Sidney Sheldon's Reckless (35 page)

Mr. Bowers.
Tracy smiled to herself. Jeff hadn't used that one in a long time.

“Lovely man.” Madame Dubonnet's eyes positively glowed.

“When did Mr. Bowers stop by here, out of interest?” Tracy asked.

“None of your business,” the old woman said tersely. “The point is that he warned me. ‘She will come here asking questions about her lover,' he told me. And now you 'ave.”

Tracy frowned. “My lover?”

“Bah,
oui!
Of course, your lover! Monsieur Graham. Not that you are 'is only girlfriend, of course. Any man rich enough to play at Albert Dumas's table keeps women like a beekeeper keeps bees.
Buzz buzz buzz.
”

Madame Dubonnet's wrinkled mouth puckered up grotesquely as she made the buzzing bee sound.

“Naturally I make no judgment,” she added, looking at Tracy as a chef might look at a rat that had wandered into his kitchen. “But there are conventions here in Paris, even for the mistresses.”

Tracy pieced things together. Jeff had guessed Tracy would go to Guy, and that eventually she would follow him here. So he'd pumped Madame Dubonnet for information on Hunter, then convinced the old hag that Tracy was some sort of bunny-boiling bit on the side, here to cause Harry Graham trouble.

“Madame,” Tracy said firmly. “My friend Monsieur Bowers is mistaken. I am not Monsieur Graham's mistress. Or anyone else's mistress for that matter.”

Ignoring Tracy's protests, Madame Dubonnet wagged an arthritic finger in her face, almost blinding Tracy with a five-carat sparkler.

“You know, Cherie, it is not a nice thing to try to
entrapper
a gentleman by threatening to go to his wife.” Madame Dubonnet made a clucking sound with her tongue and shook her head from side to side, before pronouncing, “This, I do not approve of.”

Tracy's eyes widened.
Boy, Jeff must have laid it on thick.

“Madame. I assure you, you are mistaken. For one thing Monsieur Graham, as he calls himself, is no gentleman. For another, he has no wife. Although you may be right about the bee thing,” she conceded, thinking back to what Sally Faiers had told her about Hunter's endless string of lovers. “In any case I am
not
his lover, as my ‘friend' Mr. Bowers knows all too well. The truth is”—Tracy lowered her voice—“I'm working for American intelligence.”

Madame Dubonnet smiled patronizingly.
“Vraiment? Le CIA?”

“That's right,” said Tracy, relieved to have cleared up the misunderstanding. “I work for the CIA.”

“And I am working for NASA, mademoiselle.” The old lady cackled at her own joke. Then the lips pursed again for the last time. “As I said before, I do not discuss the private lives of my patrons. Marianne will see you out.”

JEFF CALLED TRACY JUST
as she stepped out of Madame Dubonnet's apartment building onto the street.

“Darling! How's your head?”

Tracy exploded. “Don't ‘darling' me. You told that old witch I was sleeping with Hunter Drexel!”

Jeff chuckled. “Ah, dear Madame Dubonnet. You've been to see her then?”

“Of course I have. You knew I would.”

“Now don't be mad, angel. I didn't say you were sleeping with him. Not exactly.”

“Well, whatever you said ‘exactly' it was enough to get me kicked out of there. So what ‘exactly' did she tell
you
? That you were so eager to hide from me?”

“Nothing!”

“Pull the other one, Jeff. I'm serious. She obviously knew Hunter. She'd met him. What do you know? When was he last there?”

“I have no idea.”

“You're lying.”

“Tracy darling, what is the point of this conversation? If you refuse to believe a word I say?”

“Good point,” Tracy said furiously, and hung up.

JEFF RANG BACK IMMEDIATELY.

“I see you're fully recovered then?”

Tracy bit her lip. The urge to hang up on him again was almost overpowering, but she wanted to know what he knew.

“Yes, thanks. Nice of you to come visit me,” she added caustically.

“I wanted to.” Jeff sounded genuinely hurt.

“So why didn't you?”

“Something came up.”

“Something always does,” said Tracy bitterly.

“Hey, hold on,” Jeff protested. “It doesn't help when your boyfriend guards the hospital like a Rottweiler and then spirits you off to his tower in the woods like bloody Rapunzel!”

