The Paris Caper (4 page)

“Tell me what happened,”
she said, herding them back into her taxi and giving the driver the address of
the apartment on rue Daguerre that Ciara kept for the Orphans—Davie, Ricardo,
Sophie, CoCo, and Hugo. Part of the reasons these kids had all ended up on the
streets was an overabundance of adult control. Ciara had earned their
confidence by trusting them to live on their own, with her help but not her
interference and a minimum of rules.

“It was Beck,” Ricardo
said. “He beat up Sofie.”

Ciara’s heart went cold.
Brigadier
Louis Beck of the Paris
Préfecture de Police
was another on the long
list of good reasons one should never get involved with a cop. First Etienne.
Now Sophie. It always ended badly with cops.
Always
.

Having worked the
infamous red light district for thirty years, Beck was as corrupt as they came,
a vile specimen of everything evil in a man. But he’d never actually hurt Sofie
before. Ciara should have known that would change.

“How bad?”

“A few cuts on the face,”
Davie said grimly. “A lot of bruises. She’s gotten quiet.”

“She won’t tell us
anything.
Niente
,” Ricardo said, with his expressive Italian gestures.
“She just cries.”

“She’ll talk to you,”
Davie said.

“Hopefully before Hugo
goes after Beck with a switchblade,” Ricardo added.

 “That’s all we’d need,”
Ciara muttered. Hugo would do it, too.

The three of them arrived
at the rue Daguerre apartment and clattered up the half dozen flights of stairs
to the attic story, which was the only place Ciara could afford that had two
bedrooms and a landlord who consented to look past the youth and tenuous backgrounds
of his tenants.

“Oh, sweetie,” she softly
said when she saw Sofie, bruised and battered, curled into a ball on the sofa.
“Baby, what has he done to you?”

She gathered the girl in
her arms, relieved when Sofie hugged her back.

“I’m okay,” she sighed
out, wiping tears with a tissue CoCo handed her.

“She’s feeling better
now,” CoCo said, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “We iced her face and gave
her a couple of aspirin.”

CoCo was the mother hen
of the group, albeit a tough one. Having taken care of herself for nearly all
of her nineteen years, as well as big brother Hugo and their cousin Etienne
before he married Ciara, CoCo was brash and outspoken, but loyal to a fault. It
had been an eleven-year old CoCo who’d brought Ciara back from the brink after
Etienne’s death, cajoling and shaming her into giving a damn about her life
again by asking for help in changing hers. CoCo had been Ciara’s first Orphan,
but there had been many a time over the past six years that she had wondered
exactly who’d been adopted by whom.

“Sofie still won’t tell
us what happened,” Hugo growled from the other side of the living room, pacing
back and forth like a tiger on a leash.

Ciara glanced at him and
tamped down her anxiety. Hugo had joined the Orphans at the behest of his
sister at the ripe old age of fifteen. He was now twenty and the oldest of the
group. Hot headed like his cousin Etienne, Hugo’s waters ran much deeper. Not
an easy mix. For now she set aside Hugo’s agitated state and turned back to
Sofie.

“Sweetie, you need to
tell us. Why did Beck do this?”

The girl glanced up, and
suddenly broke into sobs. “Oh, Ciara, What am I going to do? How am I ever
going to pay him? But if I don’t, he says he’ll go to my father and—”

“Whoa! Slow down. What do
you mean, pay him?” Ciara asked.

“
Nobody’s
going to
your father,” Hugo said angrily, stalking over to the sofa. “I’ll kill the rat
bastard first.”

“Quiet, Hugo! Let the
girl talk,” CoCo upbraided, taking Sofie’s hand and pressing a kiss to it.
Davie and Ricardo came to sit on the floor at their feet. Hugo continued his
pacing.

“Start from the
beginning,” Ciara urged.

“I was going to the
market. We’ve no milk for the morning coffee,” Sophie explained. Ciara bit back
her impatience, letting the girl take her time. “I was counting the coins to be
sure I had enough money, and wasn’t watching where I was going. He was there,
Brigadier
Beck, waiting for me outside the door.”

