had trouble with eggs.
“What are you doing?”
He eyed the eggs again, reluctant to turn around and face her. She would look soft and deliciously rumpled, he knew. She even sounded that way. Damn, she was attractive. And very distracting.
What was she doing to him? He had to get a grip. Must be her French, that faint Parisian-born drawl like none other, he guessed. Could be she reminded him of his mother a little. She sounded a bit like her. She even had that little one-shoulder shrug he remembered his mother using. Only on Solange, it looked a damn sight more interesting.
“I’m making breakfast,” he answered, his words a little more gruff than he intended. No, it was not Mama he was thinking about at the moment. Not even close.
She brushed past him and reached for the coffeepot sitting on the stove and poured herself a cup. When her arm touched his, he nearly jumped, catching himself just in time. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Cool this morning, he thought with a grimace.
Jack kept doing what he was doing, shoring up his internal defenses, cracking eggs and trying to concentrate on how Holly had taught him to do that one-handed. He nearly crushed the first one and stifled a curse.
“Move out of the way,” Solange ordered and took the bowl of eggs and fork out of his hand.
He watched the impatient little shake of her head as she took over. In no time she had turned out a perfect, fluffy omelette, which she neatly halved and slid onto the two plates he’d put out on the table.
Then she sat across from him and they ate, wordlessly eyeing each other in the way two strangers might do who had shared a night together and could find nothing to say when morning came.
Essentially that’s what they were, he supposed. There was even a faint sexual undertone present, though he had scarcely touched her at all and never with that intent. He wanted to, however, and that was the problem. She couldn’t know that, of course. And definitely wouldn’t share the feeling or appreciate his telling her about his. When they had finished eating, she gathered up the dishes and began to wash up.
He knew he had to gain her trust, and so far he hadn’t done much in the way of accomplishing that. He also decided he would trust her. Maybe it was the tender way she treated the boy and how she had leaped to his defense. There was a goodness about Solange Micheaux that seemed to emanate from her pores like a sweet fresh scent.
“Would you leave that and sit down again?” he asked politely. “We need to talk.”
Immediately she dried her hands on a towel and complied. Why wouldn’t she? He was her captor, or at least she thought of him that way.
She leveled a questioning look at him but didn’t speak.
“There is something I need to explain to you.” Still, Jack hesitated and looked through the doorway at René Chari. “Are you certain he’s still unconscious?”
“He is asleep.”
“Would you check on him and see if he’s conscious?”
“I did before I came in and he is not. His vitals are acceptable under the circumstances. I expect he will recover completely, but not anytime soon.”
“My point is, are you certain he can’t overhear what I’m about to tell you?”
“Why?” She frowned, and the expression tugged at him, made him want to erase it and put a smile there. He had not seen her smile and imagined it would be like sunlight on water.
Jack shook off the thought that was a little too poetic for comfort. “Just tell me if there’s any chance he’s awake right now.”
“None. I doubt he will awaken for hours.”
Jack relaxed a bit. He needed to bring her in on the plan. She would be able to sink him with a word when they encountered Chari, but he was literally betting his life that she wouldn’t. “I have to trust you,” he told her. “May I call you Solange?”
“No, you may not. Are you going to explain now why are you doing this?”
“Yes, Doctor, I’m getting to that if you’ll give me a chance.” He took a deep breath and made the plunge. “I work for the government.”
Her blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Which government?”
“Yours and mine in this instance. I am an American.”
“Well, that explains much. Are you annexing France or what?”
Jack smiled at the jab. “Not right now. We received intelligence about a month ago that a man called Ahmed Chari has set up a laboratory where he’s concocting a deadly virus that he intends to sell for use as a biological weapon.”
She gasped, covering her mouth with the fingertips of one hand. “No!”
“Yes. There’s a possibility that he plans to test it here. If he sells it to the groups that will want it most, Americans everywhere will be at risk. It’s possible he’s only a puppet for some larger power that could be using him and others like him to establish a supply of bioweapons. We have to find out.”
“But…but this is terrible!”
“And unfortunately, true.”
“Who told you this?”
She had trouble believing it. It did sound far-fetched unless you dealt with these monsters on a regular basis and knew what they were capable of. “Someone with inside information. Unfortunately not enough information. What he related about the supplies Chari had purchased for that purpose proved to be true. Your intelligence people have been performing surveillance, and two agents have attempted to infiltrate. They haven’t been seen since. I need to work my way into his operation and see how far he’s been able to take it. And what else or who else might be involved.”
“Why not simply go in by force and arrest this man?” she asked.
“I told you. We need to know whether he is working independently or if his setup is but one of a number of labs doing this. Also, we have to find out who is to receive his product, where they are located and, of course, their affiliation.”
“If you have him in custody, surely you could force him to reveal all of this.”
“Torture?” he asked. “We have to suppose he would never talk, even on pain of death. If he is a fanatic, he would fight to the death. Or kill himself as we go in. If he is just a supplier with no ideological motive, he and those working for him would be more afraid of his clients than of us. These people use families as leverage. As you must know, truth serum’s vastly overrated. So, we have to extract the information, all of it, by other means. In this case, by gaining his trust if we can.”
“And after you do?” she asked breathlessly.
“Perform what damage control we can, destroy the product and put him out of business permanently.”
“Kill him?” she asked in a broken whisper.
“Yes, if necessary,” Jack replied. “At least lock him away where he’ll present no
