She caught it by instinct, then shoved it back at him. “No.”
He’d been looking for the excuse to put his hands on her, he realized. It was fast and it wasn’t pretty, but he was much stronger than she was. A moment later she was wearing the shirt, and he was fastening the buttons on the front, ignoring her glare as his hands brushed against her breasts. He shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t had enough of her the night before. It should have been, but it wasn’t.
He gave her a surreptitious glance. Beth wasn’t a one-night stand kind of woman, and he wasn’t a relationship kind of man. His need for autonomy was stronger than his lust, or so he’d thought. Now that it was too late he was rethinking things, wondering if there was any way to get one last taste of her.
Put it out of your mind, boy-o, he told himself. Pissing her off and rejecting her was probably the smartest thing he’d ever done. There was no coming back from that.
Mazza was perfectly situated, seemingly at the end of a blind alley, with hidden tunnels underneath leading to the ancient sewers and the rest of the city. It hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been there. A little older, a little shabbier, the three-story building looked as if it were leaning against the other equally-decrepit buildings on the right side of the alley. It probably was.
The place was dark and shuttered, metal gates across the front, but he knew someone would be there. By the time they reached the entrance a man was already pushing the gates open.
“MacGowan,” the stranger greeted him. “We’ve been expecting you.”
The unease blossomed, and he could have kicked himself. He’d been so distracted by Beth Pennington that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to his instincts, which were now on high alert.
“Who are you? Where’s Castalbo?”
The man was French, not Spanish, an anomaly, and he didn’t like anomalies. “I’m Leon,” the man said succinctly. “And Castalbo’s dead. This place has been shuttered for more than a year. They sent me to intercept you.”
Christ, why the hell did he have to be saddled with two civilians? If he’d been with Bastien, or even Peter Madsen, they’d know enough to edge into the shadows. Beth and Dylan were standing in the middle of the alley, sitting ducks for anyone who happened to be training a sniper’s sight on them.
He glanced up to the third story of the old building, and saw a shadow move past. “Who’s here?” he said casually.
“Just me and my brother, Remy. He’s in the kitchen, making you something to eat. You don’t want to be standing around in plain sight. Come in out of the cold.”
Shit, he’d caught them in a lie already. Which meant they weren’t that good, but he could get little comfort from that. Sometimes bad operatives were more dangerous than the good ones.
There was no way he could tell Beth and Dylan to get the hell out of there. If he tried, they’d be cut down as they ran. If they ran. Knowing Beth, she’d probably stay right there just to spite him.
“Sure,” he said. “What happened to Perrin? He was a great chef.” Perrin was Castalbo’s dog, a mutt of indeterminate parentage who kept the place free of rats.
“He took a job in Marseilles. You need to get in out of sight,” the man said again.
“Good idea,” MacGowan said, an easy grin on his face, moving toward the man so that he blocked access to his companions. He almost had his gun out when he heard Beth scream, and he started to turn, just as something came crashing down on the back of his head.
He had a hard head. He went down, but he could see two men as well as the first. They had guns trained on Dylan and Beth, and they were already shoving them toward the door to the restaurant, past his prone body. He let them haul him up, keeping his body a dead weight as they dragged him into the dank interior of the restaurant.
They were arguing in guttural French, so thick it took him a moment to understand it, no thanks to the bump on his head. “Take them upstairs and tie them up,” the one who’d answered the door, presumably the leader, said. “Barringer said he only wants MacGowan and we can do what we want with the others, but there’s no hurry. He may change his mind. The best way to break a man is to hurt a pretty woman.”
It was all he could do not to leap up and plant his fist in the man’s mouth. Talk about stupid. If he hadn’t turned at Beth’s scream this might be a different situation. He’d dropped his gun when he’d fallen, and through the blaze of pain he’d heard them kick it away. That didn’t account for the knives he carried, or the smaller gun in his boot, but he’d have to time his retaliation very carefully.
The ancient smell of lamb and garlic still lingered on the air. Too bad – he’d been looking forward to some of Castalbo’s stuffed dolmas. If they’d killed him MacGowan was going to be extremely annoyed. You don’t kill an artist like Castalbo and get away with it.
They were shoving Dylan and Beth up the narrow stairs, and he heard Beth’s muffled cry of pain as someone hit her. Oh, the Frenchmen were most definitely dead meat, he thought grimly as they banged his limp body against the steps.
A moment later he was sent sprawling on a hard wood floor. The idiots left him alone – why they thought a simple bash on the head would keep him immobile for long was beyond him. They wouldn’t have much of a career if they made mistakes like this. There were times when the incompetence of the enemy was simply an insult. Though he was the fool who’d walked into this mess.
Dylan was glaring at their captors, full of bravado as always. “You can’t get away with this, dude,” he said, sounding oddly like his father in a save-the-world-action-hero mold. “MacGowan’s gonna kick your ass so badly …”
MacGowan was gonna kick Dylan’s ass first, he thought. They needed to think he wasn’t much of a threat. Fortunately they slapped duct tape on Dylan’s big mouth as they tied him to a chair before they turned on Beth.
It was all he could do not to move. They shoved her into one of the flimsy chairs, tying her wrists in front of her before threading the rope through the rungs of the chair. Another mistake, though whether Beth would be able to undo the knots with her teeth was another matter. One of them slapped a piece of duct tape across her mouth, their first smart move of the day, while the other moved over to her, blocking his view.
He couldn’t see what they did, but her heard her muffled cry, and fury shot through him. He controlled his instinctive jerk, but it was too late, as the men turned on him.
His reactions were delayed, probably because of the damned blow on his head, and he was fumbling for the pistol in his boot when they caught his arms, slamming him back against the floor, and this time he passed out, cursing himself as the blackness closed in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO