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  “It’s on the schedule,” she pointed out, puzzled. It came right in the middle of her shift, tomorrow.

  Harry dug into his back pocket and dropped a small manila envelope onto her lap, beside the brown bag the canelé had come in. The envelope was humped in the middle.

  She picked up the envelope, her heart thudding. Anonymous envelopes were never a good start to a conversation.

  “Well, see you tomorrow, Kelsey,” Harry said, and stepped back into the common room and shut the window with a solid thud and rattle of old glass. The off-duty early shift people were at the scratched wooden table, horsing around with a pack of cards and matches for chips, most in shirt sleeves. The night shift would stir soon, preparing for their shift.

  Four per shift, plus Harry and the thirteenth man as spares and backup…not that backup had ever been used. For an international squad too far from home base, the men in this detail were obscenely relaxed.

  Not for the first time, Agata recalled Warren’s low, hard voice explaining that the detail was bullshit, a way for his father to keep tabs on him.

  She had wondered about that since yesterday. The briefing she had read on the plane had been full of keywords: hostage value, extortion, high profile public figure, optics, high value terrorist target. None of those words matched the bitter awareness in Warren’s voice, yesterday.

  While men laughed and conversed behind the French doors, Agata cautiously eased out the flap of the manila envelope and peered inside.

  Euros. A thick wad of the colorful notes.

  She slid the stack out far enough to rifle through the corners, counting swiftly. A thousand euros. About twelve hundred US dollars, at current exchange rates.

  Her throat was dry. She pushed the money back inside the envelope and considered, while her heart ran hard and heavy. Tomorrow, when Warren took his midday constitutional…the money was to make sure she kept her mouth shut, or did nothing, or did something. She would figure it out, Harry had said.

  Agata couldn’t help but recall arguments Dima’s team had debated, sitting around one anonymous hotel room or another, waiting for things to go down.

  Scott and Leander had a lot to say about the line between agreeing to look in the wrong direction at the right moment, and actively selling out your country. Leander had been particularly pithy. They’re both just flat out wrong, he’d insisted, slapping the table.

  Scott’s viewpoint had been the interesting one. “The line blurs and shifts all the time. The first king says painting your face blue is mandatory. The next king says it’s illegal. Who’s right?”

  “There are moral—” Leander began.

  Scott shook his head. “No, there’s in here.” He tapped his chest. “That’s it. You choose based on your own values.”

  “Morals, in other words,” Leander said, smiling.

  “Yeah, but yours, not what some asshole in a suit decided.”

  “You are a terrible civil servant,” Leander chided him.

  “Damn right,” Scott had finished, with feeling. “May it long be so.” And he’d tapped Leander’s bottle of soda with his beer.

  Agata recalled that particular discussion as she smoothed the flap on the little envelope. She wished she was in the same room with them now, and could put the envelope on the table, stand back and see what they made of it. She missed them—all of them, including Lochan with his endless self-absorbed humor.

  She would have to figure this out without them, though. Dima’s team had failed one hundred percent to find any ongoing lead to the Kobra, while too many people had died in Austria, in a far too public blaze of guns and explosions.

  The team had been disbanded, the team members scattered in disgrace. Agata wasn’t even sure where Scott and Leander were, right now.

  It was up to Agata to decide. She pressed her hand against her chest. “From in here,” she murmured.

  So.

  She couldn’t guess what the money was for, not until she was up the sharp end, right in the thick of the moment tomorrow, with no time to consider. Only, a wad of money usually meant doing something against whatever rules ran the day.

  Given Cain Warren’s history, she could guess what rules he wanted to break. Drugs, booze, women. All three at once, and a lot more along those lines. If there was one thing Cain Warren was consistent about, it was living life to excess. The money was to ensure she looked the other way while he indulged himself. It meant nothing about his escapades made it into any of the official journals, which his father would have access to.

  For this to work, Warren had to be paying off the entire day shift. Four thousand euros, so Daddy didn’t blow a gasket.

