She took him to Le Papillon Bleu, a hidden treasure on a side street in Le Marais where locals dined by candlelight on fresh mussels and clams from Port du Belon while they listened to accented American jazz performed live. A stunning young French reincarnation of Billie Holiday sang “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” with a voice that almost made them forget Louis Armstrong’s version. Well, almost.
They ordered aperitifs, and after Rook surveyed the menu and pronounced the place quite a find, Nikki gave him the unasked-for assurance that it was her first time there. “You mean this hasn’t been boyfriend tested, boyfriend approved?”
“On the contrary,” she said. “Of course, I had heard all about Le Papillon Bleu, but ten years ago, as a student, I didn’t have enough money to eat in a place like this.”
He took her hand in his across the crisp white linen. “So this qualifies as a special occasion.”
“Count on it.”
They walked off their meal wandering hand in hand past the quaint shops of Le Marais. With the jazz singer’s “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and “Body and Soul” still floating in their heads, they ended up at the Place des Vosges, an immaculately maintained square surrounded on four sides by historic brick-faced homes with elegant blue slate roofs. “This place looks like the rich uncle of Gramercy Park,” she said as they followed the path into the garden.
“Yeah. But without the sneak attacks by rug-wielding cops.” As soon as he said that, they heard a shoe crunch on gravel behind them and she turned abruptly. A lone man hobbled along the sidewalk outside the park on a bad leg and continued on, whistling to himself. Rook said to her, “You need to relax. Nobody’s going to bother us. Not on our big ROTC.”
“ROTC?”
“Hey, I give. At this point, I’m just throwing out capital letters in any order.”
They had the park to themselves, and she led him to a bench under the trees, where they sat in the shadows together, nestling against each other. The city traffic floated like distant white noise, merely blocks away but buffered by the uniform row of stately buildings surrounding the square and the gentle splash of fountains. As they so often did, without a word or a signal, they leaned into each other at the same time and kissed. The wine and the warm April evening scented by night blooms and his taste released Nikki from the weight of her cares and she pressed herself against him. He encircled her with his arms and their kiss grew in its intensity until they both parted lips, breathing hard as if suddenly remembering that, to live, they also needed air.
“Maybe we should take this back to the hotel,” he whispered.
“Mm-hm. But I don’t want to move. I want to freeze this moment.” They kissed again, and while they did, he unfastened the top button of her blouse. She reached for his lap and held him. He moaned, and she said, “You know, I don’t think my New York credential would help me beat an indecent exposure.”
“Or a lewd act in public,” he said, slipping his hand in her bra.
“OK, I know we can make this much more interesting back in our bed. Let’s do it.”
They crossed through the park in silence, arms slung around each other’s waist. As they walked, he felt her shoulders and biceps tauten slightly. He said, “As long as you insist on thinking about the case, why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind? Maybe we could find some kinky way to incorporate it into foreplay. With handcuffs, of course.”
“You could tell?”
“Please. I’d like to think I’m more to you than diverting wit and arm candy. But it’s OK if you’re preoccupied, I know this is big.”
“Sorry. Something from today keeps bugging me. Something I know I’ve overlooked, and I’m reaching for it but I can’t grasp what it is. That’s not like me.” Her reply was only partially true. Nikki did have a feeling of missing a step and it did pester her. But she only offered him that as a cover to avoid the deeper, more personal issue she had been mulling all day.
Rook yanked her hip to bump his, to shake her up. “Give yourself a break. You’ve had a lot coming at you.” The nod she gave in the dark read to him as noncommittal, so, as they strolled on, he continued, “I mean, beyond the obvious mill you’ve been through this past week, some of the things you learned about your mother…? Those are going to take you a while to digest.”
“Yeah, I know.” She felt her throat constrict and swallowed hard, which didn’t seem to do much good. How could Rook know her so well, be so attuned as to see through her armor? To get it-that it wasn’t really the murder case per se she was stuck on at that moment. But he didn’t know the depth of it. Rook couldn’t know that right then, she wasn’t walking through a storybook park across from Victor Hugo’s home, holding him while he hummed “Stardust” off-key. In her mind, she was back in that hospital room feeling relief that her mother had been working as a spy to serve her country, only to have the rug pulled from under her by the words she couldn’t shake.
She could still see Tyler Wynn regarding her from his pillow. The old CIA man saying her mother was one hell of a spy. And how “the sense of mission it gave her fulfilled her like nothing else could. Not even her music.”
Nikki completed the rest of the thought herself: Not even me.
Tires screeched. Light blinded her and shook her from her reverie. She and Rook were getting ambushed- boxed in at the street corner-sandwiched between two dark Peugeot 508s with blacked-out windows and their high beams frying them.
Rook moved quickly and instinctively, sliding to step in front of her. But footsteps approached from behind them, too. Heat pivoted to see the man from before, the whistler, rushing toward them, his bad leg miraculously healed. Four others-two muscle men from each car-converged from both sides, grabbing for them. By reflex, she reached for her hip. But her gun was back in New York.
In a flash, two of them enveloped Rook and dragged him to one of the vehicles while a third man appeared from the passenger seat and pulled a cloth sack over his head. Heat dodged the first of the other pair when he reached for her, but the one coming up from behind, the whistler, bagged her head, also. Disoriented and surprised, she felt the powerful arms of the other two goons wrap her up in a bear hug and lift her feet off the sidewalk. Nikki kicked air, squirmed, and hollered, but the big men had her overmatched.
They bundled Heat into the backseat of the other car and wedged her between their wide shoulders when they got in. Her shouts mixed with the scream of rubber on pavement as the Peugeot accelerated. The car had started roaring up the block, when she felt a sharp stab in her upper arm.
TWELVE
When Heat woke up, she couldn’t move her body. She tried to figure out where she was. It was too dark to see, but she knew that she was lying on her side, nearly fetal. Her knees felt cramped, pulled up to her chest as they were, but when Nikki tried to extend her legs, she couldn’t; the soles of her shoes were up against a solid wall. A shiver ran through her. This was exactly the position in which she had found Nicole Bernardin inside her mother’s suitcase.
Her arm itched where the needle had pierced her, but when she tried to reach for it to give it a scratch, something stopped her. Heat didn’t need to see to know what caused that. She was handcuffed.
To find out how much range of motion she had, Nikki gave the cuffs a tug. And then came a bizarre sensation that made her wonder if she was hallucinating under whatever drug they had injected her with. The handcuffs… tugged back.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” said Rook. “Can you do me a favor? Your right elbow is digging into my ribs.”
Still foggy from her sedation, it took Nikki a moment to process all this. Wherever she was, Rook was there, too, wedged beside her. Or under her. Or a bit of both. She drew in her right arm as close as she could to her body. “How’s that?”
“Heaven.”
“Rook, do you know where we are?”
“Not sure. They gave me something to knock me out. I felt a little prick.”
“Would you stop?”
“Sorry. I think it, I say it. Anyway, judging from the scent of steel-belted radial, I’m guessing we’re either spooning the Michelin Man or we’re locked in the trunk of a car.”
