Page 3 of Icebound

“Am I Le Fauçon? No.”

“That’s not what I asked. Is that the name of the old enemy who’s resurfaced? The Falcon?”

“Chloe, drop it. If something were to happen to you, Bastien would never forgive me. Come to England. Genny would love to see you, and your kids miss you. They’re busy with the archeological dig nearby, but they would love to have you here.”

“Teenagers do not want their mothers interfering in their vacations,” Chloe said, managing to sound both wry and calm. “I’ll be fine here, don’t worry about me.” She tossed her sneakers into the suitcase. “I’m sorry—I just got worried for a bit.”

“I can send someone to stay with you…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Peter. I’m perfectly fine on my own. You’re right, Bastien will return when he’s ready to. I’ll kill him when he does, but I can be patient.”

“Can you?”

Peter Madsen was no fool, and she managed a breathy laugh. “Well, maybe not. But I’ll stay put.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. You can trust me.” She hung up the phone, then looked at the suitcase on the bed. She’d pulled out every piece of black clothing she owned as she remembered the old, horrifying mantra. Black doesn’t show the blood. Her husband still dressed exclusively in black when they left their sprawling compound.

Paris. Le Fauçon. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a start. She would make her way to France, as surreptitiously as she could, and hope that the people who were already watching her wouldn’t be able to follow.

They would see that she booked a ticket to Amsterdam, though her plane stopped in Paris. “They” being the Committee and whoever else was watching her, maybe this mysterious Le Fauçon. So be it—she was hardly up to anyone’s standards when it came to the games they played. But if Bastien were anywhere nearby, he would come to her, she knew he would, and if she had to put herself in danger to lure him out, then so be it. Something was not right, and she’d waited long enough. She would go after her husband herself.

Peter Madsen set the phone back in cradle. He had a bad feeling about all this, and he’d learned long ago to trust his instincts. He had absolutely no idea where Bastien Toussaint was—there’d been no word and no sighting since he’d collapsed at the base of Notre Dame. Rumor had it he was in Gdansk, but things in Poland were surprisingly peaceful at the moment, and if there was something going on, Peter would be the first to know.

Another rumor was that he’d been taken to Algeria, but he didn’t believe that either. Bastien was still in France, but no one knew where the hell he was. Peter had men searching for him, for weeks now, but there hadn’t been a sign, and he was beginning to doubt his infallible instincts. Bastien wasn’t dead—he knew that much. But he’d simply disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving Chloe and his children with no word.

The children shrugged it off, of course, caught up in the amateur dig in Hampshire. But he knew Chloe, and he didn’t make the mistake of underestimating her. Despite her promises, he knew damned well she wouldn’t stay put for much longer, and then they’d have both of them in the wind. Bastien counted on him keeping Chloe safe—if anything happened to her…

He needed to send someone to stay with her. She was safe in Bastien’s fortress up in the North Carolina mountains, as long as she stayed put. There were few places safer. But sooner or later, she’d was going to have enough of waiting, and she’d go after Bastien, and probably screw up everything.

No, he’d find someone to keep her company and her mind off her missing husband. While he did everything he possibly could to find him.

A man with Bastien’s talents wouldn’t be found if he didn’t want to be—Peter knew that much. It would be a cold day in hell before anyone could get the drop on him—therefore, he must be hiding away from the Committee and his wife, though Peter couldn’t begin to guess why. In the old days, he would have let him go, knowing Bastien was a good enough operative to know what he was doing.

But the entry of Chloe and the children in his life changed everything. He wouldn’t stay away this long without a damned good reason, and Peter needed to know that reason, now. Before Chloe packed her bags and showed up…

No, she wouldn’t. She had no idea where he was, any more than Peter did. If she came to Europe, the only place she could go was to him, and he knew how to keep her quiet. It wasn’t an emergency yet.

Now who could he send to keep her company?

Chapter

Two

Chloe hadn’t been back in Paris for fifteen years, not since she left with her parents on a snow-swept night, left Bastien behind, bleeding from a gunshot wound. It had been an unspoken pact between Bastien and her—wherever they might travel, they would avoid France. As far as she knew, all their enemies had died in the bloodbath that night, but life was never so lucky. Someone had resurfaced, from that time or one of the many covert operations her husband had carried out, and it was important enough to send Bastien into oblivion. Instinct told her it was Paris, it was always Paris, where she would find him.

He could be anywhere in that vast city, but she was heading toward the Left Bank. She had a name—Marceau—and a café he’d once told her about, full of unsavory characters and the barter of information. If Bastien was in Paris, he would have showed up there, she was certain. If not, she wasn’t quite sure what she would do next. Head on to Amsterdam, where she knew no one and nothing?

But she couldn’t sit home and wait anymore. The longer he was gone, the more worried she became, and it was enough to contravene Peter Madsen’s strict orders. Bastien had left the morally elastic Committee fifteen years ago. Would they abandon Bastien?

She was unprepared for how Paris would feel after all those years. It was late spring, far from the winter storm that she’d last seen, and the smell of the air, the sights, the very sound of the language all around her brought back a nostalgia that was almost painful in its intensity. But it also brought back fear, a goodly portion of PTSD. She’d seen so many people die in those few days she had been with Bastien, watched him kill without hesitation, blood staining the snow around her. She could never look at Paris with the same ex-pat’s innocence again.

The language came back to her almost immediately, and her familiarity with Paris followed. At the last minute, she’d booked rooms at one of the larger, posh hotels in the seventh arrondissement, wanting some promise of security while she searched for her husband. She’d considered a pension near the café but thought twice about it. She needed to get far away from any hornet’s nest she might stir up, and staying nearby would be too dangerous.

The only problem was leaving her hotel room. Once she made it inside, she found herself temporarily trapped by her memories. As long as she stayed within her room’s elegant walls, she was safe. Out there in the streets was danger and death.

She was being absurd. No one wished her harm—Bastien would never have left her if she or the children were in any danger. No, it was Bastien who was in trouble, and it was up to her to find him.