Tracy took a deep breath and counted to three. “Where are you?”

Jeff told her.

“Meet me at l'Église Saint-Louis-des-Invalides in twenty minutes.”

“l'Église les what now?” said Jeff.

“Just be there.”

LITTLE KNOWN TO TOURISTS,
the church of Saint Louis nestled deep within the complex of Les Invalides, beneath its magnificent golden dome. Designed by architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the chapel was commissioned in the seventeenth century by Louis XIV as a sanctuary specifically for soldiers. Every stone, from its banner-hung walls to its crypt filled with the tombs of French generals, was steeped in military history. But this afternoon, like most afternoons, the church was almost deserted, with only a few quiet worshippers kneeling discretely in its pews or lighting candles of remembrance.

Jeff saw Tracy as soon as he arrived, kneeling alone in a side chapel. Making a sign of the cross he knelt down beside her and whispered in her ear.

“What are you praying for?”

“Strength,” Tracy whispered back. “I tend to need it whenever you're around.”

“How are you?” Jeff asked, ignoring the jibe.

“Fine.”

“They told me you'd been in a coma.”

Tracy thought,
And still you didn't come.
Out loud she said, “I'm fine, Jeff. We aren't here to talk about me. Where have you been?”

“Bruges.”

Jeff had agreed to follow Frank Dorrien's advice and not tell Tracy about his trip to Steamboat. There would be time enough for that later.

“You saw Drexel?”

“Yes.”

“And you know about Sally Faiers?”

Jeff shook his head grimly. “Yes.”

A verger, busy polishing the tabernacle and the altar candle sticks, shot Jeff and Tracy a reproachful look. Jeff lowered his voice.

“Awful business.”

“Any ideas who did it?”

“Well, it wasn't Hunter,” Jeff whispered. “I was watching him when it happened. He won big at a poker game in the Old Town, then met up with a woman. Tracy, I'm pretty sure it was Althea.”

Tracy's eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

Jeff described the woman Hunter had met and their interaction in as much detail as he could. “Your friend General Dorrien called to tell me about Sally's murder before I could hear any more. But I heard him call her ‘Kate.' Twice.”

Kate.
A name. An actual name. It was the first time Althea had been anything more than a shadow. Not a lot to go on, perhaps. But it was something.

“They were fighting. If I didn't know better I'd have said it was a lovers' tiff. He was trying to give her money but she wouldn't accept it. She was upset when she left.”

“You said you followed her?”

“Yes. Dorrien asked me to. But I lost her in one of the squares. The city's tiny but it's like a maze, especially at night.”

“I remember,” Tracy said. For a moment there was a flicker of warmth between them, a spark of shared nostalgia for another life. But it was soon gone.

“Your turn.”

“I've got nothing to tell,” Tracy said. “I've been recovering from a major head injury, remember? I've been off the case.”

Jeff gave her a loving look. “You'll have to try that line with someone who doesn't know you, darling. You wouldn't have been to see Guy or Madame Dubonnet if you weren't working. And you wouldn't know about Sally Faiers either. So what's been going on?”

Tracy told him the CIA's latest theories. That Hunter Drexel was definitely involved in the Neuilly shootings. And that he probably had a hand in Sally's death as well. And Hélène's.

“I didn't know about the student. That's sad. . . .” Jeff frowned. But he seemed to hesitate.

“I'm sensing there's a but?”

“I don't know.” He looked at Tracy intently. “Hunter's obviously involved with Group 99 somehow. He's not who he says he is.”

“I agree.”

“The Americans and the Brits both have him in the frame now. And they're probably right. But something doesn't add up.”

“Right,” Tracy whispered. “Like the fact that he didn't shoot Sally Faiers.”

“Exactly.”

“But Frank Dorrien knew she'd been killed within minutes.”

Jeff nodded. “I thought about that. He could have been watching the house.”

“In which case he'd have seen who did it. Yet no one was arrested.”

“I thought about that too.”

“But you still trust him?” Tracy looked deep into Jeff's eyes. Looking back at her, Jeff longed to tell her everything. It took every ounce of his willpower not to.

