Statistical Approach to Quantum Field Theory 2nd
Edition Andreas Wipf
https://ebookmeta.com/product/statistical-approach-to-quantumfield-theory-2nd-edition-andreas-wipf/
"Masterly and rich... Highly recommended."
-- Library Journal (Starred Review)
As the Jack-of-All-Wicked-Trades for a secretive French military intelligence agency, Lietuenant Kingsley Boissonneault has done it all— spied, lied, and killed under orders. But his latest assignment is quite out of the ordinary. His commanding officer's nephew has disappeared inside a sex cult, and Kingsley has been tasked with bringing him home to safety.
The cult’s holy book is Story of O, the infamous French novel of extreme sado-masochism. Their château is a looking-glass world where women reign and men are their willing slaves. Or are they willing? It’s Kingsley’s mission to find out.
Once inside the château, however, Kingsley quickly falls under the spell cast by the enigmatic Madame, a woman of wisdom, power, and beauty. She offers Kingsley the one thing he’s always wanted. But the price? Giving up forever the only person he’s ever loved.
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“Stunning… Transcends genres and will leave readers absolutely breathless.” — RT Book Reviews on the Original Sinners series
“Daring, sophisticated, and literary… Exactly what good erotica should be.” — Kitty Thomas on The Siren
"Kinky, well-written, hot as hell." — Little Red Reading Hood on the The Red: An Erotic Fantasy
“Impossible to stop reading.” — Heroes & Heartbreakers on The Bourbon Thief
“I worship at the altar of Tiffany Reisz!” — New York Times bestselling author Lorelei James
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I wasn’t young, I wasn’t pretty. It was necessary to find other weapons.
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PAULINE RÉAGE
“T
ell me a secret you’ve never told anyone before.”
“Is that an order?” Kingsley asked.
A hand on his neck, a thumb digging into his throat, pressure to the point of pain. It was an order.
Kingsley told him a secret.
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The dream always begins the same way. In the winter. In the woods.
Kingsley stands in snow surrounded by shadows. None of the shadows are his because he’s not really there. He leaves no footprints as he walks. He does not see his steaming breath as he breathes. He is a ghost in this white forest, but he is not the only ghost here.
Before him stands a door.
It’s an arched wooden door alone in the woods. It belongs to an old chapel, but there is no church here, no chapel, no house. Only a door. Kingsley can walk around the door, but nothing will happen. Nothing will happen at all until he steps through it. The iron latch is cold enough to bite his bare fingers, but he doesn’t feel this either. He lifts it and passes through the door, because that is where the boy in white waits for him.
The moon is full and high, and the snow is bright, and he can see the young man so clearly it’s almost as if it were daytime, almost as if it weren’t a dream at all.
The boy in the clearing is beautiful, his hair so blond it looks almost white. His hair is white and his clothes are white, not snow white but a purer white, a baptismal white.
Kingsley speaks a word—either the boy’s name or “sir.” When he wakes he can never remember what word he says.
The boy, luminous in his pure white clothing, stands next to a table made of rough stone and on the stone table is a chess board made of ice.
Even though it is a dream, and no one has spoken but him, Kingsley knows he is supposed to sit and stay and play the game. It’s the rules. If he
doesn’t play, he’ll wake up, and the last thing he wants is to wake up now, to wake up ever.
He sits opposite the young man with the white-blond hair. The chess board is between them. Everything is between them.
Kingsley moves his pawn.
“You’re not really here,” Kingsley says to the boy with the snowy hair and the silver eyes. The boy’s beauty renders the dream a nightmare because Kingsley knows when morning comes, the boy will be gone and nowhere does such beauty exist among his waking hours. Not anymore.
“How do you know?” the boy asks, moving his king.
“You look eighteen,” Kingsley says, moving another pawn. “You’re twenty-five now. I’m twenty-four.”
The boy moves his king again. “In your memory I’m eighteen.”
“That isn’t how you play,” Kingsley says. “You can’t move the king like that.”
“It’s my game,” the boy in white says. “I move my king however I want. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the way I moved my King anywhere and everywhere I wanted him to go?”
Even in the snow and the cold, Kingsley grows warm.
“I remember.”
Kingsley moves his bishop.
The boy in white moves his king again.
“I don’t know how to win this game,” Kingsley says. “How can I win if I don’t know the rules?”
The boy in white narrows his silver eyes at him. “You’ve already won.”
“I have?”
“To play is to win, if you’re playing with me. Isn’t that true?” the boy asks with an arrogant smile in his eyes.
Kingsley knows this is true though it galls him to admit it. He doesn’t care who wins the game as long as the game between them goes on forever. He moves another pawn and the boy in white captures it.
To be the pawn captured in that boy’s hand…
“How do you keep finding me?” Kingsley asks.
“You came to me,” the boy says. “I’m always here.”
“I lost you,” Kingsley says. “Seven years ago. I lost you.”
“No,” the boy says, smiling for the first time. His face is like Michelangelo’s David, passive and powerful and carved from pale marble.
His eyes are granite and if Kingsley had a chisel he knows he could chip away at the boy’s chest until he uncovered an iron and copper wire heart beating inside a steel ribcage.
“No?”
“You lost you,” the boy says. The smile is gone and it has begun to snow again. When it snows, Kingsley knows the dream is almost over. All he wants to do is stay asleep a little longer. All he wants to do is stay asleep forever.
“How do I find you again?” Kingsley asks. “Please, tell me before I wake.”
“You don’t find me,” the boy says. “I find you.”
“Find me then.”
“When it’s time.”
“When will it be time?”
The boy in white moves his hands over the board and Kingsley looks down. The ice king lays on the board broken in two pieces.
“When?” Kingsley asks. He is a child again, asking a thousand questions in the quest for a single answer. The snow is falling harder now, heavy as rain and hot as tears. “Tell me when, please…”
The boy leans across the board as if to kiss him, but instead of a kiss, Kingsley is given an answer.
“When you find you.”
Between the kiss and the answer, Kingsley would have picked the kiss.
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PARIS, FRANCE. 1989.
Kingsley woke up covered in cold sweat. His body ached like he had a fever, but he didn’t—not of the sort that would ever break, anyway. For a long time he stayed in his solitary bed with his eyes closed, trying to remember as much of the recurring dream as possible. They had started a month ago when he returned from a successful mission in the Swiss Alps. Something about the snow there, something about the blood on the snow when he’d completed his dark task, had opened a door in his mind that Kingsley usually kept locked and guarded. The boy in the dream escaped that hidden room. There would be no locking him back in again now that he was out.
