Neither of us knows what to say.
“Well…” I start awkwardly.
He looks grim. “It’s been a wild ride.”
I nod. “That’s an understatement.”
He smiles, then grows serious again. “Look… when you get back… if you need any money, just take what you want from the overseas accounts you set up.”
His words are meant to be kind, but they sting. “I don’t want your money.”
“I know you don’t want it, but if you need it… promise me you’ll take it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He sighs, then turns and reaches into the car we came in. He fishes out the backpack and roots around inside it. I can see the last $10,000 block of cash, credit cards, the tubes of super glue.
He pulls out one of the GPS trackers and removes the plastic strip, activating the battery. “Here – take this.”
“Why?”
“So I can keep tabs on you, and make sure they keep their word. If they throw you in prison, don’t worry – I’ll break you out.”
I smile wanly and look down at the tracker in my palm. “Do I have to swallow it?”
“I doubt that’ll be necessary this time. The program you wrote – it’ll definitely track this thing?”
“Yeah. It’s set up and ready to go.”
“Good.”
I have no pockets or purse, so I tuck the tracker into my bra. We laugh over that, then stand there awkwardly in silence. We have so much to say, but we’re unable – or unwilling – to say it.
He takes the plunge first.
“Eve… I didn’t mean what I said to Dominique on that recording.”
It hurts to remember. Still, I force myself to say, “You did. But that’s okay.”
“I didn’t,” he insists. “I love you.”
“I know. But you can love me and still know it’s not going to work.”
He glances over my head at the FBI. “I’ll give it all up if you don’t go with them,” he says desperately.
My eyes open wide. “Stealing?”
“Burgling, breaking and entering… everything.”
His offer almost makes me cry. “Thank you… but I don’t want you to. That wouldn’t be right for me to ask.”
“You don’t have to ask. I’m offering.”
“Thank you… but I can’t accept that.”
“Don’t go with them,” he pleads with me. “Just go with the smuggler, and – ”
“I can’t,” I interrupt.
What I mean is, I can’t wait two weeks, two months, two years, wondering if you’re alive or dead… and if you’ll still love me when you get back.
But all I can say is, “I just… I can’t.”
There is a long silence.
Over in the FBI camp, Duplass taps his watch impatiently and yells, “Wrap it up.”
“Hold on!” Grant shouts angrily.
“I have to go,” I say, though I would stay here forever if I could, just so I didn’t have to give him up.
He looks at me in anguish. “I wish there’s something I could do to convince you… to show you how much I love you…”
I start crying. “I do, too.”
“Is there? Something I could do?”
I shake my head and smile sadly.
A light goes off in his eyes. “Stay. Stay with me. Here in Paris. Don’t go with the smuggler – stay with me.”
My heart leaps – but I know he doesn’t mean it. He’s saying it out of last-minute desperation. A day or two will pass, and he’ll resent me, and things will be even worse than they are now.
It’s time to end it. Make the break quick and clean.
“It just… it wasn’t meant to be,” I whisper.
He pulls me to him, and we kiss tenderly.
When I pull away I say, “Meeting you has been the most incredible experience of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I love you.”
I stand on my tiptoes, give him one last, soft kiss, and whisper, “Goodbye.”
Then I turn around and start walking towards Mailin and the SUV.
“Eve,” Grant calls out behind me, his voice cracking. “I love you.”
I can’t turn around. I’m barely holding it together as it is. I can’t look back or all my resolve will break.
“I love you!” he calls out, a howl of despair.
I reach Mailin and stumble. He catches my arm and opens the SUV’s rear door. Just before I enter the vehicle, I allow myself one look back – and it nearly kills me.
Grant is standing there, tears running down his face.
I break down sobbing, and collapse onto the seat as Mailin gets in beside me.
“It’s alright,” he whispers, and puts a comforting arm around me as I sob into his jacket. “It’s going to be okay.”
But it’s not.
It will never be okay again.
65
“Charles De Gaulle airport, now,” Duplass orders.
The SUV pulls out of the alleyway and merges into traffic on a larger street. I’m sandwiched between Mailin and Duplass in the back seat; the other two guys are riding up front.
“Christ, what a soap opera,” Duplass mutters. I try to ignore him, but he makes it impossible. “You and your thug of a boyfriend really know how to turn on the waterworks.”
I pretty much hated Duplass before this. I absolutely loathe him now.
“Maybe we could have this discussion another time?” Mailin asks icily.
“I’ll have whatever conversation I want to have, when I want to have it,” Duplass snaps. “You need to forget about banging your little girl crush here and grow up. She’s a criminal, just like Carlson.”
Mailin flushes deep red.
I consider how far I can jam Duplass’s earpiece inside his ear, and if that would kill him. If it did, I would go to jail a happy woman.
