Woman Without a Name

PROLOGUE

Noah Colter wasn’t in love with Paris. During his week in the City of Light he had walked the starlit Champs Élysées and gazed out at a sunshine-spangled Seine. He had eaten coq au vin and haricot de mouton in romantic sidewalk cafés and slept under crisp linen sheets in the finest Parisian hotels. And the magic of Paris hadn’t touched him.

He had come to Paris on business, and he hadn’t expected anything different. Noah collected cities with the same dispassionate interest that he collected High Renaissance art and sculpture. Every day of his stay he had taken some time to watch the world go by in a different language, but travel was only an academic exercise, something to occupy his hours and intellect.

At the moment a woman was occupying his intellect—as well as his gaze and the traitorous nether regions of his body. He had spent the past hour on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg, finishing up some notes. Surrounded by formal flower beds, potted palms and city dwellers enjoying the summer morning, he had glanced up now and then just to watch the show. It seemed as if most of Paris had found an excuse to parade through the park. The woman was just one of many who had strolled by his bench.

From the moment he had caught sight of her, Noah had watched her weave gracefully in and out of groups of sun worshipers and children preparing to sail toy boats on the shallow concrete pond that dominated the center of the park. She wore black, a simple knit dress that hugged her hips and breasts and exposed a length of creamy thigh. Whether the dress had come straight off Chanel’s runway or from a sales rack at Bon Marché, it looked as if it had been designed for her.

She had an odd, noteworthy walk. She lifted herself high with every step, as if she intended to stretch to the heavens, and she tilted her hips forward and rolled them provocatively each time she moved. Noah’s body, too long denied sex and solace, was signaling its own response.

The woman was a creature of myth and magic, a Gallic wood nymph with flowing red-brown hair and legs as long as a Frenchman’s imagination. Noah wasn’t sure why she had so swiftly affected his libido. He’d seen other more beautiful women in Paris. He’d had dinner last night with one of them, a business meeting that could have been more if he had invited it. But he had sensed the trap in his dinner partner’s smile.

There was no trap in the wood nymph’s smile. In fact, since she’d first captured his attention, she hadn’t smiled at all. She surveyed the other occupants of the crowded park as she hurried along, but she didn’t meet eyes, and she didn’t nod. She scanned faces with a swift, covert calculation that intrigued him. He didn’t understand what she was looking for, but he was sure that she was looking for something or someone.

Normally he would have lost interest quickly and gone back to work. Today, before he had time to think about what he was doing, Noah stuffed the papers back in his briefcase and got to his feet. He had a train to catch that evening and an afternoon to kill. He was bored with art museums and intrigued for the first time in days. Following the woman to see where she went seemed perfectly forgivable in a city that prided itself on impulse and romance.

Once outside the park, he kept pace without getting too close. The decision to follow her was so whimsical and out of character for him that he was beginning to feel foolish. He almost hoped he would lose her, but the crowd thinned when she turned down a narrow street lined with shops. He could see her clearly until the moment she turned into one of them.

He didn’t know what he had expected to discover. An assignation with a lover, perhaps, an amorous greeting by a young Frenchman with soulful dark eyes and a three-day growth of beard. Or lunch with her girlfriends at one of the bistros near the Sorbonne. But he hadn’t expected to see the young woman take a white apron from the hands of a scowling old woman, tie it around her narrow waist and step behind the counter of a second-rate Latin Quarter café. She had elegant cheekbones and the posture of a princess. He would not have been surprised to see her on either side of the desks at the university, but he was surprised to see her serving coffee and brioche.

Surprised enough to stay and watch her some more.

There was a newsstand on the corner, and he bought the most recent USA Today. Then he strolled into the café and up to the counter. The old woman was gone now, and the wood nymph was alone. His French was serviceable, but his accent was pure generic United States. He smiled in apology before he spoke.

Café au lait, s’il vous pla;afit.

She gazed at him for a moment before she moved away to get the coffee. Her face was as intriguing as her walk. She had a long thin nose and lips that were neither narrow nor full. Her thick eyebrows were a darker hue than her hair, shading eyes of a clear, bright turquoise. Those bright, clear eyes seemed to cloud over subtly as she realized he was examining her.

She presented the coffee with warm milk frothing over the top and into the saucer.

Do you have any recommendations for what I should have with it? he continued in French.

