Honeymoon with a Stranger Page 16

  “That depends entirely on the edition,” said Sevarin.

  He reached over and removed the Makarov from Mac’s hand, then tested the weight of it. “Very nice. The Russians know how to make a solid piece of killing machinery. I take it being Chechen this fact doesn’t offend you, since it’s your weapon of choice. I know how if feels….” Sevarin exhaled a long-drawn-out sigh.

  What did he expect from Mac, violins?

  “I, too, have had to make certain decisions that go against the grain, but then a man must live, mustn’t he, Makjzajev?”

  “If you say so, Sevarin, though some us aren’t only in it for the money.” Slick runnels of sweat coated Mac’s back.

  He was grateful it didn’t show.

  “Obnoxious to the bitter end, Makjzajev.” Sevarin twisted his words into a sneer as he looked beyond Mac’s shoulder into the entrance hall.

  But he hadn’t finished with Mac. “You have proved a nuisance from the first. Disrupting a perfectly good plan and obliging me to take into my own hands certain matters that are abhorrent to a man of my refined sensibilities.”

  Sevarin stared Mac straight in the eye as he fired.

  Roxie stood at the foot of the hidden stairs, her heart jolting from the loud report that echoed through the old house.

  The reason she hadn’t entered the room was simple. She hadn’t decided whether the quiet in the study meant it was empty or if someone was sitting in silence watching the monitor.

  Now, frightened for Mac’s safety, she flung the door open. It took less than a second to confirm no one was there.

  She rushed to look at the monitor. For a breathless couple of moments she stared at the screen. As if it were a still life painting, no one moved. Half hidden, behind a crowd of shoulders and backs, she saw someone’s trouser legs from the knee down.

  To her intense horror, she realized a dark pool was growing ever larger on the flagstones. Blood. She slapped a hand over her mouth to silence the scream erupting from her throat.

  “Oh, Mac,” she sobbed into her palm. “Mac, we should have escaped while we had the chance.”

  Chapter 13

  Would Mac be next? Roxie shuddered as the light-colored suiting turned dark with blood. Then, the men who had appeared rooted the floor hurriedly went into action. With the kind of expression that usually accompanied finding a fly floating in the soup, Sevarin looked down on Zukah.

  No need to search for a smoking gun; Sevarin still held the weapon.

  Tears she couldn’t control welled in her eyes.

  Not for the Algerian, but because logic made her acknowledge that if Sevarin could cold-bloodedly kill one of his partners, he could take out Mac without a second thought.

  There had to be something she could do.

  Some incident she could create to give Mac a chance to escape.

  So far, her lover’s hands weren’t tied, but the guy pressing a gun to his back unquestionably meant business. “Dear God,” she prayed aloud, “please don’t let it end this way.”

  Solutions darted into Roxie’s mind.

  Flashes of foolhardiness she immediately discarded.

  It was no good. She was too frazzled to think clearly. She needed to be calm and rational to get her brain to function.

  Concentrating on the screen, she tried to make out what was going on without benefit of sound.

  Even so, it was obvious Sevarin had taken charge and was issuing orders, but what orders?

  The kitchen had become as busy as the Gare du Nord. She counted two men heaving Zukah around, grappling with feet and shoulders, and another three hovering in Mac’s vicinity.

  Vaguely, as she watched, Roxie wondered where they were taking the body and what they would do with it.

  Mac hadn’t been far off the mark when he’d said they would shoot her like a dog. Sevarin would kill her without compunction the moment he recognized her and put two and two together.

  Then Yves moved into the frame, and she realized a quick death might not be the worst that could happen to her.

  Mac suffered no illusions that Sevarin would let him go when this was over. He simply hoped that his rescuers, in the form of Thierry and the other IBIS agents, were already inside the gates. His men had to have noticed the black chauffeur-driven Mercedes pull up outside.

