The tiny boat tore through the teal water, leaving a white froth behind it.
In another minute, the boat and the men reached Flirting with Disaster, which was reversing direction. Propellers, or whatever was under there that made the boat go, churned and roiled the blue saltwater.
The crew hauled the tender inside the yacht.
Flirting with Disaster motored toward the break in the sea wall and into the open Mediterranean Sea.
A moment later, the guys climbed the stairs to the main deck where Gen and Roxanne were waiting.
Maxence stomped up first, laughing at the other two.
Casimir was chewing out Maxence, reading him the riot act about how he could not damn well disappear like that from Monaco and freak everyone out. “We flew here at two in the damn morning, Max! We thought some asshole had kidnapped you and was holding a gun to your head. Gen threatened to rip Pierre apart with her teeth if he had anything to do with it. You cannot disappear like that.”
Roxanne smirked at her husband. “You tell him, buckeroo.”
Maxence tried to explain himself, “I had to get Simone Maina onto a flight out of Genoa. Her husband’s an asshole and hurt her, and she’s pregnant. She’s on her way back to Mauritius now, where her family will take care of her. I had to watch her plane take off.”
Gen sucked in a breath, trying not to throttle him. Yep, Maxence had been off playing Sir Galahad or Sir Lancelot or whatever, because he would rescue any maiden in distress.
“She’ll be okay now,” Max said. “She’s beyond Estebe’s reach. I’d like to see him try to get to her once she’s on Mauritius. Her family would make sure he never washed up on the beach.”
Arthur, stalwart British gentleman that he was, did not harangue Maxence. He placed his feet firmly on the steps as he ascended to the main deck.
Maxence was laughing at Casimir’s ongoing diatribe. “I wasn’t in any danger!”
Casimir continued quarreling with Max as the yacht pitched under their feet. “Estebe Fournier wants to cut off your head and drop it overboard for the sharks! You are most certainly in danger!”
“In a week, he’ll forget all about who gave Simone a ride to the airport and go back to screwing his cabin staff. Estebe’s always had the attention span of a hyperactive Chihuahua.”
Arthur reached the top of the staircase but didn’t stop walking. He shoved past Casimir and advanced on Max.
Gen suspected that her husband wasn’t going to be able to keep it British. Arthur put on an excellent veneer of a calm and slightly bored English lord, but he was a deeply emotional man under it all.
Arthur grabbed Maxence around his neck fiercely, practically clamping him in a headlock.
Directly after dangerous situations, staunchly English Arthur became—gasp—a hugger.
Maxence’s dark eyes bulged in surprise.
Gen stood back, smiling, and watched her husband squeeze his eyes shut and whisper angrily to Maxence, “You’d better never do this ever again, you gormless twatwaffle.”
Maxence clapped his arms around Arthur’s shoulders. “I won’t. I didn’t know Pierre was going to call you guys. He usually doesn’t care if I’m incommunicado for months.”
Arthur broke off and shoved Maxence back, stalking away to stand beside Gen. He stared at the sea behind them as Flirting with Disaster accelerated to a faster cruising speed, though not all the way to the breakneck rate at which they’d traveled to Genoa.
Gen very quietly moved her hand, tangling her fingers with her husband’s.
Arthur gripped her hand tightly and continued to stare at the sea and sky, his face impassive, as he composed himself.
Slowing down for a few minutes and the boat’s current, more sedate pace calmed her stomach a bit. If she drank some ginger ale now, Gen might survive this without blowing chunks. She announced, “Come on, folks. It gets windy on the decks when this boat gets up to speed. Let’s go down and have a drink before we get back to Monaco.”
In one of the lounging areas on a lower deck, where the entire back wall was an enormous window that overlooked the yacht’s wake, they settled on long couches.
The staff handed them drinks. Gen asked for a ginger ale, which wasn’t as good as Issouf’s pregnancy tea but still hit the spot.
When they had all taken a breath or two, Gen asked them, “Should we be going back to Monaco?”
Casimir waved a finger around them, indicating the yacht. “I think Xan would be pissed if I kept his boat.”
“Xan?” Maxence asked, looking up from his triple scotch. “This is Alexandre’s yacht? I thought I recognized it.”
“Yeah, he’s a client of mine,” Casimir said, sipping a cocktail.
Max nodded. “Oh, yeah. Intellectual property rights.”
They weren’t talking about the obvious thing Gen needed them to discuss. She announced, “Let me put it another way. I don’t think Maxence should go back to Monaco.”
The others pondered this for a moment.
Maxence said, “Nothing’s going to happen. I’m only staying for another week, anyway.”
“I don’t think you should go there at all,” Gen said. “Between Estebe and Pierre, you have a problem.”
Maxence stared into his scotch, a frown gathering. “Yeah.”
“Maybe you should go to Paris,” Gen suggested. “Arthur and I will be in Paris for a while. We can hang out.”
Arthur cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Gen asked him.
Arthur said, “We’re needed at home.”
Enough said. “Well then, I guess we’ll be heading back to the UK. Maybe you could go to Amsterdam with Roxanne and Caz?”
