The Paris Caper (18 page)

“Wow,” Pierre muttered,
flipping through the other file.

“What?”

“You know she was
married?”

Jean-Marc glanced up with
a frown. “Sofie? She’s sixteen.”

“Ciara.”

For a second he couldn’t
breathe. “What are you talking about?”

“Some petty gangster.
French. Married her fourteen years ago in New York City. That’s why she came to
France.”

Ciara was
married
?
“Thirteen years?”
To a gangster
? His mind scrambled back to her
apartment, before she’d skipped out. No men’s things. He’d made special note of
that. “I thought she was here on a student visa.”

Pierre flipped some more.
“Nope. Says here permanent resident permit thanks to marrying a French
citizen.”

She’d lied.

Oh, what a shock.

“Not exactly a model
citizen, though. He was part of the Alexander crime family down south. I didn’t
make the connection before, her being American and all.”

Jean-Marc suddenly
remembered her bruises. “Where is the prick now?”

Pierre pursed his lips.
“Dead. Killed ten years ago in a shoot-out with the local constabulary in
Marseille.”

Well, that explained her
aversion to cops.

All at once, the impact
of Pierre’s full statement registered. Jean-Marc glanced over to the map of
France on the wall. The one full of colored push-pins. He stiffened.
“Marseilles?”

“Mmm-hmm. He had quite a
rap sheet. Robbery, extortion, car theft, assault.”

Robbery... Theft
.

“Marseilles?”

And we know where he’s
from...

A horrible thought crept
into Jean-Marc’s head. His brain spun with it, making him dizzy. Ten years ago
in Marseille... A petty criminal being killed by the police could easily make
that man’s wife start down the same path....

I’m not who you think
I am.

Non
. This was
crazy. Insane.

Pierre looked up. At once
aware. “Yeah, Marseille. What about it?”

I’m barking up the
wrong tree. Yes. But not for the reasons you think.

Jean-Marc’s whole body
went weightless, like he’d just jumped out of a jet with no parachute.

Airless. Suffocating.

Shaking.

Two plus two always
adds up to four. Now tell me what you’re doing that’s illegal.

“Does it say when she
moved to Paris?” he asked. Praying just once his cop instincts would be wrong.

That it wasn’t what he
was thinking.

She was a woman
,
he reminded himself.

He’d fucked her.

She couldn’t...

“Hmm.”

He stood boneless while
Pierre looked through the papers in the file.

“She has to register
every year with immigration,” Pierre murmured, drawing out the words. “Here it
is. First mention of Paris was...nine years ago.”

Nine years ago.

Jean-Marc’s disbelieving
gaze was drawn inexorably back to the map of Europe.

He moved to Paris nine
years ago. Started out snatching purses and lifting wallets on the train and
métro. Eight years ago he switched to silver and jewelry, started refining his
craft.

Jesus.

“At the apartment this
evening,” he said in a controlled voice. “Did you ask the landlord when Sofie
and the other kids had moved in there?”

Pierre consulted his
pocket notebook. “Ciara’s the one on the lease. She rented it four years ag—”
Suddenly his eyes widened and darted to Jean-Marc’s. “Whoa.
Mec
. Surely,
you don’t think—” Pierre swore softly at his expression.

Putain. Putain de
fucking merde.

But he
did
think.

The bottom fell out of
his stomach. Totally.

He was so screwed.

“Pierre. It’s her.”

“
Non
. Seriously,
mec
.
It’s not possible.”

But it was possible. It
all fit. The timing. Her lowlife husband giving her the skills. The Orphans
giving her the reason. Her being at the disco. Even the old lady. The facial
recognition software had been right all along. Suddenly he realized what had
been bothering him about that old lady. He’d seen her leave the soiree soon
after arriving...in the same car that moments before had had a flat tire.
Driven by a chauffeur who looked amazingly like one of the boys at the
apartment on rue Daguerre.

Jean-Marc had been
played for a fool
. Again.

“It’s her,” he growled.
“I’d bet my life on it.
Ciara Alexander is
le Revenant
.”