Ah, well, it was Kingsley who probably needed to be locked up. Seven years since he’d last seen the boy in white, and here Kingsley was, dreaming strange fever dreams of the lover he’d left so long ago, waking up sweating and hard. He ought to be ashamed of himself, but that would require shame. If Kingsley ever had any shame, he’d lost it when he lost his heart to that terrible blond monster whose hallowed name he refused to whisper even in the privacy of his own mind.
Outside his window, footsteps echoed off the pavement. A woman walking briskly in high heels. He gave himself permission to miss the boy in white who invaded his dreams, but only until the sound of the woman’s sharp heels faded from hearing. That was all. He didn’t weep nor did he shake. He simply lay naked in his bed and burned.
The sheets smoldered and the pillow warmed from the inside out like it had a core of hot coals instead of down. The air around his body turned to steam. He stretched his arms over his head and slid his wrists under the brass bar of the headboard and tried to pretend he was tied to it.
I want you. I need you.
Use me. Hurt me. Destroy me because you’re the one who created me. Kill me because you’re my only reason for living.
Find me because I’m lost without you.
In his mind Kingsley spoke those words, in his mind and never aloud. He was a man now, not a boy. He didn’t beg anymore. He didn’t debase himself for love anymore. And he didn’t want to.
Liar.
His time of remembering was almost up. As the sound of the woman’s footsteps waxed, waned, and then died, the fire in his heart burned itself out, leaving him once more with nothing in his bed but the soot and ashes of his memories.
Find me then…
When it’s time…
When will it be time?
When you find you…
What the fuck did that mean?
“You fucking monster,” Kingsley said with a sigh. “You even piss me off in my dreams.” And, because he could, he added, “Asshole.”
Slowly Kingsley opened his eyes, wincing as the bright white light of morning slammed into his optic nerve and caused the back of his brain to recoil. There existed the slightest possibility he’d had too much wine last night. He rolled up in bed and for a moment stayed there, knees bent to his chest, head down, arms around his ankles to stretch his back. At least the pain in his ribcage was gone, more or less. He’d taken one hell of a beating on that mission in the Alps, enough of a beating that he’d been given a full six weeks off to recover before being sent out again. He wished they’d hurry up and give him something to do. The more downtime he had, the more time he had to sleep. The more he slept, the more he dreamed…and the more he dreamed of the ice-hearted boy in the snow-filled forest, the more he wished to never wake again.
Like it or not, Kingsley was awake. He got out of bed, the white sheets damp with his sweat. The cold hardwood flooring kissed the soles of his bare feet. Two wine glasses sat on the floor at the foot of the bed. Kingsley drank the last two swallows in each and set the empty glasses back down for the cleaning lady, a local widow, to tend to it. He wasn’t lazy. He simply took enormous pleasure in trying to scandalize her with how much he drank and how often he fucked. So far, she hadn’t been impressed.
“I personally thanked a whole platoon of Patton’s boys after the Liberation in ’45. You’ll have to do more than five girls a week to impress me, little boy,” she’d said to him once. He’d kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear that he knew other ways to impress her, which had earned him a well-deserved swat with a kitchen towel on the seat of his trousers.
Maybe he should put a third glass by the bed for her. Or a fourth, each with different-colored lipstick on the rims. That might do the trick.
Smiling at the thought, he walked naked to the small galley kitchen in the garret flat on the third floor of a house that he occupied between missions. He never said he “lived” there because that wasn’t the point of the flat. He lived while he worked and when he wasn’t working, he ceased to exist. Until someone knocked on that door with a file, a passport, money, and a target, he was a ghost.
He was a hungry ghost that morning, but unfortunately the refrigerator was bare. And his companion from last night—a twenty-year-old Swiss university student named Nina (or was it Zina?)—had left around two in the morning. Usually if one of his girls stayed overnight, he’d make an offer: You feed me, and I’ll eat you. The line never failed. Since he’d woken up alone this time, he’d have to find his own breakfast. Horrible thought.
Kingsley turned on the cold water in the kitchen sink. He stuck his head under the faucet, washing the last of the cobwebs out of his skull with a quick whore’s bath. He dried off with a kitchen towel, chuckling when he noticed the red marks on his skin that Nina’s fingernails and teeth had left on him. She’d called him “delicious.” She’d meant it, too, attempting to cannibalize him with nibbles and bites and licking kisses all over his stomach, sides, and hips.
She’d been a playful little thing. Even made him laugh a few times with her dirty mouth. He’d thought he’d forgotten how to laugh. He wouldn’t mind seeing her again, which fairly well guaranteed he never would. These
days he couldn’t afford to get emotionally involved with anyone. He was gone too often. Even when he was back in his flat for an extended period of time, it was usually because he needed a few weeks to sleep off his injuries. Nina—no, it was definitely Zina, he decided—was sweet and like everyone he slept with, she deserved more than he could give. The more he liked someone, the less he saw of them—for their sake. But try passing that line of reasoning off onto a lovesick university student waiting by her phone. No, he wouldn’t see Zina again, even though she’d left her phone number on the counter signed with a red lipstick kiss.
After washing up, he found his cleanest pair of jeans, a black sweater, black scarf, and was halfway to the door when he stopped at a sound.
Footsteps.
Inside the house, coming up the staircase.
Jeanne wasn’t due to clean today. And the house was owned by his employers. No one lived in it now, except for him. Unless Zina was returning with breakfast, the footsteps meant one of two things: either someone was coming to kill him or someone was coming to give him a job. Considering he was supposed to have two more weeks off, he doubted his visitor was here simply to say “bonjour.”
Kingsley quietly pulled open the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, the one where he kept his Beretta. He waited behind the door, gun in hand. He wasn’t scared. Not yet. That would come later if he survived. That was something they’d never warned him about in training, that he would never stop being afraid no matter how many years he did this job. Only made sense, he supposed. An old fox ran as hard from the hounds as the young fox. No one ever got used to being hunted.
The footsteps paused outside the door and then came the knock.
Tap, tap.
Pause.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Kingsley sagged against the wall with relief. He wouldn’t have to shoot anyone today.
“Lieutenant?” said the voice from outside the door, and Kingsley growled with barely repressed fury. Maybe he would shoot someone today after all.
