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Instead of moving off, he chuckled. “So you like my place, do you, mon coeur?”
Ruza removed her glasses, momentarily forgetting about her black eye. “I have no—”
“Ma douce amie, you’ve been injured. Who has hurt you, my sweet? I’ll kill the bastard.”
She arched her shapely gray eyebrows above her damaged eye. “You said you’re the owner of—” she looked toward the stage “—this cheap acting den?”
“Oui. The very one. Saber Lazie at your service, mon coeur.” He pulled out a chair and sat. “I haven’t seen you here before. Have you come to my city on business or seeking pleasure?”
“That would be my business.”
Another chuckle. “Oui, a spirited woman, with a snake’s bite. The man who hurt you, does he still have his legs?”
She studied him a moment, got a whiff of his cologne, but couldn’t recognize it. It smelled familiar. That was odd.
“All you need to know—Lazie—is that I’m not ripe for plucking. I’m waiting for my daughter. You’re sitting in her chair. As you can see, I’ve bought a drink from your lacking establishment, so I’m not loitering.”
“Ruza-a…do you dance?”
“How do you know my name?”
He stood. “It’s a fittin’ name, for one so lovely. I like slender women, and memorable names. You’re a feast for a man’s eyes and his imagination.”
His sharp eyes drifted to her chest.
Ruza considering going for the mace in her handbag, which lay on the table. Not yet, she thought. He still hadn’t explained how he knew her name.
She emptied her martini glass, then asked again, “Who told you my name?”
He shrugged, checked his watch. “It’s time to go.”
She saw him step around the table. Then his hand was on the back of her chair. With a sudden jerk he pulled it away from the table, and then lifted Ruza off her chair and tossed her over his shoulder. It happened so quickly she had no time to react or reach for her mace.
The bar crowd was too busy watching the stage to notice Ruza being carried out the back door. She began to pound her fists into his kidneys as he stepped out into the back alley.
Screaming, she fought harder, but the man was stronger than he looked. He ignored her blows as he rolled her inside the trunk of the car parked next to the building.
“Don worry, Cookie. I’ll let you out soon.”
Then he slammed down the trunk and the car’s engine roared to life.
Ruza started to scream again. Maybe someone would hear her. That hope turned to dust as the radio speaker inside the car began to vibrate and drowned out her cries.
The car sped away as Aaron Neville began to sing “Use Me.”
Oh, God. Lazie—if that was his real name—was going to assault her, then kill her.
Worse, at her funeral she would be sporting a black eye.
Chapter 5
Pierce stopped next to the women’s bathroom and pressed his ear to the door. He’d guessed right. She was on the phone, chewing off Polax’s ear, and anything else that was dangling unprotected.
“Fourtier never showed at the airport. And Yurii has already found us. One of his men was at the airport. Send someone to get us out of here. Pierce Fourtier is not only an asshole, he can’t tell time, either. If he’d picked us up when he was supposed to, that gypsy scum with the earring might have missed us loitering in the lobby. I want a new contact, and a new location. And you can tell your pal from Onyxx that I want Fourtier on his knees licking up garbage with his tongue for the next month.”
Pierce slowly turned the doorknob and slipped inside. He saw a pair of blue stilettos and slender ankles in the end stall.
He locked the door, walked to the last sink in a line of three and perched his backside on it, aligning himself with the door she was behind. Arms crossed over his chest, he lit a cigarette and continued to listen and learn what she really thought of him in between a few choice adjectives.
Minutes later he heard the toilet flush, and then Miss Bitch opened the door and stepped out, wearing a blue satin pantsuit.
“Lick up garbage with my tongue?”
“You… How did you get in here?”
“Not on my knees.”
She started for the door. Pierce slid off the sink and followed. When she tried the door and found it locked she spun around.
“You’ve been fired, so get off my back and stop breathing down my neck. Polax is sending someone dependable to pick up Mama and me.”
“I’m not off the job until I’ve been notified by my boss, and until then you’re my baggage.” He saw her hand disappear into her pocket. He grabbed her wrist, raised his arm and pinned it to the door. He dropped the cigarette to the floor with his other hand, and while it died a slow death, he said, “Your first mistake was running from the airport. Your second is trying to pull a gun on me.”
“I wouldn’t have had to run if my ride had showed. What was I supposed to do, let Petrov’s gunman stuff us in a trunk and drive us to the nearest landfill? Whatever plan your boss and Polax cooked up is a joke.”
“And you think I’m a joke, too?”
“If the shoe fits, buy a pair in every color.”
He could snap her beautiful neck so damn easy. Instead, Pierce backed off. After all, he was the calm and collected one, while she was the spitfire who never knew when to shut up.
She turned, unlocked the door and walked out. He followed, stopping in the hall to light another cigarette. He took his time, taking a much-needed drag of nicotine. As he entered the bar, he saw her head for the table where she’d left her mother.
