Page 87 of The Wolves Come at Night
“Oh, we’re speaking in English. Fine. What is the meaning of this intrusion? You could have called. There was no reason to eliminate my guards. I happen to like them. Do you know how hard it is to get good help these days?”
“Frederick. I don’t care. I need information, quickly.”
The man’s gaze slid to Taylor. “Who is your friend?”
“Natalie Johnson. She is my new assistant. She needs access to an account.”
“Ah. Well. If only my assistants were such beauties.” He followed with a flowery speech in French. Taylor caught the words lovely, heavenly, and what she thought was a very deviant sexual position, and tensed. So the great La Boulanger was a bit of a pervert.
She must have guessed right, because Angelie was across the room with the barrel of her pistol again the Baker’s temple a moment later. “No, she does not have enough French to understand your disgusting suggestions. No more games. I need the accounts of one of your clients. And you’re going to give them to me—all of them—right now, or I will splash your brain across this expensive desk and leave you here to rot.”
“I give you a client’s information, and they will come visiting to do the same as you threaten. Non. I will not.”
Angelie knifed him in the thigh, and the man howled. Leaving the knife deep in his flesh, she pulled a baggie from her pocket and dangled it in front of his face. There was a syringe, a spoon, and a lighter inside, plus a prescription bottle.
Great. The Baker was a pervert and an addict. “Remind me never to keep funds here,” Taylor said, trying to keep calm and not leap to the man’s defense. Damn it, why did Angelie have to get physical?
Another test.
“Quiet,” Angelie shot back, turning to the wounded banker. “The files for the man you know as Gareth Maughan. Now, Frederick. You give them to me and you’ll get your treat. And I won’t cut your throat.”
Gareth Maughan? Taylor knew that name. That was the angel investor who’d offered so much money for Simeon Chase’s app. Some of the pieces of the past few days started to fall together. Taylor began to speak, but Angelie gave her a nasty look.
“Now, Frederick. The files.”
The little man was muttering curses and sweating hard, blood dripping down his chair leg, but started typing. “He thought you might come calling. Why don’t you just transfer the money he wants? It’s nothing.”
“Shut up and give me the transactions. If I needed to steal something I wouldn’t have bothered to come here.”
Finally, the man handed her a thumb drive. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, yanked free the knife with a hiss, and pressed the cloth to his thigh. “Be gone, salope, and never return. You will be killed on sight.”
“Merci beaucoup, Frederick.”
Angelie shot him in the left eye. Taylor started at the small report. The suppressed Walther cracked like a whip.
La Boulanger fell to his desk, and Angelie immediately began to move, graceful as a dancer, gathering up files and notepads.
“What. The. Hell?” Taylor snapped the words, trying, and failing, to keep her temper in check. “Was that necessary?”
“Check his hand.”
Taylor looked and sure enough, he had a small silver pistol in his left palm. It must have been taped under the desk. Stupid, girl. You have to pay better attention.
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. I had no choice, he was about to shoot you. Now hurry. We need to download everything we can before the rest of the guards wake up, so Santi can tear his files apart. Frederick never has meetings that last more than ten minutes. We’re already seven in.”
Taylor, still furious, handed over the bag, and Angelie dug the small thumb drive out of the zipper where it had been loosely sewn. She plugged it into the laptop, deftly reaching around the dead man, and clicked a few buttons. “The data is transferring. Get ready. We may need to be creative leaving.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t shot the man… For God’s sake. You’ve taken out five people since we got to Paris. You lied to me. This is not what we discussed. This is not how I work.”
Angelie didn’t bother looking at Taylor. “ Would you rather be dead right now?” When Taylor didn’t answer, Angelie continued. “When it’s your job, you do things your way. He would have called Game the second we left if I’d left him alive. It was safer this way. And if you’d actually understood what he wanted you to do to him? You’d have shot him yourself. Bien. C’est finis. Done.” Angelie tossed Taylor the gun, dug another out of the holster under her arm. “You go first. I’m right behind you.”
Taylor slid to the doors, looked out. Nothing. This was too easy. She knew things were about to go to hell. Her heart pumped once, hard, and she fought back the ill-timed adrenaline rush and made for the stairs. She was three-quarters of the way down when she smelled smoke. She turned back in horror to see Angelie flying toward her. “Go. Go!”
The car wasn’t in the courtyard. Taylor realized she was counting silently in time with her running steps. Five. Six. Seven. They were on the street now, the guns away, and Angelie practically scurried into an alleyway on their right. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
There was a large stone wall in front of them. “Keep going,” Angelie hissed, turning again, this time to the right. Left. Right again. Left.
