He was a patient man, but once he had determined it was useless for him to remain in the cell, that his mission was a complete bust, he wanted out. It was a waste of time for him to stay, yet his handler hadn’t agreed a month earlier to pull him out. Every day was increasingly dangerous and irritating, his mind becoming consumed with the only thing decent in the prison.
Swearing under his breath, Stefan took from the wall the latest photograph of the woman his cell mate obsessed over. She stood on a beach, the ocean waves rising behind her, a little turbulent and obviously windy, but there were no landmarks Stefan had a chance of identifying. She was undoubtedly beautiful with her long black hair blowing in the wind. Dressed in jeans and a tee she still managed to look elegant and sexy at the same time. If he were a man who was interested in relationships, no doubt he would understand his cell mate’s fixation with her. And the idiot was totally obsessed with her. There were hundreds of photographs taken over a period of years of just this one woman pinned all over the walls.
It didn’t seem to matter how intelligent a man was, or what he did for a living, in the end it seemed a woman often brought even the greatest of criminals tumbling down. And this particular woman was no exception. Stefan planned to use her to take down Jean-Claude La Roux’s international empire if that was what it took.
He glanced down at the picture in his hand. She looked pensive—no, sad. What had put that look on her face? Surely a woman like her was not pining away for a man like Jean-Claude. A small band of inviting skin peeked out between her tee and her jeans temptingly. His thumb slid over that little strip as if he might feel just how warm and soft she truly was.
No doubt Jean-Claude was a man of untold wealth. Stefan supposed a woman might find his good looks attractive, if you liked oozing charm. His charm covered a multitude of sins, but then women might find that edge of danger exciting as well. Women could be just as easily swayed by the wrong things as men could be by beauty.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” Glaring at Stefan, trying to intimidate someone impossible to intimidate, Jean-Claude La Roux snatched the small photograph from the hands of his cell mate. “You have no idea who I am.”
Deliberately Stefan showed his teeth and then spit on the floor of the cell. “That refrain is getting old, Rolex.” He infused total contempt into his tone, calling the man the hated name he’d given him.
A man like Jean-Claude, the head of a vast crime empire, would detest a common criminal taunting him. It was an affront the man couldn’t accept. In the two months Stefan had been undercover, trying to collect information, he’d had to defend his life on several occasions—a tribute to La Roux’s authority even there in the prison. Jean-Claude hated Stefan, and one word from him had sent several prisoners trying to curry favor by attempting to get rid of Stefan, the thorn in his side.
There was no doubt that La Roux was every bit as powerful in prison as he was out of it. On the surface, sentencing him for his international crimes in France seemed good. The French prison system wasn’t considered a place to coddle prisoners, but even with mold on the walls and water-stained slime trailing from the ceiling, Jean-Claude managed to appear wealthy and powerful. Every other prisoner gave him a wide berth until Stefan had come along. He goaded La Roux at every opportunity, and not one of the men paid to teach Stefan a lesson, or kill him, had succeeded.
There was no doubt in Stefan’s mind that given an hour alone with Jean-Claude, if he was free to interrogate him in his own way, he would have all the information the government needed, but here, in this French prison, with guards watching day and night and the government all too aware of their prisoner, he didn’t have a chance to extract what he needed from the man. That left only one possibility. Jean-Claude La Roux had to escape. He sighed. He’d told his handler that same thing many times over the last two months.
Stefan gestured toward the photograph-covered walls. “You have a lot of pictures, Rolex, but you sure don’t have any letters. I think your woman is on that beach with another man laughing her ass off.”
Jean-Claude replaced the photograph, his hand smoothing over the glossy paper. Stefan noticed, with some satisfaction, that the crime lord’s fingers trembled when he touched the woman’s face.
“You do not see a man in any of these photographs, do you?” Jean-Claude looked him over with obvious contempt.
