Infuriating man.
Her eyes slid shut as he played Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major. One of her favorites, which she’d mentioned once. No doubt that was why he played it. For her. Did he know she was out here? Hope she was?
Enough. She pushed off the wall and moved to the back door. Smells from the busy kitchen made her stomach growl, but she ignored it and slipped up the stairs, into the little flat over the restaurant. The couple running the bistro lived up here, but the small second bedroom had been converted into a space that could be either a meeting room or a place for a traveling agent to sleep.
At the moment, a small table dominated the space, chairs on each side. Zelie headed for her usual one—back to the window, face toward the door—but paused when she saw a piece of paper folded at her place.
She should sweep it off the table, throw it away. She already knew what it would say.
But because she had no sense at all when it came to Marcel, she picked it up, flipped it open.
And her lips turned up despite herself. Instead of words this time, he’d left his message in dots and dashes.
.--- . / - .----. .- .. -- .
Je t’aime.I love you.
He’d drawn a shooting star in the corner, as he always did. And signed it with a stamp he’d found somewhere of a small bird, in green ink.Greenfinch.As if she didn’t know exactly who’d left her messages all over the place.
Marguerite, of course, was looking at it over her shoulder. “Aww. I can’t even read Morse code, but I bet I know what it says.”
Zelie folded the paper and slipped it into her handbag. “It says,Mind your own business, Marguerite.”
Her friend laughed and pulled out a chair. “Funny. Didn’t look like that many letters.”
“Shorthand.” Zelie sat too and tried to tell herself she wasn’t straining to hear the piano below. That she wasn’t hoping he’d come up here for some reason, and Marguerite would excuse herself, and he’d ask her something inane like “How have you been?” and leave her no choice but to throw herself into his arms again.
There was something wrong with her. Why couldn’t she stick to her resolve where he was concerned?
Two minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting, the back door opened again. Marguerite went to the stairs, and given the fact that she didn’t ask whoever it was to leave, it must be Léon. Zelie stood.
He entered with a nod, his salt-and-pepper hair as well-groomed as ever, the wire rims of his spectacles gleaming. He was tall, thin, studious looking... but as much a military man as Navarre had been, and he carried himself with that familiar rigidity. “Evening, Honey Badger.”
“Kestrel.” She smiled, nodding toward the briefcase he set on the table. “That your luggage for your holiday in London?”
He snorted a laugh and opened the case, pulling out a thick file. “No, I left that below. This is a copy of what I intend to give them, though.”
She took it, opened it, but even as her eyes scanned over the list of names that could be of use to MI6 in Algeria, her mind wandered to the scheduled drop tonight. The Brits’ new aircraft, called Lysanders, were light enough to land in a small field and take off again, which meant they didn’t just parachute supplies in anymore. They actually landed, which opened up a whole newopportunity to send her agents, like Léon, to London for a week or two at a time.
Blaise would have gone wide-eyed with awe and begged to be on a welcoming committee, just to get a closer look at those planes.
She cleared her throat, pulled her thoughts back on track. “You’ve reviewed everything for your trip?”
He nodded, somber. “I’ll represent you well,Patronne.” Pausing, he studied her. “Navarre spoke of you in the most glowing of terms, you know. Said how until he recruited you, this whole thing was just a mental experiment. Butyoumade it possible. Made it reality.”
She darted a look at his face but then focused on the papers again. In the months since Léon officially joined Alliance, they’d only met in person twice before now, always with other agents present. In the back of her mind, she’d wondered if this old chum of Jean’s was only here because of his memory. If he thought Navarre had been an idiot for leaving it all in her hands. “We both know Jean didn’t value Alliance all that highly.”
A breath blustered from his lips, and he leaned forward. “Can you ever forgive me?”
That brought her gaze back up, locking on to his. “For what?”
“Drawing him into that conspiracy.” Léon shook his head, brows pinched. He flicked his gaze briefly to Marguerite, then back to Zelie. “We wanted an easy fix. Action. It... it shouldn’t have taken the execution of one of us for the rest of us to see our mistake. I distracted him from the work heshouldhave been doing—this work.”
She closed the folder again, wishing she could make the emotions vanish as easily. “Do you honestly believe this is the better work?”
“Now?” He nodded. Sighed. “But it’s not the sort we’re used to. Can you understand that? There’s no... nogloryin it, no praise, no medals, no promotions.”
Marguerite breathed a laugh. “And perhaps that’s why it took a woman to run it—we’re used to being the unseen forces behind the scenes. The ones that keep the world turning while all you men are parading about with your chests puffed out.”
