French Twist

  Oh, God! She dropped the fur on the ground to slide along the back wall behind Benazir and make a dash for the gun.

  She got about five feet when Luc made another sickening sound, and she froze in horror. Benazir half stood, then slammed himself into Luc’s chest. Luc reached up to push Benazir off, but the bigger man managed to hold on.

  As Luc lifted himself off the ground, a dark stain remained under him. Good Lord, he’d been shot! No wonder he could barely fight the guy.

  Janine darted toward the gun, but her foot hit something hard. The largest of the three Plums had rolled out from the fur and lay on its side on the concrete.

  Benazir’s knife was an inch from Luc’s throat. Scooping up the vase, Janine’s hands closed over the irreplaceable porcelain.

  Luc managed to push the knife away, but Benazir body-slammed him again. Luc growled from under the weight of Benazir and bared his teeth. Benazir thrust the knife at his chest, and Luc turned barely in time.

  Red-hot fury quaked through Janine. She leapt behind Benazir’s back and raised the vase above her head. Luc’s eyes widened as he saw her. Benazir turned slightly, unwittingly offering a target.

  She smashed the Plum in his face with every ounce of strength she could muster, sending purple shards everywhere and eliciting a violent howl from her victim.

  Luc rolled to avoid the shower of porcelain as Benazir lunged toward Janine. Blood spurted from the cuts in his face, and she backed up with a scream.

  Behind Benazir, Luc swooped toward the gun and came up in one smooth move. “Benazir!” he hollered. “Turn around, you bastard.” As the big man stumbled around in a circle, Luc fired.

  Janine’s legs wobbled, and she stared at Luc over the body between them, vaguely aware that the door burst open and several men came running out, led by Tristan Stewart.

  Her hands started to tingle, then burn, as tiny pieces of porcelain cut her palms. “Is it true?” she asked, ignoring the action around them.

  He just nodded once.

  Someone shouted, and a group of men surrounded Benazir’s body, but Janine’s gaze stayed locked on Luc. She could actually feel her heart shattering in a million pieces, just like her Plums.

  Someone placed a hand on her arm. “Dr. Coulter?” It was Tristan, holding the fur. Beside him, the other agent held a vase in each hand. “Do you want your coat?”

  She looked absently at it, and at the two remaining Plums. “No.” She had to get out of there. “Am I free to go?”

  “For the moment,” he said, turning to Luc and placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you fixed up, man.”

  Luc waved him off and pinned Janine with that unreadable expression.

  Only this time, she could read it. It said run for your life.

  She nodded back once and turned to the door.

  What a fool she’d been. What a fantasizing fool. And the only thing worse than a fool was a liar.

  Weren’t they a fine pair?

  Chapter

  Twenty-five

  N ick Jarrett. The name still hit Janine like a vicious blow to her stomach, leaving her breathless and blinking against tears. When they filled her eyes, as they had for an hour or more, the flickering casino lights streamed into runny pools of yellow and red.

  She stood paralyzed by the pain. It didn’t matter how long she waited on that balcony. He wasn’t coming back to this room; of that she was certain. Maybe he’d gone to the hospital. Maybe he’d already gone to jail. Maybe he’d gone to another country and turned into another man.

  What difference did it make?

  Dear God, all the clues had been there. From the day she arrived and Simone de Vries told her the Scorpion was alive and well and helping himself to art from the Louvre, the clues were all around her.

  Of course, she understood now that wasn’t the Scorpion. That was Benazir’s trap to get the Scorpion.

  But, oh, the signs that she’d ignored. The ease with which he stole—how else would he know how to break into a highly secure resort penthouse? And the language. He was more American than she was, at times.

  She squeezed the railing so hard that pain seared from her cut fingertips straight up her arms. It was nothing compared to the pain in her heart.

  Why did his deception hurt so much?