Words couldn’t begin to
describe the rage that burned in Jean-Marc’s chest at Ciara’s betrayal.

Duped. By a thief.
Again
.

How the hell gullible
was
he?

He bowed his head and
gripped his temples with unsteady fingers, unable to look Pierre in the eye.

“It’s not your fault,”
Pierre said, ever the faithful friend.

“What’s not my fault?
Fucking my prime suspect?”

“She wasn’t a suspect
when you fucked her. Wasn’t even on the radar.”

“But I should have
known.”

“How?”

He dropped his fingers
and drilled them through his hair. “I didn’t have to pay her.”

Pierre regarded him long
and hard. “That is so screwed up I’m not even going to address it. Get a grip.
You really think Ciara’s
le Revenant
?”

“Not a doubt in my mind.”

“So what are you going to
do about it?”

The fury in his heart
prodded him like tiny demons with sharp pitchforks. The woman was toast.

He swiped up his suit
jacket. “Think I’ll go and pay our illusive Ghost a little visit.”

♥♥♥

It took a couple of hours
to calm Sofie down to the point where Ciara could leave the Orphans’ apartment.
The girl had been hysterical from the time they’d left
36 Quai
des Orfèvres
until Davie had finally managed to coax a half tumbler
of cognac down her throat a while ago.

“I’m so sorry I signed
the picture by mistake and painted over it,” she’d wailed over and over. “I had
no idea they could do that with x-rays. And now he knows! He knows it was
me
who painted that fake Picasso!”

“It doesn’t matter what
he knows,” Ciara maintained patiently. “What counts is what he can
prove
.
And he can prove nothing. As long as we stick to our story we’ll be fine.”

Eventually she’d
convinced Sofie that Jean-Marc could not arrest them.

Now all she had to do was
convince herself.

Damn.

She dragged herself up
the six flights to the top floor apartment on rue Germain Pilon in the Pigalle
she’d rented a few days earlier. She’d vowed never to live up here again, but
unfortunately it was the only place she’d been able to find on such short
notice. She waved tiredly to the landlady who lurked in the shabby doorway
watching her with a suspicious frown.

She should have paid more
attention. But her face had started to throb and her lower back ached and all
she could think of was the ancient claw-foot bathtub that had been the only
bright spot about renting the dilapidated walk-up with peeling wallpaper and
rotting window frames she now called home.

She sighed with relief as
she reached the door and inserted her skeleton key into the ridiculous sham
that passed for a lock and turned it.

“That was some
performance,” a familiar male voice said behind her. A voice crackling with the
kind of white-hot anger that could incinerate a body in its tracks.

She whirled, barely
stifling a scream as he stepped out of the shadows of the hallway. “Jean-Marc!
What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer. Just
smiled. Like a serpent.

She took a step back.
“What do you want?”

The smile stretched. But
not to his eyes. Not even close.

Something was different
about him. He seemed harder. Sharper. More...ruthless. He looked like he wanted
to take her apart and eat her for supper. Or...maybe kill her.

Fear, sudden and
immobilizing, zinged through her.

Oh, God
.

He knew.
About her.

“Are you going to invite
me in, Ciara?”

She shook her head.
Unable to utter a word.

No. Not inside.
Not
inside her apartment. Not inside her.

He tugged the key from
her trembling fingers and unlocked the door, swinging it wide. Silently he held
it open for her and waited.

She didn’t move. How had
he found her?

“What’s the matter,
mon
ange
? Afraid of something I might find?”

“L-Like what?” she
stammered.

He shrugged easily, but
it was far from a casual gesture. Every muscle in his body was tense, his gaze
on her hawk-like. “Jewelry. Silver. Paintings. Money.”

Her heart literally
stopped in her chest. Stupid as it was, she’d hoped she was wrong. But his
description left no room for doubt.

When her heart started up
again, it felt heavy, painful, in her chest. She wanted to sink to the floor
and weep. Not because she’d been found out. But because it was Jean-Marc who’d
done it.

