Page 115 of Under Her Protection

The man at the right of the doorway moved. He went to the kitchen. He filled a glass at the tap. He brought it back across the small sitting room and set it on the low table within Vivienne's reach. Vivienne did not pick it up.

"Drink it."

"In a moment."

"Drink it now, Vivienne."

"In a moment."

The man called Maxime stayed where he was. Lara, on the sofa, did not move.

She had, in her life, never been this frightened.

It was, in her body, a cold, exact weight at the bottom of her stomach, and it had been there, she understood, since the spring of 1999. It had been there the whole time.

She thought of Leo. Handsome protective Leo. Beautiful Leo who had held her and fucked her till she came a thousand times.

Lovely Leo who would not be coming to save her tonight because Vivienne had told her that the sex had not even been that good.

22

The two Blackthorn cars arrived on the corner of the rue de la Grange aux Belles at seven fifty-six on Saturday evening, and the two brigade criminelle vans came up the rue Bichat and Leo Cole, in the charcoal suit and the field jacket and the shoulder rig and a Blackthorn earpiece in her left ear, was on the pavement at number 22 at seven fifty-nine.

The wine bar was full.

The wine bar was Saturday-evening full, with people on the pavement holding small glasses, and none of them looked up as four men in tactical jackets and Leo went past them to the staff door of the wine bar.

The staff door was not locked.

That was the first thing Leo registered. The second was that the staircase smelt of paint not quite dry. The third was that, on the wall of the third-floor landing, somebody had scuffed the paint at shoulder height with the wool of a coat, which was, to Leo's eye, the height a tall woman in a long camel coat with her hands in the pockets would scuff a wall going past it.

She had been here.

She went up the last flight without sound. Chevalier and the brigade men were three steps behind her. Avery, in the earpiece, said the one word ‘go’, and Leo put her shoulder against the door of the third-floor flat on the left.

The door was not locked either.

She turned the handle. She went in low.

She saw a man at the bedroom door go to reach inside his jacket. She moved faster. She hit him at the wrist with the heel of her hand and the inside of the elbow with her left, and the small black handgun he had been a quarter-second from drawing went on the floor, and Leo was past him and the second man was reaching for his own and one of the brigade men had the second man on the wall before he had the gun out of the holster, and Leo, in the charcoal suit, in the small sitting room, had Vivienne.

Vivienne was on the small grey armchair in a camel coat with her hands inside the pockets of the coat. Her face did not move.

Her face did not move when the door came open, and it did not move when the man at the bedroom door hit the hallway floor, and it did not move when Leo came across the small sitting room and crouched down in front of the armchair and put both her hands flat on the wool of the coat at the inside of Vivienne's knees and looked up at her face.

Leo had no idea what she was thinking.

"Vivienne."

Vivienne looked at her.

The grey-blue eyes. The dark hair, up. Her face was an immovable object that told her nothing.

However her hands inside the pockets of the camel coat were shaking visibly enough through the wool that Leo registered her fear.

"Leo."

"I am here. I’ve got you.”