“I had to keep her distracted!” Chase said. “Her brain scrambled. You know.” He grinned, feeling so big he was going to explode any moment. Hell, she was fine. “Who wants to be the best man?”
From the doorway, Ian snorted. “No woman is dumb enough to marry you. She was just using you for sex.” There was a grain of truth to that which snuck under Chase’s skin. Special ops always did have more trouble getting a woman to marry them and stick with them through deployments than finding someone to have sex with.
“It’s true love,” Chase said loftily, instead of admitting that. “You’re just jealous.”
Possibly true. The gods had showered multiple ethnic blessings on Ian, as if each race in his ancestry had assigned him his own personal fairy godmother at the christening to try to form the ideal twenty-first century man, and, in consequence, he found it even easier than the rest of them to pick up women. He had possibly gotten a little bit spoiled, therefore.
Near him, their French RAID liaison, Elias, gave Chase a jaundiced look. The tall, black-haired, and bronze-skinned member of France’s elite counterterrorism unit had been born of an Algerian father and a French mother in one of the poorer banlieues outside Paris, and he had reacted to the 2015 attacks kind of like someone might react to discovering his brother had turned into a raging zombie cannibal and was eating out the brains of their parents.
In which case, Elias had chosen the role of Rick Grimes.
“Did you come here to help protect the civilian population or inseminate them?” Elias asked coolly.
Chase grinned at him. “Worried about protecting your womenfolk?”
Elias just raised one eyebrow. How did French men manage that damn eyebrow thing? Chase tried it, involuntarily—he always had to try physical challenges as soon as he thought of them—struggling to wiggle one eyebrow over the other, and sneezed.
“I know you don’t know much about restaurants in America, but trust me, a twenty-eight-year-old two-star chef can protect herself,” Elias said dryly.
Chase’s grin widened. Damn, she’d been hot wielding those knives. “She sure as hell can.”
“So I’m just going to assume she has lousy taste in men.”
Hey. “Maybe she’s desperate.” Chase yawned and stretched and rubbed his knuckles against his chest. “Real men, you know. She probably never met one before, growing up here.” He shot Elias a bird.
“Well, she’d have to be desperate if she thought you were one,” Ian said from the doorway. He folded muscled arms across his chest and gave Chase a competitive look. “Or exhausted.”
“Ego depletion,” Jake said judiciously. “Eighteen hours handling a top kitchen. Decision fatigue, man. Give her a chance to sleep and she’ll wonder what the hell she was thinking.”
Chase scowled, slouching a little in his chair. It was not that he thought they were right, obviously, but still…
Damn it. They were probably right. Part right. They all knew the research on decision fatigue, kind of essential to anyone in special ops. Shit.
“I’ll go introduce myself to her, and then she’ll wonder what she was thinking,” Ian said and grinned. “But that’s okay. I don’t mind giving her a second chance to find the right man.”
“Okay, you know what—?” Chase started to stand.
“If we could focus on the main subject,” Mark said with that too-long-on-the-grill note to his voice. Long, lean, dark-haired Mark had a quiet manner and a bony angularity to him that always managed to convey the impression that he was a nerd, which was kind of hilarious considering his physical abilities. The iron man geek. Who had the nerves to deal with men like Chase, Jake, and Ian.
Chase subsided, Ian relaxed back against the wall, Jake gave them both a sardonic glance, Elias gazed heavenward, and they all paid attention.
“Chase. Other than chasing tail, anything?”
And Chase settled down. Way down. Into that cold place, where his heartrate dropped, where his focus was perfect. He didn’t think he was a psychopath, like people always liked to claim about special ops, because his emotion switch was usually full on. But he knew how to turn it off. That empty, calm clarity that took over his brain and body when he did.
“Nothing,” he said. “But…” And he dropped his head back, staring at the ceiling. “Is there any more on that ricin rumor?”
SOCEUR, United States Special Operations Command, Europe, was coordinating special ops with the French for one primary reason. Obviously, SOCEUR, too, would do anything and everything in their power to help prevent additional attacks on French soil, and they’d been instructed by the President himself to assist in any and all ways they could to track, punish, prevent.
But Al-Mofti was their highest value target now, and the reason SOCEUR had more or less crowbarred their way into operations here. Al-Mofti had been the mastermind behind the attack that took down a Paris-New York flight over the holidays, full of hundreds of French and Americans going to visit families, usually with their little French-American children with them on their way to see grandma. There had been a symbolism in the attack, to hit both France and the U.S. at the same time, a strike right at the heart of where the two were most vulnerable and most united.
And every person in the room and all the way up their chain of command to two presidents would kill that motherfucker if it was the last thing they did.
Mark shook his head grimly. “They’ve gone entirely dark.”
Chills prickled up Chase’s arms. He hated it when terrorists went dark. Especially when several of them in Paris and Brussels went dark together. Especially after the word ricin had been picked up by the CIA. Especially when one of the men they were tracing on his return from Syria was the cousin of Violette Lenoir’s pastry chef and had been seen on the street of the restaurant, using a phone for a purpose they hadn’t been able to trace. Damn encrypted chat apps.