  Only, Vice President Warren wasn’t the only man who thought Cain Warren was at risk, here in Paris. There were solid hazard factors other sober men agreed justified Warren having a security detail assigned to him. Everyone else on the detail had either failed to read their brief or had forgotten the reasons why they were here.

  It was those reasons she couldn’t ignore. If she turned her back, she couldn’t help Warren if it was needed. That was not a risk she was prepared to take.

  She’d found the line, the one she wouldn’t step across.

  Agata shoved the last crumbs of the canelé into the bag, wadded the top closed, and got to her feet. She held the envelope between her thumb and forefinger and moved back inside the apartment.

  A few men at the table looked up as she approached. Harry wasn’t one of them. He did jerk his chin up when she put the envelope in front of him, on top of his dwindling pile of matches. “You dropped this.”

  She didn’t look at any of them. She didn’t want to meet their eyes and read disappointment or fury in them. She knew damn well she was the only hold out. They were all in this, or Harry would not have tried to rope her into the pay-off within 72 hours of arriving here.

  Instead, she went to bed, to lie with her heart thudding, sleep far away, while she wondered what would happen tomorrow.

  [2]

  The Sorbonne, Paris, France. The next day.

  The day started bad and descended from there.

  Agata ignored Harry’s scowls and barely audible murmurs about team players and boy scouts. It wasn’t up to her to make his life easy.

  Cain Warren was a different matter, though. He was the subject, her protectee. She could put up with his lack of cooperation, because it wasn’t his job to make her life easy, either. It bothered her, though, when Harry dropped into the chair opposite Warren’s at the little café where the briefing notes said Warren frequently had breakfast.

  This was day four. She’d already figured out that no one sat at Warren’s table. Not strangers, nor the team. He was ruthless about rebuffing anyone who came too close. In that regard, she had trampled all over his personal space the first day. Although she had been warding off the woman in pink tweed, who’d failed to notice the stay-away signals Warren put out.

  Much as Harry was ignoring Warren’s signs, now. He squeezed himself between the slim arms of the chair opposite Warren and murmured. Warren barely raised his head in acknowledgement. He kept his gaze on the phone, until he raised his chin with a sharp movement to glare at Harry. His head stayed still, as his gaze leapt to where Agata sat nursing a cappuccino, then back to Harry’s face.

  Warren scowled, the heavy black brows coming together.

  She wasn’t sure she had seen him smile even once since she had arrived in Paris. Most of the time his body was held in a neutral stance, with no expression in his eyes and a vague sense of wariness bracing him. He wasn’t always pissed, the way he was now.

  The wariness wasn’t unusual for protectees. Knowing people wanted to harm them, often for reasons outside their control, ground down their psyche. In Warren’s case, though, Agata wondered if the pressure was the only reason he wore the permanent defensive attitude. There were oddities about him which didn’t fit with the classic profile.

  Yeah, he was the privileged son of a famous man, from a family wi
th ancestors on the Mayflower. Warren had lived life in top gear, pedal to the metal, safe behind his father’s shield of influence. So far, so very standard.

  Only, Warren didn’t look standard. He wasn’t clean-cut and wide-eyed, presenting his best and most innocent face to the world. He wasn’t even blond, as his father was. Vice President Robert Warren had married the 1982 Miss World, an environmentalist who made audiences weep with her Stradivarius violin. Dina Warren was an Indian princess from Mumbai. Her son shared her black hair and eyes, and brown skin, while taking his father’s height and solidness, and his straight nose.

  Cain Warren wore simple tee shirts and jeans, without a single designer label visible anywhere. He favored black tee shirts, and left his hair shaggy and thick. Agata hadn’t seen his chin clear of stubble even once. He wasn’t overloaded with muscle, even though he had a room full of weight training equipment in his apartment and used the equipment daily. His upper arms stretched the sleeves of the tee shirts he wore with agreeable solidness, though.

