by Kaylea Cross
Megan nodded. “All of us are. And we’re going to get him.”
Heath was never more aware of the deadline looming before him as he was right then. What if he wasn’t there when they went after Dubois? He wanted to be there. Needed to make sure he had Chloe’s back while she put herself in harm’s way again.
She may have operated alone in the past, but not anymore. Now she had him and the others to watch over her.
****
Chloe squinted as she looked down at the pictures Amber had taken an hour earlier. “Do I look dead to you?” she asked Heath.
“Yes, and put them away, because I don’t like looking at them,” Heath ordered.
Though Rycroft and Trinity had done a damn good job at sanitizing the scene on board the ship and dealing with the local authorities on their behalf, it wasn’t perfect. People had seen what had happened. Word would have circulated by now about a small team taking the ship and freeing the women. Dubois’ eyes and ears would have reported to him immediately.
The only way to protect Chloe now was to prove to Dubois’ network that she was dead. The blood on scene would help, and Trinity had worked something out with the head pathologist at the local hospital. They had a fake death certificate in Gabrielle’s name, and now these shots of Chloe lying on a metal autopsy table, looking dead. She and Megan had done an awesome job with the makeup.
“Think Dubois will buy it?” she asked.
“Let’s hope so,” Megan replied, uploading the last of the images to send to Rycroft.
She hoped so too. Once Dubois was gone, she would be safe. Faking her death would make her as safe as she could get until then.
She didn’t want to jinx herself, but she wanted to end this and then go to England to help the team find the remaining Valkyries. Especially Eden.
And she wanted Dubois gone fast, because she wanted more time with Heath before he left for Syria. He’d taken such good care of her over the past two days, barely letting her lift a finger. She’d been annoyed and grumpy about it at first, but she had to admit, it was damn nice to have him there seeing to her needs. He’d brought her food, washed her hair and helped her shower, helped her dress and made her stay off her feet.
She wanted a relationship with him. But she wasn’t ready to say it, because none of what she wanted was possible until Dubois was gone, so she was trying not to think about it.
Megan picked up her phone when it rang. “It’s Amber. Hey,” she answered. She listened, her expression hardening. “You’re sure?” A pause. “All right. Hang on, I’m putting you on speaker so the patient can hear you.” She hit the button.
“What’ve you got?” Chloe asked.
“A possible hit on Dubois.”
Chloe caught her breath. “A location?”
“Maybe. There’s a series of high-level meetings in Milan with someone known to be tied to the Italian mob. Dubois was seen at the hotel this morning. The meetings are supposed to wrap up tomorrow. If he’s there, he’ll likely be headed back in a day or two.”
“He’ll go back to Paris,” Chloe said, adrenaline pumping through her. “He’ll want to see his family after being gone.” This bastard’s days were numbered. When he came back to France, they would be ready.
“I’ve planted the pictures of you,” Amber continued. “Only a matter of time before he sees them. You got a plan in mind? With you on the DL, we’re not taking the added risk of going after him yet.”
“We’ll wait for him to go home, where he’s most comfortable.”
Where he wouldn’t see her coming until it was too late.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Just received this from our source inside the coroner’s office,” Jean-Pierre said over the noise of the jet’s engines, holding out his tablet for Guillaume to see.
The images on screen showed a dead blond woman lying on an autopsy table, with a bullet hole in her upper chest. Her face was slightly gray from blood loss, purple showing around the eyes, nose and mouth. But even in that state he recognized her, and his pulse kicked up a notch.
Gabrielle.
“When was she brought in?” he asked, unable to stop staring at the images.
“Just before six o’clock last night, after the shipment was intercepted.”
“And the cargo?”
“Being held at a detention facility while the investigation is carried out.”
Guillaume studied the photos. It gave him tremendous satisfaction to know she’d been shot by one of his men. “What’s her real name?”
“They don’t know yet. She had no ID or other identifying items on her. They’re searching their databases now but so far no one’s reported her missing.”
“If she’s a Valkyrie, she won’t have any. And there would be a mark of some sort. A tattoo, maybe.” He’d heard whisperings about it through his sources.
“I’ll check into it.”
No matter. Finally, a bright spot had punched through the canopy of black cloud that had been hovering over him ever since the night Dom had been killed. Burying his little brother would haunt him always. The pain still raked him with sharp claws upon waking and whenever his mind wasn’t occupied with other things. But at least this bitch was dead. With her gone, Guillaume and his family were safe.
Now it was time to get back to running his empire.
He handed the tablet back to Jean-Pierre, satisfied with what he’d seen. “Have them contact me immediately once they know her real identity. Offer whatever incentive you have to.” He wanted to know the name of his brother’s killer. Find out who she really was.
“Of course.”
He leaned back in the plush seat, exhaustion weighing on him. “What about the latest offer?” With Dom gone, it was up to him to handle this less-savory part of the business. Guillaume didn’t relish it, but he was first and foremost a businessman, so he would be stupid to give up such a profitable revenue stream.
“Here.” Jean-Pierre tapped the tablet and brought up another screen. “I just received these this afternoon.”