Hugo growled again, low
in his throat, and CoCo muttered angrily, “Why does he keep after you? The man
should be castrated.”

The brigadier
was a longtime beat cop and had he’d met Sofie almost immediately
after she’d run away from her abusive father. She was working the streets and
he’d gotten used to enjoying her favors in exchange for “protection.” He hadn’t
liked it when she quit turning tricks, and he’d been harrassing her ever since,
trying to pressure her into renewing their arrangement.

“He’d been
drinking,” she went on. “When I wouldn’t have sex with him, he hit me. I was
stupid. I called him names and told him exactly what I thought of him. He lost
his temper.”

Ciara
winced.

“
Fils de pute
,”
CoCo said.
The fucking bastard.

“But that’s
not the worst part.”

“
Chérie
,
what could possibly be worse than that?” Davie asked sympathetically.

“He said if
I didn’t pay him ten thousand euros, he’d tell my father where I am.”

“Ten
thousand euros!” Outrage spurted through Ciara. Over twelve thousand dollars.

“I will
kill him!” Hugo repeated even more vehemently. “It’s what Etienne would have
done.”

“And
Etienne is dead,” Ciara snapped, surprising them all. She took a breath and
turned back to Sofie. “Where does he expect you to get that kind of money?”
There was no way.

“He doesn’t,” Hugo spat
out furiously. “He expects her to fuck him, whenever he calls.”

“I won’t!” Sofie cried.
“I’ll leave Paris! I’ll go to London, or somewhere else. Anywhere else. So
he’ll never find me.”

“No!” Ciara shook her
head. “You can’t leave. What about your studies? You’re so close to finishing.”

Ciara was taking care of
all the Orphans financially right now, except for Hugo, paying for the
apartment, their food and tuition. She had few rules, but one of them was that
each start a course of study that would give them an income and independence
when completed.

When she was a girl,
she’d seen a movie once where one of the characters had said, “Give a man a
fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime.” That had struck her as very wise. She’d begged her mother to stay in
school, but that would have meant feeding her for three more years. And keeping
her around. By then her mom had needed every cent she had for drugs. Ciara
found herself out on the streets shortly thereafter, but she’d never forgotten
that movie, and never stopped wanting to go back to school.

She was determined her
Orphans would all learn how to fish.

To that end, Hugo had
already graduated from his auto mechanics course, and started contributing to
the family coffers. Sofie was a talented artist—a painter—but making a living
at that was next to impossible, so she was at cosmetic school, with only a year
to go.

Desperation crept into
Sophie’s tone as she murmured, “But what else can I do? None of us has that
kind of money. You have to steal just to pay our rent!”

They all stared at each
other for a long moment. Ten thousand euros. And Ciara had thought she’d soon
be able to give up her life of crime.

Now she despaired of ever
being able to quit. Unless...

“We should go to the
police,” she announced.

“
What
?” they all
exclaimed in a chorus.

“You’ve got to be
kidding!” Ricardo said, leaping up.

Ciara waved her hands,
trying to calm down the explosion of protests. “I met someone tonight. From the
DCPJ. He seemed—”

CoCo and Davie looked
horrified. “The
police judiciaire
?”

Hugo looked equally
furious. “No!” he insisted. “
Pas le keuf
! Are you that naïve? Beck is a
cop, too. There is no way they’ll take our word over one of their own. Just see
what happened to Etienne!”

“But Beck’s in the Paris
préfecture
.
The
judiciaire
is a completely different division—”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll
end up investigating us instead, and social services will split us up. And you,
you’ll
end up in jail!” he said. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course not.” Ciara
jetted out a breath. She saw his point.

The unfairness of the
situation burned at her like acid. The ones who needed the police’s protection
most of all, the weak, the young and the oppressed, were often the ones who
were most victimized by them. It was the same the world over. It’s what had
taken Etienne from her. She was not about to let it happen to the Orphans, too.

Ciara had liked
Jean-Marc, but he was undoubtedly the same as any other cop. What he’d done at
the club with her did not exactly put him in the best light. Would he have
stopped if she’d told him no in that storage closet? Maybe. But maybe not.