  There were tattoos on both forearms, crudely drawn and faded. Gang ink, the subject brief had explained. There were more under the tee shirt.

  The wary, worn look about his eyes and face were perhaps early outward signs of the abuse he’d put himself through for too many years.

  His profile said he was thirty-four, three years older than Agata, which made him way too old to still be in Daddy’s shadow. It was another oddity she was still trying to figure out. With time, she’d get it. It seemed that time was in abundance, here. Warren was enrolled at the Sorbonne for summer courses, too. There would be no long summer break spent back in the Hamptons.

  Warren came to this sidewalk café nearly every morning for a croissant and coffee, before his first lecture. The Sorbonne building itself was across the road and through the park. The dome was visible through the trees.

  Yesterday and the day before, two of the day-shift detail had taken seats at a table beside Warren’s, while the other two monitored at middle distance, on benches across the street. This morning, it was Agata’s turn on the iron bench. She wore jeans and a camisole top under a jean jacket, and sandals, to fit in with the high percentage of students in the area. Her hair was down, although she had a hair elastic on her wrist and could pull the more than waist-length bulk into a half-bun on the back of her neck to get it out of the way, if she needed to.

  She held her cellphone in front of her as if she was reading it. Occasionally she touched the screen with her thumb, but only the blank home screen was on display. Text might distract her at the wrong moment.

  While keeping her chin down, she watched the table across the road where Harry had inserted himself, despite Warren’s scowl. Now Warren glared at her, his stare open and angry.

  Harry had broken the news about her refusal to take the bribe.

  Agata didn’t react to Warren’s furious gaze. Not openly.

  She turned her head, instead, scanning the area in a long sweep from left to right. The runner who’d stopped to catch her wind was walking once more, her hand on her diaphragm. The man three benches up—dark shirt, loafers, professor-type—was still buried behind his newspaper, just as innocent.

  While Agata scanned the area, she fumed. She shouldn’t even be here. She was an analyst, for fuck’s sake. Yeah, so she’d had training in security details—a whole three-day workshop led by snotty Treasury men in suits who resented the CIA getting involved in their business. The course had been offered to her and she took it because information was information. It was all useful.

  And now she was here in Paris, being resented by a whole new crowd, including the subject himself. Great. Fantastic. Fucking wonderful.

  She could have used that thousand euros. Why hadn’t she just taken it? Let Warren watch out for himself. He was a grown man. Let him live with the consequences of being stupid, while she spent the midday break in the shoe shop she had spotted, around the corner from here.

  Warren squeezed the flesh between his eyes with forefinger and thumb. He had done that the first day, too. As Harry kept talking fast, Warren dropped his hand to his thigh, the fingers curled up. Then the thumb, index and middle fingers curled in over each other, one at a time, with a pause between each.

  Agata identified the motion with a jolt of recognition. She had seen Leander talk Lochan through something similar, in Austria, when Leela had been in danger. It was a calming technique, accompanied by deep breathing. It focused the mind and let aggravation drop away. She had researched it after watching Leander bring Lochan to calm acceptance inside three minutes.

  Too many oddities, she realized. Cain Warren didn’t add up.

  Then the man got to his feet and picked up the short stack of books and his iPad. He said something short and snappy to Harry, who looked doubtful.

  Pepperidge and Dunkley, who were sitting at flanking tables on the sidewalk, both got to their feet, buttoning their jackets carefully, as the subject moved.

  Agata also stood, making it seem casual. She pushed her cellphone into her back pocket and dropped her sunglasses over her nose. Thomas Roe, the fourth man on the detail, moved in toward Warren in a pincer movement which would end with each of them on the four corners of an invisible square around Warren.

  With a start, Agata realized Warren was heading for her. He wouldn’t really confront her about the bribe, right out here in the open, would he?

  Then she remembered that everyone was in on it. She was the holdout.

  Behind Warren, Harry remained at the table, for he was not on active duty. He glanced around for observers, then reached and plucked the uneaten half of Warren’s croissant from the plate and gobbled it quickly.

