Black Ice - Anne Stuart [32]
“No one trusts you, Bastien,” Madame Lambert said. “None of us trusts each other. That’s why we work so well together. Between us, we control the selling and buying of illegal weapons throughout most of the world. Trust would simply interfere with things.”
“Most of the world,” Bastien echoed. “But not all of it. Where the hell is Christos? I don’t like this delay—it makes me edgy. Shouldn’t we be worrying about him, not a hapless young woman with the guile of a rabbit?”
Monique laughed. “She is a bit of a bunny, isn’t she? All big eyes and twitching little nose. We just don’t know if that’s an act or not. And I, for one, don’t propose we endanger our enterprise by waiting around to find out. If Christos were here he’d say the same thing.”
“Christos isn’t here, and we’re wasting too much time on the girl,” Hakim said, clearly displeased. “Bastien, go after her, see what you can find out. I don’t want to attract any official attention, but neither do I want to waste our time squabbling about her. We’ll start with Ricetti’s proposal for redividing our Middle East customers—that should give you enough time to make a determination. If she’s a danger, kill her. If not, come back to the table and we’ll get some work done.”
Bastien raised an eyebrow. “And why do I get charged with this little assignment?” he demanded. “I already spent the whole damned day with her and didn’t find out anything.”
“You didn’t push hard enough. You’re the one who’s spent the most time with her—you’ll have the best chance of finding out what’s going on.”
“Besides,” Monique purred, “she has a crush on you. Any fool can see that.”
He didn’t bother denying it. Any fool could see that she was almost hypersensitive to his presence. He drained his wineglass and pushed away from the table. “My pleasure,” he said lazily.
And he strolled from the room, hands shoved in his pockets, entirely at ease with his task.
There was no sign of her in the upstairs library, but the computer was out of sleep mode, proving she’d just been there. She’d made an inadequate attempt at covering up her Internet snooping, but it didn’t take much to find her footprints. She’d been looking up Legolas, and she’d found the right site to tell her just how very dangerous and illegal those weapons were. She’d also looked up half the people in the room, including him.
He didn’t bother to check—he knew exactly what she would and wouldn’t discover in her clumsy tripping through the Internet, about the others and about him. Bastien Toussaint was thirty-four years old, married, no children, rumored connections with various terrorist organizations, never proven, suspected to be an international dealer in illegal weapons and drugs. Connected to the murder of three Interpol agents. Considered to be a very dangerous man.
She would have read that, but then, it should be nothing new to her if she’d been properly briefed. If it was news to her he was going to have a hard time getting any closer to her, to find out exactly who and what she was.
And he was going to find out just how hard to get she was. And exactly how good his performance, as Monique termed it, was. No more graceful little dance. The time had come to find out why she was really here.
And then to do something about it.
Chloe was scared shitless. Sitting in the middle of her elegant room, crying. Her freshly applied makeup would be running down her face, she thought, and she’d look like a raccoon all over again. And this time Bastien wouldn’t be there to mop up the mess with one of his soft, clean shirts. He wasn’t going to get anywhere near her.
She had to get out of here. How in God’s name had she managed to land in such a nest of vipers? She should have realized something odd was going on, but her parents had always told her she had an overactive imagination, and she’d decided they were right. An addiction to thrillers and fantasy novels probably hadn’t helped.
But this was no imaginary danger. These weren’t grocers, and why the hell she