Paris is a Bitch Read Free Page B

himself, would try to keep it from anyone else.”
    I exhaled long and hard, trying not to imagine the psychic price she must have paid for repeatedly offering her body, and even a simulacrum of her mind, to someone who obviously repulsed her.
    “You know,” I said, “it wouldn’t have hurt for you to tell me that before we were trapped in a restaurant with an ambush waiting outside.”
    She said nothing, and I wondered if she could sense what I’d really been thinking. Probably she could.
    “All right,” I said. “Never mind. This guy… is he connected enough to track you to Paris?”
    “He knows I live in Paris. I didn’t try to hide that.”
    “Does he know your particulars?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Is he connected enough to find out? To track a cell phone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then what do you think these guys are here for? Kidnap you? Take you back to Saudi Arabia, put you in a harem?”
    She looked at me, her face expressionless. “I think they’re here to hurt me.”
    “Hurt you how?”
    She cocked her head as though in wonder at how thick I was, then said, “If you and two or three other thugs had a woman alone in a panel van and wanted to hurt her in the worst way possible, wanted to ruin her for anyone else, what would you do?”
    I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
    “Well,” she said. “I imagine that’s how they’re planning to hurt me.”
    I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “When this is done, I want you to tell me who the Saudi is.”
    “No. I don’t want you involved.”
    “I’m already involved. I’m not going to let you walk out there alone.”
    “My organization will take care of it. Let’s just focus on tonight.”
    I wanted to press the point, but she was right. About the tonight part, anyway. The rest we could figure out later.
    “All right,” I said. “I only saw one on the right, but there was another guy mobile so there could be two. Could you handle two on your own?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then here’s how we’ll play it. If I go with you, and the ones on the left see me help you drop the opposition on the right, I lose the element of surprise if they come after us. If I hang back, and anyone pursues you, they’ll have to get through me, and they won’t even understand I’m a real obstacle until it’s too late. Okay?”
    She nodded. “It’s a good plan.”
    “So we walk out together and kiss goodnight at the door. You go right, I hang back. If you need help, I’m close enough to back you up. If you don’t, I’ll mop up the others.”
    Suddenly she looked alarmed. “You can’t kill them. Not unless you absolutely have to.”
    I tamped down my frustration. I wasn’t used to having to consult on this kind of thing. I said, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, okay? We’re up against four. Maybe more. We don’t know if they have weapons, we don’t even know for sure what this is about. When I hit these guys, I don’t want them getting back up. If you’re smart, you’ll do the same.”
    “Think, John. We can’t leave four bodies, or more, outside a restaurant where we just had dinner, where we’ve eaten, what, eight, ten times before? The police will get a description. An attractive blonde and a Japanese guy, you want to be worried about the police looking for something like that every time we share a kiss on the Pont de Sully?”
    Goddamn it, she was right. I was letting those images of what they would do to her in the truck affect my judgment.
    I blew out a long breath. “You’re right.”
    “I mean it,” she said, knowing me, realizing how I was feeling.
    “I get it. I’m not going to kill anyone.”
    But I’ll make them wish I had.
    “If the plan is to get you into the truck,” I said, “that’s the center of gravity of this thing. So when you’re done taking care of business, you keep going in the same direction you started. Away from the truck. I’ll handle my end, you just get out of Dodge. You