Page 214 of The Wild Charge

Reese fell into step beside him. “Hm. Barbecue, actually.”

Tenny let out a startled laugh.

Behind them, the car ignited with a lowwhump.

~*~

Saumur, France

The problem with Abacus was that it had operated so seamlessly, and so powerfully, for so long, that its heads had grown complacent and unworried. Waverly, Howard, and the Morettis’ deaths had hit the others hard…but they’d been too stupid to change things up. The Kellys were killed in their home. Whitmere had bit it one mile from his house, on a road he traversed every day.

Idiots.

Angelo Rawlings, however, was too young, too successful, too good-looking and genetically blessed to go out like that. Like a sad loser who didn’t understand when the jig was up.

No, Angelo got the fuck out of town.

“Monsieur Rawlings? The water – it’s not too cold?” one of the hotel staff asked him as she laid a fresh towel and robe over the lounge chair in front of him.

Angelo had just finished his fiftieth lap in the pool, and though the water was cold, as a golden autumn gripped the Pays de Loire, the exertion of swimming had warmed him. “No,” he said, smiling at the girl, sure to flex his biceps as he pushed his wet hair off his face. “C’est parfait. Merci.”

She laughed quietly, eyes lowered, and blushed as she walked away – but she glanced back over her shoulder in a promising way as she retreated.

Angelo watched her until she was gone, then hauled himself out of the pool and dried off. An afternoon breeze whipped down the courtyard, and he hastened to don his robe.

When he’d first announced that he’d be taking some time off for “mental health reasons,” a dozen clients had offered use of their beach or mountain houses. But Angelo hadn’t wanted to go anywhere so traceably obvious. When his friend, Logan, mentioned he’d found this super-out-of-the-way chateau in the Loire River Valley where he’d taken a girlfriend once, Angelo had booked a one-way ticket and not even told his secretary where to get hold of him.

The 19thcentury chateau offered splendid views of the countryside, and a short drive took him into town, to the markets and les brocanteurs. There was a medieval castle to explore, and he’d even thought of attending one of the shows they were giving at The National Riding School there. He didn’t know anything about horses, but he couldn’t spendallday in bed with the maids.

He'd been here two weeks, and had started pricing flats in the heart of Saumur. Was thinking about the logistics of setting up shop here and working with his investment clients remotely in the near future.

God knew he was done with Abacus. That had been a good thing while it lasted, but the risk was too great, now.

He let himself into his room clad in robe and slippers, the large, two-room suite flooded with light from the tall windows, drapes billowing across the parquet floors. He walked to the dresser, scrubbing his hair with a towel, drawn by a new addition to his suite: a massive china vase of blue hydrangeas seated there, a small card propped against the mirror.

The maid? he wondered, smiling to himself as he reached for the card. Or maybe the girl by the pool. There were so many leggy, lovely young things working here, with their soft accents and their doe eyes. Who needed Abacus when he looked like he did and had regular women leaving him flowers?

HELLO, the card read, in all caps, typed rather than handwritten.

Underneath, it was signedThe Six Hundred.

Angelo frowned. “What?”

A sound behind him: a soft scrape. He froze, realizing then that he hadn’t left his windows open when he went out.

He turned around slowly, the fine white linen of the curtains bellying out like sails, and saw a man seated with his legs crossed in a dainty blue chair. He wore all black, down to his gloves and stocking cap, and his face with smeared with something greasy and green-black that made his features hard to pick out.

His eyes were blue, though, the same pale shade as the hydrangea blossoms.

“Hello,” the man said, affably, flashing a lazy smile. “Angelo, is it?” He was British. “Right, now, go and lock the door like a good boy, and I’ll tell you how this is going to work.”

He drew a gun from his waist, and rested it on his thigh. “Go on, then. That’s a good lad.”

~*~

The farmer’s market laid out in the narrow, shaded streets of Saumur was a bazaar of every kind of food imaginable: from staples like baguettes and cheeses wrapped in wax, to fresh seafood and local beef, to escargot quiches and piping hot sandwiches and flaky pastries. At a small, streetside table shaded by an umbrella, Fox thumped down baskets of steamed mussels and handed around plastic forks.

“I like the cap,” Tenny observed, breaking a loaf of bread into quarters and putting the largest portion on Reese’s paper plate. “It’s very London cabbie chic.”

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