Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3) (25 page)

His voice remained sweet, but that wolf-like stare never left my face.

Which again, might have worried me, if I thought he’d remember any of this in a few hours.

Still, I felt bad for him in a way. He was just doing his job.

“Of course,” I murmured, smiling back, and pretending I didn’t see the harder stare behind his smile. “I’ll call them tonight...
 
since it’s business hours there.”

“Excellent.” He beamed, holding out his hands in a kind of thanks. “Thank you so very much...
 
both of you. Your help is most appreciated.”

I noticed he never really took that harder stare off me, though.

“WHO WERE THOSE guys?” I asked Nick in a murmur as we walked through the last checkpoint in customs and towards baggage claim.

Nick shrugged, not looking at me as he walked.

“DST,” he murmured, meaning The Directorate of Territorial Surveillance, their domestic intelligence department. He gave me a bare glance. “...Maybe DGST. Jean’s done stints for the Ministry of Defense. He and Lauren both technically work for the
Gendarmerie
now, but with specialized units to combat wider domestic threats. I told them to bring in whoever they needed to get us through the airport in one piece...
 
and to ID these fuckers.”

I nodded. I was familiar with both sets of initials, having worked in intelligence myself.

I also knew what Nick was driving at.

His friends worked for anti-terrorism units connecting French intelligence to the national police force. “DGSE” was France’s foreign intelligence service and, if I remembered correctly, stood for “General Directorate for External Surveillance.” It was the counterpoint to DST, and focused on threats from outside of the country.

Unlike the United States, France didn’t have its own Homeland Security Department, but the presence of either or both intelligence services definitely suggested they viewed Lucky as that kind of threat, meaning a potential political threat as well as a criminal one.

I wondered if they’d gotten that idea from Nick, too.

We found Angel waiting for us by our flight’s baggage claim carousel.

Since we’d gotten through customs so quickly, most of our flight’s passengers were still standing there, bleary-eyed, and waiting for their luggage to appear.

Angel finished before us, since Airport Security wouldn’t give her access to much.

They did let her look at surveillance footage for the customs area, but unfortunately, the footage wasn’t particularly helpful. Angel said it showed the same two guys walking from the parking lot through baggage claim and back through customs, past numerous check points and without anyone seeming to notice them. They strolled through the final customs checkpoint in plain sight of five armed soldiers and three people manning passport booths, without anyone so much as blinking.

No one appeared to have seen them at all until a few seconds before they got hit by those tranquilizer darts.

Nick and Angel didn’t ask me how I’d seen them when no one else could, but I guessed they knew it had something to do with the psychic thing. I didn’t offer any additional information, but really, there wasn’t much I could have told them, even if I wanted to.

And frankly, it wasn’t my priority right then.

I had the radio frequency identification or “RFID” tracker app open on my phone before we’d even gotten our bags off the baggage claim carousel. That had been my one and only condition with Black, when he wanted to put an RFID chip in my arm in Bangkok.

I’d agreed to the chip, but only if he did the same––and only if he gave me access to the data so I could track him the same way he could me.

Black was in the center of the city, not far from the Louvre.

According to the GPS map, Black might actually be
in
the Louvre. Which was more than a little strange, given that it was just after two o’clock in the morning, Paris time.

I could tell I was going to get an earful from Nick about those two seers they’d tranked, but he didn’t say anything until we’d already collected our luggage and gone to the rental car booth inside the terminal. He finally turned to me once we were standing by the curb, waiting for the company to deliver our car.

“Are you going to explain what I saw in there, Miri?” he said.

I blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Nick gave me a warning look, folding his arms. “Who the fuck are those guys? What’s up with their eyes? Why do they all...” He made a jerked motion with his hand, the leather creaking on his beat-up leather jacket. “...Look like him?”

I knew who Nick meant. He meant Black.

I gave him a warning look, right as a car rolled up in front of where we stood. The car stopped altogether when Angel flagged the driver down. Only then did I notice the placard with the car rental company’s logo on the windshield.

The driver put the car in park then hopped out of the dark blue sedan, handing Angel the registration paperwork on a clipboard along with a pen.

Nick and I watched her deal with him for a few seconds, then Nick scowled back in my general direction.

“This isn’t just about people being trained as ‘psychics,’ is it Miri?” he said.

I shrugged, focusing past him as the same rental car employee started loading our baggage into the trunk of the car.

When I didn’t answer, Nick pressed me again.

“Is this about genetic experimentation of some kind?” he said, lowering his voice when I shot him another warning glance. “...Something military? Whatever it is, Black’s obviously involved. They all fucking
look
like him, Miriam. Or were you going to tell me you didn’t notice?”

