Page 115 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

In­stead, he stood. He needed to hear it from her, needed her to trust him with her story.

Mikel stood as well. “I think of Quinn as my sec­ond daugh­ter,” he said. “No harm will come to her on my watch.”

Sur­prise rip­pled through Gabriel at Mikel’s dec­la­ra­tion of af­fec­tion for Quinn. Yet he shouldn’t be as­ton­ished. Mikel was fiercely loyal to the roy­als, treat­ing them as though they were his own fam­ily. There had been that tackle when Mikel had thought Gabriel might leap off a cliff. The del­i­cate de­brief­ing af­ter Gabriel’s ab­duc­tion when Mikel had walked a shift­ing path that re­quired him to elicit the in­for­ma­tion he needed to track the kid­nap­pers while not adding trauma to Gabriel’s al­ready dam­aged psy­che.

“All of us are very for­tu­nate to have you on our side,” Gabriel said, hold­ing out his hand. “Not just be­cause you are skilled at your job, but be­cause you care. That is a price­less gift. Muchas gra­cias!”

Mikel shook his hand with the firm grip that Gabriel al­ways sus­pected he mod­er­ated for cour­tesy’s sake. “Cal­eva is a place of sec­ond chances. I am glad to be of ser­vice.”

As Gabriel ex­ited Mikel’s of­fice, he won­dered yet again what Mikel had wanted to leave be­hind him.

Quinn stared at the large screen on the wall of the con­fer­ence room, watch­ing Paul Ricci’s face. He had blurred the back­ground be­hind him, as though they didn’t know he was at his—or, more ac­cu­rately, his wife’s—beach house in San Diego. He wore an open-necked white shirt, and his blond hair looked blon­der be­cause he had a tan. Ass­hole.

Mikel sat be­side her, adding his in­tim­i­dat­ing pres­ence to make sure Ricci took this con­ver­sa­tion se­ri­ously.

“An­toine DeGuerre,” Quinn read the third name on her list. DeGuerre was one of Dupont’s cronies. She didn’t ex­pect Ricci to know him, but it was worth a try.

Ricci at least pre­tended to con­sider the name for a long mo­ment be­fore he shook his head.

“Odette Fontaine,” Quinn read, care­ful to keep her tone neu­tral.

“No.” A pause. “Wait. I think my wife knows her.” He stared up­ward as he snapped his fin­gers to in­di­cate his at­tempt at re­call. “Yes, they have lunch to­gether some­times in Paris. They met…” He thought longer be­fore he low­ered his gaze to the screen again. “Cos­met­ics. Some­thing about skin cream. That’s it. Odette Fontaine got my wife hooked on some very ex­pen­sive skin cream that her com­pany sells. Sylvie claims it’s mirac­u­lous.”

“How long ago did they meet?” Again, she kept her voice even while ex­cite­ment pin­wheeled in her brain. But not sur­prise. She had been sure there was a con­nec­tion.

Ricci waved a dis­mis­sive hand. “Two or three years ago, maybe. How could a cos­met­ics sales­per­son be in­volved in kid­nap­ping a duke? That’s rather far-fetched.”

“We’re fol­low­ing all leads,” Quinn said in an of­fi­cial mono­tone. “How of­ten do they see each other?”

“God, I don’t know. I sup­pose ev­ery time we go to Paris”—he paused—“to­gether, which is about four times a year.”

“Have you ever met Ms. Fontaine?”

“No. Yes. She came to a party at our apart­ment. I don’t re­mem­ber when.”

“What did you speak with her about?” Quinn asked.

Ricci’s laugh had a ner­vous qua­ver. “I have no idea. There were a lot of guests. I as­sume Sylvie in­tro­duced us, and then I imag­ine we made small talk.”

“But she knew you were an oto­laryn­gol­o­gist?”

“Prob­a­bly. I’m quite prom­i­nent in my field.” The ar­ro­gance was back. “This is ridicu­lous. Odette Fontaine couldn’t be con­nected with the kid­nap­ping.”

Ricci wasn’t go­ing to give them any more use­ful in­for­ma­tion about Odette. He con­sid­ered her un­wor­thy of his at­ten­tion since she sold noth­ing but friv­o­lous, over­priced cos­met­ics.

“Let’s move on to the next name.” Quinn glanced down at her list. “Elio Ko­dra.”

“No. Never,” Ricci said.

She read off four more names that re­ceived neg­a­tive an­swers.

“All right. We’re done. Thank you for your time, Dr. Ricci.” She said the po­lite words in a tone of ut­ter in­sin­cer­ity.

“If we have fur­ther ques­tions, we will be in touch.” Mikel’s voice was edged with men­ace. He swiped a fin­ger across his lap­top screen, and Ricci’s face dis­ap­peared. “Gilipol­las,” he mut­tered be­fore he swiveled his big leather chair to face Quinn. “There’s your con­nec­tion. Buen tra­bajo. Good work.”

Quinn tamped down her ela­tion to keep her re­ply pro­fes­sional. “So many data points sur­round Odette Fontaine.”

“Be­fore we go to the king, re­view them for me,” Mikel said.

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