  He lied because he had to. Because he was involved in this sting operation. He let her believe he was an undercover good guy, and in a sense—in this case, anyway—he was. He hadn’t seduced her against her will—that bone-melting bathroom-floor sex was as much her doing as his. So he hadn’t done anything wrong in that regard, either.

  The heartache was because she had fallen for him. As hard as a woman could fall, and as deep. And she wanted him to be someone else. Someone better than what he was. Someone noble and courageous and heroic.

  The balcony door slid open, yanking her from her reverie, and her heart leaped.

  “Hey, Rapunzel.” He stood in the doorway and looked at her. “I thought I might find you on the balcony.”

  His hair was matted, and fire burned in his eyes. Dried blood covered most of his sleeve and shirt, with more on his face. He looked…noble and courageous and heroic.

  She turned back to the water so she didn’t have to look at him, didn’t have to feel that ache to touch him. “I wanted to talk to the FBI, or whoever is investigating Albert’s death, before I leave. That’s all I care about now.”

  He took a few steps closer. “What about the Plums?”

  She flashed him an incredulous look. “They were more valuable as a trio.”

  Holding her gaze, he grazed her cheek. “Is that why you’re crying?”

  “Of course,” she insisted, backing out of his reach. “I’m crying…because I can’t believe Albert had to die for a few vases. And because I can’t believe Claude Marchionette was involved with that man.” Her voice cracked, but she continued. “I still can’t believe that I—I—”

  He put his hand on her arm. “I can’t believe you sacrificed one of the Plums to save me.”

  “Oh, I was just mad as hell.” She gave him a shaky smile. “I get destructive when I’m mad.”

  “No.” His eyes were as black as the lake. “You get fearless.”

  She brushed a hair from her face, but he intercepted her hand midmovement. She flinched.

  “Jesus,” he said, examining her palms. “You’re hurt.” He tugged her toward the door. “Let me wash these cuts.”

  She didn’t move. “Wait…” Luc? Nick? “I don’t even know what to call you.”

  His expression flickered with the impact of her words, but he pulled her hands close to his face and kissed one of the dried cuts on her fingers, never taking his eyes from hers.

  “My name is Nick Jarrett.”

  She closed her eyes as he spoke that truth, and a tear escaped.

  “And I owe you my life.”

  “What you owe me, Nick, is an explanation.”

  “And my life.”

  She slipped out of his grip. “Did you work…for him? For that monster? Did you steal for him?”

  He blew out a quick breath. “Yes,” he said simply.

  The last ember of hope died. “I thought maybe…I’d misunderstood.” She walked past him and continued straight into her bathroom, where she dropped on the vanity chair and closed her eyes.

  When she opened them, he was opening the cabinets, rooting around. “There must be a first-aid kit in here somewhere.”

  It reminded her of her frantic search in Benazir’s room. “He hid them in the refrigerator,” she said suddenly.

  His lips curled in a wry smile as he pulled out a white box marked with a red cross. “Very clever.” He glanced at her. “And not on our list of preferred hiding places.”

  While he washed his hands, her gaze traveled over his bloody face and the brown stain on his expensive shirt. She could see the thick white bandage underneath.

  Her stomach tightened, and she resisted the urge to touch his arm. ??
?Were you shot?”

  “Just grazed. I’m fine.” He rinsed his hands and frowned at them, then lathered a second time. “What made you look in the refrigerator?” he asked.

  “It was locked.”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “How’d you get into it?”

  She almost smiled. “I unscrewed the refrigerator door from the opposite side.”

  “Whoa.” He patted his hands dry, then dampened a fresh towel. “I’m impressed.”

  Kneeling in front of her, he took her hands between his and avoided eye contact.

  She didn’t want to look at his hands—those long, masculine fingers that could spin locks and pilfer jewels. Instead, she looked at his messed black hair, at that one lock fallen on his forehead, the abrasions on his cheekbone. He certainly looked the part. Dangerous as hell.

  She jerked her hand as the wet cloth touched an open cut.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Some of these are deep.”

  For the first time in an hour, she realized how badly the vase had cut her. She’d been too immersed in the other pain, and in trying to sort it all out.

  “Why a scorpion?” she asked suddenly.

  His whole body stilled for a moment, and his broad shoulders tensed. “It was my father’s nickname. I wanted him to know…it was me.”

  “Your father? Why?”

  He focused on her hands, inhaling slowly before he answered. “I wanted to be a spy.”

  She leaned back in surprise, but said nothing.

  “We both did, Tristan and me.”

  “You—you knew him?”

  He sat back on his haunches, still holding her wounded hand. “Better than anyone in the world. We got into a fight on the playground in fourth grade and I broke his glasses.” He smiled. “I had to pay for them. We were inseparable after that.”

  “Did that launch a life of crime?”

  His mouth set in a tight line. “Not a life, Janine. Just a few wayward years. In fact, the night I got caught was going to be my last job.”

  She felt his pulse beat under her fingertips. “So how did the spy turn into a thief?”

  “Tristan and I had big dreams. We were pretty much dirt poor, living in Southie—the South End of Boston. His father worked down at the harbor and mine…” He carefully cleaned a cut. “Mine was a commercial airline pilot.”

  Her hand relaxed under his ministrations. “Not generally dirt poor, commercial airline pilots.”

  “That’s very true. My father, John Jarrett, had been in the air force—the U.S. Air Force.” He went back to cleaning a slice on her thumb. “That’s how he met my mother. At the Paris Air Show. She’d gone for fun, and he was working. They got involved, and she, well—I’m the result of it. I guess she was too ashamed to face Bérnard, and she ran off to America with the father of her baby. He put her up in a low-class neighborhood in Boston and came home on leave often enough for Claire to be conceived. After he left the air force he became a commercial pilot and invented a host of excuses for why he was never there, why we had no money, and why he couldn’t marry my mother.”

  She had been about to ask again how all this drove him to crime when she realized what he’d said. “Your parents weren’t married, either?”

  “No.” His sympathetic expression touched her heart. “We used his name for my mother’s pride. But no marriage document was ever signed.”

  He laced his fingers through hers for a moment, then continued. “Anyway, I was always real suspicious of my father. He adamantly refused to marry my mother. He told her she’d be deported back to France if the government realized she’d been living in the U.S. without a visa, and she’d have to leave her children. And there were these long periods of time where he was missing.”

  He stood and flipped the top of the first-aid kit again, rummaging through the medicines as he talked. “When we were about sixteen, Tris and I were pretty damn sure we could take the civil service exam after high school and pass it easily.”

  Janine reached over and lifted a tube of antiseptic cream. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  He smiled at her, leaning against the counter. He spun the lid off the tube. “We decided we needed to practice our spying techniques. I wanted to find out where the hell my father went when he disappeared, and Tristan wanted to see if we could go undercover.” He let out a short, derisive laugh. “We were so stupid. We followed him to the airport after one of his pitifully short visits and managed to get on a flight that he was piloting to New York. We followed him out of the airport, expecting him to catch a cab to a hotel where the pilots stayed.”

  “And where did he go?”

  “Home.” His voice was flat. Bitter. “He went home to his wife and three daughters, who greeted him with happy kisses on the front porch of a six-bedroom house on Long Island.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh, God.”

  He took her hands again. “This might sting a little.”

  She opened them, palms up, and let him work. “I still don’t get it. How did discovering your father’s double life lead you to…to what you did?”

  “We broke into my dad’s house that night. I wanted to see how he lived, and then help myself to what I felt he owed us.” He glanced up. “No Robin Hood analogies, please. I just hated him. He had so much and we had so little. I even managed to go back and hit his house a few more times, that’s how pissed I was.”

  “Did Tristan steal, too?”

