Page 19 of Explosive Vengeance

His heart rate quickened. He excused himself, ended the call, then motioned for Jean-Pierre to sit in one of the chairs positioned in front of the desk. “Well?”

“The woman might have caught a train to Strasbourg last night. Facial recognition said it’s a sixty-five-percent chance it’s her.”

Guillaume glanced at the door, but of course, Jean-Pierre would have locked it on his way in. He never had meetings like this at home, preferring to keep all…gray area aspects of his business dealings away from his family. “Was she alone?”

“I thought so at first. But now I think not.” He pulled out a tablet and brought up some images on screen. “I think she might be with this man. He boarded the same train car as her in Paris. Here on the platform in Strasbourg he follows her before he walks out of range.”

A dark-haired, muscular man in a brown leather jacket. “Who is he?” He studied the image. “He’s too far away to be a bodyguard. Maybe an accomplice, or someone following her?”

“We don’t know yet. And we don’t know where they’ve gone either, but we’re monitoring everything we can. If this is the same woman who posed as Gabrielle, she changed her appearance with a disguise. The hat she wore made it hard to see her face, and with her ears covered it makes it more difficult to say for sure if it’s her. But it’s the best lead we’ve got at the moment.”

“It’s her.” He’d studied her image enough now to recognize her profile and the way she moved. “Have you called in favors from our contacts?” He had everything from National Police to some military officers, intelligence officials and politicians in his pocket. Someone would be able to lend assistance.

“Yes. And thanks to new voice recognition software one of them got a possible hit an hour ago. We may have found our break.” He switched screens and brought up an audio clip. “The voice matches hers, and the cell signal was intercepted near Strasbourg.”

Guillaume listened as two women spoke in English. A very strange, definitely coded conversation that didn’t make any sense. “She’s either Canadian or American.” He met Jean-Pierre’s gaze. Everything he’d learned thus far said the rumors might be true. “A Valkyrie,” he whispered, the hairs on his nape standing up. She had to be. Incredible as it seemed, shehadto be.

Jean-Pierre nodded, his gaze intent. “Maybe.”

No. Guillaume’s gut was certain of it. “Who sent her?”

“That program was shut down completely a long time ago. It’s possible she’s operating on her own.”

“Why did she target Dom? Because of the women?” He sneered. They were such a small part of the business. Uneducated, illiterate women who barely spoke French, looking for a better life and easily manipulated into thinking they would get it.

He was doing his country a service by keeping them out of the system. If he and Dom hadn’t purchased them, they would have all landed up on welfare eventually, sucking money from French taxpayers’ pockets because they were too stupid and lazy to support themselves and the fatherless children they would inevitably have. A drain on a society already sagging under the weight of the burden it bore.

“I don’t know, but when we traced the other number involved with this particular call, the only thing we could find was that it originated somewhere in the UK. It was that heavily encrypted.”

Guillaume grunted. Maybe the Brits had sent “Gabrielle”. He didn’t want MI6 sniffing around. “So she’s still in Strasbourg?”

“As best we can tell.”

He wanted to kill her. Instead he’d make herwishshe was dead. “Do you have an exact location?”

“Yes.” He pulled up a satellite map showing a quiet, residential neighborhood.

Righteous anger punched through him. She thought she could kill his brother and then walk away? “I want a team dispatched there immediately. Find her and bring her to me. If she’s with the guy, kill him and make it look like she did it.” The fewer strings, the better.

“Of course. I’ve already alerted our special tactics officer contact in Strasbourg. He’s getting a team together now, using the story that the woman and the man she’s possibly with are terrorists.”

“Sheisa terrorist,” he snarled. “Tell him I want a live feed to their helmet cams.” He wanted to watch the operation in real time.

“I will.” Jean-Pierre stood. “I’ll alert you—”

“Sit down, Jean-Pierre. We’ll do this here. And when the team goes in, I want to ID her myself.”

Guillaume didn’t care if she was deadly in her own right. He would find her, no matter how long it took. And he would make her suffer.

No one fucked with his family and lived. There was no safe place on earth for her now.

****

Well,hewas no fun.

Chloe pouted in disappointment and stared up at the ceiling from the couch rather than look over at Heath. After her loaded innuendo she’d only been partially kidding about, Heath had merely given her a long, warning look before setting to work transferring all his contacts into his new phone.

Lame. No shock, no bulging eyes or even an interested look for her efforts. He could have at least given her something interesting to work with, but nope, he was all standoffish, cool and collected. And apparently determined to ignore her.

---