XIX.

A P E X  P R E D A T O R

—aka, a fairer game is having all the players know

INT— 6TH ARRONDISSMENT.

PARIS, FRANCE — MORNING.

SCENE II.

"WELL. . . I WASN'T expecting to find a scarier version of your sister but,... nous voilà," I said, light and airy, pulling away from Kristoff's cold anger to pick up a piece of baguette and started buttering it. Salted butter and baguettes always make me happy, and this was a stressful situation that I wasn't privy to or concocted, so I do feel like I'm out of the woods on this one.

Kristoff, jaw still tightened, turned to his batman. "Archie."

"KC had reported these. He pulled form every time, but kept me on the loop." Archie's fingers blitzed across the tablet he had produced from somewhere in his outfit. Colours and light flashed across his face as I continued eating.

"We know they were sent by Natasha, a few by Soo-young. There are a few from the feds, but that's not unusual." I raised an eyebrow, but Archie continued as if I wasn't there, or the situation was worrisome enough for them not to care. "The most successful ones were of Natasha and Yuna, but everyone had been held back from finding anything out but the basics of what we are showing."

"So she doesn't really know anything, and at most, pieced everything together by the fact that she knows you well. Or the fact that you were supposed to be allies." I waved the butter knife between them. "Pray tell how does that work when you're both that hostile to each other?"

Archie raised his chin. "You don't have to like each other to be on the same side."

"There is an agreement," Kristoff said. "In a war between family, respecting an agreement is enough."

Fair. "So. . . did I pass?"

"You did. Wonderfully."

A smile, askew and a little sarcastic. "A compliment? I didn't realise I was that good." I sighed, waving away the grumpiness. "To be fair, you did well yourself. You responded perfectly to my every comment and bruise, and it made everything believable. . . If she approves, can I call that a positive review on my end?"

"It is." Kristoff turned to Archie. "But she did make an excellent point. We should be more careful about the timeline."

"I was planning on leaning on it, actually." Archie sat up, giving me a look that said he'd rather pull teeth. "If Ms. La Verne doesn't mind, I was hoping we'd lean in more with the narrative already presented. Especially since the timeline between Russia and Italy is too crucial to play with."

I dusted my fingers off, eyes slightly narrowing. "What narrative?"

"That Ms. Park had tried to use you against Kristoff."

"The narrative that. . ." My mouth fell open. "That Yuna proposed? The baby narrative?"

"It makes the most sense for Yuna to do, and therefor—"

"— makes sense for how we met," Kristoff finished, nodding with a resolute finish. "It's a good idea."

"So let me just. . . get this straight." I sat up, clearing my throat to get rid of the sudden fog in my brain. Paris' clouds were moving, a wistful dance to make way for a glorious sun. "You are okay with your family thinking of you foolish enough to fall in love enough that you can't see when a woman is using you for sperm donation?"

Archie glared. "Don't be crass. It makes sense for Yuna to do, and she has done it. We can straighten the details, tweak some things but necessarily, it makes sense."

Before I could argue, Kristoff interjected, adjusting a good arm over his seat's armrest, studying me. "Didn't you say yourself, operating closest to the truth covers more? There is no harm in either endings, and your opinion of the matter is still important, but Archie and I are right. And you know it."

I glared at him, closing my mouth. Using my own wise words against me is such a bastard movement, I really shouldn't have been surprised.

"You're a bastard," I muttered, utterly defeated.

"Thank you." His eyes went hostile, but not towards me, if I can go as far as noting that he was amused at my antics. No, his gaze narrowed at the double doors his aunt left from, before turning back to the open veranda.

Good god, what is it now?

Archie clicked off his tablet, stuffing it in his jacket's inner pockets. "We will talk back at the hotel. KC is. . ." He tapped his ear piece. "Moving to the west building. Adjusting positions."

The doors opened, but instead of his aunt, two people came out.

One, a slight girl. Pale, short, in a nondescript black dress with a sheer white detail. Her black hair cut short was streaked in purposeful greys, and her eyes were lined thickly with a sharp kohl. She looked forward with an almost. . . bored expression.

Next to her was a familiar man of the night.

I was right. For a tall goon hidden in a hoodie, mask and cap, underneath all of that was a lithe body that looked well in a suit. He had a buzzed cut, brown skin that I couldn't distinguish the actual colour of— lighter than mine, that's for sure, and the lightest green eyes I had ever seen on a man.

He was pretty.

The girl spoke, her eyes meeting Archie. "The miss sends her apologies. She is currently attending a medical emergency."

Archie deftly stood up, and instead of bowing, raised his chin further. Like a peacock preening. "Please send our deepest regards, as well enjoyment of the morning." He turned to the man, his tone heavier. "We hope the last incident. . . would also be the last."

The man looked at him, brusque and alive, but quiet. It was the girl who spoke again, voice not precisely soft but not above a monotone. "The miss sends her apologies on the matter."

"That's not an answer," Kristoff said, standing up and fixing his suit. "It stops or it doesn't. She's more than welcome to keep prying, but she cannot go through Antonina to get there."

Both of them looked. Eyes the colour of coal, and the other of the palest green. It was unsettling. Like they were committing me to memory.

The guy looked away, but the girl doesn't. She spoke to him while looking at me.

"I will tell her."

"Convince her," Kristoff bit back softer. Solid. Like steel sliding the side of silk. "Because the next time it happens, the next person you send won't come back with a pulse."

This, he said to the man who had looked at him. Regarded his threat. But Kristoff spoke it matter of factly, like it was the only course of action. Then he turned to me and offered a hand.

I took it, bringing back my own composure. "I am not giving you a child," I said softly.