He opened the door. At the top of the stairs stood a young man with disheveled brown hair wearing a foolish grin and holding what appeared to
be a blue bowling ball bag.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” the young man said, grinning like a cameraman had just told him to say “Cheese.”
“Bernie,” Kingsley said as he leaned on the doorframe. “I thought we had this talk.”
“Which talk? Oh.” Bernie grimaced and switched the bowling bag from one hand to the other. “Right. The one where I don’t call you by your name or rank?”
“Right.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant.”
Kingsley dropped his chin to his chest. Poor Bernie. He looked like a twelve-year-old boy who’d never grown up. He’d merely gotten taller, like someone had pulled him like taffy or stretched him on a rack.
“I mean, sorry, ah…John,” Bernie said.
“Better,” Kingsley said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Lieutenant.”
Kingsley used his gun to rub his forehead, despite knowing there was the slightest risk he’d accidentally shoot himself in the head. He’d take that risk.
“Bernie, we have to have the talk again.”
“I’ve asked you not to call me Bernie,” he pointed out. “You still do.”
“It’s affectionate,” Kingsley said. The young man’s last name was Bernard. “I only call you that because I like you. Did you bring breakfast?”
“Ah, no,” Bernie said, glancing around as if hoping to find a breakfast that someone else had inadvertently left behind. “Was I supposed to?”
“It’s protocol, Bernie. It’s in the manual.”
“Protocol, right,” Bernie said again. “Well. I’ll be back. You’ll be here?”
“I’ll be here. If I don’t answer right away, it’s because I’m in bed cleaning my gun.”
Bernie glanced at the gun in Kingsley’s right hand.
“Looks clean to me.”
“It’s a euphemism,” Kingsley said. “You’ll figure it out when you hit puberty.”
Kingsley shut the door in Bernie’s face, and put his gun away before he shot someone accidentally or on purpose.
At first, he heard nothing.
Then he heard footsteps receding. Then he heard those same footsteps returning. Then he heard that knock again—tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
“Bernie?” Kingsley said through the door.
“It’s a wanking joke, yes?”
He smiled only because Bernie couldn’t see him.
“Good job, Bernie. Breakfast?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“And Bernie?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t forget the coffee. That’s also protocol.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“And Bernie?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Stop calling me Lieutenant.”
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Bernie could never remember not to call him by his name or rank, but at least he knew how to fetch a decent breakfast. Kingsley hopped up on the kitchen counter and sat with his legs crossed like a schoolboy, devouring a croissant smothered with fresh strawberry jam. He washed it all down with a large stout cup of coffee, black, just the way he liked it. Meanwhile Bernie sat waiting at the little yellow table for two under the kitchen window. The garret flat was so small and narrow that Kingsley could have extended his leg and kicked Bernie in the head, had he any desire to do such a thing. Since Bernie had fed him and brought him coffee —above and beyond the call of duty—Kingsley left him un-kicked.
For the moment.
“You had company last night,” Bernie said, nodding at the empty wine bottle and the two glasses by the bed. A small brass bed, barely big enough for two, but that was fine by Kingsley as he was happy to let his companions sleep on top of him. Or, on occasion, underneath him. And who needed a big bed? The best sex he’d ever had in his life had been in a cot.
“I have company every night,” Kingsley said.
“Is that safe?” Bernie asked.
“Are you worried I’ll catch something?”
“Yes,” Bernie said. “A bullet.”
Kingsley reached over and turned the radio volume up a couple notches. He didn’t want them being overheard. He was supposed to be playing the part of an American in Paris. Anyone hearing him speaking French like a native with a classic Parisian accent to boot might get suspicious. The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” was playing on the American radio
station. Kingsley had always liked this song for some reason. A reason probably best left unexplored.
“I only fuck university students,” Kingsley said between bites. “They don’t even know where to buy pot, much less guns.”
“You might blow your cover.”
“Fucking university students is my cover,” he said, pointing to a small desk pushed against the back wall. On it sat a blue Smith-Corona Galaxie Deluxe XII typewriter with paper rolled inside and stacks of typewritten sheets on either side of it. They were all fake, of course. His cover was “John Kingsley Edge,” a twenty-seven-year-old American mystery novelist —as yet unpublished, living out his Hemingway-in-Paris dreams. And the words on those pages? Taken word for word from The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie, the one English novel Kingsley had been able to find in the used bookshop two streets over. He doubted the Swiss and the Dutch and the Algerian and the German students he’d fucked the past three weeks were big enough fans of Miss Marple to notice, especially since he’d changed Miss Marple’s name in the book to Mr. Stearns.
Bernie’s eyes were still on the two empty wine glasses.
“Wish they’d let me go undercover,” Bernie said wistfully.
“Do you even speak English?” Kingsley asked, raising an eyebrow at Bernie. Poor Bernie. He sounded like a little boy wishing to be a spy when he grew up. Instead he was nothing more than an errand boy for the real spies. Probably as close as Bernie would ever get to his dream job.
“A little,” Bernie said. Un peu.
“You need more than a little English for this work,” Kingsley said. “I’m fluent, and I can speak without a French accent.” What he didn’t say was that he hated hiding his accent. It gave him a headache. Still, when he was out on the town meeting girls, he usually didn’t have to talk much to get them back to his place.
“How did you learn English so well? Are you actually a secret American? If you’re a secret American, does that mean it’s French you learned? No, you’re too good at it. You’d have to be a native—”
“Bernie, you know the rules.”
Kingsley had a working theory about how someone as dense as Bernie had managed to weasel his way into the inner circle of a very small, quiet, and secretive military intelligence agency. Long ago, he’d heard a story about the infamous Hope Diamond. When the owner of the cursed jewel,
Harry Winston, sent the diamond to Washington DC, he hadn’t bothered with armed guards. No, he’d put it in a regular box and shipped it via the good old-fashioned United States Postal Service. No one expected something that valuable to get shipped through the post office, just as no one expected a man as young and dumb as Bernie to be carrying important intelligence documents either. Hiding in plain sight was the best place to hide.
Either that or Bernie was the nephew of someone very well-connected.
“What’s America like? Tell me that, at least,” Bernie said.
“Barbaric,” Kingsley said. “They eat butter on their croissants.”
Bernie screwed up his face in an expression of purest French disgust. “So you hated it there?”
“No, I didn’t hate it there,” Kingsley said, trying not to smile. “I did at first. It grows on you though. Like a tumor.”
“I bet American girls like French men. Right?”
