  “It was the FBI.”

  The chill on her skin turned to ice. “Excuse me?”

  “It was an agent from the FBI.”

  She stood, forcing her wobbly legs to lock. “We were running from the FBI?”

  He raked his hand through his hair, studying her intently. What lie was he concocting now? Janine could practically hear the wheels spinning in his head.

&nb
sp; Trust me, Szha-neen. Trust me.

  God damn him. “You want to tell me why we were running from the FBI, Luc?”

  “I work for them.”

  She must have misunderstood. “You what for them?”

  He didn’t look away. “I am a consultant, Janine. I was hired by the FBI to supervise the exhibit.”

  She took a step closer to him. “You were there—at my exhibit—working for the FBI?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you an FBI agent?”

  “No. I’m a hired hand, a specialist brought in for certain situations.”

  She put a hand on her chest and tried to inhale, but it just felt like her lungs were filling with dust and cobwebs and dirt. Light-headed, she tried to reach out to the back of a chair, but missed it. He caught her as she stumbled.

  “You need oxygen,” he said, pulling her toward the steps. “So do I. Come with me to the vent; we can breathe from it directly until the room fills with air.”

  Nothing fit. Nothing worked. Her brain was shutting down, and the edges of the room got darker.

  Was it the lamp or her eyes?

  “Just breathe,” he told her, squeezing her shoulders and guiding her up the stairs, his own breath sounding as shallow as hers felt.

  Then she remembered. Albert. His friend. Both shot and drowned.

  She swayed and nearly fell, but he held firmly and took her up two more stairs. “If we don’t get more oxygen, we’re both going to black out.”

  At the top of the stairs, he released her and started cranking a long, rectangular air vent, letting in slivers of light and blessed, clean air through its slats.

  Albert had not committed suicide. He’d been killed.

  Her legs swayed, and her bloodless head betrayed her by not turning at the same speed as her eyes. She felt drunk and dizzy and weak as she reached for support that wasn’t there.

  She shook her head to clear it, but it only got foggier. Luc’s arms slid around her waist as he pushed her toward the vent, but she stiffened. “Why are you running from the cops, from the FBI, Luc?”

  She sounded distorted, like her head was underwater. She could have sworn he paled, but it might have been the flickering light. This man who stole with ease—with style, in fact—was he capable of the truth?

  “Now I understand,” she said, her voice distant to her own ears. “You’re in on it. You’re behind the theft of my Plums.”

  She shook him off when he tried to hold her shoulders, opened her mouth to suck in more air, but there was none. She couldn’t breathe. She was trapped and dying underground with a man who lied, and stole. What else was he capable of?

  He pushed her toward the vent again. “You’re oxygen deprived. Breathe.” He bent so close to her, she could feel the scrape of his whiskers on her cheek as he inhaled deeply himself.

  Her head felt so light, it felt disconnected from her body. “I hate liars. And you are a liar.” She didn’t recognize her broken voice. “And a thief.”

  The light flickered and dimmed. Darkness closed around her. He said something, but the sound was distorted and reverberated in the distance. She could see his face, so close to hers. She could see his mouth move and his eyes plead with her.

  Then the blackness came.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  S he slumped in Luc’s arms just as the oil lamp snuffed. Classic hypoxia. How many times had Bérnard promised to update the hundred-year-old ventilation system? Luc folded her into his arms and kept her face toward the vent, inhaling some much-needed air for himself. As soon as the oxygen got back to her brain, she’d wake up.

  Sitting down, he brushed her hair away and laid his head on her chest to listen to her heartbeat. “Janine,” he whispered.

  He pulled her closer into him and curled his hand around her neck. Tracing a line over the translucent skin of her throat, the urge to kiss her slammed into his consciousness. And not a gentle kiss to awaken a fainted Rapunzel. Nothing like that.

  He wanted to consume her mouth until her whole body shuddered and rocked against him. But now she shuddered with cold. He ran his hands down her arms and clasped her fingers in his with a silent curse. Her extremities were freezing, and he was fantasizing about waking her for sex on the stairs.

  He blew on her hands and lifted her enough to hold her securely with one arm as he maneuvered out of his sweatshirt. He slid it over her, pulling her firmly onto his lap and hoping that he and the shirt retained enough body heat to warm her.

  As he pulled her arms through the sleeves, she moaned. “Sam?” The name sucker-punched him. “You lied, Sam.”

  Sam of the flushed engagement ring, no doubt. The open vent let in enough light so that he could see the color return to her cheeks. He repositioned her so she wouldn’t feel his raging erection—she hadn’t exactly thrown herself on his lap for pleasure.

