The Pleasures of Autumn (9 page)

For most of the tape, she had been shocked, but there at the end, her face had changed. There had been something – recognition? And then a smile, instantly suppressed, before her eyes filled with tears. He was going to find out what that was about.

‘If she pleads guilty and returns the ruby, I’m sure we can get her a reduced sentence, no more than seven years,’ Gerhardt said.

‘Seven years?’ Shocked, Niall was recalled to his surroundings.

‘Oh, I’m sure she’ll go to a minimum security prison. She will be thirty-four when she gets out, still quite a young woman.’

The thought of Sinead locked up for seven years twisted his guts. Sure, she was a lying little bitch, but she was too alive, too sexy, too passionate to rot in a cell for seven years.

‘Obviously, her sentence will be substantially longer if she doesn’t return the ruby. She would be looking at twenty years.’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Niall said grimly.

Gerhardt looked at his watch. ‘If you want to include me in the discussion, I suggest you do it soon. I have another appointment in ten minutes.’

She’d had enough time to herself, Niall decided and strode out of the office, intent on dragging Sinead back in to face facts. It was time she stopped playing games and told the truth.

‘Where’s the bathroom?’ he demanded of the receptionist. She pointed to the end of the hall.

He paused outside the door marked ‘Dames’. Even a
former Ranger hesitated at some things. He listened, and above the sound of running water, he heard a female voice speaking French. Could that be Sinead?

Geneva was a multi-lingual city where English was widely spoken. Gerhardt and Rheinbach had both spoken English to him. But the night watchman, Moutier, only spoke French and said that Sinead chatted to him regularly. He waited, and eventually a teenager came out, lips dramatically outlined and a phone clutched in her hand.

Damn it, he would have to go in.

Niall pushed open the door, saying firmly, ‘Sinead, you have to come out and face the music.’ He swept the small facility with a glance. Two open cubicles and only one person still here.

The grey-haired woman engaged in painting her eyebrows flinched at his violent entrance. Her hand slipped and one perfectly drawn black eyebrow now dipped into her left eye. ‘
Monsieur
,’ she said with awful dignity. ‘
Qu’est-ce que vous faites ici?
’

Muttering an apology, Niall backed out, then realized that Sinead had given him the slip. Without a word to the lawyer standing gaping at him, he raced out of the building and into his Jeep. He feared he would break the suspension the way he sped over the speed bumps on the way to her apartment.

Her arrival in Gare de Lyon was uneventful. There were no armed police waiting to arrest her. At an ATM machine, she took out the maximum she could from Lottie’s
account. She wasn’t going to risk using a Sinead O’Sullivan card.

Staying at a hotel was out of the question because they would insist on taking a copy of her passport. Sinead switched on her phone and checked her contacts in Paris. She couldn’t make a call in case Niall used it to trace her; even switching the phone on would reveal her location. But there was someone here who could help her, so she risked it.

By now, Niall would know that she had left. He was probably searching Geneva for her. If she failed to turn up for her remand date in court, her uncle’s bail money would be forfeit. She couldn’t let that happen.

She had to find her sister by then or some evidence to convince the authorities that she hadn’t stolen the jewel, but to do that she needed to find out about Cirque.

The internet café near the station revealed a little about the club. Like Crazy Horse and Bobino, Cirque had become a Paris institution since it was taken over two years before by Clothilde de Marseilles. Cirque promised an edgier experience than the other Parisian tourist traps and was now the premier BDSM club in Paris.

Clothilde had also gained a reputation for hosting exclusive private BDSM parties. Her girls were reputed to be very beautiful and very talented. Sinead winced. Talented at what?

She had performed some BDSM-inspired routines on stage and she could wield a whip with a certain amount of skill but it looked like her sister was doing it for real. Sinead reached for her water bottle and gulped greedily.

Being an exotic dancer was bad enough, but Granny
O’Sullivan would have a fit if she knew about this. Sinead had heard about twins having the same illnesses at the same time, or even knowing when the other one was in trouble. But this? Was the desire to perform some kind of a twin thing? The O’Sullivans were the type of family who sang at parties, but she had never heard of any of them being on stage. She wished she knew more about her father.

She logged off the computer and paid the attendant. It was time to get out of here.

On a narrow street in Montparnasse, she pushed an elaborate iron gate open. Sinead stepped into a lush courtyard garden, a quiet oasis amidst the bustling neighbourhood shops and restaurants. She closed the gate behind her, shutting out the evening traffic. The smell of garlic, onions and spices wafted on the air, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since lunch. Her stomach rumbled. He was home. She only hoped that he didn’t have company.

Sinead pressed the bell and waited.

