The Paris Caper (9 page)

Because he was. For as
much as he’d claimed and taken her tonight, she had claimed him just as surely.

And for the first time in
many years, belonging to someone else felt like a good thing.

♥♥♥

The next morning in his
office, Jean-Marc leaned his elbows on his desk, propped his chin in his hands
and hummed in satisfaction.

Dieu
, he felt
great.

Exhausted, wrung out and
emptied. But in a good way. A very good way. Thanks to Ciara he was alive again.

And he was
definitely
in love.

He hadn’t left her place
until practically dawn this morning, and even then he’d had to tear himself
away from her delectable, awesome body. Ah, the things they’d done! Just
thinking about them—and her—left him hard as a pistol and counting the seconds
until they met again.

He would take her to his
flat tonight. Where they’d have better wine, more horizontal surfaces to
explore, and carpeted floors. A bigger bed, too, when they finally made it that
far. His cock swelled with alacrity.

“You look like Hades on
the second day of spring.” He opened his eyes to find Pierre grinning at him
with amusement.

“You should see
Persephone,” Jean-Marc said with a contented smile.

“Won over, sated and
panting for more, eh?”

“Did you doubt it? Thanks
for leaving the interview. I take it that was planned?”

Pierre shrugged and gave
him a wink. “
Peut-être
.” Perhaps. “So, what’s all this?” he asked,
indicating the piles of file boxes stacked around Jean-Marc’s desk.

“Archives sent them up. With
a note for you.” He handed Pierre a white memo slip.

“
You owe me big-time,
Rousselot
,” Pierre read. “
I’m thinking San Tropez. After the files are
returned in good order. Hugs, Nicole
.” He looked up. “O la la. I’ve hit the
jackpot.”

“It’s a scam,” Jean-Marc
assured him. “She just wants her damn files back.”

Pierre chuckled. “Then
she shall have them. And the sooner the better, in my view. Let’s get to it,”
he said, and grabbed the top container, which happened to be Saville’s box of
files on
le Revenant
.

After going over the two
dozen or so robberies attributed with fair certainty to the Ghost, they made a
list of the things those cases told them about the thief. The list was topped
by the time of month the thefts had been committed.

“I’ll bet he’s paying his
mortgage with the proceeds,” Pierre declared when Jean-Marc pointed out that
nearly all of the thefts had occurred within the week before the first of the
month.

“Or his rent,” Jean-Marc
agreed.

“Pretty high for the
suburbs,” Pierre said, studying the figures. “About right for a fancy place
downtown, though.”

“Or, he’s living modestly
but paying all his bills with his robbery proceeds, and just gets it over with
all at once, with one heist.”

“Makes sense.”

“What would either of
those options tell us?”

“That he’s lazy?”

Jean-Marc picked up the
neat list of columned statistics he’d written, and pondered the bigger picture:
motive. “Or that he’s not doing it for the thrill. If he’s waiting until the
last minute, I’d say stealing is not a lifestyle for him, but a necessity. And
not one he particularly enjoys.”

Pierre nodded. “I see
what you mean. Thieving obviously doesn’t scare him, but it doesn’t turn him
on, either, or he’d be doing it a lot more.”

“And yet, he’s very good
at it. So why doesn’t he go for bigger things? Knock over a store, rather than
take one bracelet or necklace at a time? Pay the bills for a whole year in one
fell swoop?”

“Because he’s smart,”
Pierre said, with a shade of respect. “Staying small-time kept him low-profile
and low-priority with the police for a long time.”

“Exactly,” Jean-Marc
said, tapping his pencil on the list. “Very smart.” He got the distinct feeling
they’d all been underestimating this guy. “Which makes me wonder...”

“What’s that?”

“If he’s been working in
other countries besides France. Maybe he only steals during the last week of
the month here because he’s working the other weeks in Germany, or Belgium, or
Spain.”

Pierre’s eyes widened. “
Mon
dieu
.” He sat up straight. “You mean like that serial killer who was murdering
women for years all along the E50. Different months for different countries.”

“Well, not quite that
grim, but yes, like that.” Jean-Marc lifted his phone. “Think I’ll put in a few
calls and check it out.”

