“I am nothing if not flexible in my plans. Call the dog or I will shoot you through your left leg, mademoiselle. And I can assure you that it will be very painful.”
“Another bad idea, mate,” Riley said, although there was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there previously. “Look at her. She wouldn’t weigh a hundred pounds if you filled her pockets with rocks. That hand cannon is a three-fifty-seven Magnum. You’ll blow her bloody leg off and she’ll be dead before the dog finishes scratching its arse.”
Lefévre let out an annoyed huff of breath and let the big revolver drop to his side. Then he transferred it into his other hand, holding it delicately as if he didn’t trust his injured arm to take the weight.
“Ah well, I had hoped we could be… civilised about this,” he said, and backhanded Hope across the face.
The force of the blow had the girl stumbling back. She lost her balance, falling heavily. Riley shouted and swore and struggled against his restraints. Beside me, Joe Marcus surged up. I grabbed his arm, dug fingers and thumb into the pressure points on the inside of his wrist and twisted hard.
“For God’s sake stay down,” I hissed. “That won’t help any of us — least of all Hope.”
I nearly recoiled at the way his eyes loathed me at that moment but he subsided without speaking. I relaxed my grip and he roughly shrugged my hand away.
Hope did not get up at once, just lay sprawled on the uneven ground as though stunned. She pushed herself up to a sitting position very slowly, head hanging. When she finally lifted it, there was blood staining her upper lip and her eyes were drenched.
“I assure you this gives me no pleasure,” Lefévre told her, “but it causes me no anguish either. I will keep doing it until you give me what I want.”
“Go ahead!” Hope threw at him, her voice breaking. “You can’t do any worse than what’s been done to me already.”
“Jesus Christ mate, she’s just a kid!” Riley yelped, still struggling without result. “Hope, do what he wants sweetheart. Please. Don’t put yourself through this.”
“Riley knows, doesn’t he?” I said close to Marcus’s ear. “He knows about Hope — that she’s only sixteen.”
“Of course he knows.” Marcus couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene unfolding below, but there was pain in etched on his face, and the kind of promise in his eyes that sees men die very unpleasant deaths. “We all know. Did you think we wouldn’t?”
I glanced back outside. Hope was still on the ground, gathering herself. Lefévre had made no further moves toward her.
“Including Kyle Stephens?”
I heard his teeth grit together. “Yes.”
“Then what the fuck were you thinking, letting her stay?”
“Making a mistake.” And for once the contempt in his voice was not solely directed at me.
I rose to a crouch and handed the SIG across. He took it automatically before he realised what I had in mind.
“What the—?”
“He’ll only take it away from me,” I said, dumping my spare magazines in his hand too. “And he might decide that a forty-cal round is more survivable than three-fifty-seven. Just do me a favour — when you get the chance to shoot him, don’t miss.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I walked into the street from the far end, keeping my hands in plain view. The dust swirled around my legs as I went, like some tumbleweed-blown town in the Old West. In the back of my mind I almost heard the jingle of spurs on my heels.
Lefévre saw me coming a long way back. He yanked Hope to her feet and steadied her in front of him, checking Riley’s position at his back so nobody had a clear shot behind either.
No flies on you, sunshine.
“That’s close enough, if you please,” he called when I was maybe fifty feet away. “What do you want?”
“To negotiate.”
He smiled. “With what?”
“Word from Hope’s boss.”
“And where is Monsieur Marcus — lurking somewhere nearby no doubt?”
“We split up to search. He went northeast,” I lied, gesturing vaguely. “Could be anywhere by now.”
“Let’s see the gun.”
I shook my head. “I’m not carrying.”
“You will not be insulted if I ask you to prove it?”
I lifted my shirt up, baring my midriff, and turned a slow circle so he could see I had nothing tucked into my belt.
“Ankle holster?”
I leaned down and pulled up the bottoms of my cargoes.
“Never liked ’em,” I said. “They play hell with my back.”
“Sleeves, too, if you please.”
I unbuttoned my shirt cuffs and rolled up both sleeves with the exaggerated movements of a stage magician showing there were no rabbits or white doves hidden there. I even removed the cotton scarf from around my neck and twitched both sides toward him like a matador tempting a bull.
“OK — talk. What does Monsieur Marcus have to say?”
“The gist of it is, let his people go or be hunted to the ends of the earth.”
He pursed his lips. “And in return for this?”
“We give you what you want.”
I heard Hope gasp but didn’t take my eyes off Lefévre. He grimaced.
“You cannot give me what I really want.”
“You have my sympathies,” I said blandly. “Just out of curiosity, what was Gabrielle Dubois’s real name?”
He looked momentarily startled then shook his head. “Better for both of us if you never find out.”
“Did you really buy that ruby for her, or simply take it after Rojas was dead?”
And did she find it appropriate to be given a blood-red stone?
That brought a twisted smile to his lips. “Once a thief, always a thief,” he said. “But our engagement was real. This was supposed to be our last job.”
“For her, it was.”
The smile vanished and he gave Hope a shove in the back that made her stagger. “Now, if you would be so kind — call the dog in.”
Hope’s eyes were pleading. “Charlie—”
“Please, Hope. Do as Joe asks.”
And whatever you’re planning Joe, you better do it soon…
Hope cast me a final despairing glance, circled her forefinger and thumb, stuck them between her lips and blew sharply, letting out a piercing whistle.
Almost at once there came the scrabble of booteed feet and the yellow Labrador retriever appeared over a mound of fallen bricks. She was wagging her tail and looking inordinately pleased with herself.
With another careful glance behind him, Lefévre leaned to the side and picked up a discarded paper bag. I realised it was the one he’d been carrying when he left the hospital. So he hadn’t kept hold of his clothes for sentimental reasons, then. He’d kept them for scent.
That made me feel a little better, knowing that it wasn’t a spur of the moment decision born of opportunity that had led him to hijack the Bell. He’d probably been planning this ever since he discovered the dog’s tracking abilities.
Yeah, Fox, and who told him about that?
I pushed that insidious thought aside and tried not to look around me for any sign of Marcus’s approach. Lefévre was too canny not to spot it.
Lemon trotted right up to her handler and sat down so close in front of her she could prop her muzzle on the girl’s thighs. Hope cradled the dog’s head with both hands and looked about to cry again.
“Good girl, Lem,” she said, her voice cracking. “Who’s my best girl then?”
I studied the thin frame and wondered how I’d ever believed she might be twenty. Hell, she didn’t even look sixteen.
Lefévre had put the paper sack down near her and now he nudged it with a foot. He had swapped the Ruger back into his good hand, I saw, just in case Hope got any ideas.