Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited) (37 page)

“Back during the siege of ’70 and ’71,” Marco said, leading her along the paths, “Paris was being starved out by the Prussians. No food could enter the city. The
citoyens
were forced to eat horses and zoo animals to stay alive. Cleared out places like this private menagerie. The owners don’t come here because they don’t want to remember.”

“I don’t blame them.” She shivered. “And I don’t know why we’re here.”

“Look.” He parted some of the ivy growing over the fence, revealing a view of Reynard’s home. “A good place to keep watch over our targets. But it’ll take some time for my letter to get here. We’ve got a few moments.”

“Someone might find us.”

“No one will.”

She looked around and realized he was right. The former zoo was completely deserted. The menagerie itself wasn’t very large, but it was large enough, and they spent a few minutes walking up and down its wild paths, studying what happened when a patch of city was left to return to nature. She read the plaques that proclaimed what animals used to live within the cages. Lions, monkeys, exotic birds.

Then she stood at the base of a tree as Marco climbed it, lightly scaling from branch to branch. He made a dark and sleek form, and she could well picture him in some jungle, hunting from above. His prey would never know they were being stalked until it was too late, and then it would be over.

What were the lives of those cats, in their secret moments away from human eyes? There was so much more than what was perceived.

She watched him climb higher, losing sight of him among the dense foliage. Strange that, for all her insistence that she didn’t know him, he was more real to her than Hugh had ever been.

Poor Hugh. He’d been exactly the man he’d represented, fulfilled all the roles that society had given him. A respectable gentleman. A kind husband. And yet there wasn’t much more to him than that. He liked his newspapers and having people over for dinner. Having seen his father and elder brother, she knew that, had Hugh lived, he would’ve kept his hair into old age. And when the time would’ve come for them to raise a family, he would have been attentive but reasonably distant from the children, just as his father had been with him.

He couldn’t pick locks or forge documents or melt into shadows. He’d no calling higher than to simply be an example of Britain’s elite.

Oh, it wasn’t fair to compare one man with another. Unfair to both Hugh and to Marco.

Suddenly, Marco dropped down in front of her. Holding a very small white flower.

“One of the first of the season.” He held it out to her.

She tucked the blossom into her hair. “Am I a nature spirit now?”

He stared at her a moment, something unspoken in his gaze. Then he turned abruptly away. Leaving her suspended.

“What—”

“The messenger just delivered my letter.”

She peered through the ivy with him, watching the front of Reynard’s home. A moment later, a man left the house, headed in the direction of the Sûreté. Many agonizing minutes passed. Would the Grillons boss get the proof he needed that he’d been betrayed, and prepare to fly from the city?

The Grillons runner returned. And left again, a short time later.

“He’s heading to the bank,” Marco said. “That’s the only place Reynard would send him.”

“This may just work, after all.” She couldn’t keep the optimism out of her voice, but a dark look from him quelled it.

“Assume nothing until the very last.”

Just then, a police van pulled up in front of Reynard’s house. So, the police were moving with special haste. The machine was in motion. But would she and Marco emerge unscathed, or be ground up in its cogs?

FIFTEEN

Marco led Bronwyn from the menagerie to watch as Journet and a dozen police officers converged on the place. The doors to the house were flung open, and several bodyguards lay on the ground, cradling their bloodied heads. The street turned into chaos, with dozens of passersby milling outside, craning their heads over the crowd to see the excitement. On this quiet, residential avenue, lined with expensive homes, something this scandalous drew a curious crowd.

Marco kept himself and Bronwyn on the far side of the street, with the throng providing a buffer between themselves and the action. He held Bronwyn’s hand tightly.

His gaze moved constantly through the crowd, looking for any man with a hard, determined expression on his face, or whoever seemed to be preparing himself to move. Anyone who might be connected with Les Grillons.

A roar rose up from the crowd when a struggling Reynard was dragged out of his home, his hands manacled. The people surged forward. Despite being on the other side of the street, more pedestrians had gathered around them, so that when the rush toward Reynard’s door came, it was as though a brutal wave pushed and rushed against them. Bronwyn’s hand was torn from his.

