Page 77 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

There were rules about where bad guys killed peo­ple? Her fa­ther was a con man, not a killer, so she didn’t know how this worked.

“Buenos días, señor,” Mikel said, halt­ing six feet away from Dupont.

“Bon­jour, made­moi­selle et mon­sieur.” Dupont held up the wand. “With your per­mis­sion?”

Mikel nod­ded but didn’t move. Quinn could tell that her boss had scored the first point some­how.

“I am also jam­ming all com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” Dupont said as he stepped for­ward to scan Mikel.

“Of course,” Mikel said, his eye­brows raised in a way that said he had an­tic­i­pated Dupont’s ev­ery move.

Up close, Dupont looked younger than she had as­sumed in Lis­bon, prob­a­bly in his for­ties. His mouth was thin, and his nose had been bro­ken at least once. He moved like Mikel did, with the stealth of a hunt­ing cat. A jit­ter of nerves ran through Quinn to set­tle in her knees, forc­ing her to lock them so they wouldn’t fold un­der her.

As he turned to her with the wand, he scru­ti­nized her face with that flat, ma­lig­nant gaze. Sud­denly, fury blazed across his face, twist­ing his mouth into an ugly gri­mace.

“We’ve met be­fore, made­moi­selle. In Lis­bon, I be­lieve.”

So he hadn’t iden­ti­fied her face from their en­counter, yet he had asked for her to at­tend this meet­ing. How? Why? Her knees started to buckle again, but she thought of Gabriel, of all he had suf­fered. Strength flowed through her, and she stood tall to meet Dupont’s eyes with­out flinch­ing. “Yes, we did.”

“That fils de pute Ko­dra! He led you there.” Dupont turned to Mikel. “Were you there too?”

Mikel shrugged but did not an­swer.

Dupont moved in close to Quinn, crowd­ing her as he ran the wand slowly around her shoul­ders. He brought it so close to her breasts that his knuckle brushed the cot­ton of her T-shirt. She hissed in a breath but didn’t move.

“Back off,” Mikel snarled, “or I’ll use that wand on your face.”

Dupont held his ground for a cou­ple of sec­onds be­fore step­ping back.

Quinn let out the breath she’d been hold­ing.

Mikel stepped for­ward to put him­self be­tween Quinn and Dupont, forc­ing the French­man to step back. “Your meet­ing is with me, not Quinn,” he said.

Dupont ad­dressed Mikel. “What do you want?”

“The per­son who mas­ter­minded the ab­duc­tion of the duke,” Mikel said.

“I was not in­volved.”

“Not many peo­ple could pull off an op­er­a­tion that com­plex. You would at least hear about it.”

“Why would I tell you?” Dupont started to reach in­side the pocket of his leather jacket. Out of the cor­ner of her eye, Quinn caught a flicker of move­ment from Mikel. Dupont froze. “I am get­ting a cig­a­rette. Noth­ing more, I prom­ise.”

“Please…smoke the whole pack,” Mikel said with a wolfish smile.

Dupont pulled a packet of cig­a­rettes from his pocket and took his time light­ing one. The tip glowed as he drew in a lung­ful of smoke.

“If you don’t tell me the truth,” Mikel said, his voice a lash of ice, “you will have a dif­fi­cult time suc­ceed­ing in your fu­ture busi­ness ven­tures, as I have demon­strated.”

Dupont blew out the smoke in a se­ries of per­fect rings. “Are you stupid enough to threaten me?”

“Your stu­pid­ity far ex­ceeds mine,” Mikel said. “You kid­napped a mem­ber of the royal fam­ily of Cal­eva. And not even the mem­ber you tar­geted.”

Some­thing ugly flared in Dupont’s eyes as Mikel’s sneer hit home. “I would never make such a mis­take, so now you can be sure I didn’t do it.”

“You asked for this meet­ing,” Mikel pointed out. “You must have some­thing to tell me.”

Dupont took an­other drag on his cig­a­rette be­fore he dropped it in the dirt and ground it out with the toe of his pol­ished black boot.

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