“They like Englishmen better. They assume Frenchmen will cheat on them.”
Bernie’s eyes widened. “That’s rude. Why?”
“Because we do.”
“We do?”
Kingsley shrugged and nodded.
“That’s not very nice of us,” Bernie said, frowning.
“I don’t make the rules. But they will sleep with us for a night or two if you know enough English to get them into bed.”
“I know enough.”
“Say something in English,” Kingsley said before finishing off the last of his coffee.
“Euh…” Bernie paused so long Kingsley had time to finish off his breakfast. When Bernie started speaking again, it was in English. Very bad English.
“I ‘aave…”
“Go on, Bernie,” Kingsley said, not only in English but in his flawless American accent picked up from his mother who’d been born and raised in Maine. “You have what?”
“A zhab…pour…”
“For.”
“For you.”
“You have a job for me?” Kingsley repeated, lighting a Gauloise. He only allowed himself to smoke after eating these days. He wanted to quit, but the last thing he needed on a mission was his hands shaking as he went through nicotine withdrawal. He’d planned on cutting back by smoking only after he’d had an orgasm, but some days that was almost half a pack. Three meals a day. Three cigarettes a day. It was as close as he got to self-restraint.
“I have a zahb for you,” Bernie said and smiled, proud of himself.
“I’m supposed to be on leave,” Kingsley said. “Medical leave.”
“Your physical results came back—you’re in perfect health. Try to stay that way.”
“I’m still sore,” Kingsley said, which was true…ish? “There’s no blood test for that.”
“They said you’d say that. So I’m supposed to tell you that if you’re in good enough shape to bring five different girls home five nights in a row, you can work.”
Kingsley pursed his lips but couldn’t argue the point. It was his own fault he’d gotten caught. Of course the house was being watched. Spies spied on spies. It’s what they did.
“Give me the dossier,” Kingsley said, wiping his hands off on a towel. Kingsley might be tasked with killing the target contained in the files— usually KGB or someone else the government had deemed too dangerous to continue being allowed to walk God’s green earth a week longer—but that didn’t mean he had to get crumbs all over their fucking dossier. The first dossier he’d ever been given had contained pictures of his target…and his target’s wife and three small children. Killing was the only part of his job he took seriously.
Bernie opened his bowling bag and took out a file folder, which he handed over.
“It’s a woman,” Kingsley said, staring at the photograph clipped just inside the flap. “A beautiful woman.”
“You think?” Bernie asked. “She’s wearing a widow’s veil over her face.”
Women didn’t wear black veils anymore. Kingsley couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman in a widow’s veil, even at a funeral. They were no longer in fashion. They caught the eye. They made you look.
“A woman wouldn’t wear a veil over her face unless there was something under there worth veiling,” Kingsley said. “Trust me, she’s beautiful.”
Kingsley could see the woman’s eyes through the open weave of the tulle. She was staring directly at the camera, which was rare. His targets never knew they were being targeted. Even most Frenchwomen smiled when they knew a camera was on them. Not this woman, even though it was clear she knew someone was photographing her. She didn’t look amused and she didn’t look defiant and she didn’t look shamefaced or shameless or even curious. She simply looked bored. Any woman who looked bored while being stalked and photographed was likely a very dangerous woman indeed.
“Why am I killing her?” Kingsley asked. He found it was hard to imagine this chic lady with the white fur collar of her black coat turned up had done anything to deserve being assassinated. Then again, he’d learned in his line of work that one could never judge by appearances.
“You aren’t,” Bernie said.
“I’m not? Then what am I doing with her? Surveillance? Reconnaissance?”
“Rescue.”
Kingsley narrowed his eyes at Bernie. This woman was not a woman who needed rescuing. Kingsley would bet his life on it.
“What’s going on here?” he asked Bernie.
“The colonel says this is an ‘unofficial’ assignment.”
“All our assignments are ‘unofficial.’ ”
“This is extra un-official,” Bernie said. “You can even turn it down if you want. Although the colonel might not be happy if you did that.”
“Let’s keep the colonel happy. Tell me everything.”
“Apparently a man has disappeared,” Bernie said. “Six months ago he disappeared for a week. Came back and didn’t tell anyone where he went. Now he’s gone again. He called the same phone number the day before both disappearances. Her phone number, they think.”
Bernie nodded at the file, at “her.”
“So?” Kingsley said. “A man has a right to run off with a woman if he wants to. Not telling people where he is makes him thoughtless, maybe even an ass, not a criminal. Or her.”
“They don’t want to arrest her. Or him. They just want someone to go in and talk him out. He’s young.”
“If they have her phone number, can’t they find her address? Send his mother to go talk to him.”
“Untraceable number, apparently. She’s got friends in high places. Someone’s protecting her privacy. Makes her very hard to find. The only option is for someone to meet her, talk their way in. Like you.”
Kingsley closed the file. “This assignment is a shit sandwich,” he said. “I’m not getting involved with someone’s family soap opera. It’s none of our business if somebody’s kid wants to screw an older woman.”
“I guess it would be none of our business,” Bernie said, “except the missing man is Colonel Masson’s nineteen-year-old nephew, Leon.”
Kingsley stared at Bernie. Stared and glared.
“What?” Bernie asked.
Kingsley opened the file again.
“Bernie, in the future, tell me the important part first.”
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“Sorry,” Bernie said. “Should I start over then?”
“Yes, start at the beginning,” Kingsley said, uncrossing his legs and dropping down to the floor. “And go slowly. Pretend I’m you.”
“Why would I pretend you’re me?”
“Ah…just tell me,” Kingsley said.
“We don’t know her name,” Bernie began. He clasped his hands in his lap and one foot danced along the floor. “She goes by Madame. That’s all.”
“Madame?”
Bernie nodded. “We think she’s the leader of a cult.”
“A cult? Really? In France?” Kingsley couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “Are you sure you’re not thinking of the Catholic Church?”
“This is a sex cult.”
“So it is the Catholic Church.”
Bernie blinked, his eyes dim as a five-watt bulb.
“Go on,” Kingsley said. “You now have my attention.”
“Some men…important men, have disappeared over the past ten years. They’ll be gone a week or two with no word to their families or friends at all, and then they’ll simply reappear, glassy-eyed and confused, standing outside their front doors with no idea how they got there.”
“Important men. Such as?”
“The son of an English duke. A minor Spanish prince. A wealthy North African financier. And now—”
“The colonel’s nephew.”