“We’re going to be the laughingstock of the Bureau – you know that, don’t you?” Duplass sneers at Mailin. “We’re three blocks away from the French police station. Three blocks away. Carlson forced us to meet him here just to rub it in your face, because you’re too much of a pussy to – ”
He doesn’t finish his sentence because another SUV rams us from the side.
66
WHAM!
I slam into Mailan, and Duplass topples onto me, as our SUV spins out and does a 180.
When the car comes to a halt, I look out and see dark shapes through the splintered windshield.
“WATCH OUT, GET DOWN!” Duplass screams.
I see him go for a gun.
Mailan unbuckles his seatbelt, then mine, and throws open the door.
“Come on!” he yells.
We fall onto the asphalt amidst broken safety glass.
There is the sound of French being shouted, then BLAM BLAM BLAM!
One of the FBI agents in the car screams.
Mailan pulls out a gun and aims it under the open door. “Run!” he yells at me.
“What about you?!” I shriek.
“I’ll be fine – NOW GO!”
I take off in the opposite direction, running as fast as I can.
The chatter of gunfire erupts behind me, and I hear bullets plink! into metal.
The attackers are Epicurus’s men – they have to be.
I want to scream at Duplass, So do you believe me now, asshole?
But then I think about Mailin lying there in the glass, fighting for his life.
I want to help – but there’s nothing I can do.
So I run.
67
Duplass said something about the cops being only three blocks away, but I have no idea where the station is. I’m running for my life in a city where I don’t read or speak the language.
The gunfire is intensifying behind me, and I hear more shouting in French.
Cars all around me are backing up, running over the curb, doing whatever they can to get away. I can see the terror on the faces of the drivers.
I�
��d be terrified, too, if I were witnessing a gun battle on the street.
As I pass a traffic intersection, my eyes go directly to the camera mounted inconspicuously atop the light.
Epicurus is watching – he has to be.
Up ahead there is a Metro station. I know that only because of the word ‘Metro.’
I run towards the stairs thinking If I can get on a train, I can get away.
But then I realize that I have no money. Sure, it would be great if I could jump the turnstiles, but if something happens – if I get stopped by a guard, if the trains don’t come, if I miss it – then I’ve trapped myself in a hole in the ground with only one exit.
Not to mention there is a shit-ton of surveillance cameras everywhere.
There’s nowhere I can go that he can’t watch me. Cameras are everywhere –
And then, in the distance, I see the one place where there aren’t any cameras. Not inside, anyway – because it was built over 700 years ago.
Notre Dame Cathedral.
I start running straight towards the 14th century.
68
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m running towards the world’s most famous church, but on the way I say a silent prayer for Mailin. I hope to God he makes it.
I wonder if I will.
On the way, I look behind me several times.
There’s at least three of them, all in black, all wearing masks. They’re far behind me – over a football field’s length away – but they’re there. And they follow me around every blind corner, through every shortcut, into every tree-lined side street. I try to shake them, but I never can.
It makes sense, though. Epicurus is guiding them. He can see everything with the dozens of cameras I pass every city block, and he’s giving them directions. The hunter controlling his hounds.
They don’t fire on me, but that makes sense, too. They want me alive… as bait.
Which is why I can’t be caught.
My side is aching as I reach the giant square outside the cathedral. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people are milling around – taking pictures, reading signs, strolling and seeing the sights.
Maybe I can lose the mercenaries in the crowd.
BLAM BLAM BLAM!
Gunshots shatter the air.
The entire crowd looks past me in horror. I know what they see: masked men with guns.
Terrorists! they think, and all those hundreds of people scream and scatter, leaving the square completely empty within seconds.
So much for losing my pursuers in the crowd.
I sprint across the courtyard and head for the main church door. Normally there would have been a line; normally a guard would have stopped me. But the line has long since dispersed, and the guard is freaking out on his radio as the gunmen reach the square.
I head inside the church, where it’s another world entirely. In spite of my panic, I’m struck by the breathtaking beauty around me. Vaulted ceilings reach a hundred feet overhead; gigantic arches stretch above dark recesses lit with chandeliers. Blue and pink light filter through the stained glass at the far end of the cathedral.
Some distant part of my brain makes a note that I should come back here someday – if I survive.
Tourists stand around in shock and watch me run past them. Some horrible vulgarian has desecrated the peace and solitude of the cathedral! Then they hear the BANG BANG BANG of gunshots just outside the front of the church, and everyone starts screaming and trying to find a place to hide.
I run down the center aisle and to the left of the altar. A priest is guiding fleeing visitors through a door; I figure it’s my best shot, and so I follow the herd through a passageway that finally dumps me back outside.
I run out onto the green grass and pause amongst the trees. I feel like I’m going to die – there’s a stitch in my side that’s sharp as a scalpel, and it feels like molten lead is in my lungs as I gasp for breath.
I can’t run any farther.
They’re going to get me.
There’s nowhere to turn.
And then… like something out of a dream… I hear Grant’s voice.
