enough time but suspected that he could never have enough time to fortify himself to see her again. To face Dani down and deal with all the issues sure to exist between them.
But he had no choice. Corbett Lazlo had saved his life and Dani’s. For that reason alone, he was honor-bound to do what Lazlo was asking of him.
He only hoped that, when it was all over, he would finally have some peace in his life.
Chapter 2
Dani stared intently at the long steps leading up to Sacre Coeur on top of Montmartre. Months earlier she had tried to climb those steps but failed, her body debilitated thanks to too much time in bed. For the past few months she’d pushed herself by making each day’s walk longer than the one before. Her hikes eventually brought her back to the bottom of these steps, but she had never felt strong enough to make the climb.
Until today.
She began slowly, pacing herself in the August heat, but about halfway up she knew.
She increased her pace and although she was slightly winded at the top, she made it. For a Rocky-like moment, she wanted to pump her arms in the air and jump around, but contained herself. She didn’t want people to look at her and think, Crazy Tourist.
Instead, Dani glanced at Paris, laid out before her in all its splendor. From high up on Montmartre, most of the city and the Seine were visible on the clear summer day.
She paused to enjoy the sight for only a moment, knowing that she had not only pushed her physical limits, but that she had stretched the boundaries of how long she had been away from the Lazlo medical compound. The beep that sounded at her side a second later confirmed it.
Grabbing her cell phone, she read the text message—her presence was demanded back at the compound immediately. Mr. Lazlo wanted to meet with her.
It would take her time to walk back, and she sensed from the curtness of the message that she shouldn’t dawdle. Texting back that she would be there within the half hour, she rushed back down the steps and walked to one of the side streets until she hit a main thoroughfare, where she quickly snagged a cab.
In French as flawless as her English, she asked to be taken to the Louvre and then she held on as the cab sped off, weaving through traffic and the assorted circles at a breakneck pace. When the cabbie stopped with a screech before the museum in record time, she mumbled a thanks to God for arriving in one piece and paid the man.
Racing past the pyramid, she walked to the bridge near the Seine, down the stairs to the riverbank and hurried to the metal grate beneath the bridge. Once she felt confident that it was secure, she used a specially encoded magnetic card to enter the tunnel and rushed toward the elevator to the Lazlo medical compound. After clearing the palm print and retinal scan, she proceeded to the main level of the compound where Jacques, the larger of her two sparring partners, waited for her.
“Mr. Lazlo asked me to bring you to his conference room as soon as you arrived,” Jacques said in French with a polite bow.
“Of course,” she replied and followed Jacques to a wing of the compound she had yet to enter, wondering about the elusive Mr. Lazlo, whom she had met only once.
As he stopped at a door, Jacques placed his palm on another reader and with the same almost silent whoosh, opened the portal. “We’ve coded this door to allow you entry as well,” he added as he motioned for her to enter.
“Merci,” she said and walked in, expecting him to follow her into the lushly appointed conference room. Instead, the door closed silently behind her, leaving her alone in the space.
A large mahogany table filled the center of the area. Three of the walls were lined with matching bookcases, ornately trimmed with hand-worked moldings and filled with expensively bound leather volumes. An exceptionally large plasma monitor was mounted on one wall, and as she walked farther into the space, the lights dimmed slightly and the monitor snapped to life.
“Good afternoon, Dani. I trust you enjoyed your stroll this morning.” The voice came from a speaker phone in the center of the table.
Dani had heard the voice only about a half dozen times since that one fateful meeting by her hospital bedside, but it was familiar enough for her to recognize.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lazlo. Given your message, I had hoped to be meeting with you in person,” she said as she strolled around the room, searching for whatever kind of surveillance equipment was being used to keep an eye on her.
“In time. But for now there is a matter of some urgency that requires your attention. That is, if you’re ready for a mission.”
“Not that I’ve minded your hospitality, Mr. Lazlo, but for months now I’ve been trying very hard to understand why you would want me to work for you.” As she spoke, Dani walked around the room, searching for the location of the hidden camera.
“I know what it’s like when SIS turns its back on you. I used to be one of them.” A dead tone filled his voice at the admission, causing a sympathetic sensation within her. She still felt dead inside.
“I’m surprised you feel you can rely on me. My instincts have been rather bad lately.”
“You believed the prince when he said he wasn’t using drugs anymore, correct?”
Dani dredged up the memories of that night from her last mission. Normally she would have turned over the prince and the man who had hired her to kill him—Silas Donovan—to SIS to handle, but Donovan had dangled an intriguing bit of info before her. Donovan had insisted that the prince knew who had murdered her parents nearly a decade earlier.
Dani had wanted that information badly. So badly that she had put her personal quest above the SIS mission.
“Dani?” Lazlo prompted at her prolonged silence.
“I didn’t think the prince would use the tainted cocaine I left behind that night,” she finally admitted, still feeling guilty that she had played a part in Prince Reginald’s death. She had believed he was clean and had hoped that having seen the error of his ways, he would reveal the names of those who had sold him drugs and possibly killed her parents.
She walked to the front of the room and paused before the plasma monitor. As she tracked her gaze along the sides of the bookcase beside it, she caught a telltale glint, almost like a speck of glitter against the dark wood. As she raised her finger to cover what she suspected was a fiber-optic camera, the image of her doing so appeared in the large monitor.
“Your admission of that is a good start. So, are you ready for an assignment?” Lazlo pressed again.
She nodded, and Lazlo began his report. “I need you to concentrate on the data I’m about to provide.”
With a curt bob of her head to acknowledge the request, Dani seated herself at the table in a comfy leather library chair. Immediately, a picture of Silas Donovan came onto the screen.
“You’re aware that Mr. Donovan paid them to assassinate the prince so Donovan’s nephew could instead inherit the throne of the European principality of Silvershire.”
As her gaze locked with that of the man in the photo, she remembered those cold eyes staring at her from behind his ski mask as Donovan had stood by, waiting for her to die after he had shot her. “Tell