Bernie shrugged. “He was last seen getting into a wine-colored car. That was one month ago.”
“White wine or red?”
“Oh,” Bernie said. “I don’t know that part.”
Kingsley met Bernie’s eyes. “You’re someone’s nephew, aren’t you?”
Bernie looked sheepish and guilty. “Yes.”
“Whose?” Kingsley demanded.
“My aunt’s.”
Kingsley counted to five in both French and English and then smiled at Bernie. “So it’s a sex cult. Run by a woman who goes only by Madame. And the colonel wants me to go there and check on Leon, and convince him it’s time to come home. Where’s this woman live?”
“Apparently her château is off the map. The phone number is untraceable.”
“She does have friends in high places. Wait, did you say château?”
“Yes, she lives in a château,” Bernie said. “Does that mean something to you?”
“Maybe,” Kingsley said. “But I can’t remember why.”
“Will you take the job?” Bernie asked.
“Why me?”
“Why you?”
“Why am I being sent on this job?” Kingsley asked.
“I don’t know. I’m only the messenger.”
“You’re a messenger who eavesdrops. Why me?”
Bernie flushed. He looked guilty as a little boy who’d seen his first naked girl in a movie. “I might have heard the colonel say something about you being a good fit for the job.”
“Why?” Kingsley asked, eying Bernie meaningfully.
“He used a phrase, but I don’t know it.”
“What phrase?”
“It’s English,” Bernie said. “Something like, uh…oeuf trader? Egg broker?”
“Rough trade?” Kingsley asked.
Bernie’s eyes lit up. “That!” Then he paused. “What’s it mean?”
“It means the colonel thinks I’ll fuck anyone,” Kingsley said. He decided not to tell Bernie the phrase specifically referred to working-class men who had sex with men with money and for money. That was a conversation Bernie was not ready to have yet. Or Kingsley.
“But…you will fuck anyone.”
“I won’t,” Kingsley said, insulted. “I’ll fuck almost anyone. There’s a difference.”
“Who wouldn’t you fuck?” Bernie sounded skeptical. Kingsley flipped another page in the file. “Nazis.”
Kingsley found the file woefully lacking in useful information. No addresses. No photographs apart from the one of Madame. There was a phone number written on the file. That was about it for useful information.
“I need to know more about her,” Kingsley said. “What else did you overhear?”
“Three different agents have already tried getting to Madame. Only one of them has gotten further than a first phone call. It’s like she gives them a test, and they all fail, but they don’t know what the test is, so they don’t know how to pass it.”
“I’m not saying I’m doing this job,” Kingsley said. “But if I were going to do it…what do I do? What’s the first step?”
“You’re supposed to go to a payphone. Call the number on the file. When whoever answers, you say ‘looking glass.’ ” Bernie was speaking French to him, but the password—“looking glass”—he’d said in English. That seemed significant, though Kingsley couldn’t say why.
“Looking glass?”
“A mirror,” Bernie said.
“I know what it means,” Kingsley said. “If I can get to her, what’s my cover?”
“Tell her you’re a friend of the family, and they’ve asked to look into Leon’s disappearance. She’s made all the other agents immediately, so the less you lie to her, the better. She’ll probably make you, too, but she might still bite if she likes you. They don’t think she’s dangerous. I mean, she probably won’t try to kill you.”
“Probably?” Where had Kingsley heard that before?
Bernie nodded, smiling.
“Anything else?” Kingsley asked. “Anything at all? Anything that might help me not get ‘probably’ killed by her?”
“Oh, one thing. They worship a book.”
“Every cult worships a book. It’s called The Bible.”
“No,” Bernie said. “Different book.”
Once more he went into his bowling bag and produced the book in question.
“This book,” Bernie said.
Kingsley didn’t take it from him. He only looked at it. It was Histoire d’O Story of O—by Pauline Réage, the most notorious novel of sadomasochism of the twentieth century. In the book, a young woman’s lover takes her to a house in Roissy where she’s ravished and imprisoned and trained to be the perfect slave. No, not a house.
A château…
“Lieutenant? Something wrong?” Bernie asked.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Kingsley said. Quite possibly something very right. “Tell the colonel I’ll do it.”
“You’re braver than I am,” Bernie said.
“I know. Now get out.”
“But—”
“Out. I’ll be in touch when I can.”
Kingsley held the door open for Bernie. The poor boy had to scramble to push all his papers back into his bag. It appeared there was an actual bowling ball in his bowling bag. Kingsley decided that either Bernie was literally the worst spy in the entire world or the best.
“Leaving, leaving,” Bernie said. “But don’t you want the book? You might need it?”
He held it out to Kingsley again.
“You keep it. Read it. You might learn something,” Kingsley said, before shutting the door in Bernie’s face.
He didn’t need to keep the book, after all.
Kingsley had his own copy.
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Was this real life?
Was this really happening?
This woman, Madame, not only ran a sex cult, but a cult that worshipped Story of O? Crazy, right? It had to be crazy. Rumors, misinformation, you couldn’t trust stories like that. They were all urban legends, blown out of proportion. More likely that Madame was a madam. Instead of kidnapping important men, she probably operated a brothel that catered to rich, deviant men, and those rich, deviant men lied to their notso-deviant wives about how they ended up in the pocket of this woman. That was Kingsley’s theory. And it was very possible that’s why his little corner of France’s intelligence community wanted to know where she was and exactly what and who she was doing. The colonel’s nephew strapped to a bed by a beautiful woman might give up secrets he didn’t know he knew.
In the wooden crate at the foot of his bed, the one he used for a makeshift bookcase, he found his copy of Story of O. He’d first read the book when he was a boy, sneaking it from his parents’ bedroom shelf when they were out. He told himself he’d only kept the book because it had his mother’s initials written inside it. K.B. The same as his. But that wasn’t why.
He’d read it a dozen times since, this strange slim novel about a woman whose name is nothing but an O, a hole, and the terrible things done to her that she hates while they happen and misses when they’re over. Sometimes when he read the book he imagined himself as one of the mysterious men who used O for his own perverse and violent pleasures. And sometimes— often even—Kingsley imagined he was O.
Kingsley opened the book to an earmarked page and read. To say that from the moment her lover had left, O began to await his return would be an understatement. She turned into pure vigil, darkness in waiting expectation of light.
