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When she looked out now, there were no landmarks or identifying characteristics on the eerie, moonlit landscape. He might have changed direction entirely. They could be anywhere in France by now.
“We’ll stay here for the night.”
She looked at the man who had kidnapped her, then out the window again. “Would you tell me where we are?”
“A safe place,” he replied cryptically.
He got out, opened the back door and gently lifted René in his arms. Solange hopped out quickly and hovered, cautioning him to be careful not to jostle her patient any more than he could help.
The night was chilly for mid-May, but that was not what caused her to shiver. She rubbed her arms briskly.
“Look under the mat there and find the key,” he ordered, his voice curt.
She hurried to find it and unlock the door to the old house, feeling for the keyhole with trembling fingers. What would happen once they were inside?
Where was this place? The moon was high enough that she could see they were not in a town or village. In fact, she could see no other buildings except this old cottage they were entering.
Could this man be intending to hold René here for ransom? And, if so, what would happen to her? If René remained unconscious during all this, he could not identify his kidnapper. But she could. Perhaps she would live only so long as René needed her.
If she found an opportunity, she would escape. Then she could go to the police and have them rescue René.
“There should be an oil lamp and matches on the table. Careful you don’t knock it off and break it,” he said, moving farther into the main room.
She heard the rustle of movement as she discovered by feel the lamp and a box of matches where he had said they would be. She struck fire and lifted the old-fashioned globe.
When she had adjusted the flame, Solange carried it over to where he had laid René on a shabby, but comfortable-looking couch.
“See to him. I’ll go and get your medical bag,” Mercier told her.
“Is there water in here or must we go outside to draw it?” she asked.
“Running water. The bath is off the hallway. Kitchen’s through that door,” he said pointing.
She knelt beside the couch and began checking René’s pulse. It felt steady and strong enough. He breathed normally and seemed to be quite comfortable. She lifted his lids and examined his pupils in the lamp light. A crocheted afghan lay draped over the foot of the couch and she used that to cover him against the chill of the room.
Mercier returned quickly and handed her the bag. “How is he doing?”
“No worse than he was.”
“His pain was severe enough for morphine?”
She hesitated. “First answer me one thing. Are you holding René for ransom?”
“No,” he declared shaking his head. Then he seemed to think about it. “But I can see why you might think that’s what I’m doing. No, I’m returning him to his father as soon as I can. I was escaping, anyway, and thought I might as well take the boy out of there with me.”
“On the hope of a reward, perhaps?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That and a place to hide once I got out. I’m hoping Chari will offer me a job.”
“You said my father agreed to help you? Why?”
“Even before he was beaten, the boy was not strong enough to survive long where he was. Your father knew that, and I suspect you know it, too.”
Satisfied he was not lying, she answered his question truthfully. “René was hurt, yes. He could have borne it well enough with pills, but my father wanted him bedridden, to seem worse off than he was.”
Mercier’s dark eyes softened as he crouched beside her on the threadbare rug. “To protect him? So he wouldn’t have to return to the cells?”
She nodded. “He has been at the prison for over three weeks and this is his second beating. That is why Father gave him morphine. If René remained unconscious, he would have more time to heal. When my father told me of his condition, both of us tried to intervene on René’s behalf, plead his youth and size to someone in authority. But neither my father nor I could get in to see anyone in the prefecture or the warden’s office. Even if we had, they probably would have laughed at us. He is simply another prisoner to be locked away. Why should they care?”
“But you care.”
“Of course I care!” she exclaimed, glaring at him. “He is hardly more than a child. Look at him. A gentle boy. How could they put him in with all those monsters?” Oh God, what had she said? She had just included this man in that insult.
But instead of outrage, she saw full understanding in his eyes. “Good for you. Your father and you outwitted them.” He smiled at her then, a gentle expression she would not have expected from such a man.
“We do what we can, though it is never enough.”
He nodded. “Baumettes is a three-hour drive down from Paris. Do you come to work at the prison hospital often?”
“Whenever my schedule permits, I assist my father in his volunteer work. Since his retirement, he spends a good many hours at three of the prison facilities.” She could see no point in going into their reasons for doing what they did.
He sighed. It was more a gust of resigned frustration. “One of my people is checking on your father’s condition and you’ll be advised how he is tomorrow. Try not to worry about him, though I’m certain you will, anyway.”
“Then I must thank you for that, I suppose.” Solange slumped, burying her face in her hands. She felt like weeping but knew she must not.
She took a deep breath and raised her head again, meeting his eyes. “I am very tired. Would you mind if I lie here on the floor beside the divan and sleep for a while? I had duty in the emergency last night and was unable to rest.”
He straightened and held up one finger. “Wait just a minute.”
Before she knew it, he was dragging in a single-bed mattress. “Here you are,” he said, positioning it next to her. “I’m afraid there are no linens. But here is a pillow and it’s new.”