Casimir nodded, but Roxanne shook her head. “I got a text from our office a few hours ago. They got swamped, Cash. We need to get back to Los Angeles.”
Maxence turned his tumbler in his palm. “I think I could probably go to Paris, anyway. I can get lost in Paris. You’re right. Monaco isn’t the place for me right now.”
Casimir stood. “I’ll talk to the captain about taking us up to Nice instead of to Monaco. My plane is still there.” He walked off.
Roxanne puttered after him, “Hey, wait. Take a look at this brief.”
Gen should take a look at her clerk’s emails soon.
Ah, back to normal life for the four of them, then.
Maxence stood, still contemplating his drink. “I need to make a phone call or two while we’ve still got cellular signal. I’ll be back in a moment.” He walked toward the deck, and his phone chimed as he turned it on.
Good Lord, Max had his phone turned off. No wonder no one had been able to raise him. Gen returned to sipping her ginger ale.
Arthur was sitting beside her, staring into a vodka tonic and frowning.
She took his hand again. “Are you all right, my love?”
“Of course,” he said, because he always did.
Gen mentioned, as if it were a casual subject, “It was worrisome when Max was missing.”
“Indeed.”
“Are you going to bawl him out some more?”
“I think the time for that has passed.”
“What’s up now, my love?”
He pivoted toward her on the velvet couch, and the sunlight shining off the sea outside the bay window touched the hard slashes of his cheekbones. “I shouldn’t have let you come to Monaco.”
“I don’t remember you having much say in the matter,” she said.
His silver eyes were level and sober as he poured his heart out. “You can’t do this anymore. I can’t have you risking even your slightest discomfort, let alone your safety. I need you to be safe.”
She’d known this was coming. “Okay. I’ll be better.”
“I need you and Roxanne to stay away from us tonight, away from Casimir and me, while we get Maxence settled in Paris. I don’t want you anywhere in his vicinity.”
“It’s that important?”
He nodded, his blue-gray eyes still so ser
ious.
“All right. We’ll stay in the hotel or go out, and we’ll stay away from you boys in Paris. I’ll clear it with Roxanne.”
Arthur leaned back and lifted his drink. “Good. The captain can surely return Flirting with Disaster back to Monaco without us aboard.”
“You sound worried about Max.”
“He’s not stable. He might do inadvisable things.”
“Like—” Gen pressed him, worried.
“Like drink himself into a bad situation or take up with unsuitable persons.”
“Oh, so not—”
“I don’t think so, or not this time, anyway. Caz and I need to get him settled. I need you to be a good girl and not put yourself in any danger.”
“All right.” She rolled her eyes and patted her pregnant stomach. “I’ll be a good girl until little Sam-Houston is born.”
Arthur raised one eyebrow, and a bit of twinkle returned to his silvery eyes. “Edward.”
Chapter Eighteen
Phone Calls
Maxence
Maxence stood on the other side of the yacht from where Casimir and Gen were talking on their phones.
The noontime sun sparkled on the wavelets. Salt spray flying off the sapphire water stung his face, but he was used to the elements. Such minor things didn’t bother him.
He took a deep breath before dialing and held the phone to his ear while it rang.
A man’s voice answered. “Quentin Sault. Is that you, Maxence?”
Quentin was his brother Pierre’s security chief. “I heard you were looking for me.”
His voice was gruff. “Those were our orders.”
“And your orders after that?” Maxence asked.
“Custody.”
“And then?”
Sault’s pause spoke volumes. “We weren’t informed.”
Maxence breathed for a moment and watched the horizon, a slash of bright blue above and dark blue below. His heart fell, not in fear but with resignation. His incredibly rich and powerful older brother was a psychopath, a family trait Max hadn’t inherited.
Maxence had been making noises all their lives that he wanted to give up his rights to the family fortune and walk away.
It may have been the only reason he’d survived this long.
If Max had been ambitious, Pierre would have known how to deal with him. Instead, Maxence was more dangerous to Pierre than if he’d been a challenger.
Maxence asked, “Has he become paranoid? Like, clinically? Dangerously?”
A sigh. “He’s desperate. His wife is missing. There are consequences for him, especially now. Other than that, I could not comment.”
Pierre’s wife, Flicka, wasn’t exactly missing. Pierre, Quentin Sault, Maxence, and a few others knew exactly where she was.
Indeed, Maxence had seen Flicka just the day before in Geneva.
Which was why he’d called Quentin Sault.
“Quentin, I need a phone number for someone in Wulfram von Hannover’s security staff.” Wulfram von Hannover was Flicka’s older brother, and he was richer, more powerful, and probably more psychopathic than Pierre. Max had never been able to metaphorically pin Wulfram down and discover what he was underneath.
However, Flicka loved her much-older brother with a child’s intensity, which suggested Wulfram presented a cold, cruel face to the world but was quite different in his heart.
The exact opposite of Pierre, in other words.
Sault said, “You can’t tell von Hannover where she is.”
“That’s why I need a number for someone in his organization.” If Max rang up von Hannover and told him where Flicka was, he would have immediately launched a full-frontal assault with his Welfenlegion security people, and the guys holding her would kill her. “If there’s a hint, a rumor, and then a low-key snatch operation, maybe her captors won’t see it coming. I remember what happens when a rescue operation goes wrong.”