Stefan knew he wasn’t much to look at. He was tall, with wide, ax-handle shoulders, a thick muscular chest and large arms with bulging muscles. He didn’t look suave or wealthy, or charming. He looked a brute, not very smart, with longish hair and lots of scruff. Scars webbed his skin and his knuckles were callused and shiny. He had a square jaw and dark blue-green eyes that looked straight into other men’s souls and found them guilty. Stefan exuded raw power through sheer physical strength, and men like Jean-Claude automatically dismissed them as muscle and brawn—never looking beneath that surface to see if there was any intelligence behind the mask of a brute.
In his mind he used his real name, Stefan Prakenskii, as often as possible because, truthfully, he used aliases so often, he was afraid of forgetting who he was. And maybe he had already, long ago, lost his identity. What was he? Who was he? And who really gave a damn anyway? There wasn’t a beautiful woman standing on a beach looking sad, pining away for him—and there never would be. He was successful at his job because he refused to let women, like the one Jean-Claude obsessed over, into his realm of consciousness.
He glanced again at the pictures covering the stained wall. There were hundreds of them. Jean-Claude had the woman under surveillance for a long time. She had changed little over the years the man had spent in prison, but he was right, there was no man ever photographed with her. Stefan cursed under his breath and turned away from the pictures.
The woman would get under anyone’s skin if you stared at her long enough. Really, what else was there to do in a tiny prison cell but notice her lips and eyes and all that long glossy hair? Jean-Claude was feeding his own addiction, growing it into a monster, and Stefan had uncovered that weakness immediately and used it against the man, making him ripe for an escape. He didn’t see other men with her in the photographs, but who could stand thinking about another man touching all that soft skin?
“I will say this for you, Rolex, she’s beautiful. Where the hell did you ever meet a woman like that?” It was time to change tactics.
For the first time, Stefan allowed a little admiration to creep into his voice. Just as he suspected Jean-Claude couldn’t resist the need to talk about his woman or respond to the first sign that a man such as Stefan who only seemed to admire obvious strength, might respect the crime lord at least for his ability to attract a beautiful woman.
“She was an art student, studying in Paris,” Jean-Claude said. “She stood outside the Louvre—all that long hair flying around her face—and she paused to scrape it back away from her face and for just a moment . . .” He trailed off.
Stefan didn’t need him to say it. The crime lord had probably lost his breath just as Stefan had the first time he’d looked at her photograph. She could easily have been a model on the cover of a magazine—yet more. There was something undefined, a quality he couldn’t put his finger on, something innocent and sensual at the same time—mysterious, remote, just out of reach. Something terribly elusive and yet made a man want to reach out and grab her, to hold her for himself alone.
Oh, yeah, the woman definitely had an impact on a man, especially one locked in a cell without a companion. Stefan had endless patience when he was on the job, but seriously, this was a bust. Jean-Claude would make a beeline for the woman and for the microchip he’d stolen from the Russian government—a microchip worth a fortune on the black market. That chip contained information that would set their defense system back fifty years if it got out.
“She any good at painting?” Stefan asked.
Jean-Claude nodded. “She’s good at everything she does.”
Stefan remained silent, waiting for more. He knew it would come. Jean-Claude wouldn’t have said anything at all if he didn’t want to talk.
“She’s already made a name for herself in the art world. Her kaleidoscopes have won international awards. Her paintings are sold for a fortune, and she’s a conservator of old artwork for private collectors. They fly the paintings to her under heavy guard.”
Jean-Claude sounded proud of her. Conservators were rare, responsible for restoring the health of paintings hundreds of years old. It was difficult work and a somewhat small community. He doubted if there were many award-winning kaleidoscope artists. The information would be very helpful in uncovering her identity. Stefan had already sent several pictures back to his people in order to start the investigation into just who the mystery woman actually was.
“I have to hand it to you, having a woman like that willing to wait for you.”
Jean-Claude didn’t say anything, but stared down at the quiet, pensive face. Stefan knew the words would eat at him, the idea that maybe she wasn’t waiting for him. La Roux had a better cell than most inmates. He wasn’t like the majority, suicidal and depressed with the conditions, which told Stefan guards were smuggling him items and doing their best to curry his favor right along with the prisoners. It hadn’t taken long for word to get around that if a guard displeased Jean-Claude, one of his men retaliated against the guard’s family.