"I don't expect you to." He looked at me. At that little second. Sincere.

I let go and walked away.

INT— PARIS INTERPOL.

LYON, FRANCE — MORNING.

SCENE III.

IN ANOTHER A different part of France, Ashley Baudelaire was not having a good day.

It started with the wrong coffee order.

Which felt deliberate because in her four months since living in that godforsaken apartment with that godforsaken couple that went back and forth with having sex and fighting— seventy percent of that fighting were cheating allegations, that at one point on a wine-drunk night and a laptop with a connection to Interpol database, were mostly found true — Ashley had been going to that coffee shop. Everyday. For four months.

The wrong coffee order was just the tip of the iceberg.

Followed by losing the train by just three minutes, subsequently putting her late at oh, roughly about twenty minutes for work, and getting there with Gabriel smugly pointing this out.

Ashley sighed haggardly as she walked up the stairs.

"Unusually late, Madame Baudelaire." Gabriel Moulin squashed the cigarette on the very verge of where he was inhaling (with a sour voice in Ashley's head making a petty damn. A few more huffs and it would've burned the sucker's mouth) with the toe of his shoe.

Ashley matched his grin if just a little more sarcastic. "Get off my ass, Monsieur Moulin."

He blinked, a little taken aback, but shrugged it away as he fell into step with her. Ashley Baudelaire's entire program was to make nice with the French neighbours. After all, Interpol was based here. And she was the across pond neighbour who was only here for one entity and one entity only.

And not the fact that her chief in command had specifically told her to play nice, but that's beside the point. She was really having a shitty day.

"You're one my smartest kids, Baudelaire," Chief Ghost had pronounced, palms flat on her glass table. "Calmest, aced her reporting exam in weeks, and have been God sent in this godfarsaken place we call lovingly, mother fucking earth." She always looked like she needed a smoke even when she didn't smoke, drank, or did drugs. But Ashley thinks that comes with the job.

A job that she was actively striving for, hence why she was still in Lyon. Hell, in Europe even when she missed US soil almost as much as she missed her pa and his horrible aversion to shrimp— aversion, not allergy — and made gumbo nights way too difficult than it had to be.

"— Are you even listening to me?"

"Huh, what?"

Agent Moulin sighed almost just as haggardly as Ashley did this morning, and that made her just a bit too happy. But then his eyes went down.

"My eyes are up here, Moulin," she said.

"You have coffee on your shirt," he replied just as deadpan. "On your white shirt. Café."

Train station. Sicko who pushes grandmas to get purses. Grandmas who swear at you because the strap gets broken from the fight.

Just one of those days.

"I am having a very shitty day, I am aware, thanks. What were you saying?"

"She has been found. Your— what you say, Robin Hood?"

Ashley Baudelaire went into a complete standstill in the middle of a very busy office. Agent Moulin awkwardly stopped with her, unknown to this reaction. All he really knew was that this was her Moby Dick. Her baleine blanche.

Catherine Meyer. Laura Finley. Antonina La Verne.

Hits from Miami, London, France. . . and so much more to uncover, a ghost. A damn good con woman.

Her.

Ashley was about to go home, move on with the case of the missing pearls from that godforsaken party growing colder and colder as each week passed and the newest information they could gather was La Verne (or Meyer or Finley) escaping the scene of the crime in the arms of a very good looking waiter (who she found, interviewed for weeks, and still came up nothing but her godforsaken smile), and then nothing.

In her arm, for fuck's sakes, was a chip breakdown of her entire case on La Verne for the French Interpol to feast on (what a diminutive fucking feast, honestly), and go back home and regroup.

"Where— How? Actually you know what?" Ashley hit him on the chest with the fist still holding the half finished (mostly drenched on her very white shirt) coffee cup. "Where? Where is more important."

It might've been the fire, freshly brought to life behind her dark eyes, but Agent Moulin straightened. Ashley Baudelaire, the youngest agent to have ever taken down three black market houses and dealings in the last four years. Agent Baudelaire who rose ranks as one of the best one hit wonders.

"Here, in Paris." He inclined his head to the board room they had made a makeshift plan space four months ago when the American agent had arrived and began making orders and advancement on a thrilling case that involved a woman with many faces and slippery hands. The same board room where they—she had lost the very same woman.

"I had this printed, but there's more in the office."

She snatched the paper before it was even out of his pocket, her stare, her fingers, hungry for a morsel. One more hit for the prey that managed to evade her.

"But I don't think you can do anything. She is under some serious protection. We have sent detail since a night ago when they arrived via a private hangar off Cannes, but we still haven't been in contact with them."

Ashley paused her peruse of the black and white image. It was clearest photo there had ever been of her, apart from that Laura Finley London photo of her whipped hair and turned back. Her hand covered most of her face here, fixing her hair, but there was a shadow of a nose, a clear shot of her lips. Her hand with a gold signet ring and a diamond? Is that a diamond ring? On her ring finger.

Just shy of a few steps, was a man hidden by a town car, getting inside it.

The only other person who was visible in the image was fully seen. Long hair, glasses. He stood upright to let her pass, face stoic.

"Who is this? Gather every intel—"

"We already have. It is not a good situation, Agent Baudelaire." Agent Moulin opened the glass door to the board room. "Your white whale has a hell of a sea for a protection."

Gabriel Moulin was not seeing double when Ashley Baudelaire, for the first time in the four months she had been residing in Lyon, smiled a genuinely wide, excited smile.

"Of course she has. She's a white whale for a reason, Moulin. Tell me everything."

FRENCH TRANSLATION—

nous voilà = here we are

baleine blanche = white whale