Kingsley closed the book and put it back in the crate. He watched the street from behind the window curtain. The second Bernie’s putting red Citroën pulled away from the curb, Kingsley flew into action. He burst out of the door of his flat, ran down the three flights of stairs, and out onto the street where he nearly bumped into an old woman carrying her groceries. She swore at him, and he muttered a quick “Je suis désolé” before running off again down the street to the next block over where he knew he would find a payphone.
As soon as he arrived, Kingsley pushed the door open so hard he almost wrenched it off the hinges. He grabbed the receiver, put in his coin, dialed the number, and panted while he waited, waited while he panted.
One ring.
Two.
Three rings.
Four.
The rings ceased. Kingsley heard silence, white noise, a breath.
“Looking glass,” he said in perfect English, sounding as American as possible.
More silence.
A long silence.
A long and terrible silence.
Then finally…
“Not again.”
Kingsley laughed softly. The woman, for it was a woman who’d answered, sounded deliciously annoyed.
“I’m sorry,” Kingsley said, already playing the slave. He remembered this game. Oh, he remembered it well. Remembered more than anything how much he loved to play it.
“Go on. Tell me your name.” She spoke in French.
Her voice sounded impassive, detached, elegant, educated, sinister, and civilized. Yet she hadn’t asked him for his name; she’d ordered him to tell it to her.
His cover of “John Kingsley Edge, poor American writer playing Hemingway in Paris” was almost on the tip of his tongue when his real given name slipped out.
“Kingsley,” he said, dropping his American accent to speak to her in French. “Or King. Or whatever you want to call me.”
“Kingsley,” the woman said. “You sound scared.”
“Out of breath. I ran to the phone. I was in a hurry to talk to you.”
“I’m flattered. You’re nervous.”
“Yes,” he said. Not a lie. He didn’t know why it wasn’t a lie. Women didn’t make him nervous. Men didn’t make him nervous. It took someone facing him with a gun in their hand to make him nervous. Only one person had ever made him nervous without the gun.
“Good,” she said. “Very good.” Her voice was cool and soothing, like a psychologist’s voice made for probing the deepest recesses of the psyche and soul.
“Tell me how you heard of me, Kingsley,” she said.
“A friend,” he said. “His name is Leon.”
“Leon,” she repeated.
“He stayed with you a few months ago for a week. When he came back he told me about you. He’s gone now, but I found your phone number in some papers of his.”
“Leon is your friend and he told you about me…”
“He said you’re beautiful under your veil.”
There was a long pause after that. Had Kingsley gone too far or had his arrow struck his target?
“Many men have tried to find me,” she said. “They never find me.”
“I don’t want to find you,” Kingsley said.
“Tell me who you want to find,” she said.
Kingsley closed his eyes tight and returned to his dream.
“I want to find me,” he said at last.
“Very good,” she said. She sounded pleased with him. Already he was desperate to please her. He remembered this feeling, this need to please. It had lingered in his blood, dormant like a virus and already he felt the first hint of dizziness, the first flush of fever.
“Tell me what you look like,” she said.
“Six feet tall,” he said. “Eighty-two kilo. I’m twenty-four, and I look twenty-four. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Hair needs a cut. It’s wavy, not curly.
People tell me I look Greek. I guess I’m darker than your average Frenchman.”
“That’s not what I wanted to know.”
Kingsley smiled. “Women find me very handsome.”
“They do?”
“I’ve had seven beautiful girls seven days in a row,” he said.
“Are you bragging?” she asked.
“Just offering corroborating testimony,” he said, proud of himself for that line.
“Arrogant boy,” she said.
“Sometimes.”
“If we meet, I’ll humble you,” she said.
“I need it.”
“You won’t like it.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You won’t like it,” she said again.
“Maybe not,” Kingsley said. “But I might love it.”
“Ah,” she said and it was a delighted sound like he’d heard women make when he was touching them for the first time and found that spot, that special little spot that wanted, needed, demanded touching. “Ah,” she said again.
“I want to meet you,” he said. “I want you to humble me.”
“You want me to humble you.” She sounded amused by him, like a teacher speaking to a too-eager pupil. “Very well. Tell me the phone number from where you’re calling.”
Kingsley read it off the payphone to her twice.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”
“When?” he asked, but she’d already hung up.
He stared at the phone as if it would answer his question for him, but it did nothing but buzz until Kingsley replaced it on the cradle.
“Fucking sadists,” he said to himself. There was no telling when she’d call back. A minute. An hour. A day. He had no choice but to wait and to wait and to wait. Wait like a servant. Wait like a slave. Exasperating. Infuriating. Insulting.
God, he’d missed this.
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As Kingsley expected, Madame didn’t call him back right away.
Not for one hour.
Not for two hours.
Not for three hours.
Not for four.
She was testing him. He knew it. She was testing him, and he had to pass this test if he were to be allowed to meet her.
Kingsley waited.
He waited and he waited and he waited. Luckily he’d picked the payphone booth next to an alley where few people ventured. He didn’t have to fight anyone for custody of the phone, but that didn’t make the wait any easier. He paced the alley, never walking out of earshot of the ring. He sat down in the phone booth and read the phone book until he almost fell asleep. And he would have fallen asleep if it were three degrees warmer outside. An old man walking his dog gave him increasingly suspicious and disgusted looks all four laps he made of the alley. Even the dog seemed to be judging him. Finally Kingsley leaned out of the phone booth and yelled to them both, “It’s for work, all right!” The old man muttered something about “bizarre young people these days” and took his dog away—briskly.
By late afternoon, he’d been waiting for the phone to ring for six hours. At least it had warmed up enough that he could almost, perhaps, maybe take a quick nap while sitting on the floor of the phone booth with his coat wrapped around his knees. He got settled in and closed his eyes. Just as he was about to drift off, someone knocked on the phone booth door.
Kingsley sprang immediately awake. And when he saw the girl standing outside the door, he leapt to his feet, a smile on his face.
“Pardon me, sir,” she said. “Do you live here?”
She spoke French like a native. He knew he was supposed to play dumb, to act like he only spoke English or stilted French, as part of his cover.
But.
The girl was magnificent. Black hair in a loose bun. Onyx eyes. Skin a deep olive like his, maybe even darker. She had a little beauty mark on her chin and her lips were a dusky hue, full and mischievous as if they wanted to slide into a smile but knew better than to encourage him. All her clothes were chic. Chic brown leather knee boots with a little heel. A brown skirt, a belted brown coat, and a red newsboy cap tilted rakishly over her right eye. She didn’t look very old—maybe eighteen or nineteen—but she carried herself with a sophistication beyond her tender years.
