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Martine’s smile slipped at that. She probably worried about the eventual discovery of an errant body mucking up this new meeting place, but she said nothing more about it. “I meant the phone calls you were to make regarding Alexander. Results?”
Sonnegut brushed his hands together and nodded vigorously. “He’s solid. Brugel said he does good work, so did Hamish. Best they know of for providing surreptitious entry. Both vouched.”
Martine reached inside her pocket and retrieved a cell phone that must have been set on vibrate. She clicked it on, listened, nodded and answered briefly and affirmatively in Italian. It was the third language Renee had heard her speak fluently.
They all conversed in French, of course, except when Martine encouraged her to use English. That was Martine’s native tongue, though she was as proficient in French as anyone born to it. Apparently she was pretty good in Italian as well. She was speaking with the man called Brugel, whom Sonnegut had just mentioned.
After she put the phone away, Martine promptly handed over a nine-millimeter pistol to Mark. “Here’s your toy back, darling. You’re hired. Same rate as Brugel gave you, agreed?”
He nodded, pulled a wry face as if disappointed that he wasn’t offered more and stuck the weapon beneath his black leather jacket. His intense gaze captured Renee’s again. His dark eyes told her nothing regarding his true affiliation. But they did reveal his continued interest in her as a woman. Not helpful at all.
Then Deborah turned to Renee. “Tonight we firm up some of the details. Also, if you have any doubt about your ability to do what we need done, you must tell me now. Failure is not an option.”
Renee shrugged one shoulder and tried to look nonchalant. “I can handle anything but boredom,” she declared lazily, leaning backward as Mark pulled a lighter from his pocket and offered to light the cigarette she held.
She lowered her lashes, then raised them in shameless flirtation. Had to keep up the act. “Thank you for the thought, but I don’t smoke anymore. This,” she said, wiggling the cigarette between her fingers playfully, “reassures me of my ability to resist temptation.”
He raised one dark brow, his expression deadpan as he drawled. “All temptation?”
Renee smiled, trying for coy. She caressed his well-honed body with a slumberous appraisal, fully aware of everyone’s eyes now riveted on them. “Well, only what I have sworn off of as not being good for me.”
Deborah cleared her throat. “Not to interfere with your charming little tête-à-tête, my dears, but I believe I have the floor. And we are on a tight schedule with this lovely conference room.”
The men, except for Mark, laughed at Martine’s sarcasm, nudging one another playfully like naughty little boys. Their deadlier forms of naughtiness, especially Sonnegut’s, made her sick. The memory of the bullet-riddled bodies of two Secret Service agents reared its ugly head.
She could wind up exactly like them if she put a foot wrong. That was another reason she never allowed personal relationships to develop. The more people you worried about leaving behind, the less effective you were when faced with a deadly situation. And loved ones could be at constant risk just by association.
Renee carefully concealed her thoughts and smiled along with the thugs. “Please, continue,” she said to Deborah with another casual lift of her shoulder.
Martine looked from one to the other of the group, then concentrated her full attention on Renee. “You have examined the blueprints I gave you?”
“I have.”
“Good. I will identify the target now.”
She pulled a wrinkled map from her coat pocket. “Here. It is marked and the address is written along the margin. It is to be totally demolished, as if clearing the area for future construction. Spare all surrounding structures. The destruction must be isolated.”
“Implosion.” Renee took the folded map and tucked it inside her jacket. “So you want the adjacent buildings undamaged. Why?”
“It is to be very clear what our target was when it is finished.” Her smile grew hard. “That’s enough information. Yours is not to question why.”
“Ah, mine is but to do or die,” Renee said lightly. “I got it.” She squinted at Deborah. “How critical is it that the target collapse directly into its own footprint? It could take months and a very large crew to give you any sort of guarantee on that. And even then…”
The woman huffed and rolled her eyes. “Just do the best you can with the time you have, girl. You said you were the expert. And if you need a crew—” she gestured around the table “—here they are.”
“The hour’s late,” Sonnegut said with an impatient gesture. “I have other things to do. Could we get on with this?” He shot Deborah a heated look that indicated these things had little to do with the business at hand.
“Of course, darling. You’re right as usual.” Deborah gifted Sonnegut with a salacious look.
