Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (21 page)

While researching, I’d discovered that after years of being shuffled around step-child-type offices, Interpol had finally moved into a new building in the St. Cloud section of Paris in 1966. And outgrew it in barely more than twenty years—probably the biggest clue to the value the international community placed on Interpol’s services. So once again the member nations anted up, and a grand new monument to international policing went up in Lyon. The present headquarters was both castle and fortress, transformed by late twentieth century architecture into the clean curves and angles of the modern world. The roofline might not have been crenellated, but if those clusters of columns weren’t inspired by ancient turrets, I’d . . . I’d nibble on one of Viktor’s
papier maché
eggs.

“
Mademoiselle,” said the driver, a new note in his voice, “it is possible we are being followed.” My head swiveled around so fast I almost bumped my nose on the partition. “The black Citroën, three cars back, has been with us since we left the Gare Part Dieu.”

I could see excitement in the driver’s eyes—I was young, I was attractive, I’d asked to see Interpol. Therefore, intrigue was afoot. I faced forward, assuming my most bland expression. “Perhaps they are simply going in the same direction, monsieur. But thank you for being cautious. We will go to the Meridien now.”

“
Oui
, mademoiselle.” With a resigned sigh, the driver headed back the way we had come.

The black Citroën stayed with us, but my concern was soon swept away by astonishment as a uniformed bellman on the ground floor of the round, brown building escorted me to an elevator, which went directly to the thirty-second floor. As the doors opened, I glanced around, struggling to maintain my international sophistication as I discovered that here, far above the rooftops of Lyon, was the lobby of the Meridien Hotel.

My room was on the thirty-fourth floor, and I admit I was glad to shut the door, throw the deadbolt, and put up the chain. And then, ignoring my considerable doubts about following Rhys to Lyon, as well as my questions about who was following me, I rushed to the broad curve of my window and looked out. There was Lyon—roofs, steeples, toy cars, streetcars, buses, and boats, bisected by the gray-blue line of the Rhone.

Okay, I was glad I’d come. Even if I went home without ever seeing Rhys, I’d have these pictures to carry in my head. Interpol and Lyon were no longer vague words with no images to anchor them in place. But I couldn’t be easy.
Why would anyone want to follow me?
On the grand scheme of things I was a nothing, a nobody. The taxi driver was mistaken.

If I’d been followed from the train station, I’d been followed all the way from Bern. Perhaps from the sanatorium itself. I’d been followed across the border between Switzerland and France. Which supposedly in this era of one great happy European community was no longer a big deal, but nonetheless . . .

No, no way. Nobody cared what I did. Except . . . possibly . . . Interpol. I’d been on hand for the attempted murder of one of their officers. Three times. Surely they didn’t think I was involved?

Stupid!
How could they not? I was involved up to my eyeballs. I simply didn’t know why. Had Interpol put out their equivalent of an APB for me? Had I been watched from the moment I went through customs at the airport in Zurich?

It was, of course, entirely possible. Which made things that much more awkward.

I fixed myself a scotch from the mini-bar. I took my cell phone out of my purse and plunked it down on the table by the window, right next to my scotch. I glared at it, the pros in a battle-to-the-death with the cons inside my head.

It would be romantic to say my heart won, but, truthfully, it was more like curiosity and determined selfishness pushing aside stubborn pride. I needed to know why I hadn’t heard from Rhys, and I needed to find out if I still wanted to jump his bones.

I punched in his cell number, my last swallow of scotch threatening to come back up and choke me. But as his phone rang, instead of my heart pounding in time-honored romantic fashion, it went all cold and still. The man was a lying rat, and I was betraying the Halliday pride.

Voice mail.
I was caught somewhere between annoyed and relieved.

“
Hi, this is Laine. Just passing through and thought I’d say thanks for the check. I’m at the Meridien.”

Was that cool or what? He couldn’t fail to get the dig about the check. Looking out over the rooftops of Lyon, I finished my scotch. I poured another.

I waited.

