Eight Days to Live

by Iris Johansen

  “Aye.” His lips indented at the corners. “But it’s bullshit that put a little color in your cheeks. I don’t like to see you pale and strained. Has it been a bad time for you tonight?”

  “Bad time? You might say that. That bastard crucified my friend. He pinned her to that door like a—” She broke off. “And I don’t know why. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Yes, you are.” He moved across the room toward her. He looked different, she thought. He was wearing a gray tweed suit, and she was accustomed to seeing him in casual slacks and sweaters. No matter what he wore, it was difficult to take your eyes away from him. He was tall, muscular, in his mid to late thirties with dark hair pulled away from his face. His light blue eyes were a striking contrast in his olive face. It was no wonder that Celine had been drawn to him. He was forceful, magnetic—all the things that would have attracted Celine.

  He said, “May I sit down?”

  She nodded impatiently. “Venable has something to do with this.”

  “Yes.” He dropped down on the seat Jock had vacated. “I’d like to say the bastard had everything to do with it, but that would be giving him too much credit. He was only a cog.” He frowned. “But Venable should have come to me. I would have taken care of you. He had no business bringing Jock back here to do his work.”

  “Taken care of me? What are you talking about?”

  “I told you I regard you as family. Naturally, I’ll take care of what is mine.”

  Arrogant, possessive bastard. Don’t argue. “Just tell me why anyone should have to take care of me,” she said through set teeth. “Why did Jock show up tonight?”

  “He thought you were in danger. He’d received some information earlier today, and he had to make a move. He didn’t trust Venable’s men to protect you.”

  “But why me? Why would anyone be targeting me?” Jane lifted her hand to her eyes. “Don’t start in the middle. The beginning, MacDuff.”

  “I’m not certain where the beginning is yet,” he said grimly. “But I’ll tell you what Venable told me. Though I’m not sure that he told me everything.” He reached in his pocket and brought out a folded newspaper. “Do you recognize this?”

  She took the newspaper. Le Monde. Feature section. “Yes, it’s an article that appeared two weeks ago. Celine was over the moon that she managed to wangle an article about the show.” A photo of herself looked up at Jane. Beside it were five of her paintings that were to appear at the exhibit. “It was taken before I left to go home on a visit to Atlanta.” She frowned. “Why?”

  “One of Venable’s informants, Ted Weismann, sent him a copy of this article. Your photo was circled. And a date was inserted beneath your picture.”

  “What date?”

  “April 1.”

  “So?”

  “According to Venable’s informant, it was the date that you had to die.”

  Shock. No time for shock. She had to recover quickly and go on, “But April 1 is eight, no seven, days away. And it’s Celine who died.” She shook her head. “It’s all crazy.”

  “Venable didn’t think it was crazy. He respected this particular informant. He’d been working with him and trying to round up a group of killers for hire called the Sang Noir, who specialized in murdering political figures. He hadn’t been very successful. No proof. They’re careful and seemed to have enough money for bribes to skirt the law. It’s headed by Jack Millet. Very lethal. Very nasty. The group is responsible for at least two assassinations of world leaders in the last year. Jorge Ralez, President of Colombia. Kim Thai of South Korea, Head of the Parliament.”

  She shook her head. “According to the media, Ralez’s death was drug-cartel related.”

  “And Kim Thai was supposedly targeted by North Korean secret police. Neither of their killers was caught. High-profile cases and still no one brought to justice. Very strange.”

  “Yes, but it has nothing to do with me.”

  “It didn’t until Venable’s informant, Weismann, sent him this newspaper with your photo. He’d copied it from one that Millet had in his possession.” He paused. “He also said that Millet had been sent the photo by a businessman who was closely involved with Millet and the Sang Noir.”

  “What kind of involvement?”