“You know me,” he quipped. “I don't trust anyone. How about you?”

“I think Greg Walton's a good guy,” said Tracy. She wasn't about to bring up Cameron's name again with Jeff. She'd learned her lesson last time. “I told him I'd pass on any intelligence you gave me, by the way. As we're being so ‘open' with each other.”

“Don't.” Jeff said, more forcefully than he'd intended. “Whatever gets to Walton gets to Milton Buck,” he explained, spitting out the FBI agent's name as if it were poison. “Never forget that, Tracy. Never.”

Tracy was surprised. Jeff had as much reason to dislike Agent Buck as she did. After all, if Buck had had his way, Jeff would have been left to die at the hands of Daniel Cooper, nailed to a cross in a remote Bulgarian barn. Yet in the past it had always been Tracy who'd felt afraid of Milton Buck. Jeff had treated him almost as a joke.

Had something changed?

“I assume the British know about ‘Kate'?” she asked, changing tack.

“Yes. I told Frank Dorrien everything I just told you. MI6 have been digging for a week, looking for any ‘Kates' in Hunter's past.”

“Have they found any?”

“A whole bunch. I'm telling you, Drexel makes Magic Johnson look like a Buddhist monk. But no one significant. Yet.”

“All right,” Tracy said, making another sign of the cross and standing up to leave. “I'll get on it.”

Jeff put a hand on her arm. “Don't disappear on me, Tracy. I think Hunter came back to Paris because he's planning another attack of some kind. This ‘story' nonsense is just a cover.”

Tracy nodded. Hunter Drexel as the innocent, intrepid journalist was simply not believable anymore. Too many people had died.

“He's trying to get Kate, whoever she is, to help him. You mustn't get too close to this woman. If you raise her suspicions, you could be in very real danger.”

“You think I don't know that? This time last week I was in a coma,” Tracy reminded him. “I'm doing this for Nick, Jeff. That's the only reason.”

Jeff watched as Tracy left the church, her head bowed, like any other anonymous war widow.

That's what she is, in a way,
Jeff thought sadly.
Her life has been one long war. And she's lost so many people she loved.

In that moment he felt utterly overpowered with love for her.

Even for Jeff Stevens, there were times when lies didn't come easily.

“HI, YOU'VE REACHED JEFF.
Leave a message.”

Frank Dorrien was irritated. That was the third time today he'd failed to reach Stevens.

Frank was confident after Bruges that Stevens was back on board. That his tiresome maverick streak was under control. But that was before Jeff had met up with Tracy Whitney again.

Tracy had certainly been useful to Frank Dorrien, albeit unwittingly. Her connection to Stevens had provided MI6 with a huge advantage. But the intelligence she provided came at a price. When Tracy and Jeff got together, nothing was predictable. And the stakes couldn't be higher.

Frank Dorrien felt the first stirrings of real fear in the pit of his stomach, like sun-dazed butterflies slowly coming to life.

Glancing at his watch, Frank set off at a run towards Jeff's hotel.

“WHEN DID YOU LAST
hear from Tracy?”

Milton Buck's entire upper body tensed with irritation and resentment. Who the hell did Cameron Crewe think he was, interrupting him in the middle of an important meeting with French intelligence?

“I told you before. I can't talk now.”

“I don't give a fuck what you told me, Agent Buck. I can't reach her and I want answers. Now!”

Arrogant asshole. I'm not one of your minion employees.

“I'll call you when I'm out of my meeting,” Milton replied, through gritted teeth.

“Don't bother,” Cameron snapped. “I'll take it up the food chain. God knows why I'm talking to the monkey anyway. We both know Walton's the organ grinder.”

To Milton Buck's fury, he hung up.

GREG WALTON WAS REASSURING.

“I saw her two days ago. Everything's fine. I'm not expecting her to check in with us daily.”

“Well, I am,” Cameron Crewe said bluntly. The strain in his voice quivered down the phone line. “She always calls me back, usually within an hour. It's been a day and a night.”

“She's working, Cameron. She's probably reestablishing ties with Jeff Stevens. That's what we asked her to do.”

“That's what I'm worried about. Did you know she checked out of the Georges V?”

There was a long pause. “Are you sure about that?”