The French Detective's Woman (3 page)

“
De merde
,” he softly swore, and reached into his inside pocket for it. He looked down at his newest lover apologetically. “Sorry. I have to answer. It’s probably headquarters.”

She nodded. He could tell she was trying to look nonchalant as he disengaged from her and flipped open the phone, but for a brief second she looked distinctly nervous.

“
Commissaire
Lacroix,” he answered, and her eyes flared even bigger. He gave her a wry smile and lifted a shoulder as he tried to make out through the static who was on the other end of the line.

“
Jean-Marc, tu est la
?”

“I’m here,” he told his second-in-command,
Lieutenant
Pierre Rousselot, whose voice was breaking up. “What’s up,
mec
?”

“Where the hell are you, buried in some basement somewhere?”

“
Club LeCoeur
,” he said a little louder, casting about for a wastebasket. “They must have thick walls.”

“
Club LeCoeur
? Then you know about the robbery,
oui
?”

He straightened, immediately alert. “What robbery?”

“Your Ghost. He’s struck again.”

A sharp spike of angry frustration swamped over Jean-Marc. God
damn
it. God
fucking
damn it. It was like the bastard
knew
exactly when he’d stopped watching.

He paced away from the woman, who’d begun to rearrange her clothing. “The princess?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

“Just as you predicted,” Pierre said. “Say, I thought you were doing surveillance on the Dutch mob?”

“I took a break.”

There was a meaningful pause on the other end. “Ah,
pardon
. Well, you’d better finish quick. In three minutes the place will be crawling with gendarmes, the OCBC, and the Dutch secret service. Apparently the victim has made quite a stink.”

Jean-Marc swiped a hand over his sweaty forehead.
Dieu
. He had to get hold of himself. Any second now his boss, CD Belfort, would be calling, demanding to know if he’d caught the thief—even though Belfort and Saville had denied Jean-Marc’s request for an official police team to follow the princess’s every move. They hadn’t believed the chances of
le Revenant
showing up were high enough to warrant that kind of expense. So Jean-Marc had done it on his own time.

And now he’d fucked up.

He glanced at his lover, who was looking around at the boxes on the shelves, pretending not to listen to his conversation. And just like that his anger evaporated.

Damn. She had been
so
worth fucking up for.

“When will you be here?” he asked Pierre.

“I’m parking now.”

“Meet you at the entrance in two,” he said, and hung up.

He turned to the woman and opened his arms. “Come here,
mon ange
.” His green-eyed angel.

She hesitated, looking uneasy. “You’re a
commissaire
?”

He nodded. “
Commissaire de Police Judiciare
. CPJ Lacroix. But don’t let that worry you. It has nothing to do with us.
Vien ici
.”

She came haltingly, but she came, stepping into his embrace. As he took her in his arms, she let out a nervous giggle. “I can’t believe I let a detective superintendent of the National Police fuck me in a storage closet.”

He smiled and kissed her. “Next time I’ll do it in a more romantic place, I promise.”

Her surprised gaze held his for a moment before it slid to the buttons of his shirt. “Do you have to go now?”

“I’m afraid so. There’s been a robbery. Here, at the club.”

“
Here
?”

“It’s all right. I can vouch for your whereabouts, so you won’t have to hang around for questioning.” He tipped up her chin and gave her another kiss, then softly asked, “Before we go, I want to know your name.”

Her lips parted for a second before she answered, “Ciara.”

“I’m Jean-Marc,” he said. He wanted to kiss her again, and keep kissing her all night. But their time had run out.
For now
. Pulling a business card from his wallet, he wrote on the reverse and handed it to her. “My cell phone number’s on the back. I want you to call me.”

She stared down at it. “Really?”

“Tonight. I should be finished here in a couple of hours.”

Disbelief flitted through her eyes as she looked back up at him. “I, um—”

“I want to see you again.” He took her face in his hands. “There’s something between us, Ciara, I can feel it. Let’s explore this thing, whatever it is.”

Her tongue peeked out then disappeared. “I— I’d like that.”

“
Bon
. Good.” Relief washed through him. For some reason he’d had the crazy notion she would turn him down.

