Dangerous to Know (14 page)

He unfolded one grubby fist to display an innocuous-looking pocketknife. Curling his fingers around the handle, he pressed some hidden mechanism. With a deadly click, a thin stiletto blade slid out of the handle.

Doc didn't need to ask if Henri knew how to use the switchblade.

“Both of you, get back in the shadows and stay there.”

Paige pressed backward and tried not to shudder as her bare skin made contact with a dank stone wall. God only knew what was growing between the cracks in the stone. Henri scooted back, as well, gouging one of his bony shoulders into her ribs.

“If I'm not out in two minutes, or if you hear shots, get the hell out of here, understand?”

If he wasn't back?

Terror clawed at Paige's chest. Any lingering vestige of excitement or adventure was stripped away at that moment. Her fingers dug into Henri's shoulders.

“I won't leave you here!” she whispered frantically.

“You will if you want to summon help for Maggie and me. Get in the clear, and as soon as it's safe, send the emergency signal 311. Got that?”

“David…”

“Three-one-one. Say it, Paige.”

“Three-one-one. What does it mean?”

“Agent down, request immediate extraction.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Say it again.”

“Three-one-one. David…”

“I love you. Say it again.”

“Three-one-one, dammit. I love you, too.”

Incredibly, he grinned. A crooked, slashing grin that showed his white teeth and his heart-stopping handsomeness.

“We'll finish this discussion later.”

“Right. Later.”

He leaned over Henri to give her a swift, hard kiss. “Three-one-one, Paige.”

“I have it! Just…just be careful.”

Her heart hammering with a painful, erratic beat, Paige watched David move down the alley. He stopped a few feet away from the green-painted door.

He seemed to draw in a deep breath, then threw his shoulders against the wood panel. It crashed open on the first thrust and bounced inward against the wall.

Through the opening, Paige caught a glimpse of a short, heavily muscled man frozen in place beside a figure slumped over a table. Aghast, she saw a cascade of white gold hair spilling across the table.

“Antoine.” Henri spit out the name, just as David launched himself at the man with a snarl of animal fury.

In the shattering moments that followed, Paige discovered yet another David, one she'd never suspected lay beneath his sur
face. Gone was all trace of the brilliant engineer. Nothing showed of the skilled, considerate lover. What she saw was a powerful, enraged attacker who mowed down his victim with all the finesse of a Mack truck.

This battle wasn't like those in the Karate Kid and Steven Segal movies Paige had seen, in which the good guys moved with a sort of balletic grace, their arms and legs swinging in slow-motion arcs.

There wasn't anything balletic about the fist David slammed into the man's face. Nothing graceful about the blow he delivered to the bookie's stomach. They were brutal powerhouse punches, thrown with every ounce of strength David possessed.

Blood spurted from Antoine's nose with the first hit. He grunted and doubled over at the second, only to connect with David's upthrust knee. Paige heard a sickening crunch, then a gurgle as he collapsed in an untidy heap.

Forgetting David's admonition to stay put, she and Henri ran forward. They rushed through the door just as David gently raised Maggie's face from where it lay amid a litter of cloudy glasses and bottles on the rickety table.

“Oh, my God…” Paige whispered, stumbling to a halt.

David went on one knee beside the slack woman. “Chameleon, look at me. Look at me.”

Her eyes wide and unfocused, Maggie stared at him blankly for a moment, and then her head lolled back limply, like a rag doll's.

“Son of a bitch.” David slid an arm around her waist and dragged her up out of the chair.

“The pig!” Henri turned and spit on the comatose Antoine. “He has given her the drug.”

“What kind?” David snapped at the boy. “What kind of drugs does he use?”

“That one? Anything and everything.”

“Son of a bitch.” With visible effort, David reined himself in. “Chameleon, can you hear me?”

Maggie made a pathetic attempt to lift her head from his
shoulder. Her dilated pupils tried to line up on David's face, but couldn't seem to focus.

“Get out your compact,” he snapped at Paige.

Still clutching the mascara tube with one hand, she tugged at the clasp of her small white shoulder bag and dug inside. After a few frantic moments, she found the diamond-studded compact.

“Open it and press the center stone,” David ordered. “Once to transmit, twice to receive. Once, Paige! Once.”

“Nuuu…” Maggie's protest was so weak and indistinct, they almost missed it.

David shifted her weight in his arms to look down into her face. “Chameleon! Can you hear me? Do you know what he gave you?”

Maggie tried to swallow. It was a slow, agonizing effort, painful to watch.

“Nuuu…” she mumbled. “Nhat drrr….” Her hoarse whisper trailed off.