Without much hope, Niall pressed the buzzer. Nothing. He didn’t have a key, but that wouldn’t stop him. Carefully keeping his back to the security camera at the end of the hall so that his body obscured his hands, he picked the lock on the front door. Pathetic security.

If he had the right to interfere in her life, he would make Sinead move to somewhere with a better system. Her apartment door was no barrier either. It took him a mere fifty seconds to unlock that.

The apartment was neat and orderly, the way they had
left it this morning. There was no sign of hasty packing or a sudden departure. He did a quick search, looking for clues. Her well-worn wheelie bag, the one designed to fit as carry-on luggage on all O’Sullivan Airline flights, was still there. So were all of her clothes. She wasn’t running.

He searched the apartment quickly. At least he didn’t have to worry about disturbing things. If Sinead didn’t want him riffling through her things, she should be here to stop him.

His eyebrows rose at the contents of her underwear drawer. For someone who managed to look so buttoned-down and conservative, Sinead had a remarkable love of fine lingerie. Despite himself, his fingers lingered on the silk of a pair of black panties hand-painted with roses.

With a jolt, he remembered the morning he had woken in her bed. She wasn’t just well-trimmed, she had been bare. What sort of woman took the trouble of getting all of her body hair removed, and possessed dozens of pairs of expensive panties? Well, one sort sprang to mind.

Niall felt sick.

He finished searching the lingerie drawer, but found only one small vibrator and some spare batteries. So organized, Ms O’Sullivan. Taking no chance that weak batteries would get in the way of her orgasm.

Ten minutes later, he admitted defeat. There was no sign of a hurried departure.

He pulled out his work phone. ‘Andy, do a check, see if you can find out where Sinead O’Sullivan is.’

His best operative’s voice was full of glee. ‘Don’t tell me she’s done a runner on you? Dude, you scare off the ladies.’

‘Shut up, McTavish.’ Niall didn’t have time for a slagging match now. ‘Run a search on all the airlines out of Geneva, car hire, credit cards, anything that might tell us where she’s gone.’

‘She stood you up?’ Andy was still trying to piss him off, but Niall could hear the computer keys clicking as he searched.

‘Consider this a million franc date. If she doesn’t show by tomorrow week, Tim O’Sullivan will lose a million francs in bail money. Think he’s going to be pleased about that?’

There was silence while Andy worked. A few minutes later he said, ‘Sorry, man, no sign of her on any passenger list out of Geneva. She hasn’t hired a car and she hasn’t used her credit card, either.’

‘Try her phone.’

Click, click, click went the computer keys. ‘Dead. Not registering anywhere. She must have switched it off.’

Damn it.

‘But it was last active at Gare de Lyon. Is that any use to you?’

‘She’s in Paris? Great work, Andy.’

‘Is this a good time to ask for a raise?’

Niall laughed. ‘Get your ass to Paris and we’ll discuss it.’

Gabriel was barefoot. An open shirt revealed a tanned six-pack that would make most men envious. His hair was damp as if he had recently gotten out of the shower. Chocolate-coloured eyes widened in surprise before crinkling in genuine pleasure. ‘
Chérie
…’

Only then did she realize how glad she was to see him and that she had nowhere else to go. She threw herself into his arms. ‘Oh, Gabriel.’

He held her tightly, stroking her hair and murmuring soft nonsense until, with a muttered
‘merde!’
he released her and raced to the kitchen. Sinead smiled at his retreating back. Gabriel had been the unofficial cook for her troupe of dancers when they were performing in London. There had been many laughter-filled evenings around the table of his rented apartment, drinking wine and listening to Cesária Évora singing ‘Sodade’.

In the large kitchen, Gabriel poured her a glass of wine from an open bottle, but he wouldn’t allow her to talk until after she had eaten, making sure that she cleaned every scrap from her plate. Gabriel went to the cave in the basement and returned with a bottle of wine. ‘Bring the glasses,
s’il te plaît
.’

She followed him to the sitting room, kicked off her shoes and sank into the deep linen cushions of the mocha coloured couch. He switched on a lamp and lit a candle
on the mantelpiece before pouring wine for both of them and settling down beside her. He studied her face, noting the dark circles and puffy eyes. ‘You look like shit.’

She made a face at him. ‘That’s the kind of compliment a girl loves to hear.’

He gave a Gallic shrug that conveyed more than a lengthy conversation. ‘I take it that your visit means that you’re in trouble. Or perhaps you’ve fallen madly in love with me?’

‘Idiot. You know I’ll always love you.’ She squeezed his hand. He was one of her closest friends, but they hadn’t spoken in a couple of months. Gabriel was right to be mad at her for not keeping in touch. ‘I’m in so much trouble.’

Out it tumbled in fits and starts in between sips of wine; the theft of the stone, being arrested and her uncle bailing her out of jail.