Everything is good. She spoke with the alluring accent of a native. Her voice was soft and lower than he had expected.

A croissant, then.

She didn’t comment. She merely served it and told him how many francs he owed.

The café was dingy, with only four tables inside. He chose an empty one in the corner, where he could spread out his newspaper and still see the counter. He had no agenda except to pass time pleasantly. He had enjoyed the casual cat-and-mouse challenge of following a lovely stranger through the Paris streets, and now he intended to enjoy his paper.

Through the years Noah had become a student of psychology and an astute judge of people, and both had served him well in business. He had personally chosen or sanctioned every management level employee at Tri-C International, the corporation founded by his great-grandfather nearly a century ago. Noah had never had cause to regret a single decision. He enjoyed imagining the lives of others, their hopes and fears, their daily existence. But his observations always ended the same way. He learned what he could, then he moved on alone. No ties, no complications, no heartbreak.

He found the sports section and automatically scanned for the baseball scores. Once he glanced up and saw, in the split second before she averted her eyes, that the young woman had been taking his measure.

Some time later he folded his paper and finished his last sip of coffee—now cold. His sojourn at the café had come to its natural end. Now he had only an afternoon to fill before catching his train. He folded his paper and looked for the young woman one more time.

The area behind the counter was empty, and he was alone in the café.

Intrigued, he stayed to see if she would return, but the only person to join him was a dark-haired man who wandered in from the street. When no one came to serve him, the man peered over the counter, as if to see if anyone was hiding. Then, mumbling to himself, he left the café, too.

Ten minutes later the counter was still unmanned when the old woman returned. As she charged to the rear her scowl deepened into rage. She rounded the counter, cursing softly. Then she pushed open the dark curtain that separated the counter from a small back room. Noah could see that the room was empty, but a door leading into the alley was wide open. A white apron hung from the doorknob.

The young woman was gone. And Noah had gotten more entertainment than he had bargained for when he first caught sight of an auburn-haired wood nymph in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

CHAPTER 1

Celestine St. Gervais examined herself in the mirror. Her hair was neatly sectioned and clipped in fat pin curls. Her hands were still unsteady after her escape from the café, but that didn’t stop her from picking up the scissors. Long strands of cinnamon-colored hair fell to the floor at her feet. She worked quickly and carefully, unpinning a section, pulling it taut with a comb and shearing off a lock of hair. Then another section and more hair.

When she was finished she stared at her handiwork. The style was shorter than she’d planned, but she had been forced to even out the final product after she’d surveyed the back with the help of a hand mirror. Now the bob neatly grazed her collar. With a sigh she sectioned the hair in front once again and gave herself long wispy bangs.

It was a very English style, simple and serviceable. It was not particularly well wrought, but that could be remedied when she got to London and went to a hairdresser. The main point was that she looked very different.

But not different enough.

One hour later she hardly resembled the same woman at all. She had washed out the auburn rinse she’d used since coming to Paris and returned her hair to its natural color, a pale ash brown so neutral that changing it was usually simple. Today had been no exception.

Her face was neutral, as well. She had no features that were remarkable, which had been her greatest sadness as an adolescent. But now she was glad for the blank canvas. She had gamely tweezed her eyebrows into thin, tidy arches and washed away any traces of cosmetics. She had exchanged her turquoise-tinted contacts for those that made her blue eyes a smoky gray.

And now she didn’t look the same at all.

She tested her new image. Yes, thank you, she said in an upper-class English accent. I would like to apply for the position you have advertised in your window. My name is… She hesitated. Tina, she said. Tina St. James.

She wasn’t sure that the new name was correct. She crossed the narrow room to the bed and slid her hand under the mattress to retrieve a clear packet of documents. She riffled through the ones on the top until she found what she was looking for. Tina St. James. Just great, she said sarcastically. American.

The picture on the passport of Tina St. James showed a very different looking Celestine. The only time she had used this passport her hair had been long and curly. In that incarnation she had also been a brunette who wore royal blue eye shadow and spoke with a Brooklyn twang. She riffled through the documents again and pulled out more passports, selecting the one that she now most resembled.

It was an English passport, which was exactly what she had hoped for. Lesley McBain. Born north of London in Stevenage, raised by an older sister who moved from place to place after the death of their parents. Lesley McBain, who was poor but proud and willing to do almost any job as long as it was decent.