  He shrugged. “Weismann wasn’t sure. It wasn’t unusual for Millet to negotiate hits with anyone who had the money. Murder is murder. The payout would have had to be spectacular to get him to agree to any deal.” He paused. “But he was on the phone ranting and raving with the man who sent him that clipping the moment he received it.”

  “And who is this businessman?”

  MacDuff shook his head. “Millet kept his arrangement with him very hush-hush. Only a few people knew about it. It took a lot of digging before Venable’s informant, Weismann, could tell him the little he found out.”

  Jane impatiently shook her head. “Look, none of this has anything to do with me. Even if Millet had a copy of this article, it couldn’t be considered very high priority. I’ve no connection with any of those people. Which could mean that the whole idea of my involvement was a fluke.” A horrible mistake, a dreadful fluke. “For God’s sake, I’m an artist. I stay as far away from politics as I can get.”

  “I don’t think that it was a mistake. They went to a great deal of trouble to zero in on your location here. And your friend, Celine, was murdered. Crucified.”

  She flinched. Crucified. The word was as ugly as the act itself. It took a moment for her to regain control.

  Then she shook her head wearily. “I don’t know. All I know is that it doesn’t make sense.”

  “It has to make sense. We just have to find out how. Because it’s not only you on the line now. Jock killed one of their men tonight. I told you, Millet is very nasty. He’s not going to forgive and forget.”

  “Jock shouldn’t have even been here,” she said bitterly. “Damn Venable.”

  “He justified it by saying there had been several leaks, and he couldn’t afford another one in a sensitive operation. He went after Jock because he knew that he could trust him to get rid of any threat to you. He sent him to Rome, where the main branch of the Sang Noir is located, and told him to see what he could find out. There wasn’t any question of his completely infiltrating the group. They’re very tight. But he was able to cruise along in the shallows and be on hand to pick up information as it became available.” He smiled sardonically. “They weren’t suspicious of him. Venable got Weismann to spread the stories about Jock’s background. After all, he had excellent credentials in their field of expertise. Word does get around.”

  Their field of expertise. Death.

  Yes, no one could say Jock wasn’t a prime expert in that field. And he’d added another body to that reputation tonight, and it had been for her sake.

  MacDuff shrugged. “Anyway, Jock had been aware of something stirring about you for the last few days. But he only found out late yesterday afternoon that Millet had left Rome for Paris. He called Venable and told him to make sure you were protected, then headed for the airport. It appears he got here just in time.”

  “Not for Celine,” she said dully. “Such savagery. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But Jock is no fool, and he thinks that Venable is right and April 1 is your death date.”

  She tried to smile. “April Fool.”

  “I don’t regard it as a joke.”

  “I know you don’t. Because Jock killed a man tonight because of me.”

  “Yes.” He met her eyes. “And because you’re family, and no one threatens my family.”

  She pulled her gaze away from him. She had told him several times that she had no connection to his blasted family. But he had gotten the idea into his head and wouldn’t let go of it. “I’m no MacDuff. I’m an illegitimate street kid, and I like it just fine that way. Joe Quinn and Eve Duncan are the only family I need or want. And I’ll take care of my own threats, MacDuff.”

  “Whatever you say
.” He smiled. “Cousin. But the portrait of Great-aunt Fiona MacDuff on my wall at home makes me wonder. There’s no discounting the resemblance.”

  “She lived during the late eighteen hundreds and everyone looks like someone. We’re a homogenized race.”

  “You don’t believe that, and neither do I. We both have egos that tell us we’re unique.” His smile disappeared. “And someone has put you on a list that definitely makes you stand out.”

  “Not that you didn’t stand out before.” Jock stood in the kitchen doorway with a huge cup in his hand. “I found a souvenir mug on one of the top shelves.” He came toward her. “Much better than those little cups.” He gave her the mug and took the other cup away from her. “Now drink that down. I’m sure MacDuff has told you enough to make you need another jolt of caffeine.”

  “You should have come to me, told me.” She shook her head. “MacDuff says there’s no mistake, but I still can’t see any connection that would make sense.”