“
You
lost
him?” Klaus Peiper, chief of Interpol’s Human Trafficking section, glared at Alain Bedard, a relatively new addition to Interpol, seconded from the Sûreté in Paris.

“
What can I say, sir?” the young man exclaimed. “He’s been so good, obeying all the rules—I never thought . . . We’d been in that meeting for two hours . . . he was checking his cell phone messages, I needed to take a—ah, use the facilities, sir. When I came out, he was gone.”

Inspector Peiper sighed, his slightly overweight body seeming to deflate, along with his wrath. “Not your fault, Bedard. And it’s not as if we can’t guess where he is.”

“
Cherchez la femme
, sir?” Bedard grinned, his face hastily rearranging itself when his Interpol superior did not share his amusement. “It’s not as if she’s the assassin, sir.”

“
May I remind you of the meeting we just finished?”

The young man gulped. “No, sir.”

“
In more than a month of investigation the only conclusion we’ve been able to reach is that someone feels so strongly about keeping Tarrant and Mademoiselle Halliday apart that they’re willing to kill for it. And yet Tarrant swears they have nothing in common other than his desire to use her as an informant. No cause sufficient for someone to hire an assassin.”

“
To kill Rhys, not the girl.”

Klaus Peiper gave an abrupt nod. “A further mystery. And right now Tarrant’s on his way to her hotel. You know it, I know it, the assassin likely knows it. She wasn’t exactly keeping a low profile in Switzerland. She was on the evening news—what the Americans call, ‘eye candy’—so sweetly thanking everyone in sight for rescuing her clients.”

Alain Bedard sighed. “You can’t really blame Tarrant for giving us the slip. I mean . . . what red-blooded man wouldn’t?”

“
So take your team and find them,” Peiper growled, “before someone tries to turn the Meridien into the World Trade Center.”

“
Sir!” Bedard gasped. And took off at a run.

I was still sitting, staring at my silent cell phone, tapping my fingers against the condensation on the side of my glass of scotch, when someone knocked on my door. Not too loud, not too soft. Just right for a man unsure of his welcome. Leaving the chain in place, I cracked open the door.

“
May I come in?” Rhys inquired. Humbly. I gaped, my stomach churning in Wash cycle while my head made it all the way to Spin. I shut the door, rested my forehead against it for a moment before removing the chain.
Idiot! He’ll think you’re shutting him out
. I opened the door, instinctively scooting back, seeking safety from diametrically opposing emotions that had just launched into World War III. I longed to throw myself in his arms and weep for joy, but my pride wouldn’t let me. The man had a lot of explaining to do.

Rhys turned the dead bolt, put the chain back in place. “Scotch?” I asked, calling on all my resources to project calm, cool, and utterly professional. “Or is that a sin in France?” Before returning to my seat by the window, I waved a hand toward the mini-bar. “Help yourself.” Rhys maneuvered around the suitcase I’d left lying in the middle of floor and busied himself with ice cubes, tongs, and a fine single malt. Ice tinkled against glass. The air hung so heavy with tension I was surprised the cubes didn’t shatter.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him, of course. He cleaned up a treat, as the Brits would say. Steel-gray eyes, warmed to molten silver, glowed from a smooth, impeccably sculptured face that showed no sign of the various traumas he’d suffered in Peru. He wasn’t quite as tall or as rugged as Flint, but he was strikingly good looking in a European sort of way. British upper class crossed with continental smarts. To an American, I guess he could be described as Ivy League meets Don Corleone. Oh, yes, Rhys Tarrant had recovered completely. And well. A twenty-first century James Bond.

I was having trouble remembering to breathe.

He settled himself into the other chair at the small round table, took a long, slow sip of scotch, and made a low sound I had no trouble translating as,
Ah, I needed that!
He raised his deep-set steel eyes to mine and flat out said what we were both thinking. “You’re angry with me.”

I batted my eyelashes in my best dumb blonde routine. “Whyever would you think so?” I inquired, dripping honey. “We were ships that passed in night. Why should I expect you to keep you to keep in touch.”