He whistled. ‘A million francs?
Chérie
, you have gone up in the world.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ She glared at him. ‘You haven’t heard the worst bit yet.’

‘There is worse? I think I need another drink.’ He topped up their glasses and sat down, stretching his arm along the back of the couch behind her.

Apart from Niall, she had never mentioned Roisin to anyone. The rag-tag camp she had lived in until she was four years old had good reason to avoid anyone official. Drug dealing and petty theft were rife and families appeared and disappeared, sometimes overnight.

Sinead took a deep breath. ‘I saw the CCTV footage of the theft at the museum. It was my twin sister.’

‘You have a sister?’ Gabriel looked dumbfound. ‘
Chérie
, why did you never mention her?’

‘Because sometimes I almost believed that I had imagined her.’

She took a deep breath and carried on. ‘My mother was a bit wild. She ran away with a man when she was seventeen. Anyway, they ended up living in a commune in the back end of Mayo. That was where Roro and I were born. We slept in the same bed, wore each other’s clothes and were never apart until my dad left and took her with him. But just after they left my mother died. I was brought up by my grandmother. I found out later that my mother died because she’d had an ectopic pregnancy.’

Sinead picked up her glass but her hand shook and a drop of wine sloshed onto her hand. It wasn’t just talking about her past. It was everything about the last few days. Meeting Niall, losing her job, finding out that her sister was alive.

Gabriel sat up quickly and took the glass from her, setting it down on the table beside his own. He licked the spilt wine from her hand before pulling her into his arms. ‘
Mon Dieu
,’ he murmured against her hair. ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’

‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone. It was years before I went to therapy. Granny and Uncle Tim were great, but who would believe a child? There was no proof that Roro ever existed. The other people from the commune scattered. No one remembered her. How could a child just vanish like that, and no one noticed or cared?’

‘Did you try to find her?’ His voice was gentle, but Sinead couldn’t look at him.

‘I couldn’t. I didn’t know my dad’s full name. Only that he was Peter. Not a lot to go on.’ She shrugged. ‘Father unknown.’

She gave up the battle against tears and sobbed into Gabriel’s shirt. After a few minutes he pulled out another tissue and used it to wipe her face. ‘
Petit chou
, what am I going to do with you?’ He tossed the tissue when it was wet.

Sinead sniffed and searched her bag for yet another tissue and found the printed pages from the internet café. ‘She has some connection with this club. Can you help me?’

Gabriel took the pages from her and shook his head. A slow smile spread over his face. ‘I know it well,
chérie
.’

‘Then let’s go.’

He looked at her doubtfully. ‘It’s going to be quiet on a Monday night. And you won’t get in dressed like that.’

He fingered her shapeless, long-sleeved T-shirt with distaste.

‘I can’t wait. I’m on bail and the clock is ticking. The longer I wait, the harder it will be to find my sister. You still have my Lottie clothes, don’t you? Surely there’s something there that’s suitable.’

It felt like the longest day of her life, but she couldn’t stop now.

Gabriel led her into the night air and to an old building on the other side of the courtyard. They walked up two flights of narrow stone steps on the outside of the building, then he unlocked a green door leading into a tiny studio apartment.

It had become a store room for her stage costumes. Sinead remembered the images from the Cirque Noir
website. The costumes were a bit more hardcore than what she usually wore on stage. Did her sister wear clothes like this too? She had devoured books and articles about twins and knew that they often had similar interests, but this was unnerving.

The studio was crammed with boxes containing shoes, headdresses, masks – all the trappings of seven years of performances. She really should sell them, but that would be like saying goodbye to Lottie and she wasn’t ready to do that yet.

‘Hey, do you remember these?’ Gabriel produced a tissue-wrapped bundle from one of the boxes.

When she opened it she found a pair of purple sequined nipple covers. Sinead smiled. ‘That audition was the first time we met. Remember?’

‘How could I forget?’

In the communal dressing room, another contestant had swopped Sinead’s pastie glue for eyelash glue. The pasties had stayed in place until mid-way through her routine, when one had flown off and struck the stage director in the eye. Mortified, she had left the stage, vowing never to audition again.

Gabriel was the one who had returned the errant pastie to her outside the theatre. They had gone for coffee and had been friends ever since.

The studio was so full, Sinead would have had no idea where to start looking, but after a few minutes Gabriel gave a triumphant cry. He found the right box and carried it back to the apartment. Sinead knelt on the floor and delved into it. The black catsuit had been made to measure. ‘I hope it still fits me,’ she said ruefully.

‘Mmm.’ Gabriel sounded uncertain. ‘Now that you mention it, your derrière does look a little more luscious than before.’

‘Bastard.’ She threw a studded glove at him. He laughed as he caught it.

