Altar of Bones (28 page)

Okay, think
. The barge wasn’t going down the river on its own. She saw the green glow of an instrument panel through the window of a small pilothouse. Somebody had to be inside doing the steering. Maybe whoever it was would put her ashore, or more likely he’d have a radio and he’d call the gendarmes and she’d probably be arrested, but at this point she didn’t care. At least the cops wouldn’t shoot her, she hoped.

She pushed to her feet. The newspapers were wet and slippery and squished beneath her feet so that she wobbled and staggered with every step.

Suddenly the door to the pilothouse crashed open. Zoe opened her mouth to shout a hello and screamed instead when a huge black mastiff burst out, teeth bared, snarling.

She turned and ran, the dog right behind her, growling, snapping at her heels. He got her pant leg, but she jerked free. She didn’t even think about it. She leaped over the side.

S
HE PLUNGED
deep, deep, then shot back up, gasping, her lungs on fire with the hideous cold.

The satchel’s strap was strangling her. She struggled to pull it off over her head, choking, swallowing water, then got it off at last. The satchel was supposed to be waterproof and the icon was wrapped up tight in the sealskin pouch, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She held it up as best she could out of the water while doing a lame sidestroke with one arm. The current was fierce, pulling her downstream.

She looked up to see how far she was from the quay and the steps. Too far, and past the steps nothing but sheer stone as far as she could see. Maybe the steps stopped here. Maybe this was the end of it for her. No, no … She kicked out hard with her legs, trying to burst free of the vicious current.

She saw the steps coming up fast, then suddenly she was sweeping past them. She flung out her hand, barely caught the bottom one. Her fingers slipped. She grabbed again, held on this time with all her strength, which wasn’t much now. She was cold, so cold she couldn’t breathe.

She clung to the step with numb hands while the rushing river pummeled her. She knew she needed to get out of the water now, but she was so cold and so tired.

She looped the satchel’s strap back over her head and hauled herself up the narrow, steep steps hand over hand. She climbed over the lip of the quay and fell flat on her face. She lay there, shivering to her bones, black water streaming off her. She didn’t want to move, but she had to. She simply had to, no choice.

She struggled to her feet, staggered forward, fell to her knees, and crawled up a dirt ramp to the street above. Saw a lamppost and crawled to it. She wrapped her arms around its iron base, shuddering. Her wet clothes felt like a shroud. She was cold, so cold, but she wasn’t going to give up now. She wasn’t about to die. She wasn’t. She needed more
toapotror
magic, though, and didn’t she deserve it? After all, she’d kept the icon safe from those two men, and a killer dog, and a mad dunking in the Seine.

She dug deep, pulled herself up. She was shaking so hard her eyes blurred. The icy rain thickened, and wasn’t that just perfect, the wind driving it sharp as needles into her face.

Through the bare branches of a tree on the corner she saw a light shining in a window with red-and-white checkered curtains. A restaurant?
Please, God, let it be a restaurant
. Because there would be a phone inside. Or someone willing to call her a taxi. She needed to hide somewhere, anywhere, it didn’t matter so long as it was warm and she could get herself together again until she could catch a plane home. She wanted to go home.
Home
. It sang in her like a mantra.

She took a staggering step, then another, aimed for the tree and that beautiful light beyond it.

A man’s shadow crossed in front of her, looming out from behind the tree’s thick trunk. A big man, dressed all in black. The man from the bridge.

He was on her in a second, so fast she didn’t have time to scream. He poked the barrel of a gun in her ribs.

Slowly, Zoe looked up into a pair of familiar blue eyes. What in hell was
he
doing here?

“Sergei,” she said, but she was so cold, her teeth chattering so hard, she hadn’t even understood herself. She said it again, clearly this time, “Sergei.”

“Give it to me,” he said in her ear. He sounded out of breath, and for some reason that really made no logical sense, that made her feel better. She hoped he was good and cold, too. She hoped he was freezing his balls off.

“Give me the film, and then you’re coming with me. Nice and quiet.”

The film?

She was really losing it because that made no sense at all. Why did her mother want the film and not the icon? And what about the ponytailed man? He’d killed her grandmother. She knew to her soul her mother hadn’t known about that, but suddenly he shows up in Paris with Sergei? Something was very wrong here. Her brain squirreled around, she was too exhausted and cold to make sense of it.

He pushed the gun harder into her side. “Have you fallen asleep? Give me the film, and don’t even think about trying any more comic-book heroics. My God, I still can’t believe you actually jumped off that bridge and didn’t break your neck. And then you added stupidity to insanity by jumping off the barge and into the river. I thought I was going to have to go in after you, and that, lady, would really have pissed me off. So quit pushing your luck and give me the damn film.”

The film, the icon, it didn’t matter. She was the Keeper and the Keeper kept.

Zoe fumbled with the satchel, tugged at the zipper, tugged again. He grunted with impatience and leaned forward to pull it out of her shaking hands—

She rammed her elbow straight into his chin, so hard she heard his teeth crack together. Then she pivoted on the ball of one foot and lashed out with the other, kicking him square in the gut.

The air whooshed out of him. He staggered backward, holding his belly. But before the thought
Run!
could even enter her head, he had his gun back up and pointed at her chest.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t you dare fucking move another inch, and Jesus God, woman, that hurt. I ought to shoot you now just for the hell of it. Give me the film.”

