Page 34 of The Wolves Come at Night
Taylor glanced at her watch. She needed to leave to make her date with Florian. Feeling much more herself in her normal uniform—dark wash jeans, a cashmere T-shirt under a black leather jacket, and her battered Lamas—she loped down the street through the pulsing crowds on Lower Broad to the Omni Hotel and the restaurant inside, Bob’s Steak & Chop House. Full of nooks and crannies, locals and tourists alike, it was not only a bastion of fabulous food but was also a perfect place to either be seen or hidden away in privacy.
The head of the Macallan Group, Thierry Florian, waited in the back room of the restaurant, looking dapper and extremely French. For a pseudo spy, he stood out, and Taylor wondered if it was on purpose. Any time she’d been undercover, she’d found trying to be nondescript sometimes drew more notice than being dressed to kill. Some people stood out no matter what. Taylor was one of them. Thierry another.
He’d ordered a bottle of wine already, a good one, judging by the dark ruby liquid in the decanter on the ledge behind him. And managed a table in the corner that put both their backs to walls and had them angled away from the main dining spaces. An exit was nearby. They were alone in the room and had line of sight to all ingress and egress. Now that’s more spy-like, she thought.
She accepted the black napkin from the server, spread it in her lap, and watched him pour a glass of wine for them both. She waited for the server to depart before pointing toward the decanter. “Are we celebrating?”
“We are,” Florian said, rolling the wine in his glass. “A lovely little Pichon Lalande. I was surprised to see it on the menu. A token of my gratitude. I am hopeful that you will soon be a member of my team, and these meals will occur more regularly. You’re excellent company, Captain Jackson.”
“I’ll be even better company if you call me Taylor. Why do you want me to be a spy so badly?”
Florian laughed, showing small, even teeth. “I don’t particularly identify with that word. Spying sounds so vulgar, as if we’re some sort of voyeurs. I—and Macallan—are merely facilitators. Investigators who work in that gray space between law enforcement and criminals. We do what must be done to save the masses from total destruction. As I told you in Maryland, your unique style and searing insights would be a godsend. And I know that you’re bored. I can offer a more exciting life. A more fulfilling life.”
“People die around you an awful lot, Thierry. And I have plenty of excitement here.”
Those even teeth flashed in the dim light, and Taylor was reminded of a small wolf she’d seen bounding across her backyard several years earlier. Noticing her on the back deck, it had stopped and stared at her with an almost comical grin on its face. It looked harmless, even beautiful, but she knew if she’d gotten closer it would have happily ripped out her throat.
“My dear Taylor, please don’t. Games do not suit us. We both know you’re leaving Metro and coming to work for Macallan.”
Hell, she was going to do this. She thought she was, at least. The excitement of solving Georgia Wray’s murder and searching for Carson Conway was going to fade away into the ether, leaving her stuck down the hall from Huston pushing paper for the next few years until Huston decided to run for mayor and Taylor got shoved up the ladder again.
She took a sip of the wine in acknowledgment of this truth. The deep, dry red exploded in her mouth, berries and truffles and cedar. “You serve me wine like this at every meal, and I’m in. So if I join you, what’s my first assignment?”
“That is to be determined. There are steps we must take to secure you. Legends to build. You’ve been in the news enough that we’ll have to reduce your footprint for a while. You need training, most of all.”
“I know how to handle myself.”
“You are excellent with a weapon, yes. But you’ll need more tools in your arsenal than a gun. And you must learn the theater of operations. My preference would be for you to establish residency in Paris. It is a central location, easy to reach me, our headquarters, and all the areas we would travel while you’re training.”
Better than the Virginia countryside or Quantico. “Paris. For how long?”
“To be determined.”
Oh yeah, Baldwin was going to love this. I have to move to Paris for a while, honey. Be back before you know it.
“And Baldwin?”
“Is more than welcome to arrange visits. Not in Paris, of course, we’d have to find safe houses out of the country for you to meet in. It will take a bit of coordination, but we’re hardly asking—”
“Thierry. Let me stop you right there. No offense, but that just isn’t going to happen. I’m not going to move halfway around the world away from my fiancé for an indeterminate amount of time in order to—how did you put it? Reduce my footprint?”
“Then convince him to join you.” Florian leaned forward, the charm offensive forgotten in favor of intensity and earnestness. “You work well together. Couples in general work well in this arena. We can send a pair like you and Baldwin anywhere in the world to operate. You’re both smart, you’re both capable. With the right training and fewer fetters on your talents, you could save so many from harm.”
Taylor shook her head, but internally. This was nuts. And Baldwin didn’t want it. She’d never convince him otherwise.
“What else?”
“Compensation, obviously, will be quite generous. You will want for nothing. You will have the best training in the world, from the finest instructors. Weapons, hand-to-hand combat, languages, covert actions. You will be operational within a year, and then, my dear, you will change the world.”
“A year?”
“Ten months at the outside. You are a quick study, and you’ve already had some training. We have some less orthodox ways to train that will leapfrog you ahead. If you were to join your own intelligence services, it would be much longer. With much less freedom on the back end, I might add. At your age—not that I am commenting on it, my dear—they are less likely to take on more seasoned operatives for fieldwork. I am the opposite. I much prefer experience to enthusiasm.”
“And Angelie Delacroix? What of her?”
She could have sworn Florian flinched.
“Retired.”