By ten o’clock he’d
gotten promises from his contacts in the Dutch, Spanish, German, Belgian and
Swiss authorities to look into things and call him back.

By lunchtime Jean-Marc
had made his next major discovery.

“It’s not just jewelry.
He’s stealing other things, too.”

Pierre looked up from his
fourth box of files and frowned. “How do you figure?”

“There aren’t many, but—”
Jean-Marc held up several pages of notes he’d made on unsolved cases from the
past two years “—these robberies fit his pattern to a T.”

“And they’re not
jewelry?”

Jean-Marc shook his head.
“Paintings and silver. Plus...” He pointed to their master list of
le
Revenant
’s known robberies. “The other thefts took place in months when his
jewelry takes were lower than normal.”

Pierre leaned back in his
chair and whistled. “Paintings and silver. A lot harder to conceal than
jewelry. Sounds like Plan B.”

“He’s stuck to small
pieces, and he cut the paintings out of the frames. Even so, they’re harder to
get away with and probably tougher to fence than jewelry. So yeah. Plan B. Find
anything like that in your stack?”

Pierre frowned. “I’ll
have to go back and check my notes.”

“Here. Let me.” Jean-Marc
shuffled through the hand-written pages, skimming over the sea of dates and
figures. “Look. Here’s one more that fits. Another piece of silver.”

His lieutenant gave him
an incredulous look. “How the hell did you see that so fast? My head is
spinning with all these facts and figures.”

“It’s a gift,” Jean-Marc
said with a grin. “I was a national math scholar in school. Statistics were
always my favorite.”

Pierre rolled his eyes. “
Merde
.
It’s unnatural.” He gave him an appraising glance. “Remind me never to play
poker with you.”

Jean-Marc laughed. “Don’t
worry. I only gamble when I want revenge on someone. Well, actually, no one
invites me to poker night any more. Sore losers.”

“Don’t bloody blame
them,” Pierre muttered.

By late afternoon,
Jean-Marc had already gotten a positive response from the ever-efficient
Germans, including an email with all the pertinent data on five matching
robberies over the past three years in that country. So before quitting time he
appropriated one of the incident rooms, then he and Pierre tacked up a large
map of Europe and also one of Paris on the wall. Using stick pins, they marked
all the places where
le Revenant
had struck: red for jewelry, silver for
silver items, and blue for the three paintings that fit the profile.

They stood back and
looked it over for a moment. Suddenly they exchanged broad smiles.

“The train,” they said in
unison. “He’s been taking the train.”

“Are you all right?”
Sofie asked for the fifth time since they’d sat down at an outside table at
Café Constantinople, which was across the street from
Valois Vieilli.

Ciara mustered a smile.
She wasn’t. It had been six hours since Jean-Marc had left her bed, and she was
worried as hell. Emotionally, she felt like she’d been through a blender. But
Sofie didn’t need to hear about her problems. She had plenty of her own.

“I’m fine,” she said.
“How’s your face today?”

“Better,” the girl said
softly, touching a finger to the largest bruise on her cheek. Despite the thick
layer of disguising make-up, it still showed livid purple in a circling ring of
blue and yellow. “I’ve been taking aspirin and it hardly hurts at all anymore.”
She picked up her pen and went back to doodling on a napkin.

Ciara watched the gentle
brown eyes of the girl she had grown to love as a little sister and knew she
was lying, too. Ciara wanted to kill Beck for what he’d done to her. Renewed
anger welled up within her, and she embraced it. She’d brought Sofie along on
her excursion to Valois’s shop specifically to remind herself of the
consequences of associating with cops.

A reminder she
desperately needed after last night.

She heard the faint
tinkle of a bell and glanced across the street. Valois had returned from his
errand and was unlocking the shop’s front door. She’d give him a few minutes
before walking over for their meeting.

“You’re glowing today,”
Sofie said, yanking her out of her thoughts.

“What?”

“Glowing. And yet, you look
so incredibly sad. Why?”

Ciara lifted her cup and
took a sip of the sweet Turkish coffee that was the specialty of the café. “I
can’t imagine,” she evaded.