  What was really doing his mind in was knowing he had done Roxie a disservice by not getting her out of here before the crap hit the fan.

  It stung to realize he’d been so absolutely focused on his goal that the peripherals had become blurred.

  Sure, Green Shield threatened thousands of peoples’ lives and would put a dent in many more having a fulfilling future, but he knew none of them the way he did Roxie.

  Intimately. Biblically.

  Now, at the wrong moment, he realized that no one on earth was as important to his sense of well-being as Roxie, not even his parents.

  Her scent was imprinted on his synapses. He could recognize every curve, every hollow of her body blindfolded. Her touch was like no other, thrilled like no other.

  Damn, the discovery of how much she meant to him had arrived too late. She would never forgive him for misleading her.

  The irony turned out to be that he hadn’t been lying when he claimed her as his petite amie in front of the heavy-handed goons invading the apartment.

  He’d been foretelling the future.

  What was it his mother used to say when he was little about the first time she’d looked at his face? The heart knows.

  It was time he started listening to his heart instead of letting his suspicious mind rule.

  For all she’d tried to put one over on him with the MI6 lie, Roxie really didn’t have a scheming bone in her body.

  Mac’s back was to the camera, his face hidden to Roxie, but the others? Not a flicker of emotion showed as they carried Zukah out. She couldn’t let that happen to Mac.

  Not now that the message of how much he meant to her had sunk in.

  She began to pace, catching glimpses of the screen each time she turned. But, just staring at it wouldn’t save Mac’s life.

  The exercise did help, though.

  An idea occurred to her out of the blue. She would create some sort of distraction, but she couldn’t go downstairs unarmed; first she needed a weapon.

  Without a second thought, she opened the top desk drawer, then skipped through them all from top to bottom. They were empty apart from a few pieces of yellowing stationery.

  Frustration simmered through every cell, an emotion that made her want to slam the last drawer shut and break the silence she’d been careful to preserve.

  If she didn’t find anything here, she’d have to search through the bedrooms Mac had told her were on this floor.

  With only two pieces of furniture in the room, her chance of finding what she needed immediately halved. Only the filing cabinets remained, and she didn’t hold any great hope of finding anything that might constitute a threat to the men she’d been watching.

  Sure, the garrote in her pocket was a silent killer, but only if she got up close and personal.

  The thought made her shudder.

  A fire would prove an excellent diversion if she had matches. But since only Jean-Luc smoked and an electric spark was used to light the gas hobs in the kitchen, that idea was dead in the water.

  Dead… She took a quick glance at the screen.

  The word was a nudge to work faster.

  An empty glass on the desktop brought up a picture of her grandfather to mind. He used to keep a whiskey bottle tucked behind his files, where Grandmère couldn’t see it.

  Neither she nor Grandmère had disillusioned him.

  She discovered the stash in the bottom drawer.

  At first glance it looked no different from the others, then she realized…it didn’t open quite as far.

  Tipping a few tightly packed files out onto the floor, she reached back into the drawer where her fingers touched the catch.

  It was old,
so she held her breath until she heard it click.

  The false panel tilted, giving her room to reach inside, but not enough light to see what, if anything, hid behind it.

  Excitement shimmered at her fingertips. The sensation that inside here hid a secret that no one was meant to find.

  Not her. Not anyone.

  She reached farther and touched something cold.

  With a jerk of his head, Sevarin requested Mac join him at the other end of the table from the aquarium. “We might as well be comfortable while we wait for the demonstration you were so insistent upon seeing.”

  Mac grimaced. Did he have to harp on about his dogged determination? It showed that he couldn’t have had many previous dealings with terrorist groups if he imagined they would buy a pig in a poke.

  Sevarin leaned an elbow on the table, the Makarov beside it on the pale wood as if to say, “Go ahead, try it.”

  Mac sat at the end of the table, followed by the man who had become his shadow. Although he could no longer feel the gun pressing against his spine, he was very much aware of its existence and of the man with his finger on its trigger.

