Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)
Laura Florand
Chapter 1
It was a dark and stormy night, and Chase had three goals. Get out of the f*cking rain. Stop a terrorist. And save the world.
Goal one accomplished, he thought as he dropped soundlessly from the window into the restaurant kitchen below. Goals two and three seemed a lot less likely tonight, but at least he would have checked it out. And escaped the rain. A drop of ice water ran down his nape, and he shuddered. Jesus, it was cold out there. What the hell was wrong with this city? It was July! Somebody should have warned him all those films about Paris were bullshitting him.
City of Love. City of Light. City of snobs. City where it rained and was forty degrees in freaking July!
Jesus.
An LED glow dimly lit the empty industrial kitchen of the famous Au-dessus restaurant, and he shifted away from the draft from the window, scanning the space. Where to start—
The barest whisper of sound saved his life. He jerked aside just as something heavy barely missed his head and slammed into his shoulder instead. It bounced off and fell to the floor with a clatter. A pot.
Fuck.
He spun—and caught up short not at the very large, very sharp knife aimed in his direction, but at the person wielding it.
A slim blonde clad in sleek leather, her eyes cucumber cool over that lethal blade.
Oh, man. In all his career, this had never happened to him before. He’d been starting to think those James Bond movies he’d loved so much as a teenager had totally lured him down the wrong career path in life.
That was Violette Lenoir, right? The chef of this place? The security cameras hadn’t even begun to do her justice. If they had, he’d have been fighting his entire team for the right to break into her restaurant in the cold rain.
“Hi,” he tried.
Damn, that was lame. Twenty-six films, and he bet James Bond had never said “Hi” in a single one of them.
“Get the hell out of my kitchen.” She reached for an open knife roll with her left hand, still aiming the butcher knife at him.
Well, he could do that. Get the hell out of her kitchen. But then (a) he wouldn’t meet any of his initial goals, and (b) it might be hard to ask her out from a position of cowardly retreat. “If I could just—” He reached toward his inner jacket pocket.
A much smaller knife appeared in her left hand, balanced for throwing. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Damn. That smaller knife chilled the blood. He was pretty sure he could knock the butcher knife out of her hand if she came at him and not have to do anything too brutal to contain her, but if she started throwing knives left-handed, God knew how this situation would degenerate.
He wouldn’t even know in what direction to dodge, the aim would be so messed up.
Damn it. People watched too much television. That was the problem. Tried to go all Scarlett Johansson on him when she should be hiding behind a counter and hoping he didn’t notice her.
“I just want to show you my badge,” he said.
“Really.” Her voice was deadpan, and he realized they were speaking English only when her accent on the R just frissoned over his skin.
Hell. Blonde, high cheekbones, leather, French accent, aiming a knife at his throat. Maybe he was having that dream again.
“Vraiment,” he tried, and that damn expression flinched across her face. That screwed-tight, oh God spare me look everyone in this damn city got whenever he tried to speak their language.
After untold hours of torture by LREC classes, too.
“I’m a security consultant,” he said. “For the hotel.”
Her knife didn’t waver. “Right. That’s why you didn’t have the code to enter through the door.”
“I’m testing security,” he said. “To see how easy it would be to break into this place.”
She smiled and hefted her knife. “Well, as you found out—it’s hard.”
“Nope.” He shook his head firmly. “You need better security on the windows. Which I would like to make a note of, if you would just—let—” He inched his hand toward his pocket.
The knife she held whizzed right past his ear and buried itself in the wall two inches from his head.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he yelled, jerking far too late to the right. “What the hell? You almost killed me!”
A second knife appeared in her hand. “Don’t be a baby. That was three centimeters away from you. If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
There was a God after all, and He loved him. Chase could not believe a hot blonde in leather had finally said that to him in real life.
“But who wants to go to jail?” she said. “Your president might be coming for dinner next week. If I’m not here, God knows what they’d serve him.”
Interestingly, Chase had a similar worry about what they might serve the President.
The guys in Intel rated the information as only twenty percent reliable, which, in his experience, meant it was probably a figment of someone’s imagination. And there never had been a successful mass ricin attack yet. But hell…if there was…
If there was, and it was in this kitchen, he was probably looking at the first casualty right now. The chef.
“I just want to show you my badge!”
“I just wanted to make sure you were clear on what could happen, if whatever you’re reaching for in your pocket isn’t a badge.”