“It’s a man, isn’t it?”
Sofie pressed. “That detective you said you met the other night,” she concluded
with a nod, shocking Ciara. “You’ve seen him again.”

“Maybe,” she said,
schooling her expression. The girl was too perceptive by half. Or maybe the
incredible night she’d spent making love with that detective showed on her face
as plainly as Sofie’s bruises. “But it won’t happen again,” she said. It
couldn’t. No matter how much it hurt to think about never seeing him again.
“I’ll have to move now. So he can’t find me.”

Which is why it was a
mystery that she’d hit upon every excuse in the book not to look for a new
apartment this morning....

“I see,” Sofie said
solemnly, putting a flourish to her doodle, which had transformed into her
signature Hand of Fatima. Sofie signed all her paintings with the distinctive
symbol instead of her name. “Better to be safe, I suppose.”

“You’ll have to paint me
another Hand of Fatima, over my new bed,” Ciara said with a sigh. “For
protection.” Not that the old one had protected her from the wicked charms of
Commissaire
Jean-Marc Lacroix last night. She’d been helpless as a babe against him and his
masculine charms.

Sofie smiled shyly,
pleased. “I’d love to.”

“Paint me one, too,” said
the owner of the café, who was just walking by after waiting on another table.
He picked up the napkin and admired the drawing. “A big one. Right there,” he
said, waving it at a blank end wall inside the café. “I’ll pay you, of course.”

Sofie’s eyes lit up.
“Really?”

“The
khamsa
is a
Turkish symbol. This is a Turkish café. What could be more appropriate?”

Sofie looked to her for
guidance, and Ciara could see how excited she was. Being paid for her paintings
was Sofie’s dream. Ciara leaned over and kissed her forehead, relieved at the
change of topic. “You go for it, sweetie. I’ll just step over and speak with
Valois while you discuss your fee. See that you don’t cheat her,” she told the
owner with a friendly warning smile.

Valois was expecting her.
Hopefully he had good news.

As soon as she entered
the shop, he ushered her into the back room. “It’s a go,” he said. “I have a
buyer for the Michaud Picasso.”

Lightheadedness swirled
through Ciara and she dropped into a seat-sprung eighteenth century lounge that
served as both file cabinet and guest chair. “Yeah?” she said, unsure whether
she should be ecstatic or petrified.
One point three million euros
.

“Are you absolutely
certain you want to do this?” he asked, seeming to sense her waver.

“Absolutely. I’m ready.”
Ready to get out of the thieving business. Ready to start a new life. The way
it should have been from the beginning. And this laydown would do it.

“Have you seen this?” he
asked, and tossed her a copy of today’s paper. “Page three.”

She quickly opened it,
and started in surprise. There was a picture of Jean-Marc. And a short article
stating that this morning the
DCPJ
had announced he’d been put in charge
of
le Revenant
case, replacing
Commissaire
Saville.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

“This is not good news,
ma
petite
. Saville is an average detective at best. Unimaginative. Lacroix is
not. You must take extra precautions at the Michaud’s to see nothing is left
behind for him to find. Not so much as a stray hair.”

“Fuck,” she repeated.
Because that pretty much summed up her whole situation. “
On est foutus
.”
She was so fucked.

♥♥♥

That evening, Jean-Marc
came to Ciara’s flat earlier than she anticipated. It was late afternoon and
she’d packed a few things in her oversized purse and was escaping down the
stairs heading for the Orphans’ when he caught her. Literally. He grabbed her
around the waist and swung her up into his arms, taking her mouth and cutting
off her protest.

“Mmm,” he hummed when he
finally lifted his lips. “Miss me?”

Her insides were a
roiling mass of contradicting emotions. Elation to see him again, to feel his
embrace. Desperation and anxiety because she hadn’t meant to see him again.
Didn’t
want
to see him again. Shouldn’t.
Couldn’t
. For her own
good.

But one look at his face
and she knew there was no getting away from
Commissaire
Lacroix. Not
tonight, anyway. So, she answered, “I missed you like crazy,” because it was
the God’s honest truth. “I thought about you all day.” Then she kissed him
back.

Her bag dropped from her
fingers and he broke the kiss, glancing down at it. “Going somewhere?”