A woman sat at a table in the back, tucked under an umbrella in what seemed like a deliberate attempt at privacy. Dark hair. Easy laugh. She was talking to a man—handsome, , the kind of face that belonged on magazine covers.
But Alan wasn’t looking at him.
He was watching her. At the way she held her coffee cup. At the tilt of her head when she smiled.
He knew her.
The recognition came slowly, then all at once. The Inauguration. The kitchen. A woman with a cast-iron pan and fire in her eyes, standing over him while one of Hamilton Jones’ men ground his face into the tile.
“I’m done negotiating,” she’d said.
RJ. York’s woman.
Alan’s blood went cold.
If she’s here?—
York. York was in Paris.
The man who’d survived the car crash. Who’d caught him at the Inaugural Ball. Who would never—never—stop hunting him.
Alan scanned the café, the street, the windows of the apartments overhead. Was York watching right now? Was this a trap? Had they somehow known he’d be here, at this park, at this hour?
No. Impossible. The route was clean. The Bratva had assured him?—
But York had a way of showing up where he wasn’t supposed to be. A way of finding Alan no matter how far he ran.
Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe she was here for something else. A vacation. Family business. Something that had nothing to do with him.
He wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe he could make the drop, disappear into the Paris crowds, and never cross paths with York Newgate again.
But he’d stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago.
Across the street, the man with RJ gestured toward the park. Toward Alan. Some kind of joke, maybe—the way his hand swept dramatically, the grin on his face.
RJ’s head turned.
Her eyes swept the park, the bench, the statue with its pigeon-stained general?—
And landed on him.
For one heartbeat, they stared at each other. Alan in the shadows of the chestnut tree, sunglasses hiding his eyes but not the scar that traced his forehead. RJ at her umbrella table, coffee cup frozen halfway to her lips.
He watched her face change. Watched the easy smile falter, the color drain, the coffee cup tremble as she set it down.
She knew.
Alan turned. Walked toward the alley at exactly the right speed—not hurried, not casual. The pace of a man who had somewhere to be, nothing more.
Around the corner. Through a courtyard where laundry hung on lines overhead. Out onto a different street, losing himself in the flow of pedestrians.
His heart was pounding. His hands itched to shake.
He didn’t let them.
Two hours later, he came back.
Different approach. Different sight lines. The café had turned over—new customers under the umbrellas, no sign of RJ or her companion.