  Sevarin must have panicked when Zukah told him what had happened. That’s why he’d brought extra backup.

  Zukah had been dead from the moment he reported in. Now Yves was sniffing around for a promotion. Funny how the seat Sevarin had indicated to Mac had the best view of the dark stained flagstones.

  The metallic odor of blood invaded the air they breathed. So much had poured out of Zukah, the shot couldn’t have killed him straight off. No, the guy had bled out while everyone stood around and watched.

  Sevarin saw the direction of his gaze and smiled.

  “I can see you think I was hasty in getting rid of my lieutenant,” he said. “But failure is unacceptable and it would have been mine if I’d allowed Ahmed’s incompetence the slightest degree of latitude.”

  He raised his faded blue eyes to the man standing behind Mac holding the gun. “Men like these need to know that, isn’t that right, Javier?”

  “Whatever you say, mon patron.”

  Mac waited for the man behind his chair to click his heels, sure that if he’d been a dog he’d be wagging his tail.

  In contrast, Mac kept his mouth shut and his features blank.

  But though Sevarin was in a chatty mood, it seemed he had no real expectation of being answered while he carried on a one-sided conversation.

  “What do you think of my home, it is beautiful, yes?” he said, answering his own question.

  “There have been Sevarins living here from the days of Louis XVI. I’m descended in a direct line from the Marquis de Sevarin, but not through marriage, you understand. This was the house he gave his mistress.”

  The smile playing round Sevarin’s lips as he looked into the past made Mac’s stomach curl.

  This was one weird dude.

  “My ancestor killed his brother here, the one who inherited the title. It was a duel. Over a woman, you understand. And then, poof, France had the Revolution and there were no more Sevarins who could legally inherit the title.”

  Clasping his long, thin fingers together, he continued. “We Sevarins have always guarded what we considered ours, by any means that came to hand. We have served kings, emperors and, yes, even fascist dictators, but this house has never gone out of my line of the family.”

  Was there a son now, Mac wondered, another greedy Sevarin male trying to put his stamp on the world?

  “After the demonstration I will show you the salon. It is the most beautiful reception room of the château. I’ve had the laptop set up in there for when we conduct the transfer of the money.”

  To Mac’s way of thinking, Sevarin’s high-flown notions only served to confirm that the politician was blinded by what he considered his aristocratic heritage.

  He actually thought this small château was something special.

  The house had probably started life as a dower house before the then marquis’s mistress got her greedy claws on it.

  Mac was caught in the middle of these speculations when Jean-Luc and the chauffeur returned minus the body.

  Sevarin scraped his chair across the floor, as he pushed back from the table. “Ah, just in time, Jean-Luc,” Then he turned to the chauffeur. “Gustav, you and Jean-Luc fill the tank with plants.”

  Mac knew he had been right to distrust that smile as Sevarin turned it in his direction.

  “We can begin our little demonstration while Yves persuades your little companion to join us. I should be sorry not to meet her. Yves tells me she is quite the little hellcat.”

  Mac cursed aloud, then inwardly, knowing he’d given his feelings for Roxie away. “Leave her alone! She has nothing to do with our deal.”

  “I’m sorry, I do not think I could forgo meeting such a one as Yves has described to me. You are not the only man of good taste, Monsieur Makjzajev.” Sevarin moistened his lips. “I’m considered quite the ladies’ man.”

  As Yves hurried to do Sevarin’s bidding, Mac leapt to his feet, crashing the wrought-iron chair he’d been sitting on to the floor.

  Sevarin’s hand reached for the Makarov.

  Mac ignored the move. Instead, he turned in place, as though to watch Yves progress.

  Javier had jumped back out of the chair’s way; now he bent to pick it up. There was no one to notice Mac look up at the camera.

  Hoping Roxie was keeping abreast of the situation, he mouthed, “Go! Get out of there. Go now!”

