Black Ice by Anne Stuart

such a nest of vipers? She should have realized something odd was going on, but her parents had always told her she had an overactive imagination, and she’d decided they were right. An addiction to thrillers and fantasy novels probably hadn’t helped.
    But this was no imaginary danger. These weren’t grocers, and why the hell she’d ever thought they were was a total mystery. Did Bastien Toussaint look like a chicken importer? Did Baroness Monique von Rutter buy her designer clothes and magnificent diamonds with the proceeds from soybeans?
    “Idiote!” she said aloud. She needed to get the hell out of there, fast, before they decided she was a liability. She’d left the dining room immediately, not even pausing when she heard her name in the midst of a German sentence. Getting to the Internet before anyone could catch her was too important. Baron von Rutter was a sweet old man—he wouldn’t allow them to harm her. Unless, of course, he was equally ignorant of what was actually going on here.
    Her suitcase was in the bottom of the armoire. She dragged it out and began throwing Sylvia’s clothes into it, including the ruined silk blouse and shredded stockings. It was simple enough—she would tell MonsieurHakim that she’d received an e-mail from her roommate informing her that her grandmother was desperately ill and she needed to fly home to her family immediately. She could even tell them her ticket on Air France was already booked, and she was due to fly out in less than twelve hours. Just enough time to get back to Paris, throw a few things in a bag and fly home. For the first time in her adult life she was actually frightened.
    She was hardly set for travel. She’d picked the plainest dress Sylvia had sent—a clingy black wrap dress that showed too much cleavage, though she’d managed to pin it closed. Beneath it were black French lace underthings that belonged on a rich man’s mistress, and if she had to put another pair of too-small heels on she’d cry.
    But she did have to, if she was going to get out of here alive. She could hide her panic—she’d never been a very good liar but the stakes had never been so high. Just think of it as an act, she told herself. Like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire …No, someone more self-sufficient! She wasn’t going to find any strangers with kindness to rely on in her situation.
    The suitcase was a jumbled mess, and she didn’t care. She went into the tiny bathroom, swept the toiletries in the embroidered satchel Sylvia used, and went back to toss it into the suitcase before she closed it.
    “Going somewhere?” Bastien Toussaint drawled from the open doorway.

8
    C hloe Underwood stared at him as if he was an axe murderer, Bastien thought lazily. She was in a panic—a tear-streaked, mindless panic, which seemed one more bit of evidence that she was a complete innocent who’d accidentally got caught up in this mess. Except that Bastien didn’t believe in accidents.
    It was like looking into a hall of mirrors, he thought. You couldn’t tell where the original began, and what was merely a reflection of the real thing. Was she an innocent? An inept agent? A very good agent pretending to be an innocent? Pretending to be inept?
    Time was running out, and there was only one way to get to the truth of the matter. Hurting her would get him nowhere—she’d be trained to withstand pain and she’d give up nothing she didn’t want to give up.
    But there were other, much more pleasurable ways of finding out what he wanted to know. He kicked the door shut behind him, watched the alarm in her eyes grow.
    He knew where the security cameras were—he’d scoped them out last night when he’d searched her room. They covered almost the entire room, including the bed and the bathroom, and he had little doubt that if they didn’t have an avid audience they were at least being taped for posterity. He was going to need to put on a good show—Hakim and company