“Eve!”
He’s far away, but he’s shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Eve!”
Where…?
I follow the sound of his voice across a pedestrian’s walkway to the edge of the Seine River, only a hundred feet from the church.
“EVE!”
I look over the side of the stone wall.
Thirty feet below, Grant is in a speedboat. Some man I’ve never seen before is at the wheel.
“EVE!” he cries out. “JUMP IN THE WATER!”
“How did you – ?” I yell, but at that same moment I see the laptop and the backpack beside him in the rear seat of the boat.
The GPS tracker, the one I stuffed in my bra.
That’s how he found me.
“HURRY!” Grant yells. “JUMP IN THE WATER!”
The river is thirty feet down. I am not happy to be doing this – but behind me, I hear the shouts of the gunmen as they exit the church.
“Oh God,” I cry out as I clamber over the wall and jump.
69
The water comes at me so fast. A split second later I’m engulfed in cold, wet darkness. It brings back the memory of when Grant and I parachuted into the English Channel, seemingly an eternity ago – even though it was only three days.
I thrash back up to the surface, where strong hands hoist me out of the water and onto the boat.
“GO, GO!” I hear Grant scream.
Suddenly the boat lurches into motion beneath me, and we take off like a shot across the water.
I cough and open my eyes to see Grant looking at me like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever seen in his life.
Then he kisses me, hard and passionate, with the intensity of terror turned into joy.
For a brief moment, there is nothing else in the world. Nothing else matters, except that I’m reunited with him.
He pulls back to look at me, and clutches my wet hair in his hands as he laughs. His eyes glitter and dance as he drinks me in.
“Are you okay?!” he asks.
I nod. My heart hasn’t quite recovered from the adrenaline tidal wave of the last few minutes, but I’m alive, and that’s enough.
“You tracked me?” I ask.
“Yes, from the second we left. I knew something was wrong when I heard the gunshots, but we were already across the river and couldn’t get back in time. Traffic turned into a gridlock. So I called Pierre – ”
Here he gestures to the young guy at the wheel, skimming the boat over the water.
“ – he picked me up, and we tracked you to Notre Dame.”
I start weeping, I’m so relieved. Once again I skirted death by the narrowest of margins – and found my way back into the arms of the man I love.
“Babe?” he says.
“Yes?”
“I take it all back.” He grins. “You were right – the GPS was genius – the best idea ever.”
I laugh through my tears. “Can I get that in writing?”
He laughs with me. “I’ll have it engraved on a gold plaque, and you can hang it anywhere you want.”
Before I can say anything else there is an ominous sound overhead. I hear it often in Los Angeles: the whup-whup-whup of a police helicopter flying low, searching for criminals at night.
Except it’s daytime, and it’s Paris… and it isn’t the police.
It’s a black military-style helicopter, complete with a machine gun in the open side door. It appears out of the city and swoops over the river, then starts flying parallel with the speed boat.
Grant reaches into the backpack and pulls out the pistol – but before he can even point it, the machine gunner opens fire.
Not at us, mind you. He could have easily shredded us into bits, but he doesn’t.
Instead, it’s a warning shot that tracks right next to us in the river. A hundred tiny explosions on
the water’s surface, just feet away from the boat.
Grant throws the gun back in the bag and puts his hands up. No more shots are fired.
We watch helplessly as two mercenaries latch rappelling ropes onto the helicopter and position themselves on the landing skids.
They’re going to jump off and board us.
Grant yells something at Pierre in French, then tells me, “Hang on!”
Suddenly the boat drops in speed and does a spine-wrenching U-turn in the middle of the Seine. Within seconds we accelerate to full power in the opposite direction –
But the helicopter merely circles around and follows us again.
Horror is slowly overtaking me – but it swallows me whole when I look at Grant’s face.
All I see there is utter hopelessness.
Then he looks at me, and now I see fear.
Not for himself – no. Fear for me.
Grant stares back up at the helicopter. “He’s always one step ahead…”
“There has to be some way to outsmart him,” I say, trying to bargain with the universe. “Isn’t there a covered boat dock we could go into? Or maybe some sort of water entry to the catacombs?”
Grant yells a question at Pierre.
The young man looks grim as he shakes his head ‘no.’
Grant looks back up at the skies. “They only want me…” he says to himself in a voice so low that I understand him more by reading his lips than by hearing him over the boat engine’s roar.
Then he gets a look on his face. A sudden flash of inspiration, followed by steely resolve.
“Do you still have that transmitter?” he asks.
“Yes – why?”
“Give it to me.”
“But – ”
“Just do it!”
I dig in my bra and pull out the tiny circle of metal.
He takes it from me, then kisses me hard. He looks into my eyes and yells, “Come find me!”
Then, with his back to the helicopter, he pops the tracker in his mouth and steps off the speeding boat into the water.
The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) Page 19