Panic clutched him as he shoved forward, trying to reach her. But she wasn’t there.

A litany of swearing ran through his head as he searched the crowd, elbowing people aside roughly, ignoring their curses. He couldn’t even care about Reynard being led into a police van. All that mattered was finding Bronwyn.

A moment before he called her name, he spotted her. Being dragged down the street. By the same assassin who’d killed Devere.

She fought against him, but the man was too strong, and he held tight. Her screams of anger were swallowed by the sounds of the mob.

Rage and fear poured through him. With a roar, he shoved more people aside, until he broke free of the crowd. But Bronwyn and the killer had disappeared.

Furious, he searched all the streets and alleys nearby. He scanned for clues as to their whereabouts. But the damn assassin was too bloody good, and Marco found nothing. Not even a dropped hairpin.

Doubtless, word would somehow reach him that if he wanted to see Bronwyn alive again, he’d have to help Reynard escape. And even if Marco cooperated, Les Grillons wouldn’t take kindly to the fact that he and Bronwyn had helped with the arrest of the two crime captains. She’d be killed anyway.

With another roar, Marco kicked apart a nearby crate. Terror unlike anything he’d ever known raced through him. And self-recrimination. Stupid bloody bastard, to lose her like this. There was no forgiveness, and he didn’t want it.

He’d burn this whole damn city down to get her back.

*   *   *

Everything had happened in an instant. One moment, she stood beside Marco, her hand clasped securely in his, and the next, there had been an almighty shove from the crowd, and she’d found herself adrift in a sea of people, buffeted this way and that. She struggled to keep on her feet. Then someone had taken hold of her arm, and she’d naïvely believed it was a helpful citizen. But then she looked up into the face of her benefactor, and froze. She knew this man. His face had haunted her for weeks. Devere’s killer.

She fought against him even as the crowd swelled around them. Frantically, she tried to twist from his hold, but it was strong as iron. When she tried to stomp on his foot or throw a knee into his groin, he evaded her strikes.

Furious, terrified, she looked for Marco, but the crowd was too thick to see him. Then suddenly, she and the Grillons assassin broke out of the throng into a patch of open street. She could just make out Marco searching for her, shouldering people aside like a battering ram, but before she could call out to him, the killer pulled her down an alley, then another, and another. She’d no idea how far they traveled, only that they were getting farther and farther from Marco.

“Easy, madame,” the assassin said tonelessly. “Don’t struggle and I won’t hurt you.”

A statement as believable as a crocodile’s assurance that it wouldn’t have you for dinner.

“Where the hell are you taking me?” she demanded, still fighting.

“Someplace safe.” He didn’t look at her as he kicked open a door to a tall, run-down building, one of many on this street, and tugged her up a dark set of stairs.

“Why do I doubt that?” she asked acidly.

“Because you’re smart.”

Again, not a very reassuring answer. As he pushed her in front of him, heading up the stairs, she tried to remember all the things Marco had taught her about defending herself. Those hours practicing in the freight car seemed to have slipped from her mind, and she battled to recall even the smallest maneuver.

Somewhere, at the top of these stairs, lay her ultimate fate. She had no idea what that fate was, or if she’d survive it.

Her body acted before her mind could. Instead of tugging against his hold on her arm, she leaned into it, causing his grip to loosen slightly. The moment it did, she twisted in his grasp, dug her fingers into his bicep, and pulled with all her might.

His balance was thrown off. Sensing the shift in his equilibrium, she freed her arm from his grip, then kicked him in his knee.

The assassin tumbled down, shouting, rolling down the stairs, until he made a heap at the bottom of the steps.

Two choices: either continue up the stairs to wherever they led and hope for an exit, or else go back down the steps, risking going past her kidnapper. But he seemed awfully still. Was he dead? She didn’t care. She simply needed to get away. Going up meant she might corner herself.

She hurried down the stairs. Leaped over the prone form of the killer, and landed almost at the door. The bright light of freedom beckoned.