He looked away, staring out over the city, his fingers going white-knuckled around his glass. “They took away my passport,” he said at last. “Ordered me not to call or contact you in any way. Perhaps that makes me spineless, but I’ve been a cop a long time now. I’m on my second three-year tour here. I like what I do—the way you like what you do. The ban was only going to last until we could figure out what was going on, and the investigative resources of Interpol should make short work of it.”

“
And have you figured it out?”

Rhys winced, his handsome face screwing into a grimace worthy of a gargoyle. “This isn’t the way I pictured our reunion,” he murmured.

Neither had I. Too damn bad for both of us. Reality sucks. I glared, and he got back to business.

“
We had a meeting this afternoon, laying out everything we’ve learned in the last few weeks, and that includes input from at least fifteen countries, mostly those where trafficking is a problem. I didn’t agree with the conclusion—it
has
to be someone I’ve ticked off during my investigations—but everyone else seems to think you’re the catalyst. That someone doesn’t want us to get together and compare notes. About what? Some mysterious thing so vague it’s ridiculous? We don’t have any mutual acquaintances. Do we, Laine? No Thais, Philippinos, Pakistanis, Iranians, Romanians, Russians . . . ?

“
Laine?”

I recalled our conversation in Agua Calientes, when I failed to mention my connection with a Russian named Viktor. But the whole concept was absurd. My Russian bear and his Fabergé eggs a menace? Viktor Kirichenko, the romantic bridegroom, a villain? I’d refused to consider it.

You blew it, Laine
. It was entirely possible Viktor had knifed a man to death on the Golden Beach fishing pier.

Feeling an utter incompetent idiot, a failure to Fantascapes and the family, as well as an obvious Interpol reject, I accepted that I had to tell Rhys everything. “There’s a large Russian-Ukrainian population in Three Rivers—a town about ten miles from where I live,” I began. “I never thought anything about it, but . . .”

Rhys listened attentively, as police officers do, carefully avoiding the slightest nod or shake of his head. Not even one significant look that might indicate what he thought about my gross failure in communication. When I finished, all he said was, “Tomorrow you’ll go through photos, see if you can pick him out.”

Sorrowfully, I shook my head. “Without the beard, I doubt I can. That brush heap covers everything but his eyes. If you had voice clips . . . ?”

Rhys leaned back in his chair. “Our files are huge. Anything is possible. After all, that’s what we do—keep track of international criminals. Interpol—just a bunch of file keepers and paper pushers. I’m willing to bet that’s what your brothers told you.”

I tossed him a rueful smile, and nodded.

“
There’s a great restaurant on the top floor here,” Rhys said in an entirely different tone. “Three-sixty view. Or would you rather order room service?”

I know hearts don’t really turn over, but mine sure felt like it. Was that offer good manners, or a declaration that he was staying?

“
Dare we be seen in public?” I asked.

“
The top floor of a skyscraper is not a good setting for an assassination,” Rhys assured me. “Too hard for the bad guy to get away. And the only blessing in this is that we don’t seem to be dealing with suicide bombers.”

I looked down at myself and made a face. “I’m a rumpled mess. Give me a minute to change.” I popped to my feet, started across the room toward my suitcase.

“
You do that, and we’re never going to make dinner.”

Definitely not the same voice he’d used when discussing Viktor Kirichenko. I suffered a severe butterfly attack from my brain all the way down to the tips of my toes. Whew! I swayed in place—probably the scotch. No way was I going to make this easy. It was bad enough I’d come crawling to Lyon. “Down, boy. “I’ll change in the bathroom. I wouldn’t want to miss the three-sixty view.”

“
Better view right here.”

I tossed my suitcase on the bed, unzipped it with a rather vicious flick of my wrist. “The only thing you could have done worse than not delivering that check in person,” I informed him as I hauled out my cosmetics, my brush and comb, jewelry and the basic black dress I’d brought with me, “is if you’d come to Golden Beach, then left the check on the dresser in the morning.”