  “There was a connection. No one mentioned your name, but I saw that newspaper article in the possession of at least three of the members.” He made a face. “It was pretty frustrating not to be able to learn more. They welcomed me on a very tentative basis. I wasn’t privy to any crucial information, and they watched me as much as I watched them. But they definitely thought I might be useful to them at some point.” His lips lifted in a sardonic smile. “Why not?”

  “Did you know anything about Folard, the man you killed?”

  “No, he was never in Rome. But if he was sent after you, then he was probably one of the core eight.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “I gathered that there are eight who are considered the core or most important members. They’re the only ones that Millet trusts and allows to travel with him.”

  “How many people belong to this Sang Noir?”

  Jock hesitated. “I’m not sure. The Sang Noir has twenty or thirty members in Rome. But I understand he gets phone calls from all over the world. Of course, they could be clients.”

  “But you don’t believe that?” MacDuff asked.

  “I don’t know what I believe. I was only concentrating on getting information that pertained to Jane.” He paused. “I didn’t give a damn about anything else. Let Venable track down all Millet’s dirty business. If I’d run across something about this deal Venable’s so concerned about, I’d have told him, but it wasn’t a priority. I knew he was using me.” He added, “In fact, he suggested rather bluntly that he wouldn’t be opposed if I took out Millet.”

  “Son of a bitch,” MacDuff said.

  “It wasn’t totally unreasonable. It could have solved Venable’s problem. I might have done it, but I couldn’t be sure that would have stopped the plans for killing Jane from going forward. I decided to let him live.”

  The words were said with an offhand coolness, and Jane felt a ripple of shock. She knew that Jock still wrestled with the numbness that had been instilled in him during that period when he had been brainwashed. Yet the Jock that he showed to her was so gentle and caring that those glimpses always caught her off guard. But Jock wouldn’t have been put in the position of making decisions like that if he hadn’t been trying to help her.

  “Tell me about Millet and this Sang Noir,” she said. “They have to be crazy, or they couldn’t have done what they did tonight. But I’m lost; there has to be something that I can grab and hold on to.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Jock said. “Most of it is what Venable filled me in on when he tapped me for his little job. As I said, the group is very tight and they don’t talk much. Millet supposedly grew up in Syria. His mother was Syrian and his father, Jim Millet, an American from Miami. His father was a smuggler and had a record a mile long before he settled in a village in Syria. He was under suspicion for beating his first wife to death before he left Miami. His second wife disappeared when Jack Millet was sixteen.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Her son and husband claimed she had run away. There wasn’t much of an investigation. In spite of the strides Syria has made, a wife is still often thought of as property. Millet’s father died a year later, and Jack Millet dropped out of sight for a number of years. Then he showed up in Rome and Venable began to hear rumors of the Sang Noir.”

  “He didn’t have a record?” MacDuff asked.

  “He was under suspicion for killing a thirteen-year-old girl in a brothel in Barcelona.” He added grimly, “He toyed with her for three days. The kid was cut to pieces.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Only rumors. Very ugly rumors. His favorite sport is inflicting pain. But by that time Millet had formed his group of killers for hire, and no one would testify against him.” He looked at MacDuff. “One thing Venable told me that was a little unusual. I’m sure Millet charged a small fortune for his hits, but even when he’d had no work for a long time, he seemed to have plenty of money and was able to maintain his killing squad.”

  “So we look for the money.”

  He shook his head. “Venable can look for the money. We just take care of Jane.”

  “I don’t care about the damn money,” Jane said. Jock’s summary of Millet’s background had not yielded anything of value except that he was a sadistic monster, and she already knew that. She felt helpless, frustrated. “I don’t know enough about him. I don’t even know what he looks like. I didn’t pay any attention to him in that taxi.”

  “I can help there,” Jock said as he took his phone out of his pocket. “I took shots of all the Sang Noir while I was hobnobbing.” He flipped through the photos and handed her the phone.

