People in their line of business?Wolf Enterprises? “And what line of business would that be, exactly?”
Louis disappeared into his room, returned with his wallet and handed her a card, white with an image of a howling black wolf’s head and the words Wolf Enterprises in elaborate silver beneath it. It didn’t escape her notice the design on the card looked an awful lot like the silver motif on their leather wrist cuffs.
Her hands shook as she turned it over. Because of the last half hour’s events, or because she feared what she would find? Maybe both.
The back was blank. No website, no phone number, no email, not even a bricks-and-mortar address.
Louis stood there, hands on his hips, watching her. “We’re in security. Technical division. Computer experts.”
Technical division. Computer experts. Of course they were. It all made sense now. Why she’d found so little on them. Why they hid their tech when they had guests over. Their awareness of the cameras. The twins were hackers. Like her, only they worked for a corporation. A highly secretive, exclusive one by the looks of the card. “Why are you in London?”
Louis shrugged, drawing her gaze to the play of muscles across his chest. “We had a job to do.”
“There’s nothing more we can tell you, Melinda,” said Pierre. “Client confidentiality.”
Melinda could understand that. They couldn’t tell her any more than she could divulge information about her client, MysticMage. Or any of her clients. But their vague answer had her on edge. Or was that because barely fifteen minutes ago, someone had tried to kill her? And now there was a dead man in her flat.
She couldn’t say she was sorry about that. Better him than her, but that didn’t change the fact Louis had just killed a man. How could they be so calm after what had happened tonight? What the hell sort of security work were they involved in?
Her body shook, her knees weakening. Had Louis and Pierre not burst in, that shot would have found its mark and she’d be little more than a police report filed in the morning. If she stayed in her flat, she’d be in a police report for an entirely different reason. She slumped down on the sofa, her head in her hands. What the hell was she supposed to do?
The sofa dipped, and a muscled arm pulled her close. “Melinda. You’re not alone. We can help you.”
Pierre.
She shook her head. She couldn’t involve them. That wasn’t right. Not if she did what her heart was telling her she should do. Find MysticMage. She needed to make sure the woman was safe. Melinda’s mother had never left her father, but she’d heard all the threats of what he would do if she ever tried to. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow any more violence to happen on her watch. Not because of her.
Pierre grasped her about the waist, and suddenly she was sitting not on the sofa, but on his lap, engulfed in his warmth,surrounded by his scent. Was it wrong if she took comfort from it? If only for a minute?
Louis dropped to his knees in front of her. Now they surrounded her, blocking out the world, and she longed to give into it. To stay here forever.
Louis cupped her face. “We can help you, Melinda. We have resources far beyond your imagination.”
“Can you get me to San Francisco?” Her sarcasm hung in the air.
A shrug of shoulders from behind her. “Oui. You want to go to San Francisco? We can get you there.”
Seriously?
For the second time in the last twenty-four hours, Melinda extricated herself from their embrace. “Thanks, but… This is not your concern. I’ve involved you enough already.”
Louis got to his feet and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Please, Melinda. Someone tried to kill you tonight.”
The concern in his hazel eyes was touching. She tucked her laptop into one shopping bag, threading her hand through both bags’ straps and her backpack, and grabbed the cat carrier. “I’ll be fine.”
Would she? In all her years creating new identities for people, some very unsavory, she’d never encountered this situation. She guessed it’d only been a matter of time.
Pierre unfolded himself from the sofa. “How are you going to get out of the country?”
She pinched her brows together.
“Whoever sent that man to your apartment to kill you tracked you somehow. The moment you book a flight, the moment you hand over your passport at the airport…” Pierre rubbed his chin. “Who knows what they’re capable of, what connections they have.”
He had a point. She could hunker down somewhere in a seedy motel under a fake name until she could organize a new identity and passport, but that could take weeks. Did she have that sort of time? Not if she wanted to save her client from the same fate that had nearly been hers.
“And what are you going to do with your cat?” asked Louis. “Leave him at a shelter? You’ll never get him through customs.”
As though Manchu knew he was being discussed, he let out a plaintive meow. How could she leave him behind? Through some of her darkest days, he’d been her only friend.
