Jeff nodded, sipping his coffee. It was ridiculously strong, like tar, but it helped with the jet lag. “At the Georges V.”
“Alone?”
Jeff winced. “So far.”
“Have she and Crewe been in contact?”
Jeff shook his head. “No.”
Shadowing Tracy had been no fun. In fact it had been the dictionary definition of no fun. Nor was Jeff convinced that his presence was protecting Tracy from anything, or anyone. Not so far anyway. He was starting to feel like the worst kind of Peeping Tom. Bugging her hotel room and tapping her phone had both been relatively easy. But he dreaded having to hear her be intimate with Cameron Crewe over the phone, and he’d stopped short of installing cameras in her suite.
“Stay close to her,” Frank Dorrien instructed. “Hunter Drexel’s still in the city. We think he’s going to make a move soon. We’re close, Jeff. But we can’t let Tracy get to him first, maybe scare him off again. Or worse.”
Jeff frowned. “What do you mean ‘worse’?”
Frank pushed a classified file across the table.
Jeff read it in silence. Then he read it again.
Finally he looked up at Frank, an expression of pure horror on his face.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course we’re not sure,” Frank snapped. “That’s why we need to bring him in. But I think it’s safe to say that Hunter Drexel is not who the world believes him to be. If Tracy were to try to corner him alone . . .”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence.
Jeff drained his coffee. “Don’t worry. I won’t let her out of my sight.”
TRACY LOOKED AT HER watch, an exquisite, delicate 1920s antique with a white gold strap and diamond-studded face.
6:15 P.M. Exactly two hours to go.
Putting on a pair of diamond drop earrings to match the watch, Tracy winked at her reflection, ashamed of how much she was enjoying herself. She liked being Mary Jo. Tracy had always enjoyed creating new and different characters. Together she and Jeff had been the masters of it for more than a decade. But now, since Nick’s death, stepping out of her own tortured existence and into someone else’s was more
than just a game. It was an escape. Tracy hadn’t realized till now quite how much she needed one.
Her old contacts in Paris had been a gold mine of information when it came to the city’s high-stakes poker scene. Which was a good thing, as so far Cameron’s had come up with precisely nothing. It was almost as if Cameron didn’t want Tracy to find Hunter Drexel. He probably thinks he’s protecting me, Tracy thought. But perhaps it was better this way anyway? She’d grown used to working on her own. Working with Cameron might put a strain on . . . whatever it was that was happening between them. Tracy still couldn’t quite bring herself to call it a relationship. That sounded far too permanent. But it was something, and she wasn’t ready to break it, not yet.
If I find Hunter—when I find him—I’ll bring Cameron in then.
As soon as Tracy heard the name Pascal Cauchin—her dear old friend, the master forger and long-term Paris resident Harry Blackstone, had mentioned Cauchin’s monthly poker parties—her hopes soared. Cauchin was huge in the fracking world, right up there with men like Cameron and Henry Cranston. It was inconceivable that Hunter Drexel hadn’t heard of him. The fact that he also hosted private poker nights at his penthouse apartment in Montmartre with a secret and closely guarded guest list was almost too good to be true. It would be reckless in the extreme for Hunter Drexel to show up at one of Cauchin’s games. But as Sally Faiers had told Tracy, Hunter was reckless. Taking big risks was his oxygen, his adrenaline, his raison d’être.
It had once been Tracy’s too.
I know you, Hunter, she thought, adjusting her earrings. I know how you operate.
I’m going to find you. And when I do, you’re going to lead me to Althea. You’re going to help me lay my son to rest.
ALEXIS ARGYROS WAS AROUSED.
The violently pornographic rape fantasy playing out on his computer screen helped a little. But Alexis had become so used to images of sexual depravity, they were no longer enough on their own.
What really turned him on was power. The power to inflict pain, to create fear. The power to end life.
Hunter Drexel believed that knowledge was power. Knowledge and truth.
Alexis knew differently. Who cared what you knew when pieces of your brain were flying out of your skull and being splattered across the walls?