“Press the stone again,” David growled at Paige. “Once to transmit, twice to receive.”

She squeezed the diamond as hard as she could and shouted into the compact. “This is Jezebel! Can you hear me?”

David began to pace the small room, forcing Maggie to walk with him. “Try again,” he told Paige.

“This is Jezebel. Is anyone there?”

“Mademoiselle!”
Henri reminded her. “You must press the stone twice to hear.”

“Oh. Yes.” Paige juggled the mascara to her other hand and squeezed the stone twice in rapid succession.

“This is Cyrene,” a woman announced calmly. “Go ahead, Jezebel.”

Her fingers slick with sweat, Paige engaged the diamond once. “I'm with Doc and Chameleon. She's been drugged. We need an ambulance.”

Paige stared at the compact, waiting for a response. Any response.

“Press the stone,
mademoiselle!
” Henri shouted. “Twice!”

As soon as she hit the stone twice, she heard Cyrene's steady voice. “I repeat, Jezebel, give me your coordinates.”

Paige sent David a helpless look. “What are my coordinates?”

“Reach into my left pocket,” he instructed Henri. “Pull out the small flat pocket calculator.”

The boy's nimble fingers quickly extracted the device that the waiter-surgeon had passed David after inserting Paige's little tracking chip.

“Press the switch in the upper left corner,” David told the boy. “Now read the numbers on the screen aloud. Slowly!”

His face scrunched up in fierce concentration, the boy started to call out the numbers.

At that moment, Maggie's head lolled sideways. Her eyes seemed to focus for an instant on something over David's shoulder.

“Daf-fid!” she groaned in warning, just as a blood-spattered figure lumbered out of the shadows.

His battered face twisted into a snarl, Antoine charged toward David.

Without thinking, without hesitating, Paige dropped the compact, aimed her mascara and fired.

H
is face blank with astonishment, Antoine stumbled back against the rear wall. He looked down at the bright red blood blossoming on his thigh, and then at the unidentifiable object in Paige's hand. His legs bowed, and he slithered down the wall until his butt hit the floor with a solid
whump.

“You shoot me?” Dazed, he stared at Paige. “With that?”

“Yes, and I'll do it again, you pig.”

She kept the tube pointed at his chest, which took some effort, considering how badly her hand was shaking. For the life of her, she couldn't remember whether the weapon carried more than one projectile, but she figured Antoine wouldn't know, either.

With a savagely controlled gentleness, David eased Maggie into one of the chairs.

“I'll take it from here,” he told Paige. A feral light glittered in his eyes as he swung toward Antoine.

He crossed the room in two strides. Reaching down, he wrapped his fists in the man's shirt, hauled him upright, and slammed him back against the wall, with no regard for either his battered face or his bleeding thigh. The powerful muscles in
David's shoulders bunched as he pinned the heavyset Antoine to the wall, several inches off the floor.

“You've got five seconds to tell me what you gave her.”

“I gave her nothing!”

“Four.”

“
Monsieur!
I swear!”

“Three.”

Blood and sweat rolled down the grooves beside the man's mouth and dripped onto his gore-stained shirt. “She comes into the shop! We talk. She smiles. I invite her to the back room to drink!”

“Two.”

“I swear,
monsieur!
I swear. We drink the
pastis!
Together! Look, there is the bottle.” He gestured wildly toward the middle of the room.

Keeping the man pinned to the wall, David slewed his head around. His narrowed eyes took in the cloudy bottle and glasses that still littered the table beside Maggie.

With a curse that made Paige blink in surprise—she had no idea engineers used such graphic terms!—David dragged Antoine over to the table. He kept a stranglehold on the man's shirt with one hand while he lifted the bottle with the other and sniffed at it.

From her position across the table, Paige sniffed, too, but couldn't detect anything over the strong, tobacco-y aromas that emanated from the boxes stacked haphazardly around the storeroom. She wasn't sure, but she thought
pastis
was some kind of liqueur or local drink. She'd seen it on the menu at both the Carlton and the seaside café where they'd had lunch.

“It is
pastis!
” Antoine choked, clawing at David's hand. “Only
pastis,
I swear. She took but a sip, then her throat closes like…like an overstuffed sausage, and she struggles for the breath.”

“Let's see what it does for your throat,” David snarled. Twisting the man's collar even tighter, he poured the remainder of the bottle's contents into his open, gasping mouth. He loos
ened the pressure enough to allow Antoine to gasp and gag and swallow some of the liquid.

For long, tense moments, the only sounds in the small room were Maggie's shallow, rasping breath and Antoine's frightened pants.

“You see?” Antoine sobbed. “Nothing. There is nothing in the bottle, nothing but
pastis.
”

“Daf-fid.” Maggie's weak call jerked everyone's attention to her.

“What did this bastard give you?”

“Naaht…drugs. He…had…same. Ho-tel. Take me…ho-tel.”

With an utter lack of compunction, David smashed a fist into Antoine's jaw. The burly, heavyset man crumpled to the floor.

Scooping Maggie up in his arms, David strode toward the door.

“Come on.” He threw the words at Paige over his shoulder.

She stepped over the unconscious body and hurried after him. “Come on,” she called to Henri.

The boy spit on Antoine one final time. “Pig!” he muttered as he followed Paige out the door.

 

The day and night that followed were the longest Paige had ever spent.

David threw a wad of bills at the driver of the taxi Henri flagged down and told him to move it. During the kamikaze ride along the Croisette, Paige fumbled with the compact and managed to give Control a whispered recap of what had happened. Promising to get a doctor to the hotel immediately, Claire signed off.

Maggie was still dazed and struggling for breath when David laid her on the satin-covered bed.

“Doc,” she gasped, and clutched his arm. “I… The drink…”

“I know,” he murmured, brushing the tangled hair back from her temples. “Just hang on, Maggie. The doctor's coming.”

As Paige watched David stroke his partner's face, she felt a huge lump forming in her own throat. This was the man she knew. This was the side of his personality he'd always shown
her. Tender, gentle, caring. She felt a wash of love for him so strong it overwhelmed her. Sinking down on the other side of the bed, she took Maggie's hand and murmured soft reassurances.

When David smiled at her across Maggie's prone form, Paige's heart melted. The contrast between this David and the one who had tenderized Antoine's face just minutes ago was extraordinary. And almost beyond her comprehension—until she remembered that she, timid little Paige Lawrence, had shot a man. With a mascara wand, it was true, but she'd actually shot someone.

David was right, she thought. No one could ever know every facet of another person's personality. Or even one's own.

She glanced at the man on the opposite side of the bed. His short, usually neat hair now stuck up in uneven patches. His red knit shirt carried a variety of stains. And his hands, those incredible, gentle hands, sported bruised, split knuckles.

She didn't need to know anything more about him, Paige decided in that instant. It was enough that he was David,
her
David.

 

The doctor arrived a few moments later. Not the little waiter-surgeon this time, but a tall, chic woman in a two-piece navy blue Chanel suit and an Hermès scarf. Paige recognized the scarf. She'd seen one similar to it during her brief foray into the boutiques of the Croissette. The price tag had nearly put her into cardiac arrest.

Paige and David, with Henri hovering in the background, stood to one side while the doctor examined Maggie.

“Anaphylactic shock,” she announced almost immediately. “It is a severe allergic reaction, similar to what some people experience from bee stings. What has she eaten or drunk?”

“Pastis,”
David said tersely.

“Ah, yes. It is made from Anise, which has carminative and aromatic qualities some people simply cannot tolerate.”

At Paige's blank look, the doctor folded her stethoscope and tucked it into her purse.

“Anise, or aniseed, as some call it, is an herb of the carrot family. It's grown locally, and used to make this potent liqueur.”

“I…hate…car…rots,” Maggie murmured. “Make…me…gag. Al…ways…have.”

“Yes, so I would imagine. It's best if you don't talk for a while.”

The doctor extracted a hypodermic syringe and a small vial from her purse.

“It will take at least twenty-four hours for the paralysis of the throat to lessen to where it is not painful, but this will help relax the muscles so you can breathe more easily.”

Paige shut her eyes as the doctor swabbed Maggie's arm and slid the needle in.

“Someone must stay with her at all times,” the woman instructed a few moments later. She drew a package of pills out of that seemingly bottomless pit of a purse.

“She may have water, only a sip at a time, and soft food when she can eat it. And one of these caplets every three hours.”

David nodded. “We've got it covered.”

“Oui, madame,”
Henri concurred, reaching gallantly for her bag. “We shall manage. May I escort you out?”

David gave him a warning frown. “I'm sure
madame
can manage her purse.”

Henri's small face assumed a wounded look. “
Monsieur!
You don't think I would steal from her?”

“I don't?”

Paige intervened hastily. “Why don't you come with me while I show the doctor out, Henri? You can check the room-service menu and decide what to order for Maggie. And for yourself, of course,” she added quickly as his eyes lit up.

 

Just after midnight, Paige walked through the tall double doors of the bedroom into the sitting room. She was limp with weariness, but relieved that Maggie seemed to be getting back her color, if not her voice.

Inside the sitting room, she leaned tiredly against the wall and crossed her arms over the little beaded vest she'd changed back
into earlier. It wasn't the most appropriate sickroom attire, perhaps, but it was comfortable and allowed her ease of movement while tending to Maggie. When he saw it, David had muttered something under his breath about plaids and jumpers, but Paige had been too busy to pay much attention.

Between them, they had worked out an hourly schedule to take care of their patient. During her shifts, Paige helped Maggie into the bathroom and fed her soup or the smooth, exotically flavored ice creams Cannes was famous for.

During his shifts, David administered ice water and the medicines and sat in an armchair pulled up to the little dressing table while she slept. He'd occupied the quiet hours making lists, Paige supposed.

Throughout all shifts, Henri had offered encouragement and advice. Enthusiastically pursuing his duties as procurer of sustenance for the patient, he'd established a personal hot line to the kitchens, sampled everything that came up and gradually stuffed himself into a stupor.

He was now curled upon the sofa, one fist tucked under his cheek and a litter of empty plates on the floor beside him. Paige smiled at the sight and wandered over to tug a light blanket up over his bony shoulders. He'd certainly gotten enough to eat tonight. A steady stream of waiters had knocked on the door of the suite, bringing dish after dish, delicacy after delicacy.

The last had left a pot of rich black coffee and a silver bowl of ripe strawberries. Paige studied the bowl for a moment, then picked out a huge, luscious berry. She took a nibble from the tip and was savoring the sweet flavor when another knock sounded on the door.

Throwing Henri an amused look, she wondered what else he'd ordered before falling asleep. They'd gone through every item on the menu, plus a few he'd requested that the chef improvise. She ambled to the door, nibbling on the ripe berry.

The man who stood on the other side looked like no waiter Paige had ever seen. He was tall and tanned and carried himself with an air of unshakable authority. A faint trace of silver threaded his black hair at the temples, giving him an aristocratic
touch. Although he carried a leather flight bag in one hand, his knife-pleated dark slacks and tailored blue shirt were smooth and crisp, as though they wouldn't dare do anything as undignified as wrinkle during travel.

Paige stood rooted to the floor, her mouth pursed around the fruit, her eyes wide.

He took in her surprised expression, her half-eaten strawberry, and her beaded see-through vest. A smile creased his tanned cheeks, and he descended from the aristocratic to the merely devastating.

“Jezebel, I presume?”

If he knew her code name, he was one of the good guys. She hoped. Reminding herself that David was only a scream away, she pulled the fruit out of her mouth and fumbled for an answer.

“Er, I'm not sure. I mean, isn't there some kind of a code or something you're supposed to give first. So I know who you are?”

The smile widened. “I'm Thunder. Adam Ridgeway. We spoke yesterday.”

“Oh. Yes.”

Paige remembered Mr. Thunder all right. This was David's boss in his secret life, the one who'd given her the choice of being fitted with an electronic leash or being bundled out of Cannes on the next available plane. She eyed him with a touch of dislike.

“You know, you have a rather nasty manner over the…” She made a small circle in the air with the strawberry, not quite sure what that diamond-studded compact was. “Over the radio,” she said.

“So I've been told.” He walked into the suite and deposited the leather flight bag on an armchair. “Where's Maggie?”

Paige gestured toward the high double doors. “In the bedroom. David's with her. You can go—”

He didn't wait for her permission.

There couldn't be any mistake. This was definitely Mr. Thunder. Brows raised, Paige trailed after him as he opened the
doors. He stopped on the threshold, his eyes fixed on the still figure in the bed.

“Adam!” David kept his voice low, but his face registered total surprise as he rose from the armchair. “What are you doing here?”

Adam Ridgeway's intent gaze didn't leave the unmoving Maggie. “I had planned to come for your wedding, anyway. I decided to move the trip up a bit.”

David sent Paige a quick look.

“How is she?”

Adam's question betrayed no emotion, but there was a quiet, almost indiscernible intensity to it that made Paige glance at him quickly.

“She's going to be fine,” David assured him. “I gave Claire hourly status reports. Didn't she keep you posted?”

“She did. I got the last report during an in-flight refueling over the channel.” His jaw worked. “It appears that Chameleon has a near-fatal aversion to carrots.”

“Distilled carrots, anyway. We've been with her every moment, Adam,” David said, his voice gentling as he studied his boss's face.

Well, well…Paige thought.

“The doctor says she shouldn't have any lingering aftereffects from the reaction, other than a sore throat as the paralysis wears off. She's supposed to talk as little as possible for a while.”