Renee listened as Martine instructed the others in their respective tasks, each of which was to assist Renee in her assignment in a particular way. Apparently Mark was to circumvent any security systems and get them inside the building to wire it.
“You will be notified of the next meeting,” Deborah said, indicating the meeting was over. She glanced at the newcomer. “Take Mark in hand, will you, Renee?”
Renee bit back a protest. “I suppose he will provide good cover during our planning foray. We can be lovers discovering Paris in the cold November rain. What do you think of that, Mark?” she asked, drawing out his name suggestively.
“I’ll try to be of more use than the cigarette,” he replied with a sardonic smile before getting up to follow the others out of the room.
Renee was the last to leave and Deborah stopped her at the door. “A word before you go.” She leaned out onto the landing. “Sonny, give Mark his instructions, won’t you? Tell him what to watch for? I’ll be along in a moment.” Apparently satisfied by the answering nod, she closed the door on the men.
“Now then, Renee, you have everything you need?”
“For now. I’ll give you a list of the matériel I require once I have it?” Renee said. “Do you think you’ll have any problems acquiring it? Dynamite’s easy enough, but RDX might prove difficult.”
Deborah patted her shoulder, an almost motherly gesture. “Send me a complete list. The supplies will be available when we are ready to put things in place. Anything you require. I’ll have the elevations delivered to you as soon as I have them so that you and Mark can study the exterior.”
She held up a finger, shaking it like a school-teacher admonishing a pupil. “Keep a close eye on Alexander,” she ordered, then added with a leer, “I’m sure you know exactly how to insure his loyalty. He is well vetted, but we both know how tenuous a man’s fealty can be, don’t we?”
Renee laughed, injecting a scoff. “I’ve had more experience learning that than I have time to tell you. Any man can be bought, but you and I know the currency they favor most, eh?”
“I sensed you were savvy in that regard. You remind me of me,” Deborah said with a satisfied bob of her head. “Let me know immediately if you have any problem with him and I’ll find you a replacement.”
Renee promised and said good-night, knowing full well what Sonnegut had been instructing Mark to do while Deborah gave her orders. He would be set to watch her even as she watched him. That was probably another of the reasons he had been hired.
The irony of their keeping tabs on each other struck her as funny, especially if Mark was still an operative for his government.
However, if he had turned she might just die laughing.
Chapter 2
Once they had left the building, Renee turned to Mark. “Do you know anything about demolition?”
“Do you?” he countered, one dark eyebrow raised.
“Do you have a place to stay?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“No, I only arrived this afternoon.” He walked beside her, hands tucked in his pockets against the bitter cold, obviously willing to follow wherever she led.
“I have rooms in the Latin Quarter. You’ll stay with me.”
Better to keep him close, as Deborah had ordered, and find out what he was all about than to wonder where the hell he was and what he was up to. She didn’t expect to get much sleep, if any, in either case.
“Are you giving me a choice?”
“Sure.” Renee headed for her rental car, a puke-green Peugeot with a balky transmission. “You could go back and bunk with Deborah and Sonny. How do you feel about threesomes?”
He laughed, a brief, bitter sound. “I don’t see that happening.”
“Who are you working for?” She hoped to catch him off guard with the question, but he replied immediately.
“You, of course.”
Right. Very smooth answer and quick on the trigger. He wasn’t going to tell her a damn thing. And she wasn’t about to volunteer anything until she knew which side he was on.
If he was working undercover, as she was, his suspicions would mirror hers. If he had flipped since she knew him in the States, he might try to kill her. Alert to that possibility, she kept enough distance between them to respond to any attack he made. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t do anything until he knew for sure what she was really doing here.
They got in the car and she drove like a maniac on the streets of Paris. Like everyone else did. When she came to a screeching halt on the curb in front of her apartment building, she noted his knuckles were white as he loosened his grip on the dash. He exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath.
“Here we are. I’ll go up first. Give me a quarter hour alone, then come up to 304. Knock twice, then once.”
“Got it,” he said agreeably. “What’s with the code?”
“Old habits die hard,” she replied.
“So do old operatives in case you plan to wait behind the door to do me in.”
“If I planned to kill you, I would have done it already.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I thought the drive here was an admirable first attempt. Nearly caused my heart to fail.”