She picked up the empty martini glass, then turned to search all four corners of the bar. When she didn’t see Ruza anywhere, she spun a half turn and nailed him with that bitch look that had made her famous in the spy world as one of Quest’s untouchables.
“Where’s my mother?”
“How should I know?”
“Because you’re a—”
“Oui, I know.” He sauntered to the table, sat down in a chair. “The words you used on the phone when you were burning Polax’s ears were, a useless turd in a sea of stink.”
“Where is she?”
“Sit down.”
“I said—”
“Sit.”
She hesitated, then jerked the empty chair out, and as she sat, she slammed the empty martini glass down between them. “Okay, I’m sitting. Where’s my mother?”
“On her way to Le Mystère.”
“With who?”
“The gypsy scum.”
The gypsy wasn’t one of Yurii’s loyal soldatos. Casmir contemplated that. Rationalized why it had been easy to make the mistake. Considering the man’s appearance at the airport, it had been an easy one to make.
“And where were you when we got off the plane, riding in the gypsy’s pocket?”
“I sent Lazie to pick you up in my place.”
“Without telling me? Why would you change the plan and send a new contact? Someone I didn’t know or expect? I’m confused.”
“Use that line when you call Polax back. Tell him you got turned around and you made a mistake.”
He had to be kidding. “The mistake was yours, not mine. You never showed at the airport, and now some wild vagabond wearing an earring has hijacked my mother. She’s probably scared out of her wits.”
“Make the call.”
“I have a better idea. You make a call to the gypsy. Tell him to bring Mama back.”
“That would be a wasted trip. We’ll be joining them soon enough.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Besides not being able to tell time, you don’t hear well, do you?”
“You want to see Mama, right? Lazie’s got quite a reputation as a lady’s man.”
“Somehow I’m not worried Mama is going to fall hard for your colorful friend unless it’s while she’s scrambling to get downwind. He probably smells as bad as he looks.”
“Lazie has never been above taking what he wants when his mind is set.”
“You’re not suggesting that his mind is set on having my mother?”
“He did confess an interest in Cookie.”
“Cookie?”
“He’s already given her a nickname. Sweet, isn’t it?”
Casmir narrowed her eyes. “Are you blackmailing me?”
“Oui. Call Polax.”
“No.”
“Tell him you ate something on the plane that scrambled your brain. Tell him since you last talked, you’ve taken some antacid, and now you’re thinking straight. Tell him we’re together and things have worked out.”
Casmir was so busy plotting the appropriate death for Mr. Asshole that she didn’t see the guy she’d had words with earlier leave his table and head their way.
“Your jealous badass boyfriend finally show up, cher?”
She looked up and saw the cretin she’d backed off at gunpoint. Big Burly was once again behind him—the giant looked like barroom brawling was his profession instead of his hobby.
Whatever, Casmir thought, but he really needed to get himself some new friends and a haircut and invest in a new razor.
“I asked if dis is da boyfriend you was crowin’ about, cher?”
She had never had a boyfriend, but if she was ever in the market for one, Pierce Fourtier wouldn’t make the bottom of the list. He was arrogant, practiced deviant tactics and no doubt had the morals of a rodent. Which was probably why Onyxx had recruited him as a rat fighter.
She glanced at Pierce, who had lit another cigarette—she added chain smoking to the list of his unsavory behavior—then looked back at the cretin who didn’t know when to give up.
“How old are you?”
The question seemed to throw him. He blinked his bloodshot eyes, then slowly grinned. “Old enough to know what ta do with you, cher.”
Casmir rolled her eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Name’s Parnel, sweet thin’.”
“Well, Parnel, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t shut you up permanently by now. If this is your routine every time a woman comes through the front door, I’m amazed that your throat hasn’t been slit, or your kneecaps blown off.”
Pierce chuckled, and Parnel gave her boyfriend a narrow-eyed glare. “You tough enough to slit my throat, badass?”
“It could happen, mon ami, if you’re not out of my face in five seconds.”
“You think you’ve got big enough balls to send me to hell?” Parnel grabbed his crotch. “I guarantee mine are bigger. I can back up what I say in an alley or in the bedroom.”
His friend stepped up and gave Parnel an elbow. “You’ve made a mistake. This guy is—”
“Shut up, Frog.”
“You should listen to your friend. He knows something you don’t. Something you don’t want to find out the hard way.”
Casmir glanced at Pierce, then Parnel’s muscle-bound friend, who had just been given the name Frog. An interesting nickname, but Big Burly fit him better.
Pierce and Frog exchanged that look. The look of recognition. Parnel never saw it: he was too busy puffing up his chest.
“I doan like you. I’m not so sure I like your girlfriend anymore neither, but no one tells me ta get lost. What’s it gonna be, fists or knives?”
“Parnel, I’m tellin’ you, this guy isn’t someone you want to piss off.”
“Stuff it, Frog. He’s da one who should be worried ’bout pissin’ me off.”
“But you don’t want to fight him. He’s—”