  An unrelenting cold seeped into Roxie’s palm as it curled round the pistol grip. In her hands lay the means to save Mac.

  Looking over her shoulder, she checked the screen. The situation looked contained for the moment.

  Her grandfather had owned a gun like this, a German Luger he’d captured during the war. It only took a flick of her thumb for the magazine to slide out of the striated wooden butt.

  Six, she counted six 9 mm bullets, more than enough.

  If she got two shots fired off before getting hit, she’d be lucky. But if they were enough to sidetrack Mac’s captors, it might give him time to escape. Her heart turned over as she wondered if she’d actually be able to pull the trigger.

  A quick glimpse at the screen confirmed Mac was still at the table. Sevarin appeared to be doing all the talking.

  With the 9 mm magazine back in the pistol, she remembered what the politician was selling. When the time came she would shoot.

  A man so loathsome oughtn’t to be allowed to succeed.

  If only there was some way she could save Mac from himself as well as help him escape. Placing the gun on the floor beside her, she reached back inside the secret compartment.

  The notebook had been lying under the gun as if protected.

  It was tiny, thin, bound in leather. So small, someone in a hurry and satisfied by discovering the Luger might have overlooked it.

  The leather held the bloom of neglect. It rubbed off on her fingertips while she turned it and she could almost smell its age.

  Her stomach constricted as she smeared her thumb over the bottom right-hand corner, certain now of the initials it would reveal.

  M. S. Michel Sevarin.

  It wasn’t a diary, just pages of names and comments. A line had been drawn through dozens of the names heading the pages and the comments below them made her hand tremble. She felt sick.

  The man had been vile.

  Yet, she couldn’t stop reading.

  Her fingers turned the pages more quickly after she recognized the name of one of Grandmère’s Resistance friends.

  Her best friend, Amelie Dutetre, had disappeared and no one knew what had happened to her…until now.

  She hadn’t died easily.

  On the next page, Roxie read her grandmother’s name and on the one facing it, the French name her grandfather had been given while he worked undercover.

  Roxie sprang to her feet, desperate to tell someone of her discovery. Mac!

  Sevarin was
speaking to Yves, and as the man walked away Mac leapt up. His chair toppled behind him, then as the man guarding him bent to pick up the chair, Mac stared up toward the camera, his gaze darkened by the intensity of his soul.

  Even in multiple shades of gray she could tell his eyes glittered with warning.

  She saw his lips move. “Go!”

  She was in danger.

  Yves was coming for her.

  Thrusting the notebook in one pocket and the Luger in the other, she slung the handle of her purse over her shoulder as she rushed back to the hidden staircase.

  The wooden stair treads led her down farther to the ground floor and for now appeared to be the only way to escape the château.

  She left the door linking the study and bedroom next door open, thinking it might throw Yves off her scent if he thought she’d escaped through the main house.

  Once the attic door gave way, Yves would see the armoire no longer sat flush to the wall; he’d realize where she’d gone.

  Mac simmered with frustration. Another ten minutes and it wouldn’t matter an iota if Sevarin wanted to meet Roxie. Thierry would have had the signal to come in with force and given Mac some backup.

  The moment Yves disappeared, Mac turned to Sevarin. “Let’s get on with the show. I like to keep business and pleasure separate.”

  He turned around to see green plants gradually filling the base of the fish tank as Jean-Luc followed Sevarin’s directions.

  Ordinarily, Mac might have taken a cheap shot at their safety measures, but he wanted this over without delay.

  Sevarin removed a vial from a foam-lined metal box with…Mac quickly counted ten spaces. “It that all there is?” He forced a laugh of disdain as he looked at the cloudy liquid. “You expect us to pay millions of dollars for that? It’s not even a drop in the bucket where Russia is concerned. It won’t be enough.”

  “You’ll soon see how little it takes. Remember, it’s a living organism. It will grow as it feeds on the chlorophyll.”