Sweat prickled on his neck, but he refused to feel it.
Another sigh whooshed in Maxence’s ear.
Sault was sighing a lot lately. It was unbecoming in a security chief.
Max said, “I just need a number.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll give you the number for Julien Bodilsen of Rogue Security. There are channels to get a message from Rogue Security to von Hannover’s people, and maybe it’ll look like it came from somewhere else.” Sault reeled off a US phone number.
“Thanks, Quentin.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“I’m not coming back to Monaco. I’ve got a new assignment. I’ll be there for six months or so.”
“Where will you be in the meantime?”
“I’m sorry, Quentin.” Telling the man who had been tasked with arresting him and perhaps dropping him over the side of a boat where he was going seemed like a stupid move.
“Right. Good luck, Maxence.”
They hung up, and Maxence dialed the number Sault had given him.
The boat pitched under his feet as they crested over a swell. Max grabbed the railing for balance.
The line hesitated and then rang.
A man’s voice answered, “Bodilsen.”
Maxence asked, “Can you get a message to Wulfram von Hannover’s team?”
“Who is this?”
“Can you talk to them or not?” Maxence asked him.
A cough. “We liaise with his security personnel. I was formerly employed by von Hannover. We go way back.”
Maxence stared over the open water that spread sapphire and silver to the horizon and prayed he was doing the right thing. “Tell them this: Flicka von Hannover is being held in Geneva, Switzerland, on the estate of Valerian Mirabaud.” Maxence recited the address.
“Thank you, sir,” Bodilsen said. “We’ll get right on it.”
“You’re sure you can get that message to him?”
“Absolutely. He will hear it in five minutes or less. I would expect events to occur soon.”
“They literally have a gun to her head. It needs to be an exfiltration, not a military assault. She also has a female toddler with her, and she won’t leave without the child. Make sure you get both of them, or she won’t come with you. There may be a man with her in there, too. I’m not sure. You’ll need to surveil to figure that out.”
“I guarantee it will happen.”
Maxence let out a deep, pent-up breath. “Thank you.”
“And I thank you.” The phone went dead.
Maxence stared over the sparkling water, his unease reduced.
Ever since Pierre had sent Max to Switzerland to talk to Flicka yesterday morning, he hadn’t known how to get a message to someone about where she was being held. Flicka had told him not to because it might make it more dangerous for her. Pierre had forbidden him to tell anyone, right up to when Maxence had punched him in the face.
The salt breeze prickled the raw abrasions on his knuckles.
Back channels were always the best.
Wulfram would know Flicka’s whereabouts within minutes.
And Maxence could relax.
Chapter Nineteen
Traitor
Julien Bodilsen
Julien, Primary Operator for Rogue Security, tapped his phone screen and hung up.
Though he held a pencil in his fingers, the piece of paper on his desk was blank.
His phone beeped.
A text came through from a contact called “Q,” Did you receive a call?
He typed back, It’s taken care of.
Julien returned to looking over a spreadsheet detailing the ammunition and firearm inventories for Rogue Security, a task he hated.
Not that he would be doing it much longer.
His alternate streams of income were quickly making him wealthy enough to retire. He figured he’d be done in six more months.
And then, he’d walk away from Rogue Security forever.
Because that’s what mercenaries did.
Chapter Twenty
Paris
, Too
Casimir
Casimir sipped his drink and savored the hint of smoke in the scotch.
Yeah, he was drinking a little much on this trip, but he’d be back to being a sober daddy when they got back to California.
He had to enjoy it while he could.
The three of them sat together in a lounge area in the hotel bar, talking it out before Casimir and Arthur had to retrieve their wives and take flights to where duty was calling them.
Casimir and Arthur had checked Maxence into a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel George V, where Arthur had been staying before the phone call eighteen hours before. Arthur had instructed the valets to pack their luggage while they had a drink. He was being evasive about his travel plans back to London for himself and Gen, probably out of habit.
Casimir would have to take Roxanne back to Amsterdam for a night to retrieve their toddler daughter before they returned to Los Angeles and their law office. Rox had been understating when she said that they were needed back in California. The law office was drowning in new cases and sinking fast. They needed him and Rox back tout suite.
Besides, Casimir missed his daughter. People joked that the toddler had him wrapped around her tiny, chubby fingers, but they didn’t know the half of it. He was sure he would have painted toenails before she went to kindergarten.
Roxanne and Gen had gone out for a girls’ supper. They’d join the guys later, when it was time to leave Paris.
Casimir’s eyes felt gritty. He could probably get some sleep on the short flight to Amsterdam.
But, in the meantime, he was having a drink with his oldest friends.
They counted on each other.
The air was warm in the darkened hotel bar, and they’d ordered ice in their drinks and rolled up their shirt sleeves to their elbows to cool off.
Their matching tattoos on their right forearms bore their story, of course. The three shields—one for each of them—surrounded a Celtic knot that represented their lifelong friendship. Arthur had designed that one and each of their backpieces.
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