Fuck, that kitchen was a nightmare. Jesus, they had shelves and shelves of half-prepped desserts sitting there overnight. Someone with a code, which probably covered all the upper levels of staff, could come in early and…
…and the first they’d know about it was when people started to get sick. And there was no cure for ricin.
They had nothing on the head pastry chef, nothing at all except the relationship with that very problematic cousin.
But what if…
That was what a counterterrorist unit had to deal with. That huge, horrible what if.
Who would be on the front line if the crazy bastards did manage to use ricin?
Violette Lenoir and all her staff. Handling all the food. Tasting it before it went out.
“We need to shut it down,” he said abruptly. “Find some excuse that gets the kitchen closed until after the President’s visit or we nail the bastards. Something that doesn’t tip them off. A plumbing problem or something. Rats?” No, shit. Vi would be pissed about rats. He’d seen the way those critics reacted in Ratatouille. Watched it during one fucking cold winter in Kandahar, where even a rat’s vision of Paris had made for an enticing contrast. “An electrical issue. Small fire.”
“That’s your call?” Mark assessed him steadily.
There had never been a successful mass ricin attack. But Chase had seen far more than his share of aftermaths of attacks with bombs and AK-47s, and they crowded up in his brain suddenly, sent ripples of horror down his skin. “Yes,” he said flatly. “It’s too big a risk.”
“The chef can’t know what happened,” Elias said. “She’s got to be left as much in the dark as anyone. We can’t risk tipping them off.”
Chase’s jaw tightened grimly. Yeah. He knew. “Fuck, she’s going to be pissed. She was really excited about the President’s possible visit.”
Elias was watching him. That sardonic look had faded beneath a certain tough sympathy. “Don’t worry. She’s a Michelin two-star chef at the age of twenty-eight. Trust me. She can handle anything.”
Chapter 8
“Salmonella?” Vi stared a
t the health inspectors blocking her access to her own kitchens with no regard for life or limb. Health inspectors were getting more and more suicidal these days. “In my restaurant? No, there damn well was not!”
“We’re sorry, Mademoiselle Lenoir,” the lead inspector said woodenly. “We have reports from a dozen people whose one point in common seems to be having eaten here last night.”
“That’s not even possible!” Vi said, outraged. “My team’s hygiene is impeccable. I know the source of everything we serve.” Even as she said it, she was running things through her mind: eggs from her brother’s farm, honey from the rooftop rosemary gardens and beehives of their own quarter in Paris, no oysters last night it wasn’t the season… “Let me see this—” She started to push by him.
He stepped to the side to block her, and something flickered through her. That was a very adamant block. A police officer kind of block. Or a military man’s block.
“Pardon, mademoiselle. It’s a public health emergency. Until we track down the source, we need to close the restaurant and run tests.”
She narrowed her eyes up at the health inspector, who certainly seemed to work out a lot in his down time. The set of his shoulders reminded her quite a lot of… “Is this something to do with Chase Smith?”
“Who?” the inspector said blankly.
She folded her arms to keep herself from stabbing someone. A health inspector, for example. “That’s not his real name, is it?”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about, mademoiselle,” the military-mannered inspector said formally.
“Bordel de—” Vi stabbed her finger at him. “These are my kitchens. You tell me what is going on.”
“We’re investigating a salmonella outbreak,” he repeated woodenly. “That seems to have started here.”
“So it’s true then?” a voice said from behind Vi to her right. “You’ve been forcibly shut down for salmonella?”
Vi pivoted to see—with a shock of horror—a television camera pointed her way. Oh, fuck.
“Mademoiselle Lenoir, would you care to comment?” a perfectly coiffed brown-haired man asked, posing beside her before the camera and extending his microphone.
“How could I care to comment? I just found out about it! How do you know about it already?” She tried to see which news station they were from.
“Twitter,” the journalist said.
Bordel de merde. “It’s on Twitter already?” Vi said, her stomach sinking as if she’d swallowed a bucket of rock.
The journalist nodded with an appearance of sympathy. “As I’m sure you’re aware, taking you on as chef here created some controversy, and your changes to the menu have been…splashy. Do you think a salmonella outbreak at Au-dessus supports those who have always claimed you were too young and too…flamboyant…to handle the job?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, shit, any minute they were going to bring out the “woman chef” thing. And she might have to hit somebody. “I think you’ll find there’s some other source to this salmonella outbreak.” She looked at the health inspector grimly. “Let’s see those tests.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you and your staff to remain off the premises while we conduct the investigation,” the military-like inspector said stiffly.
“Oh, no, you damn well will not.” Vi forgot all about the television camera. “Mess around in my kitchens without me there? Over my dead body.”
***
“Salmonella?” Chase demanded between his teeth. “Out of all the possible excuses for shutting that restaurant down, they went with the only one that would do someone actual harm?”
Mark propped his butt against the table behind him and folded his arms. “They said it was the perfect cover. It stirs up doubt. Al-Mofti might have to make calls to find out what was going on, and maybe we can get a location. Was there a ricin attack attempt? Did one of his men carry it out? Did they get caught and this is our cover up? He’ll want to know. And the more of his men he tries to communicate with, the more chance we have of tracking him down.”
