I stood with my back to the wall watching the other teams at work while I talked. The military had laid down a temporary floor that could be scrubbed clean every night but the faint tang of disinfectant overlaying old blood still lingered. It did little for my appetite.
“You have information for me?” I said at last, trying to distract him.
Parker’s own sigh was clearly audible across the international phone line. He knew exactly what I was doing and was prepared to go along with it, if under protest.
“Enzo Lefévre and Gabrielle Dubois are aliases,” he said flatly. “At the moment we’re still trying to uncover their real names but Interpol lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as we started a search.”
“What’s their interest?”
“Jewel thieves. Lots of skill and finesse — no smash and grab for this pair. I’m told Lefévre means ‘craftsman’. Maybe that’s why he chose it. From what I could squeeze out of my Interpol liaison, they’ve pulled off some major heists along the French Riviera, Monaco, Madrid and that one at the Cannes Film Festival last year. This is the first time they’ve operated so far from Europe, though.”
“So how does that square with what Santiago Rojas told us about the robbery and this supposed third man?” I said, frowning. “The one who shot Lefévre and got away. If this pair were jewel thieves, how likely is it that they just so happened to be in a jewellery store — on the very day it was supposed to have a big delivery — at the precise moment it was turned over by someone else who was totally unconnected?”
“Honest appraisal? About the same odds as getting struck twice by lightning,” Parker said dryly. “It happens, but you’d have to be pretty damn unlucky.”
I thought of the man in the hospital bed who’d told such a heartfelt story about the woman with the ruby engagement ring.
“I suppose they could have simply been taking a holiday and decided to buy a ring like normal people. Would it mean more to a pair of thieves if they paid for something rather than just stole it?”
Parker made a “maybe” noise in his throat. “Might explain why Lefévre tried to intervene and got himself shot for it.”
“A sense of professional outrage you mean?” I suggested. “That somebody had the gall to attempt a half-arsed job in front of him?”
“Something like that, yeah — if that’s what happened.”
I considered that one for a moment. Across from me, the fingerprint expert, also from the UK, was hunched over her workstation. She had just made a match between a palm-print taken from the kitchen counter at the home of a missing person and one of our victims. There was no sense of triumph or satisfaction, though, only sorrow. It was her first time with a DVI team. I wondered if she’d stay the course or volunteer again.
“I think I need to go back and talk to Rojas again,” I said to Parker. “It sounds like he may not have been entirely forthcoming.”
“He may not,” Parker agreed solemnly. “But from what you’ve said he did suffer a nasty head injury, which we should take into account. After all, we both know the kind of effects something like that can have.”
“We do.” I scraped a hand through my hair, unwilling to venture much further along that line of thought. Instead I asked, “Is there, um, any news on the girl?”
“I’m still waiting for the London end to get back to me,” he said. “They hit a few obstructions. Washington bureaucrats could learn a lot from the British Civil Service, huh? I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”
“Thanks.” Let’s just hope it’s soon. I paused. “I don’t suppose there’s been any word…?”
I didn’t have to elaborate. Parker knew exactly who I was talking about. He cleared his throat and I knew immediately it wasn’t going to be good news.
“We tracked Sean to Germany. A couple of days ago he flew from Frankfurt to Kuwait City.”
“Kuwait?” I repeated. “What the hell is he doing there?”
“We believe he may have crossed the border into Iraq,” Parker said carefully, “heading for Basra.”
I opened my mouth to ask again what the hell Sean was doing but then closed it again, aware of a leaden weight settling in my chest. I had a horrible feeling I knew exactly why Sean might be going alone into bandit country and I hoped to hell I was wrong.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The night I got back from Mexico City — the night things came to a head between Sean and me — I made what I realised later was a grave error of judgement. It wasn’t my first and I daresay it won’t be my last either.
Not by goading Sean into respond to me physically. That had been a long time coming — in every sense. Even though he’d left the army with the mistaken belief I was instrumental in ruining his career as I’d ruined my own, he still wanted me. Throughout our brief but clandestine relationship back then, the constraints of behaving with rigid formality towards each other while we were on duty led to break-the-furniture and wake-the-neighbours kind of sex when we were finally let loose.
That night my only thought had been to let it loose again.
So I held him down on the sofa in the living room of the New York apartment and released all those months of pent-up emotion. It was almost impossible not to ravage what had once been mine to take freely. His initial freeze almost made me weep but then his lips relaxed under mine and he began to kiss me back in anger.
I counted on the fact that it’s very hard for a man to be raped by a woman he honestly does not desire without some kind of chemical inducement. By the time the shower water had all-but evaporated from our naked skin Sean needed no artificial stimulation.
When I relaxed the lock on his wrist he dived both hands into my short wet hair, dragging my head back to bare my scarred throat like a goat for sacrifice. With a groan that sounded close to torture he feasted on the line of my jaw, my neck, my breasts.
And when his hands slid down over my shoulders to trace my spine and grasp my hips, I cupped his face in trembling fingers and kissed him with aching tenderness, feeling his body rise to mine in the old way, guided by instinct and muscle memory.
I forced myself not to rush even though the need was clawing through me. I knew I had to tip him over the edge of frustration until he could do nothing but give in to blind lust and take what had once been given freely too.
I couldn’t contain a harsh cry as we came together. Sean’s face was a whitened mask, his eyes closed.
I jammed a hand under his jaw and muttered, “Look at me, dammit. I need you to know it’s me.”
His eyes snapped open. “Christ. Jesus,” he managed. “How could it be anyone else?”
When he bucked under me with a growl I almost grabbed for his throat again before I realised he wasn’t trying to dislodge me, far from it. I felt the slide of muscle packed under slick skin as he powered to his feet, lifting me, taking me with him. We made it as far as the wall by the bedroom, knocking aside a small table.
My back hit the door frame and my limbs wrapped tight around him as he thrust upward with his face buried in my neck, his teeth on my skin and my name on his lips.
That alone was enough to undo me. I came apart in his arms. If the neighbours had been sleeping, I would surely have woken them.
Almost at once Sean tried to pull back. I tightened my grip.
“Charlie!” His voice was raw. “I can’t hold on much longer, and I’m not using—”
“Had a coil fitted,” I gasped against his ear. “Not taking chances after last time…”
If I could have taken the words back I would have done. I knew he’d registered the importance of them by the way he stiffened, then my body spasmed afresh and he was barging into the bedroom itself, tumbling onto the bed with me wedged beneath him.