She took the pillow from him and lay down.
Her captor offered her a reassuring smile and went to sit on the floor beside the front door. Somehow she knew that was the only exit that she would be able open.
It would be useless effort to try to escape tonight. He would only come after her, and she had no idea which way she should run even if he did not bother. Perhaps tomorrow would afford her a chance.
It was more than she could manage to stay awake and worry or react to any leftover fear. She would simply have to trust the angels as her mother used to say.
In the dream that followed close on the heels of her surrender to sleep, Solange felt one of them brush a wing over her face to comfort her. It rested lightly on her head for a long moment, a blessing, a promise to ward off evil. She smiled and felt safe.
Chapter 2
Jack stirred the bacon, careful to do it precisely as Holly had once shown him. He was not much of a cook but had been trying to learn. Since Holly was the only woman who worked with him and the only person he knew who didn’t exist on junk food and the occasional outing at a restaurant, she had volunteered.
Holly was slipping in under his guard, and he would have to watch that. Nothing sexual going on, but he was damn close to regarding her as a friend, not just one of the team.
Come to think of it, he had been spending a little too much of his free time with the others, too. Camaraderie was one thing; getting to be buddies was quite another. Maybe this mission would put things back in perspective.
He liked field work, but missed the daily routine in the office. Sometimes he could pretend for days he was just an average nine-to-fiver, fighting the traffic to work where he’d spend all day arranging investments and contacting clients. Visit his parents when it proved convenient. Maybe meet some interesting female for drinks after hours once in a while, get it on later if she seemed interested.
That was his life for about two weeks out of twelve. The rest of the time he was checking out rumors of terrorist rumblings and trying to stamp out trouble before it got underway. So far they had been successful beyond their best expectations going into this.
He thought about the woman in the next room, the pretty little doctor who had inadvertently become involved in this mission. Solange Micheaux was the least likely person he could imagine for getting wound up in any intrigue. What an open book. No guile whatsoever. She was so totally unlike the women engaged in this business, she could blow the whole op and ruin everything.
He pretty much lived for his job now, that of SAIC, or Special Agent in Charge, of a fairly new team called SEXTANT, consisting of six specialists recruited from different U.S. Government agencies. Organizations that had previously spent a great deal of their time bickering over jurisdiction and jealously guarding from each other the info they dug up. With the team’s respective contacts within their old jobs, and full allegiance to the new one, intelligence had a fighting chance of getting combined and doing some good.
Jack was formerly with the National Security Agency, the NSA, fondly dubbed No Such Agency because of its covert nature. The others were from the FBI, DIA, CIA, DEA and ATF.
They all had their own specialties, though they usually teamed up to make use of unique talents. As a rule, only one actually went in undercover. That depended on who was most suited for the job. In this instance, Jack’s French was best, learned at his mother’s knee instead of books or tapes. So was his ability to resolve matters without the use of weapons.
Jack had handpicked the agents on his team. He admittedly chose several of them for their psychic abilities. Paranormal gifts had always fascinated him. While these talents weren’t officially listed on their résumés, their extrasensory perceptions had been extremely helpful so far.
Jack wished he possessed a little mind-reading capability right now so he could decide whether Dr. Micheaux would become a help or a hindrance.
He stirred the bacon some more, then flopped it onto the waiting plates. The eggs were going to be a problem. He always had trouble with eggs.
“What are you doing?”
He eyed the eggs again, reluctant to turn around and face her. She would look soft and deliciously rumpled, he knew. She even sounded that way. Damn, she was attractive. And very distracting.
What was she doing to him? He had to get a grip. Must be her French, that faint Parisian-born drawl like none other, he guessed. Could be she reminded him of his mother a little. She sounded a bit like her. She even had that little one-shoulder shrug he remembered his mother using. Only on Solange, it looked a damn sight more interesting.
“I’m making breakfast,” he answered, his words a little more gruff than he intended. No, it was not Mama he was thinking about at the moment. Not even close.
She brushed past him and reached for the coffeepot sitting on the stove and poured herself a cup. When her arm touched his, he nearly jumped, catching himself just in time. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Cool this morning, he thought with a grimace.
Jack kept doing what he was doing, shoring up his internal defenses, cracking eggs and trying to concentrate on how Holly had taught him to do that one-handed. He nearly crushed the first one and stifled a curse.
“Move out of the way,” Solange ordered and took the bowl of eggs and fork out of his hand.
He watched the impatient little shake of her head as she took over. In no time she had turned out a perfect, fluffy omelette, which she neatly halved and slid onto the two plates he’d put out on the table.
Then she sat across from him and they ate, wordlessly eyeing each other in the way two strangers might do who had shared a night together and could find nothing to say when morning came.