Since she was so very magnificent, he was compelled to respond with his own fluent French. So what if he blew his cover? He’d blow anything for this girl.
“Do I live here?” he asked. “On this street?”
“In the phone booth?”
She smiled and he decided they should have two children. Both girls. Or maybe one boy and one girl. He wasn’t picky.
“No,” he said. “I’m waiting on a call.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll find another phone then.”
“You can use this one,” he said. “It’s not mine. I don’t own it. It’s public. You’re the public.”
“But I’m not public. I’m very private,” she said.
Maybe three children, he thought. The third would be an accident. Unplanned. Likely the result of him ravishing her one time too many while on holiday in Saint Croix. He wondered if she liked being spanked. He would try to find that out before tomorrow morning.
“Then you shouldn’t use my public phone,” he said. “We should find you a private phone. I have one back at my place.”
“If you have a phone, why are you using a phone booth?” she asked. She was looking at him with unabashed appreciation. She might even find him as attractive as he found her.
“It’s for work. I think.”
“If you’re working I should leave you alone then,” she said. “I’ll find another phone on my own.”
“You’re Jewish.”
She furrowed her beautiful brow. “Are Jews not allowed to use phones?” she asked.
“I noticed your necklace,” he said. A gold Star of David pendant danced in the hollow of her throat. “I like it.”
“Are you Jewish?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m just so happy you aren’t Catholic.”
She laughed and her laugh bounced off the sidewalk into the sky and jumped into the nearest passing cloud. Kingsley hoped wherever that cloud went it would rain her laughter onto the world.
“Is it so bad to be Catholic?” she asked.
“I went to Catholic school,” he said by way of answer.
“Is it like I hear it is?” she asked.
“Worse. We can raise our children Jewish. I’ll convert.”
“Are you circumcised?” she asked.
“Not yet, but if you’ll give me a minute, I have my Swiss Army knife on me.”
“You’re awful,” she said, grinning.
“I’m half-American. That’s where my rude behavior comes from.”
“What if I like rude behavior?” she asked.
“God bless America,” Kingsley said.
“Does he?”
“What?”
“Bless America?”
“I don’t know, but Americans say it all the fucking time. There’s another American saying: What’s your phone number?”
“I don’t have a phone,” she said. “That’s why I was looking for one.”
“Then what’s your address? I’ll write you letters. Long letters. Stirring letters. Letters that will break your heart,” he said.
“What if I don’t want my heart broken?”
“Then I’ll write you another letter to put it back together.”
“Sounds dangerous to my cardiovascular health. I don’t know if you should write me.”
“Can I write your beauty mark then?” he said, nodding at the little black dot on her chin. “I have a lot to say to it.”
“Oh, that’s not a beauty mark,” she said.
“What is it then?”
“It’s a tick,” she said.
He laughed so hard he mentally impregnated her a fourth time. C’est la vie. He’d always wanted a big family.
“Then I’ll write letters to your tick.”
“His name is Georges,” she said.
“Does Georges like boys?” Kingsley asked. “Because I want to kiss him.”
She shook her head in that way women did to tell men they were both cute and annoying.
“Would you like to go have coffee with me?” she asked. “There’s a café on the next street.”
“Yes. Yes, I would. I would like that…but not today. I’m, well…” He pointed at the phone booth.
“Working?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll be gone tomorrow. I should go now,” she said, glancing at the end of the street, a pretty pout on her face. “It was nice to meet you, Monsieur. Good luck with your work. Georges and I will miss you. Au revoir.”
The girl in the red cap and the brown boots walked away and Kingsley watched her go. At the last second before she disappeared from view, she turned around and waved at him. Then she was gone. She’d been so insanely, indescribably stunning that he could only think that she’d been a test. Madame had hired a teenaged model to charm him and tempt him with coffee at a café and the promise of more.
Madame better fucking call him soon if he gave up the most beautiful girl in the world for this job.
He waited four more hours.
Four.
More.
Hours.
Kingsley was five minutes away from giving up on this assignment, going back to his apartment and taking a long hot bath when the payphone rang.
He’d been sitting on the concrete until his tailbone had gone numb when the shrill sound pierced the cold evening air, and he jumped up so quickly one might have thought someone had shot a gun at him.
Kingsley picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Don’t talk,” came the woman’s voice over the line. “I have no time for mindless chit-chat.”
Kingsley stayed silent.
“Good,” she said. “You can take an order. Here’s another. There’s a hotel in the thirteenth arrondissement. It’s called The Opulent. It isn’t.”
Kingsley smiled.
“Be there in an hour on the hour. Precisely on the hour. Come unarmed and alone or do not come at all. Room four. It will be unlocked. Go in. Shut the door behind you but don’t lock it. Face the window, curtains closed. Wait for me on your knees.”
“What’s the address?” Kingsley asked but she’d hung up again already.
He put the phone on the receiver and leaned back in the booth. The call happened so fast and was so bizarre, he almost didn’t believe it had happened. He repeated what she’d told him. The Opulent. 13th arrondissement. Room 4. Close the door, kneel by the window, facing the window, curtains closed. He looked up the address in the phone book. It would be an easy trek on foot. He’d make it in plenty of time if he left now. He ran his hands through his hair, retied his scarf, and was about to leave the booth when the phone rang again.
He answered it but this time he didn’t speak.
“You learn quickly,” the woman said.
He still didn’t speak.
“Your ability to learn quickly has earned you an answer. Ask me a question. Don’t waste my time or yours on something stupid like what my name is.”
Kingsley opened his mouth and didn’t know what to ask at first and then he knew in an instant. “How do I pass the test?”
“Ah,” she said as she had before. That pleased little “ah” again. He was glad he’d given up the girl in the red cap. He’d needed that “ah.”
“There is a test, isn’t there? When men try to find you,” Kingsley said, “you test them. I heard this. How do I pass the test so I can be with you?”
“You pass the test by taking the test,” she said.
And, of course, she hung up again before he could say another word.
