Chapter 21 #2
She leaned against the closed door. Thank God for John.
He had zero training, but his presence calmed her.
With him, she had an ally, someone with whom to process things.
If she’d left him with a trusted colleague back home and flown to Morocco solo, she might not have made it to Monte Carlo or found the second drive.
And the world might be worse off for it.
Vivian whipped off the tank top and skirt from Monte Carlo, then changed into a black T-shirt dress and blasted her head with dry shampoo. She slung her bag over her shoulder, then grabbed the big sunnies from the dresser’s surface.
Vandenberg now knew about the second drive, Maison Moreau, and Jean-Michel’s possible connection.
If Vandenberg could be trusted, no harm no foul.
But that was the million-dollar question.
The answer was somewhere in her gray matter’s fizzing depths.
She needed to distract herself and let her synapses do their thing.
Checking on her artists was exactly the distraction she needed.
She entered the main suit. “Any extra laptops?”
Hall withdrew a clunker from the equipment crate in the corner. “Will this do?”
“Yeah, it’s just to check email.” She sat at the dinette table and logged into Jane Davis’s inbox. Nothing urgent. Oh, wait—a reload request for a Costa Coffee gift card.
She logged into the site.
Her Parisienne artist, Camille St. Lucie, had purchased six coffees in the last twenty-four hours. She reloaded the balance on Camille’s card to signal she’d seen the request and was on the way to their normal rendezvous point.
John emerged clad in teal chinos and an ivory oxford with the sleeves rolled up. Unexpected heat thrummed between her thighs. An unintended side effect of this trip was learning he looked hot in European-style clothing.
“Ma’am?” Vivian called to Vandenberg. “One of my local assets has requested a meeting. There’s a nonzero chance it’s related to—” Vivian swirled her hand “—all of this.”
“Then you should go.” Vandenberg poured water from the electric kettle into a French press. “And Hall? Accompany, but with discretion.”
Vivian hid her grimace.
“I’ll come,” John asked.
“It’ll be hard to explain two extra people,” Vivian said. “Maybe Hall can—”
“Accompany, but with discretion,” Vandenberg repeated. “Take your phones so we can track you.”
“Roger that.” Vivian sighed. “Time for a field trip.”
As she hurried along the narrow Rue Saint-Honoré, birds’ exultant chirping filled the morning air. John had no trouble keeping pace with her. And Hall… Well, if they lost her, Vivian wouldn’t mind.
“The coffee shop’s up ahead,” she said. “Remember—I’m Jane to her.”
“Who am I, though? John or Jason?”
“John,” Vivian answered.
“Did you tell everyone about me?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked. Across the street, Camille occupied a table on the gum-speckled sidewalk. “Sharing personal info is a great way to convince assets to do the same.”
“Works with boyfriends, too.” John poked the pedestrian button.
“Ha. Glad we can joke about this.”
After they crossed the traffic circle, Vivian beamed at her Parisian friend. Her early coffee look was flawless—cropped wide-leg black pants, silver espadrilles, a black tank, and a necklace made of interlocking doll hands. Doll-part jewelry was her signature craft.
“It has been forever, mon amie.” Camille rose from her seat and kissed Vivian’s cheeks. “And this must be John?”
“Bonjour.” He held out his hand, which Camille batted away before delivering enthusiastic cheek kisses.
“We are all friends here, eh?” She returned to her wrought-iron café chair. “Cigarette?”
“No thanks,” both Vivian and John said.
“So American.” She struck a match to light a Gauloise, but the breeze snuffed the flame.
“Here.” John held out his Zippo.
“A gentleman as well?” The tip of her cigarette flared orange. “Jane, you lucky bitch. A handsome American man who speaks like a Frenchman. It’s unfair for these gifts to belong to one man. Please tell me he is terrible in bed.”
“Alas, Camille, I cannot.”
“Then I understand why you’ve locked him down.” She nodded to Vivian’s left hand. “You have it good, as I do with my own dear Adélard. Which brings me to my recent purchases. A sacrifice I make for you, friend, as I loathe American coffee.”
Camille blew a stream of smoke into the morning air.
“Yes?” Vivian prompted.
“There are rumors about your ex-lover.” Another plume of smoke. “Adélard caught up with friends last week and learned Jean-Michel is in deep with the Gang de Brise Fra?che.”
A stylish artist didn’t typically have connections to the French mob, but Camille’s husband was a reformed gangster. They met when she led art therapy classes at La Santé Prison. Upon completing his sentence, Camille picked him up, and they’d been together ever since.
“But the terms of his parole—”
“Pfft.” Camille waved her hand. “It’s good for him. Keeps him a bit wild yet appreciative of the stability I provide. He’d had a beer or six and returned home chatty. Jean-Michel’s new girlfriend—oh, sorry. You knew he had a new girlfriend, yes?”
