Now it was Arnold Flamm’s turn to bound up the steps, smile strained, palms visibly sweating. “Mr. Pomerleau. It’s a pleasure.”
I glanced briefly at the outstretched hand but kept my own in my pocket because Sébastien Pomerleau didn’t have to shake any hands he didn’t feel like shaking. This, like the bourbon, was a perk of the position.
I did look the dealer straight in his dark, predictably soulless eyes, though, for the same reason I made it a point to look all men like Flamm in the eyes.
Because I could.
Next, I studied my soon-to-be slave openly, while she studied me right back, not so openly. Then I frowned, trying to ignore the sweat trickling uncomfortably down my back.
Something was wrong. Despite myself—despite my preparation—my heart rate picked up slightly.
Fuck.
I’d made my opening in the chess game, but it was time to change up the strategy.No plan survives contact with the enemy,they’d told me in training. I knew that already, but it was nice to hear it acknowledged. And for once, given the resources to do something about it.
“Take the muzzle off,” I ordered the handler. “I want to see her face.”
“But—”
“She wouldn’t bite me,” I said in English, looking at the girl, whose scabbed-over lips twitched when the muzzle was unbuckled, obviously thinking about it. Then I repeated myself in French.“N’est-ce pas, fille?”
She froze, having clearly understood the French, which was a good sign. But not good enough.
Flamm stepped forward, ignoring the handler, and jerked the girl up by her hair. “Rest assured, we’ve already addressed that,” he hissed at her in English as, for the first time, an unshed tear appeared in the corner of her eye. “It took some of our most creative methods, but we’ve addressed it.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Fucking hell. “Allow me, monsieur.” With my free hand, I reached for her now-bare chin and held it lightly between my fingers, my gold watch glinting beneath the long sleeve of my jacket. She gnashed her teeth briefly but didn’t try to sink them into my fingers.
Instead, a look of surprise crossed her face. Surprised, too, was the handler, going by her suspicious glance, though thankfully, Flamm wasn’t.
Working the lines on my father’s yachtwas my rehearsed explanation for the condition of my hands, which I would only need if the girl were stupid and brazen enough to say anything. Luckily, she was far from that. Her face had actually softened a little as she sized me up, even as she kept her eyes turned away.
She knew.
Well, shit. This kid was smart.
“I know that trick, girl,” I said in French. “Look at me so I can see your eyes.”
Not only was she smart, but she knew where her bread was buttered. Without even a glance back at Flamm or her handler, she obeyed, raising her chestnut irises to meet mine.
Well. She was the right age and coloring to be Delphine Bisset, though it was hard to connect the pale, hollow-cheekedmoppet in front of me to the girl with the silky brown tresses and professionally whitened smile grinning in the hundreds of snapshots I’d spent the past few months examining. There were millions of skinny, brown-haired, brown-eyed fifteen-year-old slave girls at dealerships all over the country. Normally, nobody gave a shit about any of them. Only her birthmark—if it were indeed concealed by the metal chain on her wrist, as I hoped—would make her of particular interest to me.
It was a cruel and heinous crime, you see, to kidnap freeborn children and sell them into slavery.
Flamm cleared his throat nervously, obviously afraid I was about to change my mind.
I had no plan to disabuse him of the notion. “Do you know anything about her background other than what was in the file?”
“Raised in the household of an excellent French family who sold her off quickly when they fell on hard times,” he said, trying to play up the girl’s minimal credentials. “She ended up on a farm in Moldova until one of our agents found her.”
“Former farm slave, huh?” I said, eyeing the girl with mild disinterest. “I like some spirit, make no mistake, but those places aren’t exactly charm schools.”
“Of course, monsieur,” Flamm said desperately. “But they break them under the lash.”
I smiled. “Not always.”
She refused to flinch as I raised one of her arms as much as the chains would allow. Counting the old bruises and scars mottling them, my stomach sank lower and lower. They weren’t the kind of scars you got guzzling champagne on a yacht in Cannes.
Not to mention, the way she kneeled in shackles was—well, she wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but she also clearly knew flopping around like a fish would get her nowhere.
