"You bet your ass I will." Moreau threw his arm over Noboru's shoulder. "Just don't call me Grasshopper. Now, come with me. I got all kinds of heavy gear bags for you to load while I supervise. Then we're going to dress you up nice and pretty like a nurse."

As they went to Moreau's car, a silver four-door Mercedes (leave it to him to rent a Mercedes), Valentina activated her OPSAT and opened the channel to Hansen. "Ben?"

"You make contact with the runner?"

"Unfortunately, we did."

"What's wrong?"

Valentina took a deep breath and told him.

16

CENTRE HOSPITALIER UNIVERSITAIRE REIMS, FRANCE

ROMAINDoucet was sitting up in bed, his leg wrapped in a heavy cast and elevated by a sling. His face was a mottled mess of purple and yellow bruises, and somewhere amid those venous flowers was a pair of dark, narrow eyes. Valentina could only imagine how much swelling there had been, but some of it had subsided. Admittedly, it was unnerving to see a man this imposing as battered as he was; it suggested that his attacker was either bigger and stronger or a whole lot smarter. Valentina suspected the latter to be true. Indeed, Doucet was a giant of a Frenchman, over six feet, to be sure, with a chest like the front bumper of a pickup truck. You wouldn't call the things at the ends of his arms hands, but paws, and his pitch-black hair was matted as though he'd been rolling around on a thick carpet.

Behind Valentina, at a nurses' station walled in by glass, Noboru was presenting the four duty nurses with a stack of bogus paperwork he'd brought in from central administration. Noboru's English was very good, but his French was poor, which only added to the mayhem. The nurses were gaping at the reports, which included new work schedules for each of them, new sets of duties, and enough other incendiary material to keep them diverted for a week, let alone five minutes. The geeks back home must have had a good time composing those documents--geeks enjoy wielding their intellectual power to piss people off. Valentina ought to know--she was in their club and just needed to make other people realize that.

For now, though, she was back to the same old pathetic ploy: using sex as a weapon to get what the team needed. She undid one more button on her uniform, opened the glass door, and sashayed into Doucet's room.

Playing on the TV was a rerun of Magnum, P.I.with Tom Selleck. Magnum's lips were moving, his mustache fluttering, but French was coming out of his mouth in a rapid fire that made him at once appear feminine and ridiculous. Doucet glanced away from the screen and abruptly beamed at her. The pig liked what he saw. "You're a new one."

"That's right, Mr. Doucet. My name's Nurse Ratched."

In fact, that was the name Moreau had placed on her ID badge; he'd planned that from the beginning. Valentina reached around and drew the curtain around his bed . . . so they'd have privacy.

Doucet raised his brows. "What do we have to do now?"

"That's up to you, sweetheart." Valentina did her finger-to-the-lips thing that all the dogs loved.

The look in his eyes made her want to put a shotgun to his crotch and pull the trigger.

But she had work to do.

"You're not a real nurse."

"And I thought you were a stupid man."

"Who hired you?"

"They did. They want me to make you feel better."

He started to chuckle. "They're good friends." He stopped and winced through the pain.

"Oh, my poor baby. What happened to you?" She crossed around the bed and stared at his leg.

"Skiing accident."

"That's not what they told me." Valentina undid another button, leaned back, and showed him more of her cleavage.

He gasped and said, "What did they tell you?"

"Something about a very bad man who came to see you." She moved toward the bed, leaned down, undid the clip and let her long hair fall into his face.

He breathed in the scent and said, "I'm going to find him. And I'm going to kill him."

She pulled back. "You're not afraid?"

"No."

"You're a strong man. I wish we weren't here. I wish we were someplace else."

"Me, too."

"This man who did this to you . . . he must be so strong."

"No, he's just a smart bastard. Very smart."

"How're you going to find him?"

"I'm not sure."

"In my business, I know a lot of people on the street. Maybe I can help you. Is there a reward?"

"There could be. But are you going to keep talking or take off your clothes?"

Valentina smiled and undid the rest of the buttons on her uniform. She moved back toward the bed and pressed her cleavage into his face. Doucet groaned softly. She rolled her eyes. She pulled back once more and said, "What does this guy look like?"

"White guy. About six feet. Longish hair. Unshaven for a week. His French was excellent, but something tells me he's an American."

"That could be anyone. You'll never find him. Maybe a police artist could draw a picture for me."

"We're not using the police. I do this my way."

"Okay. I'm sorry to talk about this. I'm here to make you feel better."

"Then climb up on top of me, and take my pulse."

She grinned, and just as he reached out to grab her wrist, the curtain wrenched open, and in walked a gray- haired, potbellied nurse who took one look at Valentina's exposed black bra and screamed, "Who are you? Not another stripper on my floor! Get out! We've banned you people, you should know!"

Noboru was standing behind the woman, giving Valentina the high sign with his eyes.

She quickly folded her blouse closed and slipped past the nurse, dropping in behind Noboru. They raced to the end of the hall, turned right, and hit the stairwell.

"I'm sorry, Maya," Noboru said as they charged down. "One of the nurses saw you close the curtain. I tried to distract her."

"It's all right. I got what we need. It was definitely Fisher."

"He didn't touch you, did he?"

She gritted her teeth. "Don't worry about me."

They reached the ground floor, and Valentina took a few seconds to finish closing her blouse.

"I am worried about you," Noboru insisted.

"Why?"

"Because my life depends on you."

"All right, I guess that's a pretty good reason. Maybe . . ." She winked.

"That was kind of fun." Noboru looked at her, then smiled weakly.

"Keep working on that smile. It's still rusty."

They pushed through the heavy exit door and started across the parking lot. "Ben?" Valentina called after activating her OPSAT. "No surprise: Doucet got his ass kicked by Fisher. I just wish Fisher had finished the job. That guy is scum."

ASHansen cruised down another impossibly narrow street, he told Valentina to meet them back at the hotel. He and Ames wanted to make one more pass by Boutin's apartment.

They had a couple of surveillance images of the man taken several years ago. Abelard Boutin was pushing sixty, and if you described him as being taller than five feet four, you were being generous. He squinted like a rodent through dark-rimmed glasses and attempted to cover his freckled and pockmarked skull with all of sixteen long, gray hairs in the classic comb-over style that fooled no one but has remained inexplicably popular for centuries. He was a gnome, a savant whose singular talent lay in the perfect artistry of his work.