“Don’t be too sure,” Marielle rasped, “That guy ran out the back door the moment the fighting started.”
She plucked the keys from the driver’s front pocket. Their rental car, a nondescript charcoal gray Renault sedan, was the only vehicle in the small parking area behind the ticket booth.
Omar relieved all three men of their guns and spare magazines while she popped the trunk.
Together, they worked quickly to drag the unconscious men to the car. The small guard with the shattered nose was the easiest. Omar and Marielle each took an arm and hauled him the short distance like a piece of luggage. The driver required more effort, his unconscious body heavy and uncooperative.
But Bashir was something else entirely. They had to rouse Hanna from her trance to help them. His massive frame required all three of them working in concert, with Omar taking most of the weight, to drag him to the parking lot and maneuver him into the trunk. By the time they’d squeezed Bashir’s bulk into the trunk with his colleagues, Omar’s back was screaming and fresh blood seeped from his split knuckles.
He slammed the trunk shut with more force than necessary and pocketed the keys. “Luck can call the gendarmes. Let the local police sort this mess out.”
They hurried Hanna back toward the village, keeping to the darker edges of the road where the streetlights barely penetrated. She moved like a sleepwalker, stumbling over the cobblestones. Twice Marielle had to steady her with a hand on her elbow.
By the time they reached L’Auberge Arbousier, full darkness had settled over the coast. Luc met them at the door, his expression carefully neutral as he took in their Omar’s battered hands, Marielle’s torn linen pants, and Hanna’s vacant stare.
Omar pressed the car keys into Luc’s palm and gave him the location, keeping his voice low and matter-of-fact. “There are three men locked in the trunk of a Renault in the train station parking area. They’re dangerous criminals with possible connections to human trafficking. Call the police, but don’t mention us.”
Luc’s gaze sharpened with understanding, his designer’s eye suddenly replaced by something harder, more worldly. “Consider it done. Are they …?”
“Alive, but unconscious,” Marielle told him.
“Bien sûr.”
Luc glanced at Hanna, who was trembling despite the warm evening, her arms wrapped around herself as if she could physically hold the pieces of herself together.
“Take her upstairs. I’ll bring tea. And ice for those hands.”
They guided Hanna up the narrow staircase, their footsteps muffled by the worn runner. She sank onto her bed without being asked, and finally—finally—the dam broke. Tears spilled down her cheeks in silent rivers, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.
Nine
Omar lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. The adrenaline that had powered him through the chase, the fight, and the aftermath had finally drained away, leaving him hollow and exhausted.
His body cataloged its complaints: ribs that ached with each breath, knuckles that throbbed in time with his pulse, a bruise spreading across his back where Bashir had slammed him into the bench. Luc had brought ice wrapped in kitchen towels, and Omar had dutifully held the makeshift ice packs against his hands until the cold became unbearable. Now his knuckles were swollen and stiff.
But worse than the physical pain was the absence beside him.
Marielle and Hanna were bunking together in Marielle’s room. It made sense—practical, even necessary. Hanna shouldn’t be left alone, not after everything she’d been through. Not when she was clearly still processing the trauma of being shot at, of narrowly escaping being snatched, of realizing that Idris’s reach extended even to this quiet village.
So Marielle had moved into Hanna’s room.
And he missed the warmth of her body in the bed. No, not missed. Craved. Needed.
He rolled onto his side and bit back a groan as his ribs protested. The sheets smelled faintly of something floral he couldn’t identify. Not Marielle’s scent. Not the warm spice-and-fruit notes of her perfume that he’d memorized during those nights on the yacht when they’d slept tangled together for the cameras.
For the cameras, he reminded himself. It had all been for cover.
Except it hadn’t felt like cover.
He replayed the night’s events, but his mind kept snagging on a single moment: Marielle standing at the train station platform, her gun steady in a two-handed grip, holding a third guard at bay while Omar fought Bashir. She’d been calm. Focused. Lethal.
And he’d been terrified for her.
Not the operational fear that came with the job—the tactical assessment of risk, the calculation of odds, the contingency planning. This was something else. Something raw and primal that had nothing to do with training or experience.
When he’d looked up from choking out Bashir and seen her moving to neutralize the third guard, his heart had stopped. What if the guard had a knife she hadn’t seen? What if he was faster than she anticipated? What if she made one small miscalculation and?—
He’d pushed the thoughts away then, forced himself to focus on the immediate task. But now, in the darkness, they crowded back.