LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t take that chance on losing it. With a desperate burst of speed, he cut the corner and ran into the street right ahead of an oncoming taxi. Brakes squealing, horn blaring, the cab fishtailed. Dev slapped a hand on its hood, pushed off and landed in a few yards ahead of the now-rolling van. He put up both hands and shouted a fierce command.

      “Stop!”

      He got a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the driver’s face through the windshield. Surprise, fear, desperation all flashed across it in the half second before he hit the gas.

      Well, hell! The son of a bitch was gunning straight for him.

      Dev jumped out of the way at the last second and leaped for the van’s door as the vehicle tried to zoom past. The door was unlocked, thank God, although he’d been prepared to hook an arm inside the open window and pop the lock if necessary. Wrenching the panel open, he got a bulldog grip on the driver’s leather jacket.

      “Pull over, dammit.”

      The man jerked the wheel, cursing and shouting and trying frantically to dislodge him. The van swerved. More horns blasted.

      “Dev!”

      The shout came from the back of the van. From Sarah. He didn’t wait to hear more. His fist locked on the driver’s leather jacket, he put all his muscle into a swift yank. The bastard’s face slammed into the steering wheel. Bone crunched. Blood fountained. The driver slumped.

      Reaching past him, Dev tore the keys from the ignition. The engine died, but the van continued to roll toward a car that swerved wildly but couldn’t avoid a collision. Metal crunched metal as both vehicles came to an abrupt stop, and Dev fumbled for the release for the driver’s seat belt. He dragged the unconscious man out and let him drop to the pavement. Scrambling into the front seat, he had one leg over the console to climb into the rear compartment when the back doors flew open and someone jumped out.

      It wasn’t Sarah. She was on her knees in the back. A livid red welt marred one cheek. A roll of silver electrical tape dangled from a wide strip wrapped around one wrist. Climbing over the console, Dev stooped beside her.

      “Are you okay?”

      “Yes.”

      Her eyes were wide and frightened, but the distant wail of a siren eased some of their panic. Dev tore his glance from her to the open rear doors and the man running like hell back down the side street.

      “Stay here and wait for the police. I’m going after that bastard.”

      “Wait!” She grabbed his arm. “You don’t need to chase him! I know who he is.”

      He swung back. “You know him?”

      When she nodded, suspicion knifed into him like a serrated blade. His fists bunched, and a distant corner of his mind registered the fact that he’d lost the lithograph sometime during the chase. The rest of him staggered under a sudden realization.

      “This is part of it, isn’t it? This big abduction scene?”

      “Scene?”

      She sounded so surprised he almost believed her. Worse, dammit, he wanted to believe her!

      “It’s okay,” he ground out. “You can drop the act. I bumped into the photographer from Beguile back there on rue de Monttessuy. We had quite a conversation.”

      Her color drained, making the red welt across her cheek look almost obscene by contrast. “You...you talked to a photographer from my magazine?”

      “Yeah, Lady Sarah, I did. François told me about the shoot. Showed me some of the pictures he’s already taken. I’ll have to ask him to send me the one of you on the balcony. You make a helluva Juliet.”

      The sirens were louder now. Their harsh, up-and-down bleat almost drowned out her whisper.

      “And you think we...me, this photographer, my magazine...you think we staged an abduction?”

      “I’m a little slow. It took me a while to understand the angle. I’m betting your barracuda of a boss dreamed it up. Big, brave Number Three rescues his beautiful fiancée from would-be kidnappers.”

      She looked away, and her silence cut even deeper than Dev’s suspicion. He’d hoped she would go all huffy, deny at least some of her part in this farce. Apparently, she couldn’t.

      Well, Sarah and her magazine could damned well live with the consequences of their idiotic scheme. At the least, they were looking at thousands of dollars in vehicle damage. At the worst, reconstructive surgery for the driver whose face Dev had rearranged.

      Thoroughly disgusted, he took Sarah’s arm to help her out of the van. She shook off his hold without a word, climbed down and walked toward the squad car now screeching to a halt. Two officers exited. One went to kneel beside the moaning van driver. The other soon centered on Sarah as the other major participant in the incident. She communicated with him in swift, idiomatic French. He took notes the entire time, shooting the occasional glance at Dev that said his turn would come.

      It did, but not until an ambulance had screamed up and two EMTs went to work on the driver. At the insistence of the officer who’d interviewed Sarah, a third medical tech examined her. The tech was shining a penlight into her pupils when the police officer turned his attention to Dev. Switching to English, he took down Dev’s name, address while in Paris and cell-phone number before asking for his account of the incident.

      He’d had time to think about it. Rather than lay out his suspicion that the whole thing was a publicity stunt, he stuck to the bare facts. He’d spotted Sarah walking toward him. Saw the van pull up. Saw she was gone. Gave chase.

      The police officer made more notes, then flipped back a few pages. “So, Monsieur Hunter, are you also acquainted with Henri Lefèvre?”

      “Who?”

      “The man your fiancée says snatched her off the street and threw her into the back of this van.”

      “No, I’m not acquainted with him.”

      “But you know Monsieur Girault and his wife?”

      Dev’s eyes narrowed as he remembered Sarah telling him about the goons Girault had employed to do his dirty work. Was Lefèvre one of those goons? Was Jean-Jacques somehow mixed up in all this?

      “Yes,” he replied, frowning, “I know Monsieur Girault and his wife. How are they involved in this incident?”

      “Mademoiselle St. Sebastian says Lefèvre is Madame Girault’s former lover. He came to their table while they were at lunch yesterday. She claims Madame Girault identified him as a gigolo, one who tried to extort a large sum of money from her. We’ll verify that with madame herself, of course.”

      Dev’s stomach took a slow dive. Christ! Had he misread the situation? The kidnapping portion of it, anyway?

      “Your fiancée also says that the manager of your hotel told her Lefèvre made inquiries as to her identity.” The officer glanced up from his notes. “Are you aware of these inquiries, Monsieur Hunter?”

      “No.”

      The police officer’s expression remained carefully neutral, but he had to be thinking the same thing Dev was. What kind of a man didn’t know a second-or third-class gigolo was sniffing after his woman?

      “Do you have any additional information you can provide at this time, Monsieur Hunter?”

      “No.”

      “Very well. Mademoiselle St. Sebastian insists she sustained no serious injury. If the EMTs agree, I will release her to return to your hotel. I must ask you both not to leave Paris, however, until you have spoken with detectives from our Brigade criminelle. They will be in touch with you.”

      * * *

      Dev and Sarah took a taxi back to the hotel. She stared out the window in stony silence while he searched for a way to reconcile his confrontation

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