“How much time?” he asked, impatient now.
“My neighbors in Lackland are a threat to me,” she said. “I have intelligence that says they will overthrow me.”
“From where?”
“Your government,” she said, waving a hand. “Such a help they were, ridding us of dictator extraordinaire Pierre Doucet, and such aid was given! For all of three months and now I am threatened and on my own. So you see, I get insurance of my own. Protection of my own. And it is fair I confiscate one of their resources to do it.”
“The resource being me?”
“Oui.”
“You’re trying to play the victim here, Annick, and yet you lead with a threat to my family?”
“You lead with a gun. So, seems fair.”
She steeled herself, for she knew what was coming. She knew what she had to do. She had planned for this. She had prepared for it.
“We will be quite close in the palace, while you protect me. I am ready to give you a preview of what we might share.”
“Really?”
He stared at her stone-faced, and she took a step toward him. She had practiced this. Her hips swaying with each movement, eye contact with him never wavering. Of course, eye contact with herself in a mirror was a damn sight different than contact with the man himself. His eyes were blue. It was shocking on one with such dark hair. They were piercing, as if they could see into her soul. But he did not move.
His face was like rock. And his undoing would be that he underestimated her. His undoing would be that he did not think her an enemy.
She sighed, reached into her pocket and leaned in as if to kiss him.
Then she pulled the handkerchief out of her pocket and clapped it over his face. He removed her hand immediately, but it was too late. She had anticipated that. That he would be stronger. That his reflexes would be faster. That she would have to overdose him.
He growled and lunged toward her, knocking her back, and he came down on top of her, his hard body a heavy weight she could scarcely wiggle free of, until...
Until his muscles relaxed. Until it was clear that the chloroform had done its job.
“It is good that I planned for this.”
But a one-woman kidnapping job of a very large man was not easy. Again, she had anticipated that and had brought with her a hospital gurney. In addition to a van she could load him in.
By the time she had driven to the airfield and unloaded him onto the private plane, she was feeling nearly cheerful. Had she known kidnapping her personal assassin would be quite so simple, she would have done it many years ago.
Now all that was left to do was...wait.