“Okay, you’re right,” she
reluctantly said to Hugo. “We take care of this ourselves.” To the others she
said, “We need a plan to make Beck leave Sophie alone. Everyone think about
what we can do. In the meantime there’s little option. We must pay him off.”

“But how?” Sofie
whispered. “It’s so much money.”

“Same way I always do.
Speaking of which...” She pulled the diamond bracelet from its hidden pouch at
her waist. “This must be worth several thousand. That’s a start.”

“Oh, Ciara!” CoCo
exclaimed, taking it from her. “It’s gorgeous! Did you slip it right off the
princess’s wrist?”

She made a face. “Yep.
While I was dancing with my cop, too.”

All five jaws dropped.
Even Hugo’s eyes widened before narrowing. “
That’s
how you met the
flic
?
While you were robbing the princess? Didn’t he get suspicious?”

She shook her head. “No.
I’m good at what I do.” She sighed. “And luckily for us, there are plenty more
rich people out there with jewels and paintings and silver that other people
want. I’ve been doing this for almost ten years. Another few robberies isn’t
going to make much of a difference.”

She knew her lifestyle
was wrong. She’d known it from the start. But she’d been so young when her
mother had kicked her out...she hadn’t seen any option—other than selling
herself on the streets, which she refused to do. She’d seen what a few years of
that had done to her mother.

Then when Etienne had
found her and swept her off her feet...well, Etienne was a thief. It wouldn’t
have done to question how he made a living. Besides, back then the seamier side
of life was all she knew.

But that had been
fourteen long years ago, and with Etienne she’d discovered there was more to
life than simply fighting for survival any way you could. Etienne was dead now
but she was still stealing. Each month she told herself, just a little while
longer... But months had turned to years. And now...it was too late.

She sighed and shoved
aside her fruitless thoughts. “Sofie, I’ll get Beck’s money, never you worry. We’re
not letting you go anywhere.”

“Or letting that
blackmailing pig touch you, either,” CoCo added firmly, her eyes blazing.

“That’s right.” Davie and
Ricardo both gave her hugs, and Davie turned to Ciara. “I just heard something
that might come in handy. The Countess Michaud is having a big end-of-summer
soiree next week. Everyone who’s anyone will be there.”

Ciara smiled. Outcast
aristocrat Davie was her pipeline to the pampered and privileged upper-class
world where she currently made her living. Although his father had kicked him
out at thirteen, to society,
monsieur le Comte
de Figeac pretended all
was well in the family. Without Davie’s tips, her life would be much more
complicated and difficult. Ciara had the skills, but Davie had the info and the
entrée to the jobs that paid well. Even his coursework in portrait photography
had brought in useful contacts.

“There, you see?
Everything will be fine,” she said, smiling reassuringly at all five of them.

These kids were all the
family she had, all she would ever have. She’d do anything for her Orphans. To
see they got the chances she had been denied.

And if that meant she had
to steal more to pay off that bastard Beck, so be it.

♥♥♥

“Ah! The most famous
bracelet in France,”
monsieur
Victor Valois said with a grin as he took
the diamonds from Ciara.

It was the next morning,
and she was visiting her friend and mentor in his fashionably shabby antique
store,
Valois Vieilli
.

Standing behind a glass
and gilt Louis XV jewelry display case, he winked. “And the most famous thief,
as well. Congratulations! I saw the papers this morning. I was expecting you.”

“Are you sure you want to
deal with me?” Ciara said, grinning back at the portly, balding old man for
whom she had a huge affection. Valois had taken her in as a protégé when she’d
brought him her first antique silver piece, accidentally stolen along with a
purse on the
métro
during her first year living in Paris. Had it really
been eight years ago?

“Surely, you jest! My
star pupil? I haven’t taught you everything I know just to let
le keuf
intimidate me.”

“The cops?” she asked,
clued in by the righteous indignation that suddenly flavored his words. “Have
they been here?”

“
Mais, bien sûr
.
They were waiting for me when I opened.” His grin returned. “One would think I
was first on their list of suspected fences for stolen jewelry.”