Yes, that would be her cover story. Surely she should be able to find something to do in London until she had enough money to escape into the country somewhere. She would need a job immediately, because she had very little in the way of savings. Paris was an expensive city, and the only job that she had been able to find hadn’t paid well.

Now, of course, she couldn’t even go back and get the wages Madame Duchampier still owed her.

She sank to the bed and held the passport against her chest. Was she making a mistake? Dear God, was this a textbook example of paranoia, or had the man in the dark suit really come to Paris to kill her? He was the general age of the others and clearly an American. And he had followed her from the park, through narrow streets crowded with tourists and students. He had followed her to the shop; then he had waited a little before coming inside. Once there, he had sat at one of the few indoor tables and watched her.

And watched.

Her eyelids drifted shut. She could still see him. He was striking, with conservatively cut brown hair brushed back from his face, a strong square jaw and hazel eyes that gave nothing away. His eyes were shadowed by a jutting brow and his face defined by a straight, ski slope nose—beginner’s hill. His suit was an expensive one, silk and wool tailored in England or Hong Kong. His shoulders were broad, and she was certain they demanded expert tailoring.

There had been something ruthless about his face that had nothing to do with individual features. Something aggressive about the way he held himself that hadn’t eased as he’d sipped his coffee and pretended to read his paper.

She rested her head against the wall. She was exhausted, and she had only a short time to pack and get to the Gare du Nord. As always, she wouldn’t take much with her. She had few clothes that suited her new image, anyway. A long flowered skirt, a lavender knit top, a navy jacket with cheap brass buttons, tailored gray trousers. Marie St. Germaine, with her auburn hair and stylishly thin body, had nearly worn out a good pair of jeans, a narrow skirt with buttons unfastened halfway up her thigh, and a tight saffron-colored sweater that had hugged her small breasts provocatively. Now Lesley would stuff those clothes and the black dress she had worn today into a paper sack and leave them for the concierge to distribute or throw away.

She ran her fingers through her hair, and for just a moment she mourned her shorn locks. She had little vanity left, but she had enjoyed the way long hair had felt trailing over her shoulders. She had enjoyed the way men had looked at her, too, even if she couldn’t safely look back.

She doubted that anyone would look twice at Lesley McBain, and that was, of course, the way it would have to be. The new haircut was no-nonsense, and the clothes she would take to London were at least a size too large. She would slouch a bit, and her smile would be tentative. When she wasn’t smiling, she would set her lips in a prim line, like a woman determined to make the best of bad luck. She might try glasses again, as she had once before. Pale blue frames, in a style that was several years out-of-date.

Celestine had learned not to cry about hairstyles and clothes. Hair grew back eventually, and clothing could be purchased. But she had never learned to be philosophical about a life on the run. She had been so many people in the past four years that sometimes she wasn’t sure who she was.

Or if she really had to run at all.

She thought again of the man in the dark suit. Was he waiting for her somewhere just beyond the walls of this attic room? Would he find her again before she fled Paris? Or was the man with the wide shoulders and the expressionless eyes just a tourist who had chosen to pass an afternoon in a quaint French café?

She didn’t know. She might never know. But she did know this. She was still alive.

And that was the way she intended to keep it.

* * *

So, Noah, will you come back to Paris and see us again? Jeanette Girbaud handed Noah a folder of facts and figures that had been her excuse for coming to the train station to see him off.

If it’s necessary. Noah smiled to soften his words. Jeanette was every bit as attractive in the harsh lighting of the cavernous Gare du Nord as she had been by candlelight last night. She was a petite brunette several years older than his thirty, with an exquisitely proportioned body and an expressive face. As the French operations director of Tri-C International, she had proved to be every bit as crafty as he had hoped, and she would soon be moving up in the company’s chain of command.

It won’t be necessary…just pleasant, she said with a small smile. Surely you fell in love with my beautiful city?

It’s a city to be proud of.

Then I may look forward to your return?

He toyed with ignoring the real message behind her question. Then he shook his head. Jeanette, I would never get involved with a Tri-C employee. It’s impossible.

She lifted a brow. No?

No.

Tell me this then, Noah. Do you get…involved with anyone? Because you seem to me to be so… She shrugged. Alone.

He was surprised at her frankness, and more surprised at the concern that was obviously behind it. I’m not an unhappy man.

