Page 7 of France Face-Off
“Do you make it a habit of trying to kill those who hurt you or your family?”
“No, but if he hurts me again, I will defend myself.”
“In this case, I will give you the benefit of doubt. In what capacity are you here?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
“I’m here as a paid escort. And you?” He waited for her response.
“Translation services.”
“Your name?”
She lifted a narrow shoulder and let it fall. “Alexa Sokoloff.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. None of the people who were attending the reception that were in the news had gone by that name. He’d have to put Lucie to work discovering all there was to know about the raven-haired beauty. In the meantime, he’d do well to watch his back lest she plunge a knife in it.
Chapter 2
Alex gave him the name she’d assumed since her parents’ death. It had been a name on one of the passports they’d made for her. They’d kept a safe hidden behind a wall in the kitchen pantry, where they’d stored passports from over a dozen different countries with as many different names on the passports and thousands of dollars in different currencies from the other countries. Should their cover be exposed, they had to be ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice.
Their final assignment had been in Russia, where they’d attempted to provide their daughter a stable environment as they’d worked as sleeper agents from the time she was twelve until she was almost twenty-eight.
Images of that fateful evening flashed through her mind, hardening her heart and her determination. Two years had passed since she’d lost her parents. During those years, she’d focused on retribution. She was getting close to discovering the man behind their hit order. Nothing and no one would stop her from avenging her parents’ deaths, not even this man in the tuxedo she’d noticed from the moment she’d stepped into the reception hall.
He’d been hard to miss. A dark-haired, handsome man, mingling with the paunchy, gray-haired statesmen from the attending countries, was bound to stand out. Not that she was there to flirt with the attendees of the Energy Summit. She was there to get the final piece of information she needed to nail the one responsible…the one who’d given the order to terminate her mother and father.
“If you turn me in to the security staff,” she said to the man in front of her, “I will tell them the same thing I told you. I was defending myself.”
“And it will be your word against Petrov’s. Who do you think they’ll believe? A foreign diplomat or a woman nobody knows?”
Alex bristled. She might be a nobody. It didn’t make her less of a person. Her parents had made a lifetime of being nobodies, and yet they’d infiltrated the Russian government and had become trusted servants to various politicians. During that time, they’d fed information back to the US government as members of the CIA.
“What were you doing in the garden with Petrov to begin with?” the stranger asked.
She tipped her head up and stared straight into his eyes. “He asked me to come see the hotel garden, not that it’s any of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll rejoin the reception.”
“And I’ll accompany you,” he said.
“That won’t be necessary. As you are fully aware, I can defend myself.”
He lightly cupped her elbow. “I’m not so concerned about your safety so much as I am for the safety of the guests at this reception.”
“You have my knife, and it’s sharp, so I wouldn’t sit while it’s still in your pocket. And it is one of my favorites. I would like it back before I leave France.”
“You’ll have to tell me where you’re staying, and I will return it after the diplomats have dispersed to their own countries.”
She allowed the corners of her lips to turn up in a tight smile. “I am staying here at the chateau, like the rest of the guests at this reception.”
“All the more reason for me to keep this knife.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. I need to get back. My services might be required.”
“Something you might have considered,” he said, “before you attacked Petrov.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “He attacked me and, if you were watching, you would have seen that.” She pushed her shoulders back and stared up at him. “You know my name. What is yours, so I can retrieve my knife once the event is over?”
“Daniel Rayne.”