Essentially that’s what they were, he supposed. There was even a faint sexual undertone present, though he had scarcely touched her at all and never with that intent. He wanted to, however, and that was the problem. She couldn’t know that, of course. And definitely wouldn’t share the feeling or appreciate his telling her about his. When they had finished eating, she gathered up the dishes and began to wash up.
He knew he had to gain her trust, and so far he hadn’t done much in the way of accomplishing that. He also decided he would trust her. Maybe it was the tender way she treated the boy and how she had leaped to his defense. There was a goodness about Solange Micheaux that seemed to emanate from her pores like a sweet fresh scent.
“Would you leave that and sit down again?” he asked politely. “We need to talk.”
Immediately she dried her hands on a towel and complied. Why wouldn’t she? He was her captor, or at least she thought of him that way.
She leveled a questioning look at him but didn’t speak.
“There is something I need to explain to you.” Still, Jack hesitated and looked through the doorway at René Chari. “Are you certain he’s still unconscious?”
“He is asleep.”
“Would you check on him and see if he’s conscious?”
“I did before I came in and he is not. His vitals are acceptable under the circumstances. I expect he will recover completely, but not anytime soon.”
“My point is, are you certain he can’t overhear what I’m about to tell you?”
“Why?” She frowned, and the expression tugged at him, made him want to erase it and put a smile there. He had not seen her smile and imagined it would be like sunlight on water.
Jack shook off the thought that was a little too poetic for comfort. “Just tell me if there’s any chance he’s awake right now.”
“None. I doubt he will awaken for hours.”
Jack relaxed a bit. He needed to bring her in on the plan. She would be able to sink him with a word when they encountered Chari, but he was literally betting his life that she wouldn’t. “I have to trust you,” he told her. “May I call you Solange?”
“No, you may not. Are you going to explain now why are you doing this?”
“Yes, Doctor, I’m getting to that if you’ll give me a chance.” He took a deep breath and made the plunge. “I work for the government.”
Her blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Which government?”
“Yours and mine in this instance. I am an American.”
“Well, that explains much. Are you annexing France or what?”
Jack smiled at the jab. “Not right now. We received intelligence about a month ago that a man called Ahmed Chari has set up a laboratory where he’s concocting a deadly virus that he intends to sell for use as a biological weapon.”
She gasped, covering her mouth with the fingertips of one hand. “No!”
“Yes. There’s a possibility that he plans to test it here. If he sells it to the groups that will want it most, Americans everywhere will be at risk. It’s possible he’s only a puppet for some larger power that could be using him and others like him to establish a supply of bioweapons. We have to find out.”
“But…but this is terrible!”
“And unfortunately, true.”
“Who told you this?”
She had trouble believing it. It did sound far-fetched unless you dealt with these monsters on a regular basis and knew what they were capable of. “Someone with inside information. Unfortunately not enough information. What he related about the supplies Chari had purchased for that purpose proved to be true. Your intelligence people have been performing surveillance, and two agents have attempted to infiltrate. They haven’t been seen since. I need to work my way into his operation and see how far he’s been able to take it. And what else or who else might be involved.”
“Why not simply go in by force and arrest this man?” she asked.
“I told you. We need to know whether he is working independently or if his setup is but one of a number of labs doing this. Also, we have to find out who is to receive his product, where they are located and, of course, their affiliation.”
“If you have him in custody, surely you could force him to reveal all of this.”
“Torture?” he asked. “We have to suppose he would never talk, even on pain of death. If he is a fanatic, he would fight to the death. Or kill himself as we go in. If he is just a supplier with no ideological motive, he and those working for him would be more afraid of his clients than of us. These people use families as leverage. As you must know, truth serum’s vastly overrated. So, we have to extract the information, all of it, by other means. In this case, by gaining his trust if we can.”
“And after you do?” she asked breathlessly.
“Perform what damage control we can, destroy the product and put him out of business permanently.”
“Kill him?” she asked in a broken whisper.
“Yes, if necessary,” Jack replied. “At least lock him away where he’ll present no further threat.”
“I do not believe you. This is not real.” But he could hear the horror in her voice. She didn’t dare not believe him and they both knew it.
“We had planned for your father to go in with me when we reach Chari’s chateau,” he told her. “Someone would need to explain how I managed to get René out of Baumettes. The boy cannot do that, since he was drugged and unaware. I want Chari to hire me to work for him out of gratitude.”
“How can you trust he will do that? Do you know anything about this man?” she asked, hitting squarely on his main problem.
“Not as much as I would like. If you go in with me to verify details of the escape, you will probably be confined once we arrive, kept only to minister to Chari’s son, until we have this resolved. It shouldn’t take long. All you would need to do is keep the boy sedated and comfortable and stay where they put you. It’s highly unlikely you would be hurt.”
“Unless what he is working on is mishandled and we all die from it!” she snapped.
