Page 6 of A Life Betrayed

The girl shook her head, clutching an overstuffed purse to her side. “I’m good here.”

Frances had gone through the list of potential informants Sergeant Gagnon had compiled and was surprised to find that none of them were connected to the array of adult clubs the family operated across the city. One establishment in particular, Le Rouge, was known by local authorities to be a hotbed of mob activity. Yet from what she’d gathered, the divisional office had never tried to infiltrate the place from within.

There weren’t many women in Frances’s position at the RCMP. There were plenty at the agency—receptionists, administrators, researchers, and assistants—but few who’d climbed the ranks like she had. There were barriers, of course—men who’d held roles longer than she’d been alive and would give them up only if they were forced into retirement or keeled over entirely. But the federal police were beginning to see the value of a quick-witted female officer in the field. Early on in her career, she’d discovered that women had far more ways than men to slip into the criminal underworld unnoticed.

Frances had cast her net wide and asked the research team to put together a record of girls who worked at Le Rouge. Then she’d cross-referenced the names against the schedule of cases awaiting trial at the local courts, hoping to find an opportunity to exploit. She’d found one in Lauralie Duquette, a doe-eyed eighteen-year-old who’d submitted a character reference for her boyfriend, who was facing criminal charges for a string of home invasions. Frances had reached out and arranged a meeting, one Lauralie had cautiously agreed to, on the premise that Frances might help make her boyfriend’s unfortunate situation disappear.

While the tip-off had implicated several mob figures, Mathias was by far the most high-profile among them, and that was where Frances had decided to concentrate her efforts. With what she’d learned about him, his involvement in the cross-provincial narcotics shipments was likely just the tip of the iceberg.

She’d been trying to put together an idea of Mathias’s movements in the city, but so far, he’d proven elusive. If Frances had someone on the inside, she’d be able to get a better read on the man and his weak points. And if he was anything like the other crime bosses she’d put away, those points involved women—the younger, the better.

“George’s court date is coming up soon, isn’t it?”

Lauralie nodded, rummaging in her purse for a silver container of breath mints. She knocked several into her palm. “Next month. The eighteenth.”

“It must be so hard on you both,” Frances said, infusing her tone with just the right amount of sympathy. The boyfriend—George Lanore—had been behind a series of violent burglaries targeting houses in the city’s wealthy Outremont suburb. George had finally been arrested when an unsuspecting homeowner had caught him red-handed in his kitchen and taken to him with his kid’s baseball bat.

“He’s a good guy, honestly,” Lauralie seethed and popped a handful of mints into her mouth. She crunched them between her teeth. “He’s just really impressionable, you know? One of his friends roped him into it.”

Frances suppressed a scornful snort. She’d seen George’s rap sheet. This wasn’t his first brush with the law. Lauralie’s conviction that he was innocent was likely a product of her own imagination.

“That’s the thing, though,” Frances said. “He’s the only one placed at the scene, so it’ll be hard to argue that he was coerced.”

Lauralie looked at her from under her thick black lashes. “So what are we supposed to do? I don’t want him to go to jail.”

“Well,” Frances began judiciously, “there are ways I might be able to assist in obtaining a more lenient sentence.”

“You’re saying you can get him off?” she asked brightly, brushing back a strand of golden hair.

“I’m saying when it comes to informants assisting with a federal investigation, there are some liberties we can take.”

“What federal investigation?” Lauralie asked, scrunching up her nose.

“How much do you know about your employer?”

The girl’s mouth quivered before she quickly masked her discomfort with an easy smile. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“The mob,” Frances said curtly, abandoning the sympathetic pretense. “The mafia runs Le Rouge, your place of employment. I have a hard time believing you had no idea.”

“We’re not supposed to talk about that,” Lauralie said, glancing around the parking lot. “Especially not to someone like you.”

“Quid pro quo,” Frances said with a shrug. “You help me, and in exchange, I help George with his current situation.”

Lauralie clasped the handle of her purse with a white-knuckled fist. “What do you need?”

“I need you to get close to Mathias Beauvais.”

The girl’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “I can’t—not him.”

“How many years did George’s lawyer say he was looking at?”

Lauralie stared at Frances, looking torn. “Seven to nine,” she whispered.

“That’s a long time, isn’t it, Lauralie?”

“He’s a good person!” she cried, her cheeks flushing.

Frances kept her face neutral. She knew better than to contradict the girl. “I’m sure he is. And you’re in a position to help him. Think how grateful he’ll be.”

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