  Cain Warren walked up to her, his stack of text books against his hip. Why didn’t he use a backpack, like every other student in the world?

  He stopped in front of her, and the other three in the detail shifted, spreading out around them. Roe moved into the park behind them, to hover by an ancient willow.

  Cain Warren considered Agata, his jaw shifting. His black eyes were narrowed, the brows pushed together. “Kelsey, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got a pen, Kelsey?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Write this down. Anouk Thayer. 36, Rue Victor Hugo, Mountrouge.” He scowled again. “You’re not writing.”

  “Anouk Thayer. Thirty-six, Victor Hugo Avenue, Mountrouge,” Agata said and waited.

  “She spent the night with me,” Warren said.

  “It’s my job to know such things,” Agata replied coolly. The night shift had passed the information on in this morning’s debrief and change-over.

  “And now I’m making it your job to find out more about Anouk. Her phone number is—” and he rattled off eleven digits, then raised a single thick, black brow, his gaze steady.

  Agata memorized the number. “The night detail would have completed a first screening of her before she stepped foot in the building. Is there a reason you want us to investigate more thoroughly, Mr. Warren?”

  Cain Warren’s scowl didn’t retreat an inch. “Because I told you to.”

  “Your reasons will give me a direction to dig.”

  “Dig everywhere, okay?”

  She got it. “You want the information by the end of the day, right?” Her voice came out tired and wise. If they couldn’t pay her off, they’d get her out of the way.

  Warren’s mouth stretched into a smile of sorts. She glimpsed very white, even teeth. There was no warmth in the expression. “You catch on fast. Good.”

  Agata glanced at her watch, then touched her earworm. “Harry, can you take over for me?”

  Harry’s voice was soft in her ear. “Coming.” Across the road, he got to his feet and brushed croissant crumbs from his jacket.

  “Where are you going?” Warren said sharply.

  Agata met his gaze. “To learn more about Anouk Thayer.”

  “Do it later. I have a lecture in twenty minutes.”

  Agata
considered him. “I don’t take my orders directly from you, Mr. Warren.”

  Harry reached them. He was puffing just from having to jog to make it across the road between cars.

  “But you’re happy to go off and check out Anouk on my say so?” Warren said.

  “That’s different, Mr. Warren. You feel there is something more to the woman. I take your hunch seriously. You’re in a unique position to spot such things, as you’re the one fucking her.”

  “Jesus Christ, Kelsey,” Harry breathed.

  Warren didn’t react at all.

  Agata shrugged. “Your safety is my single concern, Mr. Warren. So Harry will take over from me for the shift, and I will immediately learn what I can about Anouk Thayer.”

  Harry looked from Warren to Agata. “Yeah, get out of here, Kelsey,” he growled.

  Agata settled her jean jacket into place over the Glock and nodded at Warren. “Mr. Warren.”

  Warren didn’t reply.

  Agata returned to the apartment on Robert Montagne Square, and settled herself behind the secure laptop used by everyone in the detail to access federal databases. Researching people, places and things was familiar and easy work for her. It was what she had been trained to do. Her aptitude was for analytical work, they’d told her.

  Finding the shadows in Anouk Thayer’s life didn’t take nearly as long as Harry and his Treasury-trained cohorts apparently thought it should. Or maybe they’d thought there would be nothing to find, which would send her endlessly circling in search of it.

  As it turned out, though, Anouk Thayer was the daughter of one of Paris’ biggest organized crime bosses. The connection was obscure, but confirmed with just a little extra research. Thayer had likely been pointed at Warren and told to cultivate him as a useful man to bring under her father’s thumb. There was a chance she simply liked Warren, although it seemed unlikely.

  Agata spent more time typing up the brief in the proper format and language. Then she locked it inside a secure zip file and set up an email to send it to Harry, with a delayed delivery time, so it would land in his inbox in the mid-afternoon.