“I said a kitchen fire! Plumbing!”
“You’ve got to admit it’s better,” Mark said.
Maybe. If Chase turned off all thought of individual consequences and went into his cold place. Kind of a lousy, crappy place to go when it came to a gorgeous, vivid, life-filled blonde in leather.
“Better only if you consider destroying a chef’s career a minor side effect,” Elias said, his voice very even and cold. “Putain, but you people have no idea of culture. Maybe later you can build a McDonald’s where her restaurant stood.”
Ice entered Chase’s soul. “I thought you said she can handle anything.”
“I suspect she can,” Elias said. “But that doesn’t mean her restaurant can. Or her current career can. Food poisoning. At a restaurant already at the center of every critic’s eye this year, as they love her or hate her or swear she’ll never make it. Merde, it’s a top chef’s worst nightmare.”
“At least she’s alive,” Mark said. “Which she wouldn’t be, if she were exposed to ricin. She probably has friends who aren’t alive, from the last Paris attacks.”
A grim look settled over Elias’s face. He didn’t have to tell them that he also had friends who were no longer alive. They all had friends who were no longer alive, these days. “Who the hell made this call? Were my people involved or was it the damn CIA?”
“It’s a coordinated initiative,” Mark said wearily. Within their team, that was working fine, but on a larger scale…it had already been a nightmare coordinating operations between the CIA and the military when they only had one country involved. “That’s all I’ve got.”
One of those visions of Violette Lenoir dying of ricin again. Not rippling under him in a glorious orgasm, shining with life, but wrenching in death, convulsions going weaker and weaker, until all of her was gone.
Sometimes he really wished he had gone into ranching or something for a living. Surfing. Skiing. Something else challenging and daredevil that didn’t stuff his brain with so many visions of so many different moments of dying. His brain was so damn good at switching out the real bodies seen with those of the people he most cared about, too.
A lot of people claimed his breed were psychopaths. But Chase knew how many of them had gone into the military not because of too little empathy but too much. They’d seen those bodies jumping from the windows of incredibly high buildings rather than burn alive, and the pain and the fury on their behalf had been too much. I’ll get those bastards back for this, the teenage boy thought. I’ll make sure it never happens again. And he enlisted.
Maybe that teenager adopted some traits of psychopathy later. Learned how to turn off that empathy switch, because what else were you supposed to do, when your mission night after night might be to slip into someone’s compound while he was asleep and kill him? But he wasn’t born that way. The problem of that teenage boy who enlisted wasn’t that he was born with too little heart where others were concerned…it was that he was born with too damn much, and he didn’t know how to give enough of it, except with his actual blood.
“I just think they could have used some excuse besides food poisoning,” Chase said. Damn it, and he’d been the one to say he didn’t care what they came up with. “What the hell was wrong with the kitchen fire excuse?”
“This leaves Al-Mofti in greater doubt, which gives us that many more chances to finally pinpoint where that bastard is.”
“Yes, but…” Chase logged into Twitter and found #audessus #vilenoir. Oh, shit. A sick feeling grew in his stomach. What the fuck? Had some asshole just called her a “dumb c***”, with a “women don’t belong in a real restaurant” added on? He was going to kick somebody’s ass. “Can you retract it? Correct it?”
“Chase,” Mark said firmly. “You have to hold it together. We’ll run ‘salmonella tests’ for a few days, follow any leads we might get, and later we can say the salmonella cases were traced to something else and nothing
to do with the restaurant. I hope I don’t need to remind you that stopping Al-Mofti is our top priority.”
A vision of Flight 997’s family members, the screaming agony of the mother of the little girl who’d flown by herself for the very first time to see her grandparents and now would never be coming home. “No,” Chase said, feeling sick. “No.”
“And do not tell her,” Mark said. “We still don’t know what, if any, connection her pastry chef might have with any of this. We need doubt. We don’t want anything certain to slip out.”
Fuck.
Chapter 9
By four that afternoon, Vi had one thing on her mind: Chase Smith.
If she ever found that slimy bastard again, she was going to kick him so hard in the nuts he wouldn’t even be able to look at a woman he wanted to screw for months without wincing.
Not that she knew what the hell was going on, but she knew how a man’s eyes flickered when she caught him out. Like, You’re married, aren’t you? Or Navy SEAL. She knew what normal health inspectors looked like, and she knew they didn’t bar her from her own restaurant. And she knew what it was like to be screwed by a man who didn’t see her body as anything more than an enjoyable byproduct of his running his tank right over her life.
You’re lucky you snuck out without leaving your number, you bastard. She rolled her right shoulder and touched her right cheek, where both had been bruised when the police had to forcibly remove her—pushing her against the wall by the restaurant back door and cuffing her. More good fodder for the cameras.
Putain, she might have broken Twitter.
Fortunately, her arrest had been a catch and release deal. The police had just wanted her to calm down and give up her own restaurant into the hands of imposter health inspectors. One of them had even told her a pretty woman like her shouldn’t get so upset, she should show more class. And she hadn’t even been able to deck him, because all the power was in his hands, and he would just have arrested her again, and this time kept her locked up.
Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2) Page 6