  Millet appeared to be in his thirties, with thick brown hair, a hook nose, and a burly neck. Not handsome but not a terrible-looking man, she thought, sick. He didn’t look like a monster who would crucify—

  She quickly handed the phone back to Jock. “At least I’ll recognize him if I see him.” She tried to search through her memory for anything else that might help. Dammit, her contact with Folard and Millet had been only a few minutes. How could she—

  A thought occurred to her.

  “How did those members of the Sang Noir speak? What kind of phrases did they use?” Jane asked suddenly. “Were they religious?”

  Jock’s brows rose. “Not unless they kept it very private. They weren’t the churchgoing types. Priests very seldom give absolution for cold-blooded murder.” He gazed at her inquiringly. “Why?”

  “That man Folard . . . When I was on the phone with him.” Her forehead knitted. “He was accusing me of all kinds of things. Whore. Bitch. I didn’t think much of it. Obscene callers usually use terms like those. But he called me Blasphemer. That wasn’t the same. The word sounds almost biblical. It means sacrilege, doesn’t it?”

  “Or wickedness, profanity . . .” MacDuff said. “But it does sound a bit odd.”

  She was remembering something else. “And when he attacked me, he said something about the angels of paradise having to forgive him for his impatience.”

  “If he was on the side of the angels, it must be one hell of a weird heaven,” MacDuff said dryly.

  “But it sounds as if he believed he was doing something he thought was right.” She reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know why I’m trying to take his motives apart. He had to be crazy to have done that horrible thing to Celine. What difference does it make if he thought all the angels in heaven would cheer if he crucified me as he did Celine?”

  “It might make a difference. It’s certainly unusual.”

  “But knowing it’s unusual and being able to decipher it are two separate things. Which leaves me as much in the dark as when I started.” She got to her feet. “I can’t think right now. I’m going to take a shower and call Eve, then go to bed.”

  “Call Eve?” MacDuff said. “You’re going to tell her? It will only make her concerned. I’ve arranged to keep your name out of the media.”

  “Joe’s a cop. We can’t b
e sure he wouldn’t stumble on it somehow. I can’t take a chance they’ll find out and be worried.” But she’d probably try to downplay the threat to herself. Though how to do that was a mystery. Eve was too sharp and would see through her. “And that police inspector said it would be okay if I left here tomorrow. I’m going to be on a plane by tomorrow night.”

  “You’re going back to Atlanta?” MacDuff asked. “To visit your Eve and Joe?”

  The lake cottage. Joe. Eve. It all beckoned with irresistible allure. “Yes, for a little while.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Celine pinned to the door, her face contorted with pain.

  Her hands closed into fists. “Damn you. No, it’s not wise. It’s not safe for me to be around anyone until I find out what’s going on. I’ll go to my apartment in New York instead.”

  “You could come home with me,” MacDuff said. “You like it at the Run.”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?” Jock asked. “MacDuff will take care of you. I’ll be there, too, if you’ll have me. I haven’t been home in a long time.”

  “I don’t want MacDuff to take—” She broke off. Jock would never really understand. He was accustomed to the Laird caring for him, his family, and half the county. He had changed, become much more independent, but old ways died hard. “I’m going back to the U.S.” She started for the bedroom. “And, please, stay away from Venable, Jock. Don’t let him talk you into doing anything like this again.”

  He didn’t answer, and she glanced back over her shoulder.

  He smiled, that beautiful, gentle smile that had first drawn her to him when he was a boy scarcely out of his teens. “Things aren’t good for you, Jane. I have to make them better.”

  She shook her head helplessly. In his way, he was an implacable force on the same scale as MacDuff. “Good night.”

  She closed the bedroom door firmly behind her.

  THREE

  “YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE that she goes to the Run,” Jock said, as the door closed behind Jane. “We can protect her there.”