The world tilted, and the ground rushed up to meet her as the kidnapper grabbed her calf. She barely had enough time to throw out her hands to break her fall. Bronwyn thrashed as the kidnapper dragged her deeper inside the foyer. She clung to the door frame in a hope that if he didn’t pull her inside, she’d somehow be safe. Or at least she could fight long enough for a passerby to see her plight and lend a hand. But no one came, and the assassin’s grip was too strong. He hauled her inside, then flipped her onto her back.

As he loomed over her, his eyes cold and merciless, woman’s most basic fear clawed at her.
God, please, no.
She struggled even harder, throwing punches, trying to bite whatever came near her.

But the kidnapper only looked irritated. “Didn’t think you’d put up this much of a fight.”

“I. Won’t. Stop,” she said between blows.

She remembered Marco’s instructions to her in the freight car. Using her legs, she knocked him toward her. But before she could grab his ear, he drew back his hand and slapped her hard across the face. Everything faded, turned blurry. She had a vague sense of being thrown over her kidnapper’s shoulder, and going back up the stairs. As her hazy mind struggled to focus, all she could think of was Marco, and whether or not he’d be the first to find her body.

*   *   *

Marco doubled back to Reynard’s house just in time to see the police van pull away. On the van, there was a driver, a policeman beside him. Another rode on a running board mounted on the side of the wagon, guarding the prisoner within.

Wasting no time, Marco took off at a run, taking a parallel course to the van one block away. It would obviously be driving toward headquarters. And while the cumbersome vehicle would have to navigate traffic, he was on foot, and moved much faster and more nimbly.

All that mattered was reaching the van—and the man inside it.

Keeping an eye on the van as it rode the parallel avenue, Marco waited for the right opportunity to strike. As soon as the police wagon entered a narrow stretch of street, with a low wall running alongside it, he cut over and leaped up onto the wall.

The policemen on the wagon had no time to react as Marco jumped onto the roof of the moving vehicle. He stalked to the policeman sitting beside the driver, and kicked the man right in the face. Dazed, the policeman slumped, knocking into the driver.

Reaching down, Marco grabbed the driver by the lapels and hauled him onto the roof. The policeman struggled for a moment before Marco threw him off the roof and into the street.

With the driver’s seat vacated, Marco dropped down into it. He snatched the ring of keys from the dazed passenger before shoving him, too, off the wagon and onto the pavement.

He pulled on the horses’ reins, halting the van. Once the vehicle came to a stop, he was back onto the roof, striding toward the back of the wagon.

The third policeman had gotten down from the running board, and now guarded the back door, his truncheon drawn. Not knowing where the threat was coming from, he didn’t see Marco leap down from the roof of the van, or protect himself from Marco’s tackling him to the ground.

Marco and the policeman tussled over possession of the truncheon, but Marco twisted the other man’s wrist, causing him to loosen his grip on the weapon. Marco immediately grabbed it, and knocked it against the copper’s head—just enough to daze but not seriously injure the policeman. The guard slid to the pavement, eyes glazed.

Using the keys, Marco unlocked the back of the Black Maria. There, he found Reynard sitting on one of the benches. He was an angular, balding man, and his expensive suit had been torn in the scuffle with the police.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded when Marco opened the door.

“I’m the man who’s going to get you out of here,” he answered. He stepped into the wagon, and the crime boss stared at him in amazement.

“Do you work for me?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“I do now,” Marco answered. He bent over the manacles and tried fitting different keys to the lock. “We’ve got the woman, and we’re going to rendezvous at the spot.”

“Which spot?”

Marco scowled at Reynard. “He said you’d know. Where you’d hide out until the heat cools and we can get you out of France. The safe spot in town.”

“We’ve got them all over the city.”

“What’s the closest one you can rely on? And hurry, damn it, before more coppers come in here.”

Reynard rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “It’s got to be 29 rue Vergnigaud. That’s the safest place.”

Marco hauled his fist back, then punched Reynard right in the face. The crime boss slumped to the floor of the van. Marco jumped down from the wagon and slammed the door shut. It was time to get his woman back.