The Night Café

The Night Café
Taylor Smith

Mills & Boon M&B
Between jobs and feeling financially strapped, gun-for-hire Hannah Nicks takes on an assignment that promises easy money and an all-expenses-paid vacation on the Mexican Riviera. Hired by her sister's friend, a gallery owner, Hannah sets out to transport a minor artist's painting to its buyer in Puerto Vallarta. But when Hannah arrives at the delivery point, she finds the tail end of a massacre and is nearly killed herself. She hides the painting, fearing it is not a meal ticket but a death warrant, and flees back to the States. But it only gets worse for her in L.A.The gallery owner has been killed, and Hannah is named as the murder suspect. In order to prove her innocence, she must hunt down the person who framed her…and uncover the secret of a deadly work of art.

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF

TAYLOR SMITH

“Smith, who has been both a diplomat and an intelligence agent, convincingly conveys what life is like on the streets and sands of Iraq in her compelling new thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly on Slim to None

“Smith’s experience as an international diplomat and intelligence analyst lends credibility to this first-rate political thriller…exciting and intelligent.”

—Booklist on Deadly Grace

“The publisher compares Smith to John Grisham…Smith’s a better prose stylist.”

—Publishers Weekly on Random Acts

“Smith’s latest is a graceful, compellingly written thriller…[The] gloriously intricate plot is top-notch.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Innocents Club

“Sharp characterization and a tightly focused time frame…give this intrigue a spell-binding tone of immediacy.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Best of Enemies

Taylor Smith

The night Café

This one goes out with love and thanks to The Plot Queen, Linda McFadden—ally, muse and coconspirator. Neither time nor distance can squelch a great friendship.

It’s been a decade and a half (hard to believe) that I’ve been working with the wonderful people of MIRA Books, and I feel as lucky today as I did fifteen years ago when they offered to publish my first book. My deepest thanks to Miranda Stecyk, my editor, with whom it’s a joy to work—and to hang out, on those happy occasions where we find ourselves in the same city.

My family, near and far, is unfailingly supportive. Love and thanks especially to my amazing husband, Richard, and our beautiful, brilliant and all-grown-up daughters (how is that possible?), Anna and Kate.

I am thinking of frankly accepting my role as madman.

—Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother,

Theo, March 24, 1889

Just because I am always bowed down under this difficulty of paying my landlord, I made up my mind to take it gaily. I swore at the said landlord, who after all isn’t a bad fellow, and told him that to revenge myself for paying him so much money for nothing, I would paint the whole of his rotten shanty so as to repay myself.

—Vincent van Gogh

Letter to his brother Theo

Arles, 8 September, 1888

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One