Not unhappy. Perhaps my English isn’t perfect enough to comprehend that. But ‘not unhappy’ does not sound like a state one would recommend.

My life suits me.

Yes, well, it does not suit me to see you living it this way. But it seems I have little choice in the matter. She smiled warmly. Have a safe trip to London.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. Thank you for showing me Paris.

If I could not show you more, at least I could show you that.

He watched her walk away. He was a student of walks, as well as of many things. Jeanette’s stride was purposeful. She moved quickly for a small woman, but with infinite femininity.

He thought of the young woman whose walk he had admired earlier that afternoon. The scene at the café had intrigued him, and since then he had pondered reasons for her disappearance. The older woman, who must have been the shop’s owner, had been furious. Noah’s French was good enough to know that the woman had a sailor’s vocabulary, but not good enough to understand the finer points of her oratory. He just knew that the lovely auburn-haired woman had vanished, and that even if she returned, her job would not be waiting.

He made his way through customs and boarded the train. At the entrance he stored his garment bag; then he found his seat. He had bought a ticket for the seat beside his own to avoid conversation, and he stowed his briefcase on it. He had elected to take the new Eurostar to London instead of a ferry or an airplane. The high-speed train traveled under the English Channel, and he had followed the construction of the Chunnel with interest. He wasn’t in any hurry to get to London. He had been there many times and always enjoyed it, but there was no one waiting for him at the other end. He would be on his own until he decided to return to Colorado, where Tri-C International had its corporate offices.

The decor of the car was soothing, and the dove gray seats were comfortable. They were out of the station before he was even aware they were moving, and out of Paris before he opened his book. One paragraph into it he looked up as a young woman brushed his arm on her way to another car. She mumbled an apology in proper British English. He had enough time to see that she was attractive in a demure, inhibited sort of way, with sleet gray eyes, the fresh-scrubbed cheeks of a milkmaid and clothing preferences better suited to a larger woman. Then she turned away and continued down the aisle.

He gazed back at his book, a mystery he had already solved, and started the same paragraph again. But he couldn’t concentrate.

The young woman was already out of sight, but she stayed in his mind. For some reason he was reminded again of the woman he had observed at the café in Paris. He didn’t know why. The first young woman had been auburn-haired and sensuous, with showgirl legs and a tiny waist. This one, with her utilitarian hair, cheap navy blazer and prim, resigned expression, had looked as if she would close her eyes and think of England if a man ever tried to make love to her.

They were nothing alike.

They walked alike.

He snapped his book shut and tried to remember. Over the years he had become so good at watching people that the tiniest details were fixed in his mind. The first woman had lifted herself high on the ball of each foot, gently swiveling her hips as she moved.

And so had the second.

It seemed an odd coincidence. He had never seen anyone move quite that way before. And now, just hours apart, two women with identical walks had captured his imagination.

The French countryside sped past him at 186 miles per hour. He set his book on the next seat and closed his eyes. The slow-motion glide of two different women moved across the dark canvas of his mind.

* * *

Damn fate to hell! The man from the café was on board. She was on an express train hurtling like a lightning bolt toward a tunnel residing inconveniently under the English Channel, and there was a murderer on the train with her!

A murderer who had already stalked her once today.

Celestine sank into an empty seat that faced the automatic doors leading in the direction of the man’s car. She had touched him. She had accidentally brushed her hand against his shoulder. If she hadn’t, he might never have looked up and met her eyes.

Maybe he didn’t know who she was. Maybe he hadn’t recognized her.

Celestine was afraid to blink, afraid that in that infinitesimal crack in time the man would step through the doors, pull a gun and make quick work of Lesley McBain, alias Marie St. Germaine, Elena Kovacs, Tina St. James and others too numerous to mention.

A small sound escaped her clamped lips, but no one turned to look at her. She was one of hundreds of passengers, a colorless, insignificant presence. No one here knew that a man had come on board to kill her. No one knew that he wasn’t the first to try and might not even be the last—unless he succeeded, of course. Then the competition would certainly be out of a job.

She tried to think. There was no way off the train. That fact could work for or against her. At this speed, she couldn’t take a dive out an exit, even if she knew how to open one without alerting everyone on board. If she did jump she would save the man the trouble of murdering her, and he could probably claim his reward. On the other hand, the