He saw the intent in her eyes and took two more steps back. But he kept the gun pointed at her chest. It wasn’t fair. She was alone and soaked to the bone, her legs felt like lead, and she was so cold she was beyond bearing it. She was going to walk to the restaurant and call a taxi, and if he didn’t get out of her way too bad for him because she wasn’t born yesterday. If he was going to shoot her, he’d have done it by now.

“You want it so bad, cowboy”—she beckoned to him with her curled fingers—“then come and get it.”

He raised his face to the sky. “Why can’t things ever be easy?”

“What? You don’t think you can take me one-on-one? Why don’t you give your ugly partner with the ponytail a jingle then? Maybe he can drop on by and give you a hand.”

“I don’t have a partner. And that guy, you don’t want to get near that guy.”

“Oh, yeah, and you’re such a prize.”

He bared his teeth at her. “Enough of this. Give me the fucking film or I’m going to shoot you.”

“Sure. Right. You’re my mama’s pet goon, no way would you shoot me.”

He shot her.

S
HE OPENED
her eyes on a white plaster ceiling. It was a tall ceiling with a brown stain in one corner. A vague panic filled her, but she couldn’t name what she was afraid of. Something to do with a river. And ice.

Then it all came back to her in a rush—the ponytailed man, the Japanese tourists, the barge, the dog, the river.

Sergei with a gun.

Had he shot her? Was she in a hospital?

She didn’t feel hurt anywhere, but then she hadn’t tried moving yet. She turned her head and saw a red-beaded lamp sitting on a table next to an ornate silver clock. Beyond it a walnut armoire draped with a fringed Spanish shawl stood against a red-and-gold-flocked wall. Definitely not a hospital then, unless the French furnished their hospitals to look like Victorian bordellos.

She jerked, struggling against a heavy pile of quilts to push herself up onto her elbows. Pain stabbed her head so fiercely she gasped out loud from the shock of it. Her blurred eyes focused on a brass footboard, then beyond to Sergei.

He straddled a chair with his arms folded over the back. His face was in shadow so she couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them.

“What did you shoot me with?”

“A tranq gun.”

Zoe flopped back onto the pillows and shut her eyes. She had to think, but it hurt to think, so she just lay there and shivered. It felt as if she’d been shivering for years.

“Cold,” she said. The word sounded as if it came out around a mouthful of marbles.

“Cold is what you get when you go swimming in the Seine in February. You would’ve croaked from hypothermia if I hadn’t saved your ass after all those stupid, gutsy stunts you pulled. I had to hold you propped up under a hot shower for a good hour to get your body temperature back to something even close to normal.”

“Don’t hold your breath waiting for a thank-you card.” There, that was better. She could get words out now without her teeth knocking together. His teeth had sure made a nice cracking sound when she’d smacked him in the jaw. Too bad she hadn’t laid him out cold.

Something about him was different, though. For one thing, he was speaking perfectly good English, as before when he—

The film
.

Zoe jerked back up and nearly blacked out from the pain that shot through her skull. “What’ve you done with my stuff?”

He nodded to a chair upholstered in purple cabbage roses. Her satchel was in the chair, but Zoe saw that he’d taken out the reel of film. He’d set it on a round table, between an old-fashioned black telephone and a glass vase of tulips.

Zoe lay back and closed her eyes again against a fresh wave of dizziness. He’d gotten what he wanted, so why hadn’t he just tossed her back into the Seine and left her to drown? She decided she wasn’t so scared of him anymore. Not as scared as she probably ought to be.

“Will you tell me just one thing?” she asked him. “What is there about a home movie of a little girl blowing out birthday-cake candles that makes it worth killing for?”

He said nothing.

“Okay, I get it. You’re just a dumb
vors
. A goon who follows orders, no questions asked. Mr. Stepin Fetchit.”

He still said nothing.

“Are you here on a job for my mother?”

“The
pakhan
believes your life is danger.”

“My mother sent you along to protect me?” Zoe said with a snort. “Yeah, right.”

More likely Anna Larina wanted for herself what her own mother had kept hidden away in the casket. That meant she’d known of its existence,
but probably not where it was all these years. Had she known, she would have sent someone to the griffin shop to take it by force a long time ago. She didn’t have the fancy key to open it with, but a crowbar would’ve done the job.

But, no, that still didn’t make sense. The thing of value in the casket should be the icon, especially to Anna Larina, who collected the things. Yet with Sergei, her hired thug, it was all about the film.

He’d gone quiet again. Zoe’s head hurt too much to lift it and check out what he was up to.

“Are you working with the other man who was chasing me? The guy with the ponytail?”

“I already told you no.”

“But you do know who he is?”

“I got an idea.”

“Mind sharing it?”

He said nothing.

“Damn you, he killed my grandmother,” she said, suddenly so furious she was near tears with it.

She heard the chair scrape across wood; a moment later he came into her view. He went to a lace-curtained window and looked out. From her perspective all she could see was blue sky and a couple of cotton-ball clouds. Apparently while she’d been sleeping off the tranquilizer, a new day had dawned in Paris.

“Where am I, anyway?” she asked.

“A friend’s apartment on the Île St.-Louis.”

“You have friends? Who knew?”