Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe Page A

for him. “You know I’ll do anything for you. But what did you have in mind?”
    â€œDon’t worry about it now. I’ll set it up. You just do as I ask.”
    Frankie rolled on top of her. To Sofia’s astonishment, he was hard. Sliding inside her, he gave five or six short thrusts and climaxed almost instantly.
    For a while neither of them spoke. Then Sofia asked quietly, “What’s his name?”
    â€œHmm?”
    â€œThis man you want me to meet. What’s his name?”
    In the darkness, Frankie smiled.
    â€œJakes. His name is Andrew Jakes.”

C HAPTER F IVE
    L YON , F RANCE
2006
    M ATT D ALEY LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. He had spent the last half hour sitting on an uncomfortable couch in a drab waiting room, deep within Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon. The building, looming over the river on the Quai Charles de Gaulle, was a shrine to ugly functionality, a place built by bureaucrats, for bureaucrats. A data analyst’s wet dream, thought Matt, noting the total absence of artwork or even an occasional colored rug or vase of flowers anywhere in the maze of corridors he’d seen so far. No wonder the staff look so depressed.
    In fairness, he was basing this assessment on a sample of two people. The dour young Frenchman who had issued him his visitor’s pass and led him to the office of the man he’d flown halfway across the world to see, and that man’s secretary, a woman whose battle-ax features exuded about as much warmth as a Siberian nuclear winter.
    â€œD’you think he’ll be much longer?” Matt asked.
    The secretary shrugged contemptuously and returned to her computer screen.
    Matt thought of his father. Harry Daley had never been to France,but had always admired Frenchwomen from afar for their poise and charm and sexiness. Boy, would Rosa Klebb over there have shattered his illusions!
    Thinking about his dad made Matt smile.
    If it hadn’t been for Harry Daley, he wouldn’t be sitting here.
    Â 
    H ARRY D ALEY HAD BEEN A WONDERFUL father, and an even better husband. Harry and Marie, Matt’s mom, were married for forty years and had been everything to each other. At Harry Daley’s funeral last year, scores of friends had lingered at the graveside, sharing their memories of the man Matt and his sister, Claire, had loved for as long as either of them could remember.
    During the ceremony, Matt got terrible giggles when the Croatian priest’s “May he rest in peace” came out quite clearly as “May he rest in piss.” Given that Harry had died of cancer of the bladder, this struck both Matt and his sister as hilarious.
    Raquel, Matt’s glamorous South American wife, didn’t see the funny side.
    â€œMy God,” she hissed in Matt’s ear, “what is wrong with you? Have you no respect? It’s your father’s funeral .”
    â€œOh, c’mon, honey. ‘May he rest in piss’? It’s funny. Dad would have seen the humor. Imagine what Jerry Seinfeld would’ve done with a line like that.”
    Raquel said cuttingly, “You are hardly Jerry Seinfeld, honey.”
    It hurt because it was true. Matt Daley was a comedy writer, but in recent years not a very successful one. Handsome in a boyish, disheveled sort of way, with a thick thatch of blond hair and apple-green eyes, his most distinctive feature was his contagious smile, a facial event that seemed to fold his entire physiognomy into one giant laugh line. In the early days of their relationship, Raquel had been attracted to Matt’s sense of humor and was flattered when amusing incidents from their life together made their way onto the hit TV show Matt worked on briefly back then. But after eight years the novelty had worn off, along with the hope that Matt’s residuals were ever going to earn them the glitzy Hollywood lifestyle Raquel yearned for. Matt now worked for a cable network that paid their bills but left