Stefan had been in this disgusting place long enough. There was nothing more to be gotten from the crime lord. He had told his government to break the man out of prison and either snatch him as he came out or let him lead them to the microchip. Either way, it was better than rotting in the small confines of the cell staring at a woman whose name he didn’t even know. Obsessing over her right along with Jean-Claude. He was leaving tonight before he lost his mind staring at a woman who would never look at him twice.
“I hate saying anything nice to you, Rolex, but she’s got the face of an angel. I can’t imagine that any woman lives up to that.” He needed to find a way to keep the man talking. After two months, he still didn’t even know her name; Jean-Claude was that tight-lipped.
Jean-Claude glanced at him, and then at the picture. He smiled for the first time since Stefan had been shoved into his cell. “I’m sure you can’t. She speaks seven languages. Seven.” A snide lip curl told Stefan Jean-Claude was certain he could never learn more than one language.
Stefan spoke French fluently, with a perfect accent, and his undercover persona—John Bastille—certainly didn’t appear as if he were an educated man, other than in criminal pursuits. If truth was told, Stefan could match dream woman language for language, which meant she was educated and all the more alluring. He was a bit surprised that Jean-Claude liked intelligent women.
“She’s the type that would argue,” Stefan pointed out, staying in character. His type of muscle man wouldn’t want a lowly woman arguing with him. It said something that Jean-Claude wanted a smart woman.
“She definitely speaks her mind,” Jean-Claude agreed, a small half smile creeping into his eyes as if remembering a moment he found particularly amusing. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Stefan pushed down the 101 crude things his undercover persona would have said, knowing it would end the conversation immediately. Jean-Claude hadn’t said more than three or four sentences in the two months they’d shared a cell. Instead he looked down at the floor as if in sad reflection.
“I had a woman once. One worthwhile—not a prostitute. I should have been a little nicer to her, then maybe she would have stuck around.” He flashed a quick, envious grin at Jean-Claude. “She didn’t look like that one. What’s her name?”
Never once in all the months had Jean-Claude referred to the woman by her name, or said where she was. He was very closemouthed when it came to the angel on the wall. It bothered Stefan that he secretly thought of her like that.
Angel.
Mysterious. Elusive. So out of reach of the ordinary man. Out of reach of a man who lived completely in the shadows. A man without a real identity.
“Judith.” Jean-Claude’s voice was clipped and warned Stefan not to push any further on the woman’s identity.
Triumph surged through Stefan. Jean-Claude was bored in the cell. And he wanted to talk about his woman. He
needed
to talk about her. Stefan wanted him to crave her, to take the opportunity to escape when it was presented to him—not by Stefan, of course, but by one of the guards. It wouldn’t be that difficult to arrange. Having Jean-Claude La Roux owe a favor would be like hitting the lottery. At the same time, Jean-Claude didn’t give anything away for free. What was he after?
“Pretty name. She looks exotic, but that name is American, isn’t it?” Actually the name was of Hebrew origin, but Stefan doubted very much if the crime lord was aware of that fact or even cared. It was a stab in the dark, a calculated feeler.
Jean-Claude eyed him warily. “What the hell difference does it make?”
Stefan allowed a surge of anger to show, more triumphant than ever. He’d struck a nerve. The mystery woman could very well be from the United States, not Japan as he’d first thought. “Not a bit. Just makin’ conversation. The hell with it.” He turned his back on the crime lord—a calculated risk. Showing indifference was the only way Jean-Claude might keep talking. If he thought Stefan was too interested, the man wouldn’t say a word.
Turning away from La Roux only had him staring at another wall of photos. He was surrounded by the mysterious woman. She definitely looked of Japanese descent, but not entirely—she appeared tall and her skin tone lighter. It was possible she had an American parent. The coastline in the picture could be in the United States rather than Europe. He hadn’t considered that possibility before.
One of the pictures he loved the most was of Judith—he had her name now—walking barefoot in the sand. The wind was blowing hard and her long silky-looking hair streamed behind her. He could see small footprints in the wet sand. For some strange reason, that photograph got to him. She seemed so alone. So sad. Waiting for someone. Jean-Claude? His stomach knotted at the thought.