Guillaume took the tablet back and began scrolling through the images. “They’re older than the last batch.”
“Yes. But a better price, and considering the loss we just took, I thought this was the best option.”
These women were in their twenties and thirties, by the looks of them. And not all of them were pretty. Guillaume frowned, trying to imagine them cleaned up. “They won’t get the same prices the last ones would have.” Gabrielle alone would have netted him a small fortune. He would have preferred to capture her and make her suffer the pain she’d deserved, but at least she was gone.
“They were the best I could get on such short notice.”
Their buyers would be impatient. The seizure in Le Havre had cost Guillaume’s bottom line, but more importantly, it had also left a black mark on his reputation in the business. Already there were rumblings that he had been exposed, that he posed too great a risk to do business with anymore. Several people had pulled him aside to ask him about it personally at the meetings.
He’d been humiliated, but the sidelong looks and the way people had stopped talking when he’d come close told him he needed to address this immediately. He and his network were busy doing damage control before it got even worse. Once rumors like that spread, they were impossible to stop. “All right, make the call.”
Recouping some of his loss was better than nothing.
Guillaume folded his hands across his middle and closed his eyes to get some rest, but his cell phone woke him several minutes later. His eldest daughter.
He smiled. “Hello, my angel. How are you?”
“Good. Papa, when are you coming home?”
“Tonight. I’m on the plane now.”
“Yay! Then you can come to my piano recital tomorrow.”
“Sweetheart, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Jean-Pierre drove him home from the airport. It was past the girls’ bedtime, but his wife would be up. G
uillaume couldn’t wait to see her. She treated him like a king, worshipped him, and always stood by his side. He loved her impossibly hard for that.
He carried the flowers he’d purchased into the house. The kitchen light was on, but his wife wasn’t there. “Vienne?” he called as he strode toward the living room.
Quiet treads on the carpeted staircase behind him made him turn around. The welcoming smile on his face froze at the cold expression on hers. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Vienne stood on the third tread from the bottom wearing her favorite satin dressing gown, one elegantly manicured hand resting on the handrail. She swallowed, something like horror in her liquid brown eyes as she stared at him. “I had a disturbing telephone call a few minutes ago.” Her voice was a soft rasp. As if she didn’t dare to speak any louder.
He took a step toward her, concern for her safety punching through him. “Who was it? Did they threaten you?”
Vienne shrank back, clutching the halves of her gown together at the throat. As if the thought of him touching her revolted her. “Stop.”
He halted, taken aback by her reaction. “Vienne, what—”
“Is it true you’ve been buying and selling women as part of your business?”
Shock blasted through him. The blood drained from his face, leaving him dizzy, a cold sweat popping out on his skin as his heart began to hammer. No. No, this couldn’t be. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who told you that? Who did you talk to?” Guillaume would hunt them down and kill them for this.
She swallowed, a sheen of tears making her eyes glisten. “Don’t you dare lie to me.” Her voice was so quiet. So cold the words iced the air between them. Guillaume could feel their chill from where he stood.
He stared at her, struggling to come up with a plausible lie. She’d caught him so off guard that she must see the truth in his face. “I…”
A sob escaped her. She clamped her lips shut and shook her head, looking at him like he was a monster conjured up from the bowels of Hell. “Get out.”
“What?” he gasped, stricken. She and the girls were the best part of his life. He’d loved her since he’d met her at that party when he was twenty. There was no one else for him and never would be. Only Vienne.
Her spine straightened, steel entering her expression. “Get out and never come back here.”
“Vienne,” he croaked, reaching a hand toward her. “Don’t. I don’t know what you were told, but it’s not—”
She turned and rushed up the stairs, leaving his heart to hit the floor and shatter into a million bloody pieces.
The master bedroom door slammed upstairs moments later. And she absolutely would have locked it against him. Because the mere sight of him now disgusted her.
Reeling, Guillaume dragged in a ragged breath. The pain in his chest was awful. Like someone was crushing his heart in a vise.
He doubled over, forced air in and out of his lungs as his stunned brain scrambled to find a solution. Who the fuck had told her about the women? And why hadn’t he denied it faster? He was so damn angry with himself for not coming up with a lie in time.
Under the shock and grief, rage began to grow. He would find whoever had told her and kill them in a horrible way. In the meantime, he had to figure out how to win his wife back. He’d make her stay with him if it came to it, or take their girls. Because the thought of living without her or the girls was unbearable.
Feeling half-dead inside, he stumbled back through the kitchen. Jean-Pierre shot off the stool at the island, his brows crashing together in alarm. “Sir—”
“I’m going to the chateau,” he mumbled, and walked to the door. “Stay here with them. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He walked out into the cold October rain, terrified that the life he’d built had just been irrevocably shattered.
****
“I’ll be damned, you were right. He came alone,” Heath murmured to Chloe.
It was almost midnight and Dubois’ vehicle had just arrived at his country estate near the Normandy coast. They lay prone side by side on a small hill that allowed them to see over the wall surrounding the estate. The rest of the team was scattered elsewhere, ready to act when Chloe gave the signal.
