An Affair of Vengeance (2 page)

Evangeline pretended to consider the question. The answer must be yes. “They’re not bad, if you like studious types. Polite, too. They keep thanking me after I bring them stuff.”

“How sweet!”

“Totally. How sad is it that it’s become special to be thanked after you bring someone a drink?”

“Super sad.” Stacy stood on her tiptoes and tried to peer through the sea of bodies toward the front of the house where the engineers were sitting. “You think you could switch sections with me? I’m so dying of boredom, and my hot, weird dude won’t speak to me. But you have a headache and can’t make your table shut up. It’s a win-win. We’ll pool tips.”

It was so easy, Evangeline almost felt guilty. “That would be awesome. I could use the break.”

“And I could use a rich engineer husband.” Stacy lifted Evangeline’s tray off her arm and winked. “Wish me luck!”

“Who needs luck with boobs like yours?”

“I think I saw that on a T-shirt the other day, too,” Stacy said before walking away.

The bartender returned with Stacy’s drink order—a tall glass of ice water. Evangeline tucked a stray black curl behind her ear and picked up the tray. She headed toward the dark hallway where the two suited men stood guard. They grinned salaciously when they saw her.

“Bonjour,”
she said.

The goon on the right gave her a long, debasing appraisal.
“Vous êtes ici pour nous servir?”

Unimaginative jerk. He’d asked if she was coming to service them. She’d like to service his face with a crescent kick. But she simply smiled as patiently as she could and explained that she’d switched sections with Stacy.
“J’ai changé les sections avec Stacy. D’accord?”

The cousins exchanged a glance and shrugged.
“Presse-toi!”
snapped the one on the left as he clapped his hands together, urging her to hurry.

She skipped past them into the hallway, though not quickly enough to avoid a pinch on her butt. Continuing down the passageway, she poked her head into every room but saw no one. The last room, though, was the most luxurious and would probably be where Penard had stashed his guest.

The club had originally been a bank constructed during the great rebuilding of Marseille after World War II, and the quarters at the end of the hallway had been the branch manager’s office. These days, wealthy adulterers were its most common inhabitants, but tonight no low titters of flirtatious amusement echoed down the corridor. Tonight, as she stepped quickly down the carpeted path, a thick, velvety silence pressed heavily around her.

She reached the final door and slipped inside the dark den, where a man in a black suit sat on a couch, one long leg crossed over the other. Shadows masked his face. She smiled, squinting, hoping her eyes would soon adjust to the poor lighting. She hated not knowing whom she faced. But whoever he was, he wasn’t Serge Penard. Penard was a gym rat, with a rugby player’s neck and thick tree-trunk legs, but this guy was tall and lanky.

“Good evening.” She lifted the glass off the tray. “Ice water?”

Only the fingers of his right hand moved, playing continuously with a small wooden toothpick. “Who are you?”

That voice wasn’t Irish. Definitely Scottish, and not posh. “I’m your new waitress, sir. The other waitress—”

“Put it down and go.”

She placed the sweating tumbler on the low glass table in front of him. As he adjusted his legs and shifted forward to grab the drink, the red light of a wall sconce highlighted the hard angles of his clean-shaven face. She didn’t recognize him, but he was handsome and young, somewhere in his thirties.

No diamonds studded his ears or fingers, and no gold chain demarcated his neck. His lack of ornamentation wouldn’t be remarkable elsewhere, but in this particular realm of the underworld, most men she encountered were like peacocks, and festooned themselves with as much vigor as the women. This man, with his austere black suit, plain gray shirt, and complete lack of flash, was an anomaly. From his buzz-cut hair to his unrelenting jaw, every feature was severe, straight, and unforgiving.

He looked up and caught her eye. It was just a brief glance, but when his pupils locked with hers, the fine hair on her arms lifted, electrified. For a long, breathless second, his eyes—which were unnervingly yellow, like the unblinking eyes of a cat—fixed her in place. Her feet rooted to the ground, she froze under his steady, piercing scrutiny.

Ridiculous. She was a professional, and she wouldn’t be cowed by some ice-veined bad boy with the face of a Roman statue. These types of people were a means to an end, and she’d use him for all he was worth. He wasn’t Kral, which only meant that he might
lead
her to Kral.

She lifted her mouth in what she knew was her cutest half smile. How would he respond to her charms? With a little nod, or a softening at the outer corners of his eyes? Like so many operatives, her ability to charm was her greatest asset. Men—hell, even women—rarely failed to respond favorably when she tried to beguile them.

But not this one. Not even close. He scoured her from head to toe and back again before he looked away and brought his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn, as though he’d seen nothing of importance.

“Bread,” he said, and she knew it was an order.

“Right away.” She narrowed her eyes in the Scotsman’s direction before she turned on her toe and strode out the door. She didn’t care that he thought her worthless—it was a boon for her mission if he thought her undeserving of suspicion—but a very tiny, very petty part of her rebelled against the notion that a handsome man would not return her smile.

Vanity, that’s what his dismissal tweaked. Her silly girlish pride.

As she brushed past the two guards at the end of the hall, someone’s sweaty hand clutched at her bottom. She slapped it away without a backward glance and was happy to hear a surprised gasp as she stalked to the kitchen to grab a plate of bread for the mysterious man who thought her so unworthy of his attention.

Oliver McCrea shifted on the low couch, pissed at the wait, wishing he’d been able to meet Penard somewhere else. He couldn’t stand bars. He hated the scandalous behavior of the women and the salacious eyes of the men. When he’d first gotten this job and was forced to do most of his business in bars and clubs, he’d been nauseated by the sweet smell of alcohol on everyone’s breath. It reminded him of his mother, and he preferred not to think about her.

