The hand gripping the cardboard tube went white at the knuckles. His other hand bunched into a fist. Screw the lawsuits. He’d flatten the guy. The photographer read his intent and jumped back, knocking over several crates of produce in the process.
“Non, non!” He stumbled back, his face white with alarm under the greasy hair. “You don’t...you don’t understand, Monsieur Hunter. I am François. With Beguile. I shoot the photos for the story.”
For the second time in as many moments, Dev froze. “The story?”
“Oui. We get the instructions from New York.”
He thrust out the camera and angled the digital display. His thumb beat a rapid tattoo as he clicked through picture after picture.
“But look! Here are you and Sarah having coffee. And here you walk along the Seine. And here she blows you a kiss from the balcony of her hotel room.”
Pride overrode the photographer’s alarm. A few clicks of the zoom button enlarged the shot on the screen.
“Do you see how perfectly she is framed? And the expression on her face after you drive away. Like one lost in a dream, yes? She stays like that long enough for me to shoot from three different angles.”
The anger still hot in Dev’s gut chilled. Ice formed in his veins.
“She posed for you?” he asked softly, dangerously.
The photographer glanced up, nervous again. He stuttered something about New York, but Dev wasn’t listening. His gaze was locked on Sarah as she approached the café.
She’d posed for this guy. After making all those noises about allowing only that one photo shoot at Cartier, she’d caved to her boss’s demands. He might have forgiven that. He had a harder time with the fact that she’d set this all up without telling him.
Dev left the photographer amid the produce. Jaw tight, he stalked toward the café. Sarah was still a block away on the other side of the street. He was about to cross when a white delivery van slowed to a rolling stop and blocked her from view. A few seconds later, Dev heard the thud of its rear doors slam. When the van cut a sharp left and turned down a narrow side street, the sidewalk Sarah had been walking along was empty.
Dev broke into a run even before he fully processed what had just happened. All he knew for sure was that Sarah had been strolling toward him one moment and was gone the next. His brain scrambled for a rational explanation of her sudden disappearance. She could have ducked into a shop. Could have stopped to check something in a store window. His gut went with the delivery van.
Dev hit the corner in a full-out sprint and charged down the side street. He dodged a woman pushing a baby carriage, earned a curse from two men he almost bowled over. He could see the van up ahead, see its taillights flashing red as it braked for a stop sign.
He was within twenty yards when the red lights blinked off. Less than ten yards away when the van began another turn. The front window was halfway down. Through it Dev could see the driver, his gaze intent on the pedestrians streaming across the intersection and his thin black cigarillo sending spirals of smoke through the half-open window.
Dev calculated the odds on the fly. Go for the double rear doors or aim for the driver? He risked losing the van if the rear doors were locked and the vehicle picked up speed after completing the turn. He also risked causing an accident if he jumped into traffic in the middle of a busy intersection and planted himself in front of the van.
He couldn’t take that chance on losing it. With a desperate burst of speed, he cut the corner and ran into the street right ahead of an oncoming taxi. Brakes squealing, horn blaring, the cab fishtailed. Dev slapped a hand on its hood, pushed off and landed in a few yards ahead of the now-rolling van. He put up both hands and shouted a fierce command.
“Stop!”
He got a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the driver’s face through the windshield. Surprise, fear, desperation all flashed across it in the half second before he hit the gas.
Well, hell! The son of a bitch was gunning straight for him.
Dev jumped out of the way at the last second and leaped for the van’s door as the vehicle tried to zoom past. The door was unlocked, thank God, although he’d been prepared to hook an arm inside the open window and pop the lock if necessary. Wrenching the panel open, he got a bulldog grip on the driver’s leather jacket.
“Pull over, dammit.”
The man jerked the wheel, cursing and shouting and trying frantically to dislodge him. The van swerved. More horns blasted.
“Dev!”
The shout came from the back of the van. From Sarah. He didn’t wait to hear more. His fist locked on the driver’s leather jacket, he put all his muscle into a swift yank. The bastard’s face slammed into the steering wheel. Bone crunched. Blood fountained. The driver slumped.
Reaching past him, Dev tore the keys from the ignition. The engine died, but the van continued to roll toward a car that swerved wildly but couldn’t avoid a collision. Metal crunched metal as both vehicles came to an abrupt stop, and Dev fumbled for the release for the driver’s seat belt. He dragged the unconscious man out and let him drop to the pavement. Scrambling into the front seat, he had one leg over the console to climb into the rear compartment when the back doors flew open and someone jumped out.
It wasn’t Sarah. She was on her knees in the back. A livid red welt marred one cheek. A roll of silver electrical tape dangled from a wide strip wrapped around one wrist. Climbing over the console, Dev stooped beside her.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes were wide and frightened, but the distant wail of a siren eased some of their panic. Dev tore his glance from her to the open rear doors and the man running like hell back down the side street.
“Stay here and wait for the police. I’m going after that bastard.”
“Wait!” She grabbed his arm. “You don’t need to chase him! I know who he is.”
He swung back. “You know him?”
When she nodded, suspicion knifed into him like a serrated blade. His fists bunched, and a distant corner of his mind registered the fact that he’d lost the lithograph sometime during the chase. The rest of him staggered under a sudden realization.
“This is part of it, isn’t it? This big abduction scene?”
“Scene?”
She sounded so surprised he almost believed her. Worse, dammit, he wanted to believe her!
“It’s okay,” he ground out. “You can drop the act. I bumped into the photographer from Beguile back there on rue de Monttessuy. We had quite a conversation.”
Her color drained, making the red welt across her cheek look almost obscene by contrast. “You...you talked to a photographer from my magazine?”
“Yeah, Lady Sarah, I did. François told me about the shoot. Showed me some of the pictures he’s already taken. I’ll have to ask him to send me the one of you on the balcony. You make a helluva Juliet.”
The sirens were louder now. Their harsh, up-and-down bleat almost drowned out her whisper.
“And you think we...me, this photographer, my magazine...you think we staged an abduction?”
“I’m a little slow. It took me a while to understand the angle. I’m betting your barracuda of a boss dreamed it up. Big, brave Number Three rescues his beautiful fiancée from would-be kidnappers.”
She looked away, and her silence cut even deeper than Dev’s suspicion. He’d hoped she