He placed her hand on the crook of his arm and led her out of their private sanctuary, up the stairs and back into the chaos of the main club. As Pierre had warned, police were everywhere, taking down names and addresses of the impatient club-goers and wait-staff who had all been herded into a group in one corner to await their turn for questioning. To the side of the hubbub stood the snooty princess and her entourage cursing at the two uniformed cops preventing them from going anywhere until they’d spoken to a detective. Until Saville arrived, that meant Jean-Marc.

He figured they could wait a bit longer.

Flashing his
carte du requisition
at the guards, he guided Ciara to the front entrance, where they met Pierre, who took one long, appraising look at her, and said, “
Oo-la-la, mec. Très sympathique
.”

“Shut up, Pierre,” he said good-naturedly. Even
le Revenant
slipping through his fingers tonight wasn’t going to spoil his mood. No way would Pierre’s infernal, inevitable teasing.

“CD Belfort is on his way. We better get to work,” his lieutenant said, giving Ciara a shrug. “The boss.”

“Walk me out?” she asked Jean-Marc with a shy smile.

“I’ll put her in a taxi and be right back,” he told Pierre, and they walked out into the warm, black Parisian night.

An explosion of camera flashes went off from the clutch of paparazzi at the entrance, catching them both by surprise.

“
Merde
,” he muttered, shielding her eyes with his jacket lapel. “I’d forgotten about those vultures.” Jean-Marc hated reporters. Especially the unscrupulous barrel-scrapers who worked for the sensationalist tabloids.

A few reporters recognized him and shouted questions. He growled, “No comment,” at them, pushing through the throng to the curb. Wisely, they moved back. An empty cab sat across the street, and Jean-Marc led Ciara over to it.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, giving him a hug. “You better get back.”

“This guy’s timing really stinks,” he muttered.

“Who?”

“The thief, this bastard
le Revenant
. When I catch him, I swear I’ll make him pay dearly.”

She seemed to go pale for a moment, but it must have been a quirk of the light because she hugged him again, then dug around in his jacket pocket with an impish smile. She pulled out her torn panties. “I better take these so you don’t get in trouble.”

“Ah,
non
.” He snagged them from her and tucked them back into his pocket. “These are mine now. I’m going to put them under my pillow so I can dream of you whenever you’re not sharing my bed.” He bent to take her mouth one last time. “Which I surely hope will not be the case tonight.”

“You are a very naughty man,
Commissaire
Lacroix,” she whispered.

“Count on it,” he assured. “You’ll call me? In a couple of hours?”

She kissed him back and hummed out a sigh. “Mmmm.”

“Say it,” he demanded softly. “Swear to me.”

“I’ll call,” she said. “I promise.” Then she got into the taxi, watching him the whole time it pulled away. Just before she was lost in the flow of traffic, she blew him a kiss. The last thing he saw of her was her smile.

But it was a smile so bleak it suddenly struck him square in the gut.

She had lied.

She had no intention of ever seeing him again.

Chapter 2

Ciara felt sick to her stomach as she lost sight of Jean-Marc standing at the curb with his hands in his trouser pockets staring after her. She turned forward and told the taxi driver a corner where he could drop her, close to her apartment on rue du le Chat qui Piche.

Oh. My. God.

She’d just had sex with a CPJ, one of the very men who’d publicly sworn to hunt her down, send her to jail, and throw away the key.

Not that he knew it was
her
they were after. Thank God, everyone still thought
le Revenant
was a man. But
she
knew. As soon as she’d felt those handcuffs at the small of his back she should have taken off like the Roadrunner at the scent of coyote.

But no. She’d gone ahead and had
sex
with the man. And what’s more she’d loved every hot steamy second of it. Even worse, she wanted to do it again. So much so, for a second she’d fooled herself into thinking she could actually make that phone call she’d sworn to him to make.

How had she let this happen?

She covered her face with her hands. And groaned. They smelled of him; musky, erotic, virile. She yanked them away, crossed her arms and stuck her hands under her armpits. But there was no escaping. His scent clung to her everywhere: her hands, her face, her breasts...between her legs. It was like he’d marked her.
His
.