But the job had certain requirements, and one of them was that business was often conducted in objectionable establishments. So he’d grown used to it, five years in. He hardly noticed the smell anymore. He now recognized male salaciousness as fear and insecurity.

And the women?

McCrea didn’t look very hard at them these days. He didn’t want to run the risk of one of them looking back. He wished to
hell that they’d stay away from him and everyone like him, but they kept coming like midges on a Highland summer day.

Like that waitress. She was a short, fair-skinned lamb with a mountain of dark hair and a solemn mouth that tugged down at the corners. Pretty, if a bit sharp in the nose. He couldn’t help but notice that she’d had the narrow hips and muscular thighs of a dancer, which were the same sort of legs he’d seen on skilled female martial artists. The sight of a strong, physically capable woman who looked like she could defend herself against attack usually comforted him—he liked not having to worry about the safety of every innocent bystander—but tonight, he didn’t like thinking that this attractive girl could be a highly trained fighter. She’d switched with the other waitress, and it put him on edge, thinking that she might have done it to get closer to him. What did she want from him?

Everyone wanted something. Nobody did anything for free. Even him. Sure, some people might call what he did for a living a selfless sacrifice, but he knew the truth. He only worked undercover because somebody had to clean up after his brother, Aaron.

His life was a penance.

McCrea sipped his water. That notion of “penance” didn’t tell the whole story of why he lived undercover. That had always been the tale he told himself, but lately, he’d been thinking differently. He’d noticed that he felt utterly at home among drug dealers and gunrunners, because as much as he hated them, he knew their ways. He talked as they did and knew their rituals. Unlike so many other undercover cops, he wasn’t an actor among them. Because of the way he’d been brought up and the way he chose to live now, he was one of them.

He didn’t like thinking about the reasons behind what he did. Leave it to some damn waitress to make him think too hard about himself.

He might have been able to ignore her if she hadn’t looked so startled to see him. Her dark eyes had widened into perfect circles
when he’d shifted into view. She’d held his stare longer than was sensible, given the fact that they were in a room guarded by men who must be known to every employee in the building as thugs. Surely she must guess that he was a thug, too, or at least not the sort of man a nice girl like her should be making eyes at. It wasn’t like he’d given her even the slightest encouragement. If anything, he’d tried to insult her by raking over her body with his eyes and then turning away just as she smiled.

She’d had a nice smile, but she had to be some kind of idiot to grin like a schoolgirl at a guy like him.

His stomach growled and he wished she’d hurry up with his bread. He’d missed dinner again. He kept forgetting to eat. He just didn’t seem to have the time.

No. That wasn’t entirely true. He had time. He just found it increasingly difficult to let go of this constant hyperawareness of his environment, and eating required a certain amount of calm. He did his best to give the outward appearance of a predator, but that wasn’t how he felt on the inside. He felt more like prey, always watching, always listening. Always ready for an attack. The unremitting tension exhausted him, but he didn’t know how to let it go, even when alone.

Heavy footsteps sounded from down the hallway.

Someone spoke in quick, low French to the guards outside. An instant later, a beefy man with slicked-back hair swaggered into the room. He was Serge Penard, the man he’d come to Marseille to see. Behind Penard’s broad shoulders, the little waitress appeared, holding a tray with his water. McCrea hoped she’d put the drink down and scurry away like a proper little mouse.

“Welcome to Marseille. I could not be more pleased to see you, my friend McCrea.” Penard lifted his arm and snapped his fingers blindly behind him. “Waitress, get champagne. Tonight we celebrate!”

“No champagne.” McCrea waved the waitress forward with a small flick of his index finger.

“As you wish,” she murmured. Her kohl-lined eyes were pinned to the floor as she set a basket of steaming sliced bread on the table. With her tray clutched to her belly like a shield, she backed away.

Good. She’d not looked too closely at him. He hoped she would leave now before things got complicated. He didn’t need her hearing something that Penard might want to cut out of her later.

“It is always business with you!” Penard chuckled, his face reddening with the effort. “Live a little,
mon ami
. Enjoy yourself, for once.”

McCrea ignored his prodding and nodded once at the waitress, who’d slid into the deep shadows next to the door. She seemed to be trying to hide. “The girl goes.”

“Who?” Penard peered around the room, his palms raised in exaggerated confusion. When his gaze finally alighted on the waitress, he chortled. “Her?
Merci!
Do not worry about her. She is nothing, nobody. Just a servant, you know? If she knows what’s good for her, she hears nothing and says less.”

“She goes, or I do,” McCrea said.

Penard opened his mouth as though to argue but then shut it, firmly. He focused his stare on McCrea as he waved dismissively to the waitress behind him. She hastened out the door.

Penard plopped down in a chair and grinned. “Now, tell me. How can I help the British kill each other today?”

The man had no sense of decorum, but at least he got to the point. McCrea did, too. “Half the last shipment was unusable. Rusted.”

“Impossible!”
Penard threw his hands into the air. “I reviewed the containers myself before they left France.
État parfait
, perfect condition!”

“So I’m a liar?”

“No, no. It’s just that the problem is your salty English air, no?
Je veux dire, les fusils
—I mean, the rifles were fine when they
left, bad when they arrived. Maybe they don’t like the boats you put them on. What more can I do?”

“You can try again. And don’t waste my bloody time.”

“Bah.” Penard shrugged. “These things happen. We again come up with a new deal. What do you want? I get you anything, best price in Europe.
Certainement
. I guarantee it.”

“I want what I ordered. New Russian AKs, not used Chinese knockoffs.”

“Chinese? Chinese!” Penard gaped, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “You get nothing but the best from me. Straight from the heart of old Mother Russia!”

He was lying, and McCrea had proof. “The Russians know how to spell.”