‘Don’t worry. The leather will stretch and soften with the heat of your body. You can use the shower in my room while I make you up a bed.’

The warm water of the shower played against her skin. Sinead welcomed the needle-like sensation of the jets. Despite the age of the building, Gabriel never skimped on plumbing. It was a while since she had stayed here, and longer still since they had been lovers. Now, they had settled into an affectionate, intimate friendship.

Trust Gabriel to sense that she had moved on. Damned Frenchman, she could hide nothing from him.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Gabriel was dressing. His chest was bare and there was a faint sheen of oil on his skin. His dark latex pants left nothing to the imagination, but she had often seen him wear less on stage.

She wiggled her way into her costume. ‘Zip me up, will you?’ she asked, as she turned her back for his attention and breathed in.

‘Relax,
chérie
, I was teasing you earlier. You’re still hot, but performing a routine on stage is no preparation for the real thing. We need to have a little talk about the club tonight.’

‘Why?’

‘Have you ever been spanked?’

She glared at him, affronted.

Now, if Niall Moore had suggested it, she might have considered it. He was big enough and strong enough to put her over his knee if he wanted to. The man who had brought her to an earth-shattering orgasm had been controlled and experienced. She wondered what it would take to break that control and make him …

Sinead realized that Gabriel was waiting, an expectant look on his face. ‘In your dreams.’

Gabriel laughed. ‘You’re not a natural submissive then. Okay, we can work with that.’

‘What do you mean, work with that? Do you think I’m going to let some guy boss me around?’

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

‘Bloody men,’ she muttered. ‘Now, where are my shoes?’

‘Temper, temper,’ he said. ‘This is not a performance on a stage where you can switch off your smile when the lights go down. You can’t walk into a club like Cirque and start asking questions. You’ll be out on the street on your pretty ass before you know it.’

He was right. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘It looks like your sister was able to pass for you in your world. There is no reason why you can’t do the same in hers.’

He opened the closet and reached for a black leather holdall. ‘You remember the routine we did in Barcelona with the whip and flail?’

Sinead nodded.

‘Perhaps we can replicate that, but first we need to find out whether your sister is a Domme or a sub.’

Wincing, Sinead eyed the collection of whips and flails in the bag. She didn’t know what half of the other stuff was for, but she could guess. ‘What if she’s a sub?’

Gabriel gave her a grin that was wickedness incarnate. ‘Then I get to spank you.’

Niall scowled at the computer screen in the small Paris office of Moore Enterprises. Where the hell had Sinead O’Sullivan gone? It was as if she had dropped off the face of the earth. How had she managed to give him the slip so neatly?

There were seasoned operators in the SEALs and SAS who couldn’t do what she had done. All of his suspicions about her flared up again. No matter how beautiful her eyes were, or how innocent she seemed, Sinead was clearly an experienced strategist who knew how to circumvent the law.

He had tracked her as far as Gare de Lyon, but only because she had switched on her phone for a couple of minutes while she was there. She hadn’t made any calls – that would have been too easy. He’d have been able to track down the other number in minutes. But at least he knew her location four hours ago. Since then, nothing.

At this moment she was in Paris and could take a train to anywhere in Europe. He was watching for her credit card to pop up as soon as she used it, but there was no sign. She probably had a spare one. Or cash stashed somewhere. Or hell, maybe she was desperate enough to hitch-hike.

He flicked back through her credit card records. Never
in his life had he seen anyone so respectable. College, work, travel for work, virtually nothing else. Everyone had secrets. Hell, he had some humdingers himself. But Sinead’s life appeared to be pristine. If Mother Teresa was a museum curator, she would have a record like this.

The only odd thing was regular payments for more dance classes than he would expect from someone so buttoned down, but he supposed it was her alternative to sweating it out in a gym.

While he continued to search, an alert came in from one of his team of geeks that someone else was searching for Sinead. He checked it out.

Fuck. The information request had come from Blackstone’s head of European ops. Why was that bastard looking for Sinead?

Ever since he’d found Darren Hall on top of an unwilling woman in Iraq, he’d hated the bastard. Not that he’d had much time for him before that. He seemed to think that being a former US SEAL made him a minor deity, and his opinion of women had turned the stomach of every SEAL who had ever served under him. And they were a tough bunch of men.

Hall had barely escaped a dishonourable discharge from the SEALs. Now, he was working for Blackstone, a shadowy security company that was prepared to break the law if that’s what it took.

If Hall was searching for Sinead, something was going badly wrong. In fact, something already was. Sinead had a $50 million ruby stashed away somewhere. The museum director wasn’t the only person who would want to get his hands on it. The chances were that every bad guy in
Europe was after it. And Hall was one of the nastiest scumbags around. He didn’t play nice when it came to getting what he wanted.