“You have a heart? You’re in the wrong line of work.” Renee got out, slammed her door and left him sitting in the car, hoping someone would steal the wreck tonight so she could legitimately request another.
She could picture Mark on his phone the second she disappeared inside, either checking with his control on her current work status or calling Deborah Martine to reveal who she was and asking how he should dispose of the body. By the time he did either, she planned to know more about him than his own mother did and act accordingly.
The instant the door closed to her room, she was hitting her speed dial. “Get me whatever you have on British operative Mark Alexander. All sources. Instantly. It’s crucial. If you can’t find him in SIS, check other agencies, home and abroad. Then go to private. Also run him as a skel. He could be dirty.” She clicked off.
Renee felt extremely isolated on this op. Minimal phone contact, documents left at a specified drop and no face-to-face with the other agents in place. Three of her fellow COMPASS agents were here in Paris, waiting to help her wrap this up when the time came. Until then, she wasn’t supposed to reach out.
And the role she had assumed for the op—cocky, expatriated Goth chick and experienced killer with no conscience or morals—was wearing thin. There was no break from the act. She wished she could talk to someone as herself, just for a minute or two. She missed speaking English, though her French was fluent. She had acquired it as a child right here in Paris and fine-tuned it under her mother’s tutelage. Her knowledge of demolition had begun then, too, as she and her mom followed her dad from job to job. No one knew more about the business of leveling a landscape than Ed Leblanc. And she was trading on his name and reputation. Though retired in Miami for several years now, a bogus Web site, created specifically for this assignment, had him listed as still running a world class business out of Calgary, Canada.
She missed her mom and dad, her friends and her apartment. Renee let her thoughts drift to her home in McLean, Virginia, where Christmas decorations would be going up in stores even though it wasn’t quite Thanksgiving. Holly would be feeding her fish, tending her plants and collecting her mail. Unless Holly had been called away on assignment. If so, someone else would hold down the fort, one of her fellow agents. They provided good support on the homefront. But this was her first international assignment. It required a great deal of improvisation and all the acting skill she possessed. And she wasn’t used to going it alone.
Now she had a partner, of sorts. That just went to show, one should be careful what one wished for. Company could be deadly. As a fellow operative, Mark would judge her without mercy. And if he turned out to be a traitorous sonofabitch, he’d probably wind up trying to kill her, again without mercy.
Suddenly isolation seemed the lesser of two evils, but one she couldn’t afford.
Anxiously she waited for the report on him. “C’mon, c’mon, I don’t have all night,” she grumbled, frowning down at her cell phone.
Mark cursed as he put his phone away. Not a thing on her. Nothing! Lazlo had pulled every string available within the short amount of time he had with no results. None of the agencies, government or private, in the States or Canada, had a listing for Renee. He had captured a photo of her profile with his phone as she drove through the city at breakneck speed. She wasn’t in any database Lazlo could access which left damn few.
Corbett Lazlo could accomplish virtually anything, connected as he was. He had survived a conviction of treason, escaped prison and proved himself innocent. After that, he had refused to return to MI-6 where he had worked with Mark’s father and had begun his own company. Lazlo operated without the confines of bureaucracy that hobbled the government organizations. And ignored most of the rules. He was a law unto himself. Mark admired him more than anyone he knew. If Lazlo couldn’t get a background on this woman, then it couldn’t be had.
So who the hell was she? He knew she had been cleared to take that course at Langley. If she had been dropped by one of the agencies since then, there would be a record of it somewhere. That meant she must be working at a job important and secretive enough to have her background totally erased in case someone went looking. This was a good sign actually, he realized. If she were a traitor, even a suspected one, the word would be out on her.
He didn’t have to wonder what she would manage to uncover about his past. It wouldn’t look good. His real background had been replaced with one so unsavory it scared even him. She’d be horrified that she’d ever gotten close enough for that kiss they had shared.
Odd, the compulsion he was feeling to spill everything to her, to assure her he wasn’t the lowlife his official records stated. Maybe he had a death wish hidden somewhere in his psyche. More likely his libido was fogging his brain. God only knew how he had resisted involvement with her two years ago. The feelings she engendered then were suddenly active again.
