Takedown

CHAPTER 7

It was nearly three in the morning when Alex abruptly came awake.

She had been dreaming of her mother, twenty years old, wearing that veil and wedding dress. Alex sat on her lap, admiring the turquoise stone on her finger, saying, “I don’t want you to die, Mommy.” But when she looked up again, she was sitting alone.

Or so she thought.

To her surprise, she saw a Persian wedding rug spread out before her, covered with the traditional bowls of bread and nuts and coins and incense and two burning candelabra with a mirror between them.

But the face reflected in the mirror was not hers.

It was the groom from her mother’s wedding video.

Alex sucked in a sharp breath and opened her eyes and found herself lying in the dark of Gérard’s hotel suite. Gérard was on his back beside her, chest rising and falling but making no sound as he slept. And as the dream receded, regret kicked in, and she could only ask herself why?

Why had she decided to sleep with this man? He was a virtual stranger.

Alex had always been impulsive. For as long as she could remember. But she had never been reckless about her choice of bed partners, which, for better or worse, were few and far between.

So what was it about this one that had made her cave?

Hell, cave wasn’t even the word. If anything, she had been the aggressor.

After they had found the mugger’s gun, she had helped Gérard — wet and bleeding and smelling of the ocean — through the hotel lobby and up to his one-bedroom suite.

She’d sat him on his bed and told him to strip off his shirt. “Where’s your first-aid kit?”

He winced and gestured toward the closet. “In the suitcase.”

She retrieved it and checked inside, happy to see it contained some cotton swabs and several butterfly bandages. She then crossed to the bathroom and found a towel and two washcloths. After soaping one of the cloths, she filled a glass with water, and carried everything back to the bed.

She said, “Lift yourself up a little.”

He did as he was told and she scooted the towel underneath him and flattened it out. When he lay back down, she inspected the wound under the nightstand light and found a lot of sand, but was relieved to see it was even shallower than she had first thought.

“A couple butterflies should do the trick,” she said. She poured water on the cut to wash away the sand, then swabbed it with soap and rinsed again.

He winced. “You’ve done this before.”

She nodded. “Combat training.”

“Combat training?”

“Army. Two-year stint.”

He laughed and shook his head. “I have to tell you, Alex, the more I know of you, the more fascinating you become. Whatever possessed you to join the military?”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“Nothing about you is boring. Tell me.”

She shrugged. “I could say it was a family tradition, but the truth is I wasn’t ready for college, and figured a two-year stint would do me good. I could always use the GI Bill to help get me an education later.”

She left out the part where she had heard rumors that her father had fled to the Middle East, and how she had naively believed she might somehow be able to contact him once she got over there. She had been so young and stupid then.

“So did you?”

She dried the wound and applied some ointment. “Did I what?”

“Get an education.”

She nodded again. “I had thoughts about joining the FBI,”—another naive notion that it might help her gather information about her father—“so I majored in Legal Studies, with a minor in Anthropology. I figured since I had a military background and I’m fluent in Farsi, getting in would be a slam dunk.”

“You speak Farsi, too?”

“My mother was Iranian. She made sure to teach me.”

He studied her carefully. “Yes, I see it now. She must have been very beautiful.”

Alex wasn’t sure why his gaze made her uncomfortable, but it did, though not in a bad way.

“And did the FBI accept you?”

“Not even close. They rejected me outright.”

He frowned. “Why?”

She took out one of the butterfly bandages and ripped open the wrapper. “That’s another long and boring part,” she said, the edge creeping back into her voice, “and I’d rather not get into it, if you don’t mind.”

“We can stop talking altogether, if you prefer.” He gestured to the wound. “You have my life in your hands.”

She laughed and started applying the first bandage. “Trust me, this little thing isn’t even close to life threatening. You probably won’t even feel it in a day or two. I doubt it’ll leave a scar.”

He let her work for a moment, then said, “If you don’t mind my asking, how do you go from Legal Studies and Anthropology to working as a…fugitive retrieval specialist?”

“Simple. I met a guy at a party, we got to talking and hit it off.”

“A boyfriend?”

She laughed again. “No. Turned out he’d been doing trace work for a bondsman, but wanted to strike out on his own and needed a partner. With my background and training, he thought I might be a good fit.”

“I suppose in a profession like that, being a woman has its advantages.”

“Being a woman always has its advantages.” She finished up and patted his bare chest. “And it looks like my work here is done.”

Gathering the wrappers, washcloths, and first-aid kit, she got to her feet, but before she could take a step, Gérard grabbed hold of her wrist. It was a gentle enough move, but most men would have regretted making it.

“There’s no hurry,” he told her. “I’m too wired to sleep. Stay for a while. Talk.”

She looked around the bedroom. “In here?”

He gestured to the doorway. “We can go out to the sitting room if you like. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

He was smiling again. She thought for a moment, then set the washcloths and first-aid kit on the nightstand.

“No,” she said. “This is fine.”

Then, in a move that surprised her even more than it did Gérard, she climbed onto the bed and kissed him.

He didn’t seem to have any trouble kissing her back.

Now here she was, lying in the dark, still unsure what had possessed her to climb into his bed in the first place.

Maybe it was simple. Maybe at that moment she had needed to be close to someone. Maybe his charm and drunken attempt at gallantry and her own attempts at playing nursemaid had gotten all the right synapses firing and the rest was inevitable.

Whatever the case, it was done, and she needed to get the hell out of there. And when Gérard came back for more, assuming he would, she’d explain that everything from here on out was strictly business. She just wanted to make this deal and go home.

When it came down to it, he probably wanted the same thing.

After pushing the sheet aside, she carefully extricated herself from the bed and searched the floor for her clothes. She found her jeans and underwear lying on one side of the room, her T-shirt on the other, and didn’t remember removing any of them.

Jesus, Alex. What are you, an animal?

She heard Gérard stir and suddenly felt vulnerable standing there in the buff. She got dressed as quickly as possible, scooped up the mugger’s gun from the dresser, and tucked it in her waistband. Tiptoeing over to the nightstand, she kept her gaze on Gérard, then quietly slid open the drawer, and removed a pad and pen, both stamped with the Largo Inn logo.

She stood hunched over the pad, pen ready, trying to figure out what to write. She got as far as Dear Thomas and stopped, ripped off the sheet and crumpled it in disgust before returning the pad and pen to the drawer.

After checking to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind, she went to the door and let herself out.

When Alex was gone, the man who was calling himself Thomas Gérard opened his eyes and reached for his mobile phone on the nightstand. Punching in a speed-dial number, he climbed out of bed and went to the window overlooking the hotel’s front parking lot.

He waited through three rings before the line came to life and a voice said, “Yeah?”

“She’s leaving the hotel.”

“Why so early?” A hesitant pause. “You think we’re blown?”

Outside, Alex Poe emerged from the hotel entrance and crossed toward her car, her hair a clear victim of the night’s acrobatics.

“Judging by the way she climbed all over me, I highly doubt it.”

“Just be careful,” the voice said. “She’s a fierce little bitch.”

“In more ways than you’ll ever know, but she’s a lot more vulnerable than she lets on. And she isn’t the one who cut me.”

“Hey, you wanted it realistic, remember? A little blood goes a long way.”

Gérard touched the bandages on his rib cage and pushed out a dry, humorless laugh. “That’s easy to say when it isn’t your blood.”