Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(29)
“Yeah, let’s not be Neanderthal, Jake,” Ian said. “What does she say about who she belongs to?”
“It has nothing to do with her.” Jake locked eyes with him and ignored the very ironic noise Elias made at that comment. Did the French just drink a gift for irony in the water, or what? “It has to do with me and you and whether I will f*cking kill you.”
“Well, now that we’ve got that settled,” Mark said dryly. “Can we save this fight for later and focus on the mission? Try to impress these gentlemen with our professionalism, perhaps?”
The other members of Elias’s team were regarding them with an irony not quite as obvious as Elias’s but present, just the same. “Oh, it’s not your ability to fight we’re worried about,” Elias said. “It’s how the hell you manage to keep reproducing over in your country. Is it just that there are only idiots available and your women learn to settle, or what?”
“Okay, you know what—?” Ian turned toward Elias, taking that aspersion on his gift for women personally.
But then they were arriving. A raid in one of those suburbs full of fourteen-story concrete and broken glass buildings, where the police never came to save you from your neighbors, they only came to get you if you attacked outside your zone. Not so different, really, Jake thought grimly, from their raids in Syria.
They even had a couple of drones up in the air. For surveillance, this time.
He didn’t have any sympathy for people who turned terrorist and tried to shoot someone like Lina or Vi, none at all. But he’d grown up in a place he thought had no opportunity himself, where religious fanaticism had sometimes been a refuge for a certain type of mindset. And that failing coal town in the mountains had still been better than this. At least he’d had the mountains. The rhododendrons in the spring, the granite outcrop where he watched the sun set over foggy peaks, and hiking and hunting for hours, even days at a time, alone through the steep forest.
But Lina and Vi and most of their staff had grown up in places like this, too, right? He’d read all the information they had on Lina and on the Au-dessus restaurant staff. They’d made opportunities where other teenagers saw none. So he didn’t have sympathy for the shits that chose to destroy other people instead.
And yet…at one point, every military age male he might shoot and kill had once been a cute little toddler, fascinated by balls and bright colors and puppies.
A cute lion cub still grew up to be a lethal predator, and you’d best not let the way it chased butterflies persuade you to turn your back on it as an adult lion. Jake should know. He’d been cute himself once, his mom said.
Humans were even more successful predators than lions were. In a world where pretty much everyone was a predator, Jake would kill to protect his people before he would let his people be killed. He didn’t have a soft heart. He just thought too much sometimes.
Mark and his damn books.
He jumped out of the SUV. One of the French guys was on point. Black ski masks were up. Jake shut his emotions off and stacked for the raid.
***
The trouble with not believing in a future, Lina thought, hefting her case of desserts as she left Vi’s room, was that when the future went ahead and showed up anyway, a woman still had to deal with it.
It wasn’t like she could leave poor Chase sad-faced because he hadn’t gotten his special dessert today, right? She could imagine exactly how woebegone he would play it. You couldn’t abandon a guy wounded on your behalf and now stuck in a hospital bed, just because you couldn’t face the consequences of your own actions.
It was just hot sex, come on. Wouldn’t be the first or last time in the world that a woman had to face a guy the day after, wondering what the hell he’d meant by the way he’d left.
She slowed as she neared the room, where male voices were busy accusing Chase of malingering so he could stay close to his girlfriend. When they were among themselves, Chase and his “buddies” spoke in an English so full of unfamiliar words—military jargon? acronyms?—that she couldn’t follow them. She wasn’t entirely sure native English speakers could have followed them. It was like they spoke their own special language, and the only way to learn it was through blood and fire, shoulder to shoulder.
Kitchens were a little bit like that. Not quite as high a mortality rate from the blood and fire, though. Not usually.
She tightened her stomach muscles, let her shoulders settle back and down, into easy confidence, and stepped into the doorway.
Oh. A sinking of disappointment and relief. Jake wasn’t there.
She took a slow breath as Ian, Mark, and Chase turned toward her with delight. No Jake. She was both safer and, curiously, without him, felt much less safe. Alone.
“Hello, Lina.” The deep, even voice came from behind her, accompanied by a sense of warmth just short of her back.
She jumped and whirled, her plastic case striking him.
“Jake, f*ck!” Chase yelled.
Jake grabbed the case as it fell and went all the way down onto one knee with it. “Sorry.” He stayed down there. Keeping smaller than she was. Not a threat.
“Jesus, Jake,” Ian said. “What the hell?”
Jake shook his head. His eyes held Lina’s. “That was careless,” he said. “I was…thinking of something else.”
“It’s okay.” She took a deep breath and held it two counts before she let it out, embarrassed in so many ways she wished she could just run away from the world and become someone else. Like the witness protection proponents wanted her to. “I just…startled.”