  “Wake up, Janine.”

  She groaned and snuggled into him, warming his bare skin. Suddenly she jerked forward, nearly spilling out of his arms. He caught her before she tumbled down the steps, and pulled her back into him. She resisted, stiffening.

  “Oh, God. I blacked out.” She shook her head and put her hands on her face, taking quick, shallow breaths. “I’ve never fainted before.”

  “Hypoxia, Janine. Not a personal weakness.” He couldn’t help indulging in a reassuring caress of her throat, burying his fingers in the hairs at the nape of her neck. “A very common response to oxygen deprivation. It’s like being drunk.”

  She leaned back, but not out of his arms. “Yes, I felt drunk…I still feel…” A pink glow highlighted her delicate cheekbones as she dropped her gaze to where she sat. Wordlessly, she inched onto the next step down.

  “Try to take slow, deep breaths,” he told her, ignoring the empty warm spot she’d left. “In through your nose, out through—”

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  “—your mouth.”

  “Luc.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she rubbed her temples, warily watching him. “Did you orchestrate the theft of my vases?”

  He tried to put his hands on her shoulders, but she shook him off. “No, Janine. You’re wasting your energy worrying about it. But—” He paused for a moment and looked hard at her. “I won’t argue with you about the coincidence of two bizarre deaths. Something is not right.”

  It had Karim Benazir’s fingerprints all over it, and she had every right to know that.

  “I worked with the FBI and museum security to make it easy for the forgeries to be stolen. We are hunting a man who has escaped from a U.S. jail and is building up a massive drug and art smuggling ring.” He took her hand and rubbed some warmth into her slender fingers. “I have a plan to get him. If the FBI agent outside knows I’m here and that you’re with me, my plan will fail.”

  “But why is he here?”

  “Probably because Bérnard was killed.”

  She regarded him for a long time. “Do you think this man you’re trying to catch killed him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he killed Albert?”

  He took a deep breath. “Possibly. If we do this right and catch him, perhaps we can find out.”

  “But why wouldn’t the FBI help us? I don’t get it.”

  “Because they don’t give a damn about the real vases, Janine. To them, the vases are merely a tool to get to someone far more valuable.” He stood and gently pulled her up by the hand he still held. “Let’s try this again. I think I can find oil for that lamp, and there’s enough air in here now to breathe.”

  She sat on the bottom stair while he searched.

  “Who is this man you’re after?” she asked.

  “His name is Karim Benazir. About fifteen years ago, a new government in India booted him off his tiny throne in an insignificant province. But he retaliated against his country by building up powerful international art and drug smuggling rings and a money laundering organization based in the U.S. He was caught and
captured by the FBI, but escaped prison recently. He has a fairly effective network of paid thieves and assassins who work for him.”

  “How do you plan to get him?”

  “By following a trail,” he said vaguely, his fingers passing over Bérnard’s favorite brass corkscrew. A dead spider. Matches. And…the oil bottle.

  No reason to detail why he was the person on Benazir’s trail. He poured oil into the bottle and lit a match. “Let there be light.” It shed just enough light for him to see the surprised look on her face.

  “Where’s your shirt?”

  “On your back, ma belle. You were cold.”

  She touched the sweatshirt she wore, her wide gaze lingering over his bare torso. A hint of color slashed her cheeks before she looked down to the ground. “Thanks.”

  So, he had the same effect on her that she had on him. The thought warmed him. “De rien.”

  At the top of the stairs, metal scraped.

  “Luc?” Lisette whispered into the cellar as a beam of flashlight spilled in front of her. She started down the steps, a bulging knapsack in her arms, a blanket over one shoulder. Her eyes darted between them and around the room, but she didn’t stop.

  “Is he gone?” Luc asked, moving to relieve her of the bundle and the flashlight.

  She nodded, but worry lines creased her forehead. “He was very persistent.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “About Bérnard’s last days. And when I last saw you. I told him you were here at the New Year.” That was true. “And that you had spoken to Bérnard since then, a few times.”

  “Thank you.” God, he hated to put her in the middle of this.

  “The gendarmerie arrived, also. They wanted to see where Bérnard kept his guns.” She shook her head and placed a hand on his arm, then glanced at Janine. “They will come and go all day, so I brought some provisions in case you prefer to stay here.”

  There was no reason he couldn’t be seen by the gendarmerie, but what if Janine had been reported missing? He couldn’t take the risk.

  “Thank you.” He pulled out a chair for her. “Lisette, do you know how to get into Bérnard’s computer files?”