“Told you. By all reports, Vienne Dubois is a genuinely good person. No idea how she went this long without knowing what he was really up to, and not sure I believe that anyway. Either she’s clueless, or he was just that good at duping her.”
“Based on what you’ve told me, I’m guessing he was.”
“Probably. People lie to their spouses all the time.”
They’d taken a big gamble by coming here. Chloe was still recovering and couldn’t walk or move her left arm without pain. If it had been up to him, they would still be holed up someplace to allow her more healing time, but she’d refused to listen to reason, adamant that she was coming for Dubois and that she had a plan. Since he had half of France in his pocket, no cop or legal organization was going to take him down anytime soon.
But throwing him in jail wasn’t enough for Chloe. She wanted blood vengeance and wouldn’t stop until she had it.
Heath wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but his choices were either to go with her, or have her do it without him. There was no way he would allow her to do something so dangerous on her own, so here he was.
Hours ago, Chloe had leaked the truth about the trafficked women to Vienne via an anonymous call from a source within the organization Fleur had worked for. The woman had told Vienne everything they knew about Guillaume’s involvement with past shipments, including the one they’d stopped in Le Havre, and sent pictures along with irrefutable evidence lifted from the thumb drives they’d stolen from Dubois’ safe. That meant Interpol would take him down.
Chloe wasn’t going to give them the chance. She needed to do this herself.
She reached her right hand up to tap her earpiece. Her left arm was still bound in the sling across her chest, her entire upper arm various shades of blue and purple and green. “He’s here. Alone,” she informed the rest of the team, waiting nearby. Then to Heath, “I had to make sure he was alone.”
She didn’t want the wife or kids to see him die. Because she was an orphan who had seen her mother die, tough as she was, she refused to traumatize Dubois’ kids that way.
It made Heath fall for her even more. “You sure this’ll work?”
“Yes, because he feels safe here. He thinks I’m dead, and he’s more worried about saving his marriage right now than anything else.”
He shook his head in grudging admiration. “You drive me crazy, but I love that you’re such a badass.”
A slow smile spread across her face. “Me too.” She kept watching the house through the binos.
They waited there in silence until the master bedroom light on the second floor went off. “Ten more minutes, then we get to work,” she said quietly. Then softer, almost to herself. “Hope he knows Wagner.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Guillaume dragged a hand down his face and set the empty tumbler aside on his desk. He’d been in his estate’s office all night, had only dozed a couple of times in his chair. He was fucking heartsick over Vienne and the girls. She wouldn’t return any of his calls or messages. How could he fix this? She wouldn’t go to the media with it, would she?
No, of course she wouldn’t. He was just panicking. Vienne was the epitome of class, and a protective mother. She wouldn’t want this to hurt their girls. He’d always said she was too good for him. Now she knew it was true.
He looked away from the nearly empty bottle of scotch on his desk, the liquor rolling sour and acidic in his stomach. He knew his wife. There was no coming back from this. Her rebuff last night had been final. She would be speaking to her lawyer first thing this morning, if she hadn’t already.
No matter what he did, it was over. He could beg and grovel and apologize. But in the end, it wouldn’t do any good. Now that Vienne knew what he’d done, she would never let him near her ag
ain. The only thing left to decide was whether he was going to force her to stay, and how far he was willing to go to make it happen.
Bile rushed up his throat. He surged from his chair, gulping, struggling to breathe as agony crashed over him in a dark tidal wave. A terrible sound clawed out of his throat, like something a wounded animal would make. Panting, he spun around and grabbed the edge of a table, throwing it with all his might. It crashed into the wall, scattering papers and other items.
A glint of light caught his eye on the edge of the carpet. Bending, he picked up the ceramic paperweight his daughters had made him for his birthday last year.
Love you forever!
The words gutted him. He imagined the looks of pain and confusion on their precious faces when their mother told them they were getting a divorce. Or, God forbid, the day they found out what he’d done.
He sank to his knees on the floor with an anguished cry, tears streaking his face. This was too great a loss to bear. He’d already lost his brother. Now his whole family?
He barely heard the knock on the door, hurriedly scrubbed at his face. “Come in,” he choked out.
Jean-Pierre stopped in the doorway, his eyes widening in shock. “I’ll come back.” He turned to leave.
“No.” He pushed to his feet, wiping at his eyes. “Stay.”
Jean-Pierre reluctantly came in and shut the door. “I take it she still won’t talk to you?”
He shook his head. “What’s happening?” Jean-Pierre had been at the other house all night. Guarding Vienne and the girls, but also to keep watch for him.
“She’s been on the phone most of the morning.”
To her lawyer. “How is she?”
Jean-Pierre hesitated. “She’s…”
“What?”
“Not well,” he finally said. “Her eyes are swollen. She hasn’t slept either, has been crying most of the time.”
Oh, God, he couldn’t bear to know he’d caused her so much pain. The horror, disappointment and betrayal in her eyes last night would haunt him forever.
