Jane impatiently shook her head. “Look, none of this has anything to do with me. Even if Millet had a copy of this article, it couldn’t be considered very high priority. I’ve no connection with any of those people. Which could mean that the whole idea of my involvement was a fluke.” A horrible mistake, a dreadful fluke. “For God’s sake, I’m an artist. I stay as far away from politics as I can get.”

“I don’t think that it was a mistake. They went to a great deal of trouble to zero in on your location here. And your friend, Celine, was murdered. Crucified.”

She flinched. Crucified. The word was as ugly as the act itself. It took a moment for her to regain control.

Then she shook her head wearily. “I don’t know. All I know is that it doesn’t make sense.”

“It has to make sense. We just have to find out how. Because it’s not only you on the line now. Jock killed one of their men tonight. I told you, Millet is very nasty. He’s not going to forgive and forget.”

“Jock shouldn’t have even been here,” she said bitterly. “Damn Venable.”

“He justified it by saying there had been several leaks, and he couldn’t afford another one in a sensitive operation. He went after Jock because he knew that he could trust him to get rid of any threat to you. He sent him to Rome, where the main branch of the Sang Noir is located, and told him to see what he could find out. There wasn’t any question of his completely infiltrating the group. They’re very tight. But he was able to cruise along in the shallows and be on hand to pick up information as it became available.” He smiled sardonically. “They weren’t suspicious of him. Venable got Weismann to spread the stories about Jock’s background. After all, he had excellent credentials in their field of expertise. Word does get around.”

Their field of expertise. Death.

Yes, no one could say Jock wasn’t a prime expert in that field. And he’d added another body to that reputation tonight, and it had been for her sake.

MacDuff shrugged. “Anyway, Jock had been aware of something stirring about you for the last few days. But he only found out late yesterday afternoon that Millet had left Rome for Paris. He called Venable and told him to make sure you were protected, then headed for the airport. It appears he got here just in time.”

“Not for Celine,” she said dully. “Such savagery. Why?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But Jock is no fool, and he thinks that Venable is right and April 1 is your death date.”

She tried to smile. “April Fool.”

“I don’t regard it as a joke.”

“I know you don’t. Because Jock killed a man tonight because of me.”

“Yes.” He met her eyes. “And because you’re family, and no one threatens my family.”

She pulled her gaze away from him. She had told him several times that she had no connection to his blasted family. But he had gotten the idea into his head and wouldn’t let go of it. “I’m no MacDuff. I’m an illegitimate street kid, and I like it just fine that way. Joe Quinn and Eve Duncan are the only family I need or want. And I’ll take care of my own threats, MacDuff.”

“Whatever you say.” He smiled. “Cousin. But the portrait of Great-aunt Fiona MacDuff on my wall at home makes me wonder. There’s no discounting the resemblance.”

“She lived during the late eighteen hundreds and everyone looks like someone. We’re a homogenized race.”

“You don’t believe that, and neither do I. We both have egos that tell us we’re unique.” His smile disappeared. “And someone has put you on a list that definitely makes you stand out.”

“Not that you didn’t stand out before.” Jock stood in the kitchen doorway with a huge cup in his hand. “I found a souvenir mug on one of the top shelves.” He came toward her. “Much better than those little cups.” He gave her the mug and took the other cup away from her. “Now drink that down. I’m sure MacDuff has told you enough to make you need another jolt of caffeine.”

“You should have come to me, told me.” She shook her head. “MacDuff says there’s no mistake, but I still can’t see any connection that would make sense.”

“There was a connection. No one mentioned your name, but I saw that newspaper article in the possession of at least three of the members.” He made a face. “It was pretty frustrating not to be able to learn more. They welcomed me on a very tentative basis. I wasn’t privy to any crucial information, and they watched me as much as I watched them. But they definitely thought I might be useful to them at some point.” His lips lifted in a sardonic smile. “Why not?”

“Did you know anything about Folard, the man you killed?”

“No, he was never in Rome. But if he was sent after you, then he was probably one of the core eight.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “I gathered that there are eight who are considered the core or most important members. They’re the only ones that Millet trusts and allows to travel with him.”

“How many people belong to this Sang Noir?”

Jock hesitated. “I’m not sure. The Sang Noir has twenty or thirty members in Rome. But I understand he gets phone calls from all over the world. Of course, they could be clients.”

“But you don’t believe that?” MacDuff asked.

“I don’t know what I believe. I was only concentrating on getting information that pertained to Jane.” He paused. “I didn’t give a damn about anything else. Let Venable track down all Millet’s dirty business. If I’d run across something about this deal Venable’s so concerned about, I’d have told him, but it wasn’t a priority. I knew he was using me.” He added, “In fact, he suggested rather bluntly that he wouldn’t be opposed if I took out Millet.”

“Son of a bitch,” MacDuff said.

“It wasn’t totally unreasonable. It could have solved Venable’s problem. I might have done it, but I couldn’t be sure that would have stopped the plans for killing Jane from going forward. I decided to let him live.”

The words were said with an offhand coolness, and Jane felt a ripple of shock. She knew that Jock still wrestled with the numbness that had been instilled in him during that period when he had been brainwashed. Yet the Jock that he showed to her was so gentle and caring that those glimpses always caught her off guard. But Jock wouldn’t have been put in the position of making decisions like that if he hadn’t been trying to help her.

“Tell me about Millet and this Sang Noir,” she said. “They have to be crazy, or they couldn’t have done what they did tonight. But I’m lost; there has to be something that I can grab and hold on to.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Jock said. “Most of it is what Venable filled me in on when he tapped me for his little job. As I said, the group is very tight and they don’t talk much. Millet supposedly grew up in Syria. His mother was Syrian and his father, Jim Millet, an American from Miami. His father was a smuggler and had a record a mile long before he settled in a village in Syria. He was under suspicion for beating his first wife to death before he left Miami. His second wife disappeared when Jack Millet was sixteen.”

“Disappeared?”

“Her son and husband claimed she had run away. There wasn’t much of an investigation. In spite of the strides Syria has made, a wife is still often thought of as property. Millet’s father died a year later, and Jack Millet dropped out of sight for a number of years. Then he showed up in Rome and Venable began to hear rumors of the Sang Noir.”

“He didn’t have a record?” MacDuff asked.

“He was under suspicion for killing a thirteen-year-old girl in a brothel in Barcelona.” He added grimly, “He toyed with her for three days. The kid was cut to pieces.”

“Nothing else?”

“Only rumors. Very ugly rumors. His favorite sport is inflicting pain. But by that time Millet had formed his group of killers for hire, and no one would testify against him.” He looked at MacDuff. “One thing Venable told me that was a little unusual. I’m sure Millet charged a small fortune for his hits, but even when he’d had no work for a long time, he seemed to have plenty of money and was able to maintain his killing squad.”