There was also no escaping the hard lumps of the diamond bracelet poking into her arm from the hidden pocket in her dress.
They
marked her as his, too.
His quarry
.

“Jesus, girl, what were you thinking?” she whispered. Hadn’t Etienne’s death taught her anything?

Why hadn’t she worn a disguise
?

At least she hadn’t told him her last name.

She’d have to lie low now. In France, anyway. Her next few jobs she’d do outside the country. Expenses would be a bit higher, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about running into her new lover,
le Commissaire
.

She squeezed her eyes shut and drew her tongue over her parched lips. And tasted him. Deep inside she felt a sharp tug of desire. Her stomach sank even further. If she ever did meet up with him again it would be her downfall for sure. Which would spell ruin not only for her, but to the Orphans as well.

She couldn’t let that happen. Jail was simply not an option.

The taxi pulled up at the entrance to the walking street rue de la Huchette. At the heart of the Latin Quarter, the street was filled with restaurants, shops, students and tourists, but she liked living here. It was cheap, and she blended in well. As soon as she got out, she was assaulted by Davie and Ricardo, two of her Orphans. They’d been waiting for her for some time, judging by the worried relief in their faces as they ran up and grabbed her arms.

“Ciara!
Grazie a Dio
!” Ricardo said rapidly in Italian, a sure sign he was über-upset. Ricardo was seventeen, tall, lanky and the second runaway she’d adopted. Innately cheerful of disposition, a perpetual smile had graced his face ever since five years ago when she’d spirited him away from a distant relative using him for unpaid labor in his Paris construction firm.

But Ricardo was frowning now.

A knot of fear tightened in her already jumpy stomach. “What’s happened?”

Davie tugged at her arm. “It’s Sofie. You have to come with us.”

“Sofie?”

The youngest of the Orphans, and the most fragile both emotionally and physically, Sofie Hassan had run away from home at thirteen, from a horror Ciara couldn’t even contemplate. She had survived working the Pigalle doing whatever she must, until Ciara had found her one day and persuaded her to join them. But her experiences on the streets, and previously with her father, had left her meek and damaged. She was just coming out of it now, two years later.

“Oh, God, is she hurt?” Ciara asked.

“Yes!” Ricardo said, at the same time Davie said, “No. Well, not too badly.”

Ever the pragmatist, sixteen-year old Davie’s conservative aristocratic upbringing had clashed violently with his early discovery that he was gay, but had left him with a level head in a crisis. Ciara leaned on him far more than the others. Far more than she really should.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, herding them back into her taxi and giving the driver the address of the apartment on rue Daguerre that Ciara kept for the Orphans—Davie, Ricardo, Sophie, CoCo, and Hugo. Part of the reasons these kids had all ended up on the streets was an overabundance of adult control. Ciara had earned their confidence by trusting them to live on their own, with her help but not her interference and a minimum of rules.

“It was Beck,” Ricardo said. “He beat up Sofie.”

Ciara’s heart went cold.
Brigadier
Louis Beck of the Paris
Préfecture de Police
was another on the long list of good reasons one should never get involved with a cop. First Etienne. Now Sophie. It always ended badly with cops.
Always
.

Having worked the infamous red light district for thirty years, Beck was as corrupt as they came, a vile specimen of everything evil in a man. But he’d never actually hurt Sofie before. Ciara should have known that would change.

“How bad?”

“A few cuts on the face,” Davie said grimly. “A lot of bruises. She’s gotten quiet.”

“She won’t tell us anything.
Niente
,” Ricardo said, with his expressive Italian gestures. “She just cries.”

“She’ll talk to you,” Davie said.

“Hopefully before Hugo goes after Beck with a switchblade,” Ricardo added.

 “That’s all we’d need,” Ciara muttered. Hugo would do it, too.

The three of them arrived at the rue Daguerre apartment and clattered up the half dozen flights of stairs to the attic story, which was the only place Ciara could afford that had two bedrooms and a landlord who consented to look past the youth and tenuous backgrounds of his tenants.