  “Only that once. Tristan remains firmly on the side of the angels.” He dropped a generous amount of cream on her hand and started to massage it in. “That adventure was the beginning of the end for us.”

  He opened a bandage and gently pressed it between her thumb and index finger. A piece of her heart broke off, thinking of how a teenage kid would hurt when faced with that kind of lie from his father.

  “Civil service requires an extremely thorough background check, especially when you ace it like I did.” He spared her a cocky grin and opened another bandage. “They discovered the truth about my father in, oh, fifteen minutes, instead of the fifteen years it had taken me. I was disqualified for any government service.”

  “Because your father was married to someone other than your mother?” That seemed preposterous.

  He sighed and applied the last bandage. “It was more complicated than that. My father’s flight record was shaky; he’d been put on probation a few times. And by then I’d actually used my skills on a few other jobs, and I—I just didn’t really push it. I wasn’t CIA material.” He shrugged, but she sensed he hadn’t given up his dream easily. “Tristan aced the test and landed a job with the FBI. I couldn’t afford college, of course, so…” He stood up and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. “Sorry. Long answer to one question.”

  She had more questions. “And Benazir? How did you meet him?”

  “I met him tonight,” he said with an ironic laugh. “But years ago, he’d been one of my clients. Unfortunately, he discovered the one thing I guarded most closely: my identity. Tristan was moving up in the FBI at the time, and he had strong suspicions about me. I had become sort of an obsession with him. When Benazir tried to get me to kill a man, I refused. He set me up and I got caught. I made a deal with Tristan that put Benazir in jail, because I didn’t trust the bastard who’d made threats against my mother and sister.”

  She jerked back in surprise. “He would have killed them?”

  “Absolutely. So I turned him in, and in exchange, Tristan arranged my ‘death’ and helped me create a new identity. Unfortunately, I’m wanted for so many crimes that if I set foot in the U.S. without a pardon, I’d be arrested before I left the airport. So, I needed a place to live. I picked France because it was the only other culture and language I knew intimately, thanks to my mother.”

  “And you’ve spent all these years working for the FBI and trying to earn your pardon.”

  He shrugged. “Pardons are rare, if not impossible. The best I can do is live i
n the U.S. under another identity.”

  Would that preclude a normal life and normal relationships? “What about your mother and sister?”

  “They think I’m dead.” He sounded so sad, so final.

  “That alone should be payment for crimes committed.”

  He shook his head and started to reassemble the first-aid kit. “Tris told them I’d worked undercover for the FBI and that I’d been killed in the line of duty. They don’t know—no one does—that Nick Jarrett was the Scorpion.”

  He snapped the box lid down and gave her a questioning look. Waiting for her verdict, no doubt.

  Something pulled at her deep inside. Wasn’t there a noble, courageous hero living inside this former thief? Looking away from him, she studied his hands on the white box. Strong, capable, agile hands that could break locks, and hearts.

  She closed her eyes to erase the image, but could still see his hands, the dusting of hair on his knuckles, the spray of tiny dark specks on his fingers….

  Her eyes flew open, and she grabbed his arms. “You washed your hands.”

  He rubbed his fingers against each other. “I did, but—”

  “But…but they have—” Refiring spots. They were damn near impossible to remove. “Did you touch the other Plums?”

  “Yes. I brought them up to you. They’re in the living room.”

  She dropped his hands and ran out of the bathroom. Seizing one of the vases, she thrust it under the lamp and started digging at the base.

  “The refrigerator!” she exclaimed. “The Plums were cold. The temperature must have chilled the glaze. That’s why the refiring spots didn’t lift when I checked them.” She held the vase out victoriously. “These are the fakes!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes! The real ones—all three of them—are still out there somewhere.”

  He took the vase and set it on the table. “Let’s go, then.”

  “Where?”

  “To find your Plums.” His smile nearly dissolved her as he cocked his head toward the door. “We need to talk to Tristan. Unless you hate me too much to finish what we started here.”