Paris is a Bitch

is.”
    “What?”
    “I can’t tell you.”
    I felt the blood drain from my face. “Delilah. I’m about to walk out that door with you into I don’t know what. I don’t
care
what. Now you don’t have to thank me for that. But Goddamn it, you do have to tell me what you know so I can be as prepared as possible for whatever it is I’m about to deal with.”
    Another long moment passed. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just—”
    “Forget it. Who are they?”
    “For the last year, I’ve had to spend time with a wealthy man. A Saudi. A financier. You can imagine what he finances.”
    “Okay.”
    “He’s very well connected. Which is why I was assigned to him. When my organization had learned what it needed to learn through me and had acted on the intelligence, I broke the connection with him.”
    “He never knew you were using him?”
    “No. He thought it was just an affair. The problem was, he became obsessed with me. To get him to stop contacting me, I told him I was in love with someone else. He still wouldn’t stop. So I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I would tell his wife of the affair. He’s a very pious man, or pretends to be, and his piety is critical to his influence. So it was a serious threat.”
    “How did he take it?”
    “He was enraged.”
    “Enraged enough to want to do something in response?”
    “He’s a selfish man,” she said. “And cruel. The kind of man who, if he couldn’t have something for himself, would try to keep it from anyone else.”
    I exhaled long and hard, trying not to imagine the psychic price she must have paid for repeatedly offering her body, and even a simulacrum of her mind, to someone who obviously repulsed her.
    “You know,” I said, “it wouldn’t have hurt for you to tell me that before we were trapped in a restaurant with an ambush waiting outside.”
    She said nothing, and I wondered if she could sense what I’d really been thinking. Probably she could.
    “All right,” I said. “Never mind. This guy… is he connected enough to track you to Paris?”
    “He knows I live in Paris. I didn’t try to hide that.”
    “Does he know your particulars?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Is he connected enough to find out? To track a cell phone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then what do you think these guys are here for? Kidnap you? Take you back to Saudi Arabia, put you in a harem?”
    She looked at me, her face expressionless. “I think they’re here to hurt me.”
    “Hurt you how?”
    She cocked her head as though in wonder at how thick I was, then said, “If you and two or three other thugs had a woman alone in a panel van and wanted to hurt her in the worst way possible, wanted to ruin her for anyone else, what would you do?”
    I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
    “Well,” she said. “I imagine that’s how they’re planning to hurt me.”
    I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “When this is done, I want you to tell me who the Saudi is.”
    “No. I don’t want you involved.”
    “I’m already involved. I’m not going to let you walk out there alone.”
    “My organization will take care of it. Let’s just focus on tonight.”
    I wanted to press the point, but she was right. About the tonight part, anyway. The rest we could figure out later.
    “All right,” I said. “I only saw one on the right, but there was another guy mobile so there could be two. Could you handle two on your own?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then here’s how we’ll play it. If I go with you, and the ones on the left see me help you drop the opposition on the right, I lose the element of surprise if they come after us. If I hang back, and anyone pursues you, they’ll have to get through me, and they won’t even understand I’m a real obstacle until it’s too late. Okay?”
    She nodded. “It’s a good plan.”
    “So we walk out together and kiss goodnight at the door. You go right, I hang back. If you need help, I’m close enough to back you up. If you don’t, I’ll mop up the others.”
    Suddenly she looked alarmed. “You can’t kill them. Not unless you absolutely have to.”
    I tamped down my frustration. I wasn’t used to having to consult on this kind of thing. I said, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, okay? We’re up against four. Maybe more. We don’t know if they have weapons, we don’t even know for sure what this is about. When I hit these guys, I don’t want them getting back up. If you’re smart,