She forced a laugh.
“Hardly,” she said, gathering every bit of strength within her. As much as it
would kill her to lie to him, she had to deny everything. It would do neither
her nor the Orphans any good if she just rolled over and meekly went off to
prison. “If I had jewels and money, would I be living in a dump like this?” she
asked, gesturing at the surroundings. It was a definite step down, even from
her postage-stamp Latin Quarter apartment.

Something flitted through
his eyes. Doubt?

Yeah, right
.

“In that case,” he said,
“you won’t mind if I have a look around?”

She took a deep breath
and strolled into the single room of the studio. “Knock yourself out.”

He wouldn’t find
anything. There was nothing to find. Certainly none of the stuff he was looking
for. After switching apartments the other day, she’d even rented a locker at a
local gym to keep her wigs and makeup and disguises in. This place was clean.
As had been the Orphans apartment on rue Daguerre when they searched it
earlier.

Even so, her nerves were
nearly in shreds by the time he’d finished examining every nook and cranny of
the three-hundred year-old artist’s garret—every cupboard, behind every piece
of furniture, even popping the windows open to look around outside them.

If possible, he was even
more furious when he ran out of places to tear apart. Luckily she didn’t have a
lot of possessions to put back in place.

He stalked up to where
she was nervously sitting, planted his hands on the chair arms and leaned into
her face. “You’re a very clever woman. But I take betrayal very personally. I
will
find evidence and put you behind bars, if it’s the last thing I do.”

She shrank away from the
disgust in his tone. “Who’s betraying whom here?” she muttered.

His eyes narrowed. “Nice
try, baby. But if you thought seducing me would keep you out of prison, you’ve
made a big mistake.”

“Jean-Marc, it was you
who seduced me,” she reminded him, stilling her shaking hands. “If you’ll
recall, from the night we met I did everything I could to stay away from you.”

His jaw clenched. “And
now I know why. Because you are
le Revenant
.”

There it was, out in the
open. Her pulse sped.

“No. Because I knew we
would end badly. Please believe me, Jean-Marc. Whatever you think I’ve done,
betraying you was never part of the plan. I would never betray someone
I...like.”

He wheeled back. “Do
not
pull that crap on me, Ciara. This situation is bad enough without pretending
we’re any kind of friends.”

She gave up and closed
her eyes, leaning her head back on the uneven stuffing of the easy chair. “No.
And I guess lovers doesn’t count.”

She could hear his
breaths, shallow and harsh, and felt the air crackle with tension around them.
He was still standing close, practically touching her knees. The musky, acrid
smell of him, of his anger, nearly choked her with the need to reach out to
him.

But it was over between
them. Now that he knew.

Wasn’t it?

She opened her eyes and
saw him staring down at her, his expression savage. Desire, potent and
irrational, raced through her.

“Are you insane?” he
spat, eyes flaring. “You think I’m going to fuck you again? When I know who you
are,
what
you are?”

“Do you?” she softly
challenged. “Know who I am?”

Did anyone? Anyone on
earth?

Bald disbelief washed
through his expression. He spun and paced away, then turned back to her. The
skin of his throat was mottled red beneath the black stubble. “I do. You’re a
thief! And that’s all that matters.”

But...he was getting hard.

The fine wool fabric of
his suit trousers stretched and distorted over his lengthening arousal. She
felt herself grow damp between her legs.

Okay, yeah. She
was
insane.

“Is it?” she managed.
“All that matters?” She stood, and mutely dared him to come closer. Taunting
his outrage.

Playing with fire
.

“You don’t care—”
his
wrath was woven tight with incredulity
“—that I’d throw you in jail in a
hot minute?”

“I wouldn’t respect you
if you didn’t do your job,” she said.

And suddenly she realized
it was true. She would hate him if he turned out to be another Beck, corrupt
and immoral. Better to land in prison than fall for scum.

God, was she falling
for him
? She attempted a smile. Failed.

His mouth opened, then
snapped shut. “I don’t fucking believe this.”