“The substance should be relatively safe unless you sniff it, swallow some or get it on your skin. As I’m certain you know, we have serum that works against ricin, smallpox and several other dangerous agents. You would be given that beforehand, of course. Because of what he has purchased, we believe what he has is ricin or something similar.”
“You believe? Pardon me if I entertain some doubt. Even if the intelligence you received is credible, suppose he is attempting to alter the substance so that the immunizations will not be effective?”
Jack looked at her, sympathizing with her fears. The awful part of this was that she could easily be right.
He watched her as she sipped the remainder of her coffee, now probably tepid. But she wasn’t tasting it, only going through the motions to conceal her nervous tension.
With a sigh he took the cup from her and got up to refill it. He couldn’t do this after all. Too risky. She was totally unsuited for this kind of thing. And God only knew what she might suffer if Chari or his men turned out to be hostile toward women. The man was half Iranian. Too much depended solely on Chari’s gratitude, his love for his son. What if he hated the kid and didn’t care whether his son had a doctor’s care?
Jack plunked down the cup, sloshing a few drops onto the bare table top. “I can see you aren’t going to work out.”
“No!” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “I will. It is simply that I had to digest all that you have told me.” She managed a crooked little smile. “It does not go down well, but I see how important—no, vital—it is that you succeed. That we succeed. I must help you, of course.”
He was already shaking his head. “Admirable of you to agree, but I’ve changed my mind, Solange.”
“It is too late for that, Mercier…Jacques,” she said, offering him a smile that was a bit more confident than the last. Not a full sun-on-the-water smile yet, but he saw a glimmer that could draw him in deeply enough to drown. What was it about this woman?
“You’re too…honest or something. Too innocent, maybe. The boy and I will go in alone.”
“I am going with you,” she said decisively. Now there was fire in her eyes and a determined lift to her chin. “My father had agreed to do this and now that he cannot, I must. You need me. It is too late to alter your plan.”
For the remainder of the day Solange continued to argue with Mercier when she found the chance. He shushed her whenever they were anywhere near her patient, which was most of the time.
René had roused for a while. Though he was mostly incoherent, he did manage some of the tinned soup she had heated for their midday meal. He moved more easily now and seemed improved over the day before, despite the ordeal of being shuffled from his bed at the prison.
After he had eaten she administered more morphine. When he drifted off again, she renewed her assault on Mercier’s decision to leave her somewhere and go on alone with René.
The more she considered her father’s decision to assist Mercier and his people in this mission, the more determined Solange became to do so herself in his stead. Her resentment at being kept in the dark about it had faded completely. Father would have been ordered not to confide in anyone. And, of course, he would have known she would be frantic for his safety if he had told her.
She couldn’t afford fear now, not for herself. There was too much at stake.
This was the first time she had really had a chance to study Mercier and take his true measure. He wore this rough exterior, his disguise, she supposed. Even that scruffy two-day beard, slightly unkempt hair and prison clothing could not conceal his real persona, not now that she knew him better.
He took total control of his surroundings. His self-confidence seemed inborn or thoroughly ingrained early in his life. There was a charisma about him that would draw people to him, make them trust him. It had worked on her to some degree even before she had known why he had abducted her and René.
There was something about this man that was unique and compelling. She suspected that it would affect almost anyone who came in contact with him. She would need to be very careful that she did not let these burgeoning feelings of hers generate anything further that could be hurtful to her. Such as an infatuation with him. She was well aware that his qualities appealed, not just to her but all women. And he would know this, of course, and use it.
Her one attempt at a relationship had failed miserably even when she’d had her emotions under strict control. The mere thought of flinging caution to the wind with Mercier unnerved her. If ever there would be a time for that, it certainly was not now.
So she argued with him. Not only to set a precedent that she would remain independent and self-sufficient, despite his penchant for control, but because she had a legitimate reason to disagree.
Mercier kept changing the topic of conversation, insisting on hearing all about her school days, her trials of internship and residency and her father’s work and how she had assisted him. She shared all of the details, hoping to convince him that she had the necessary fortitude and experience with adversity to do what must be done.
Later, when darkness fell, they left the cottage and took to the road again. She would have continued trying to change his mind, but he silenced her immediately with a whispered warning. If René became privy to his plans, he told her, all could be lost with regard to this scheme.
Perhaps he believed she had given up. But Solange had made her decision, and that was all there was to that. They rode for what seemed hours, each lost in thought. He was probably working out an alternate solution in his mind, one that did not require her help.
They entered a village called Tournade, according to the road sign illuminated by the headlamps of the Saab. It was then Mercier declared his intention. “I’m leaving you here with my people. That way you’ll be nearby if the boy takes a turn for the worse.”
That said, he drove up a narrow winding street, parked on the cobblestones in front of a huge, Italianate three-story stone structure and got out. He motioned for her to do the same.