That lovely smile of hers combined with all that barely suppressed energy had gripped him fiercely the minute he’d set eyes on her at the initial training session. Instant accord between them, and she had felt it, too. He had nearly lost his grip on reality and offered her more than he could afford to give. Thank God, he had come to his senses in time. Still, he wouldn’t take anything in exchange for that one long, soul-deep kiss.
The girl was a chameleon, but looked great in both guises. Before when he had known her, she’d seemed the wholesome, suntanned, athletic type, maybe a girl who had a couple of brothers to toughen her up a little and make her competitive. The way she looked now, she could be belting out hard rock on stage or hanging out on street corners peddling S&M. Scary as hell, but wretchedly enticing for all that. It made him wonder which was the real Renee Leblanc.
It wasn’t entirely her looks that fascinated him, but more the way she carried herself, handled herself and met every challenge. She woke something in him that had lain dormant all his adult life. Not that he wasn’t interested in women, just that he had never before craved anything more than a very temporary hookup.
He wanted her. There was also this odd, almost compelling urge to befriend her. He couldn’t thank her for that. Hell, he didn’t make friends. He didn’t need them. But there was something about her that he knew he couldn’t leave alone. Not this time.
She had this bit of vulnerability that he figured no one saw but him, hidden as it was in those whiskey-colored eyes that would make a man as drunk as the real stuff if he drank too deeply.
Her hair had been longer and silky two years ago. Now it was chopped in a chin-length spiky hairdo he found rather silly. What man would want to run his hands through gelled spikes? Still, even that anomaly flattered her features.
Yes, she was a beauty, especially with the added fire of her attitude. Alert, interested and therefore wildly interesting. He couldn’t ignore that heavenly body, toned to slender perfection. He remembered her in the gym, slick with sweat and wearing only a sports bra and shorts. The memory threatened to activate his own sweat glands.
He had to exercise strict discipline and keep this under control. He was older now, more committed than ever to the mission he had sworn to complete and no woman was going to get in his way. Not even this one who affected him more than any other ever had. The fact that she had that effect made him slightly angry with her. Or perhaps with himself.
Mark climbed the stairs and gave the knock as she’d instructed, fully aware that she might try to kill him the instant he entered the room. It would be interesting to see which of them had benefited most by their Langley training. He was fairly sure he could take her, but not absolutely certain of it. That only added to the mystique.
She opened the door and stepped aside, gesturing him to come in. “You’re a real piece of work, Alexander. Have been for a very long time. Must have made a distinct impression on Sonny when he made those calls. Sit down,” she said, indicating the two chairs placed near the room’s one window. She remained standing. “Why was your name deleted from the course records? There is no mention of your training, training I know you had.”
“What training would that be?” He glanced meaningfully at the window, reminding her that anyone with a parabolic microphone could be listening to every word.
“Don’t worry, this place has been screened to hell and back, as well as those buildings across the street. No ears. No cameras. I’m very thorough.”
“And quite mysterious,” he commented. “Apparently you don’t even exist other than in my feverish imagination.”
Her full lips quirked at his sarcasm. “Feverish? Why, Mark, I’m so flattered.”
He smiled back. “No birth, no schooling, no employment, not even a driving license.” He recalled the ride here. “But that last bit I can well understand.”
“You might have found something under my maiden name had you bothered to ask what it is.”
Mark was already shaking his head. “You weren’t married, either. Not officially anyway.”
She strolled to the window and raked back the sheer curtain to look down at the street below. “What’s your real agenda here?”
He stood and headed for the door. “Food, bath, sleep, in that order.”
She dropped the curtain and headed his way. “There’s a café several doors down that’s open late. Food’s cheap but edible.”
He was a bit surprised at how easily she acquiesced but held the door for her to exit first. “So long as we won’t need to drive there.”
They took the stairs at a fast clip, Mark preceding her as she insisted.
He found himself actually looking forward to spending time with Renee, an unusual turn for him to take when he knew very well he ought to be working this alone. He always worked alone. He didn’t like having to worry about anyone else’s safety. Or their potential for making mistakes.
She would only get in his way, distract him, maybe even get one or both of them killed if Trip was around and in his usual form.
He thought about how ironic it was that the very lack of available information about their previous occupations in intel had virtually verified their loyalties.
What a strange world it had become. At any rate, Mark felt like celebrating the fact that he didn’t have to kill her.