Kingsley checked his watch. Head down against the wind and feet moving fast, he made it to the 13th in half an hour. Ten minutes and two wrong turns down blind alleys later, Kingsley found The Opulent. A nondescript building, he hardly would have noticed it unless he’d been looking for it. Three stories high, gray stone facade, simple glass front door. He went inside and nearly collapsed from the relief of being immersed for the first time all day in real warmth. The radiator in the lobby groaned and sang, and he stood by it, warming himself as if it were a roaring fire. In the faded red velvet lobby, he shucked off his overcoat and shed his scarf. A long-legged girl in a short black skirt eyed him with avarice and interest from across the room. There were two other girls there, wearing more lipstick than clothing. The Opulent was clearly the sort of hotel that rented out its rooms by the hour. Kingsley was surprised he’d never heard of it before.
Without a word to the sleeping clerk, he headed up the narrow stairs beside the front desk and walked down the threadbare carpet to room 4. The door wasn’t locked. He entered it, as ordered, and shut the door behind him. There was no overhead light. When he flipped the switch by the door, only the lamp on the bedside table came on.
By its weak and jaundiced light, Kingsley could see the room wasn’t nearly as squalid as he’d been expecting. It even smelled like someone had cleaned in there sometime in the last two weeks. The wallpaper was dark green, with golden vines entwined with golden apples. The bed was large, a queen-size, and covered in a forest green comforter and gold tasseled pillows. The rug was also a deep green and under it lay an ancient wood floor full of pockmarks from a hundred years of boots and high heels. Across from the bed hung an ostentatious gilt mirror, a cheap rococo replica that had likely acted as the sole witness to a hundred years of depravity in the bed it reflected. The only other item of interest in the room was the telephone.
Kingsley knew he ought to call his superiors and make a report. Yet something stopped him. Something in him didn’t want this to be about work. It already felt more like pleasure than business. Besides, he knew nothing yet. To call now would be to waste their time.
Thoughts of work faded from his mind as he tossed his coat and scarf over the back of an old and humble-looking red leather armchair. He faced the window and closed the gold curtains. He knelt on the rug and waited,
ready and willing. And if the readiness was perhaps feigned, at least the willingness was not.
Right on the hour, the door opened behind him.
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In the novel Story of O, the woman, O, is taken to a château, and the minute she’s inside the house, four men take turns ravishing her. Kingsley wondered if such a thing was about to happen to him now. Would he be grabbed, stripped, violated, raped? Myriad lurid scenarios ran through his mind. But it seemed the mysterious stranger in the room had other ideas. He heard the door lock. He heard a woman’s prim footsteps, first on the hardwood floor and then on the rug. Then he sensed her standing directly behind him. He inhaled deeply and smelled lavender water, the kind his mother used to wear.
“Don’t speak,” the woman said. It was the voice from the phone. “Only speak when I ask you a direct question. I’ll speak in French. You answer in English. If someone is eavesdropping it’ll make it a little harder on them. Do you understand?”
Comprenez-vous?
“Yes,” Kingsley said, en anglais. He wondered how she knew he was fluent in English. Apart from saying “looking glass” to her, he’d spoken French the entire time.
“I’m going to touch you,” she said. “If you have an objection to that, then I don’t know why you’re here.”
Again, Kingsley did not speak. He had absolutely no objection to being touched. Not by her, anyway.
He waited, eyes closed, and felt a soft touch on his head, a stroke of fingers through his hair.
“You lied to me,” she said.
Kingsley tensed, but didn’t speak. He knew better than to say anything to that sort of accusation.
“You told me you were handsome. You aren’t,” she said. “You’re exquisite.”
Kingsley almost said something to that. Something like, “Will that be a problem?” But she’d only made a statement. Until she asked a question, he wasn’t allowed to speak.
“If I were a painter, you’d be my muse,” she said. “You belong in oils on canvas.”
Not being allowed to say “thank you” to a compliment of that magnitude was mild torture.
She stroked his hair again. His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see her as she stood beyond the farthest edge of his peripheral vision. That explained partly why the curtains had to be closed. Otherwise he could have seen her reflection in the window.
She touched his forehead and now Kingsley felt the silk of gloves against his skin. Her touch was gentle, soothing, and the second he relaxed into it, she put a knife to his throat.
Kingsley froze.
“I don’t want to kill you,” she said. That made two of them.
“Very good,” she said. “Even with a knife at your throat you hold your tongue. Someone’s trained you very well.”
Kingsley still did not speak. He knew he could overpower her if he needed to, but would she make a fatal stab first? Better to wait it out, behave, play along.
“Someone sent you to me. Who was it and what did he tell you?” she asked. “If you tell me even one lie I will slit your throat. And yes, I will know if you lie.”
She’d asked him one direct question. Therefore he was allowed to speak.
“I’m employed by an intelligence agency without a name,” he said. “French military. Officially unofficial. Leon isn’t my friend. He’s my commanding officer’s nephew. They think you’re holding him against his will. They asked me to get him out. If he wants out.”
“Leon is your commanding officer’s nephew,” she repeated, sounding amused. “So that’s the game, is it?”
“I don’t care about the boy,” he said. Kingsley wasn’t sure what she meant by “the game.” He hoped he lived long enough to find out.
“Then why did you come here?”
“My own reasons.”
“You wish to serve, do you?”
Kingsley whispered, “Yes.”
She said nothing. The blade remained flush against his neck, cool and sharp.
“You betray your mission easily,” she said. “Why is that?”
“Because fuck my mission. Leon is nineteen. And I don’t want to lie to you.”
“And why is that?”
“For my job I have to lie to everyone. I’d like to tell the truth to someone before I forget how.”
“There may be a Leon at my home,” she said. “What does he look like?”
“I don’t know, other than he’s nineteen. The only picture I was given was of you.”
“A picture of me. Was it flattering?” Her tone was mocking.
“I haven’t see you in person yet,” he said. She’d been standing behind him ever since coming into the room. “But if you’re as beautiful in person as you are in the photograph, then it’s you who should be an artist’s muse.”
Did the flattery please her or annoy her? Kingsley wasn’t sure. After a moment’s hesitation, she took the knife away from his jugular.
She stroked his face, his cheeks, his lips. She still wore her gloves, and he ached to feel her flesh on his flesh. He had no doubt that was the reason she wore them.
“I’m quite familiar with the agency you belong to,” she said. “They’ve been dogging my every move for years. I made the mistake of knowing a little too much about one of your brothers-in-arms. They won’t let me be. I would very much like your agency to leave me alone. My family and I live a quiet life in a quiet house near a quiet village. People come to me, people in need, and I take them in. Do you think such a person deserves the scrutiny of your agency?”
“No,” Kingsley said, although he didn’t entirely believe her. He highly doubted she lived a quiet life in a quiet house near a quiet village.
