Page 24 of Thorn

Water flowed in the shower. He listened to her moving about. He thought about her rubbing soap bubbles over her tight body and wanted to go in and give her a hand, but she’d thrown the bolt when she closed the door. There was a tap of the toilet seat hitting the back of the tank. The flow of water at the sink.

He lay on the bed, his hands laced behind his head, watching the bathroom door and trying to figure out what this scene was all about. There was some “get” from all this activity. Something beyond giving her affiliations so Panther Force wouldn’t shoot her by accident. Not that any of them had a weapon. And it wasn’t about the orgasm – orgasms. Something else…

The door popped open. Brigitte emerged with a cloud of steam. Her hair hung in a wet pony tail down her back. A towel encircled her waist like a hula skirt. Her breasts were bare, her nipples hard.

Thorn smiled and crooked a finger to encourage her back into his arms.

Brigitte ignored him as she fished up her clothes from the trail they’d left from door to bed. Stepping into the lace and ribbon panties, pulling the tank top over her head, and checking her weapon, Thorn watched the efficiency of her movements. He liked that they were allies but wished they were also playing on the same team with the same end goal. Of course, if that were the case, he wouldn’t have gotten to feel her writhing underneath him. It was that whole “keep your dick zipped” policy when it came to team mates and clients. Mess that one up, and it made for a short career.

“You could have shot me in the car, and you chose not to,” Thorn said, watching her tug on her sweater and adjust it down.

“It didn’t serve my purpose. You’re not my target.”

Okay. Why not go straight for the intel he needed? “Why are you here with me?”

She raised one perfectly arched brow. The suggestion of a smile twitched the corners of her lips, then she snagged up her pants from beside her foot. “Curiosity.”

“Come on, Brigitte, tell me the truth, why are you here.”

The phone in her jeans pocket buzzed, she pulled it out and read the text. “Merde,” she said under her breath. She slipped the phone back in her pocket, wriggled into the jeans, and slid her feet into her heels. Then she walked out the door. She didn’t turn her head. She didn’t say good-bye.

Unsettled, Thorn strode over to the door, flipped the lock on the door and headed to his own shower with his Dobb kit.

Thorn stood on the bathmat staring at the mirror. “Son of a gun.”

Chapter Thirteen

Juliette

Exit 2 A71/E9 in France

Saturday 4:15 p.m.

Thesign said this was Orléans, which was good because she was just about out of gas.

Juliette wanted to look at her phone and find out where Orléans was on the map.

She’d read about cell phones and tracking. She’d used apps herself when she put her phone down in her house, and she couldn’t remember where. It was a simple matter of entering the code into the computer. Even if the phone was off, that was overridden, and it would ring loudly.

The men who took her, surely, they found her this way − by her phone’s location.

Juliette had pulled her cell phone from her pocket and took out the battery as she powered down the road. She wasn’t sure if turning it off or putting it in airplane mode was enough. She’d throw it out the window but there were some contact numbers on there that she might need.

With no access to the internet, Juliette couldn’t look for directions.

There were never any public phones around anymore, so she couldn’t make a phone call. Who would she call? Everyone she knew was far away in the United States. Her grandmother, here in France, had denied her existence. And Juliette didn’t know anyone else in Europe. She knew very few people in America. Her father was basically her whole world since the accident. The nurses and the audiologists, the physical therapists. She had no close friends. No girlfriends.

Juliette had mourned that. She wanted friends. But she was of such an age that friends didn’t come easily. Especially when you had very little to give to a friendship. She had no past to share, nothing that made her interesting. No special hobbies. Toby, her stability dog, gave her an opportunity to talk to strangers. But other than that, Juliette lived in books. She imagined herself to be one of the characters and walked in their shoes. Books gave her freedoms that her body preempted.

No, there was no one, other than her father, that she knew well enough to call and ask them to send her some money.

Her father.

That’s whom sheshouldcall.

But a seed had been planted in her head at her childhood apartment when the concierge had said David DuBois was gay. It had germinated at her grandmother’s when even the possibility of Juliette existing was denied. The flash of the Russian men calling her doctor. Her. Doctor. And not the flat picture memory, anactualmemory.

The only person she told about going to Toulouse was the voice mail she’d left her dad, and, of course, she told her caregiver who lived with her. How would the Russian men be able to find her in France? Why did they want to find her in France? Where had they been taking her? And to what end?

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