“Yes, and it’s fine.” She gestured to John. “Obviously.”
“This woman, Lola—she is the mob boss’s daughter. She’s fresh from Croatia, cutthroat, and doesn’t have a record yet. Together, they’ve reached new heights trafficking goods through price-inflated works of art.”
Vivian drummed her fingers. “Why haven’t the police gotten involved?”
“It is common knowledge among the underground. Honor among thieves, eh? Here’s the most interesting thing Adélard shared before passing out—they have an American partner in the clandestine service. An ‘angel’ who keeps their profiles low and intercedes on their behalf.”
Camille sipped her coffee.
Chills dripped down Vivian’s spine. Camille’s information matched Vandenberg’s profile of MacColl. But how could Vivian have missed the signs that the two men she was closest to at one point in her life—Jean-Michel and MacColl—were in international crime cahoots?
“Thanks, Camille. This is helpful.”
“You’re most welcome.” She glanced at her watch. “I must bid you adieu. My class starts at nine, and the public transit workers are once again on strike.”
Vivian jiggled her legs. Protocol was to wait a minute before leaving the table, but damn, she wanted to run.
“How could I miss them working together?” she asked.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” John said.
Her frustration bubbled over.
“I will, thank you.” Her chair scraped the asphalt as she pushed away from the table.
“This is how intelligence-gathering works. I gather threads, big and small, then weave them together into cogent analysis. Except if I’m distracted by falling in love, adorable dogs and thrilling domesticity, and I miss a thread, I can’t save the world. ”
“Wait up,” John called after her. “That’s way too much pressure to put on yourself.”
“Keep up. And agree to disagree.”
Hall followed twenty paces behind, per agency guidance. Someone sticking to protocol was oddly comforting.
Vivian ducked into a parfumerie. She was too keyed up to immediately return to the hotel. And while therapy was in her future, retail therapy was in her present.
John sneezed as he entered.
Hall had the decency to wait outside.
“The world’s fate is a shared responsibility,” John said.
“But I have to do my part.” She spritzed herself with the scent she’d abandoned with her car in Maryland. “My part is noticing things, extracting patterns to get to truth. I need to be here to do that or I’m useless. There’s some shit you can’t google.”
“You’re never useless. But you’re bruised and tired. That can’t help.”
She placed the atomizer on the sales counter. “TL;DR, I should take a nap?”
“No, but maybe yes?” He sighed. “You’ve got to look after yourself to be your best you. You can’t leave it all on the field and bring an empty husk home to me, our friends, our family.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. “You’ve known what I do for six days. You don’t understand it well enough to give me advice.”
She paid in euros, then flounced outside.
“That’s true, Gorgeous. I didn’t know what you do, but I know you, remember? That’s what you kept telling me. That I know you.”
She stopped in the middle of Pont Neuf.
Much as Vandenberg wanted to be Vivian’s ghost of agency future, she suspected that role was owned by MacColl.
Burned out, grumpy and willing to jump on a grenade.
Vivian had been resigned to that fate. Content.
Because without this job, she was just the middle child of a middle-class family from Baltimore.
Content until she met John.
If another person had walked into John’s museum, would his journal entry have been about her? Her heart hurt to think it was possible. But if he could be happy with someone else, why would she shackle him to this mess?
“What if this is as good as I get?” Vivian asked. “What if I never figure out how to slow down? Never have any chill about work?”
“Then…” He cupped her cheek. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll nag you to take care of yourself, too, but I’ll be there for you while you do your thing.”
She twisted the paper bag in her hands.
The personal pattern she’d wrestled with since he proposed finally emerged.
The past year, especially the past week, had revealed their biggest relationship problem—John would do anything for her.
And she’d be a monster to allow that. She’d disappear, come home injured, angry, worked up.
John would leave a light on and take care of everything.
House, dogs, possibly kids. She’d burden him while she pursued bad guys.
No. That was selfish. He deserved better.
So she had to throw herself on a grenade.
She stepped away from him. “I love you so much. But we should go our separate ways after we wrap things up here.”
Tears blurred her vision.
“Where’s this coming from? We love each other.” He tried to wrap her in a hug, but she feinted and evaded him.
“And I’m ending it while we still do.” She tugged at the ring, but the fucker still refused to budge. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” His shoulders slumped. “Just don’t do this.”
“I have to.” To save him from misery.
“You don’t, Gorgeous.”
Tears ran freely down her face. “I’m going to the hotel. Can you… Can you wait a few minutes to follow?”
With a firm jaw, he nodded.
She pivoted and ran.