When I put a finger to my lips, glancing at the rental car employee, Nick’s scowl only deepened. Meanwhile, that same employee had taken the placard out of the windshield and was indicating for Angel to sign on one more line on the form attached to the clipboard.

“...Kind of weird, wouldn’t you say?” Nick added, still in a near-whisper. “That both of Lucky’s guys just
happen
to look like your boyfriend? Are they brothers, maybe? Cousins? Or were you going to say it’s all just a coincidence?”

Remembering how seers had a tendency to call one another “brother” and “sister,” I pursed my lips, but still didn’t answer him. The rental car guy gave Angel a final wave and disappeared through the revolving doors of the airport terminal.

“What are you guys arguing about?” she said, walking towards us and jangling the keys. “You’re not being particularly subtle, whatever it is.”

Not answering either of them, I walked directly to the car. Snapping the rear-door handle with one hand, I opened it and slid into the back seat, slamming the door behind me and leaning back with a sigh. I was too tired and worried about Black to field Nick’s questions very well. Still, I knew I had to come up with something to tell them. If not now, then soon.

Angel drove.

Nick sat shotgun, looking back at me off and on the whole drive into the city.

“You’re really not going to tell us what’s up?” Nick pressed.

“What are you talking about?” Angel glanced at Nick then at me in the rearview mirror.

“Those fucking guys.” Nick turned, looking at her. “They looked like Black.”

“What guys? You mean the ones who went after us in customs?” She glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyebrows rising. “Did they really look like Black, doc?”

Folding my arms, I let out a sigh, doing my best clinical voice.

“Not really, no.” I ignored Nick’s derisive snort, looking at Angel in the rearview mirror. “But there are...
 
similarities.”

Nick let out another disbelieving grunt.

“Like what?” Angel said, glancing at him before she looked at me. “What kinds of similarities?”

“Like weird fucking eyes,” Nick said. “They just
looked
like him. I can’t explain it. Roughly the same age, same build, black hair, weird ethnicity stuff. Unusually tall. All the things wrong with Black, they were wrong with these guys too. The had similar features, for fuck’s sake. They didn’t look like him exactly, but there was definitely
something...”

Nick grunted again, giving me a harder stare.

“...And they looked like damned underwear models,” he added in a grumble.

Angel let out a laugh. “You mean they’re hot?”

“Yes,” Nick said, his voice devoid of humor. “And I’m serious, Ang. There’s something really fucking weird here, and the doc knows more about it than she’s saying.”

Sighing, I folded my arms tighter, also crossing my legs.

“Nick, you’re overreacting,” I said. “And okay, I agree there’s something...
 
strange...
 
about the way they look. But it’s not important right now, okay?”

“Not important now?” Nick gave me an incredulous look.

“It’s not,” I insisted. “I’m telling you, the issue is what they can do, not what they look like. Maybe their looks are connected to the psychic ability...
 
some weird genetic anomaly that makes them look different from other people...” That part was more or less true, even if I couldn’t tell them the extent of it. “...In any case, it’s not the most relevant thing
right now,
is it? What they look like?”

“What
they
look like,” Nick countered, pointing a finger at me in an
ah-ha
kind of way. “Who’s ‘they,’ Miriam? I know you know what I’m talking about. Just the fact that you’re trying to avoid the subject tells me you know more than––”

“Psychics,” I cut in, exhaling. “I meant psychics. Like the kind of psychic Black is. And no, Nick, I don’t know anything more about that than you do.”

Okay, so that wasn’t strictly true. But I couldn’t get into this with them now. If nothing else, it was a distraction none of us could afford, not until we’d found Black.

“You’re saying they’re a separate species, doc?” Angel said, glancing at me again.

I froze. That was a little closer to the mark than I’d intended.

“Why would you say that?” I said.

I saw Nick and Angel exchange another one of their looks.

“Look, we’re here to get Black.” I clenched and unclenched my jaw. “Can we just focus on
that
first? We can talk about conspiracy theories involving genetic experimentation by ex-KGB psychos later, all right? Maybe Black knows something. Use it as motivation to get him out of this alive, if you need to. But we’re not going to discuss this
now.”

Nick gave me another skeptical look. Even so, after he’d studied my eyes a few seconds longer, I saw him decide to shelve it. I continued to hold his stare when he sighed, combing a hand through his black hair.

“Whatever you say, doc,” he muttered.

Rearranging his muscular bulk in the bucket seat so that he faced forward, he glanced at Angel. I saw her quirk an eyebrow in return, but neither of them spoke.

They didn’t have to, really. I already knew this wouldn’t be the last I’d heard about those two seers, or how they looked like Black.

Moreover, I knew their suspicions would only get worse, given where we were going.

Eleven

LOUVRE