She stopped trying to scream, and he let go of her mouth long enough to grab his coat from the bed before pushing her from the room, closing the door behind them.
And out into the icy dawn of the Paris streets with the stink of death still on them.
C
hloe was in shock, the first piece of luck Bastien had had in a long while. She was past the point of speaking, of protesting, of doing anything but moving with him in blind obedience. He stopped long enough to wrap her in his coat, and then he moved on, keeping hold of her limp hand. If he let go of her she’d probably just stand in the middle of the street until they found her.
He moved fast, in and out of alleyways, backtracking. Why the hell had they killed the girl and then not come after them? Maybe it was a simple mistake—if they’d sent an outsider they might have thought she was Chloe. Or maybe they’d killed the girl as a precaution, then went looking for them, and they’d somehow managed to miss each other in the night.
That was the least likely—he didn’t believe in lucky breaks. His sixth sense told him there was no one watching them as he moved Chloe through the
dawn-lit streets. Maybe they thought he’d bring her in himself.
Poor little American idiot, caught up in a game that was way over her head. Both sides wanted her, and he knew his own organization well enough to know that both sides wanted her dead. She was a liability—she’d seen too much, and the sooner she was disposed of, the better.
The traffic had begun to pick up, the sun was rising over the rooftops when she suddenly froze. He knew what was coming, and he held her as she vomited into the street. Her roommate’s body wasn’t the first dead person she’d seen—she’d been there when he’d killed Hakim.
But her time with Hakim had momentarily inured her to reality. She’d had enough time to recover her equilibrium, to start thinking for herself, and the sight of her friend’s brutally murdered body would have hit her full force.
She’d stopped, and he handed her a handkerchief to wipe her face as he hailed a taxi. One pulled up fairly quickly—despite the hour and the neighborhood and Chloe’s obvious distress the taxi drivers of Paris were well trained. They could judge the cost of a patron’s clothing from a block away, to know whether they were worth stopping for.
He bundled her into the cab and followed her, keeping his arms around her and her face tucked against
his shoulder. The fewer people who saw her, the safer she’d be.
“Where to,
monsieur
?”
He gave an address in the fifteenth
arrondissement,
then leaned back. The driver took off, weaving through the burgeoning traffic with expert ease, but Bastien could see him watching them in his rearview mirror.
“Your girlfriend drink too much?” he asked. “I don’t want her puking on my seats.”
A legitimate enough concern, Bastien thought. “She’s done for now. She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my wife. She’s three months pregnant and having a hard time of it.”
He felt her jerk in his arms, but he put his hand to the back of her head and held her down.
The cabdriver nodded knowingly. “Ah, that’s the worst part. Don’t you worry, madame, it doesn’t last the whole time. My wife can’t keep a thing down for the first three months, and then she can’t stop eating. We’ve had four children, and it’s always the same. Is this your first?”
So many questions, Bastien thought. “Yes,” he said. “Any advice?”
That set him off, and for the next ten minutes Bastien got a lecture on everything from the food cravings of a pregnant woman to the best positions for sex when the wife is the size of a water buffalo. He listened with half an ear, making the appropriate responses, as he felt Chloe go limp in his arms once more.
The address he’d given was a modern high-rise with a basement garage—he’d spent a few weeks there several years ago with a beautiful model from Ethiopia. The last time in recent memory that he’d spent any time away from the job. She’d been warm, affectionate and sexually inventive, and he’d been very fond of her. He couldn’t even remember her name.
“Could I ask you to drive us into the parking garage?” Bastien asked. “The elevator is right there and I could get my wife up to bed that much faster.”
“Of course,
monsieur
.” The poor man had no idea. He drove under the building, into the darkened parking garage, and pulled up to the elevator. He even got out of the taxi to help Bastien with Chloe’s limp form. He never knew what hit him.
It would have made sense to kill him. Slit his throat and leave him in the cul-de-sac behind the elevator, where no one would find him for days. By then Chloe would be long gone, and Bastien wouldn’t care.
But at the last minute Bastien remembered the four children and the wife the size of a water buffalo, and for some reason he felt sentimental. It was probably just defiance—they had turned him into a man who would kill without compunction, and he wanted to do the opposite of what he’d been trained.
The driver had a roll of duct tape in the trunk of the taxi—it saved his life. Bastien wrapped him tightly, efficiently, stuffing the man’s own handkerchief in his
mouth before sealing it. They’d find him sooner or later—he figured he had at best six hours, maybe less. Chloe was still in the back seat of the cab, and he left her there, closing the door and climbing into the driver’s seat. He flicked on the
Pas de Service
sign, and drove out into the early-morning sunlight, a taxi driver on his way home after a long night’s work.
Too bad he didn’t kill the driver—it would have given them a solid twelve hours before his wife reported him missing, maybe longer. And the disappearance of one taxi driver wouldn’t be treated with much deference by the Paris police department. They would probably assume he’d gone off with a girlfriend and would return to the wrath of his wife eventually.
Another sign of why he’d outlived his usefulness, Bastien thought. Mercy was a weakness an operative couldn’t afford. He glanced into the back seat. Chloe was curled up on the seat, his coat wrapped tightly around her body, her eyes open and staring. Sooner or later the shock was going to wear off, and she was going to start screaming. He needed to get her someplace safe before that happened.
He couldn’t get her on a plane until that evening. For a moment he considered driving her to a smaller airport, like Tours, but then rejected it. They would be watching all the airports—he stood a better chance at Charles de Gaulle where he had a few connections even Thomason and the others didn’t know about.
He found the house easily enough, though he spent a good twenty minutes circling it, alert to the possibility of surveillance. They’d stopped using the place two years ago when it had been hopelessly compromised, and while the Committee would remember to check it eventually, they would be more likely to go through the current safe houses first. Again, another few hours added to the precious horde he was building.
As far as he could tell no one was watching. It was a huge old house on the very outskirts of Paris, abandoned since the 1950s. It was sitting on a prime piece of real estate, and it was a wonder no one had forced enquiries into the ownership. On paper it belonged to the family of an old lady whose estate was so complicated it would never be resolved. In truth it had once been the home of a collaborator, the attics filled with looted treasure. That treasure had been part of the Committee war chest—whoever had owned the priceless works of art and jewelry would no longer be alive to benefit from them.
It also came equipped with a secret room where the previous owner had hidden for three weeks when the allies had liberated Paris. Bastien himself had spent several days there, and it was as protected a place as he could think of. He’d been operating on very little sleep for the past few days, and he needed just an hour or two before his brain could function properly once more. Before he could make the right decisions, instead of foolishly sentimental ones.
He drove down the narrow alleyway that led behind the house, closed the sagging wooden gates behind them, and stashed the taxi near some bushes, hoping it might avoid aerial surveillance. He only needed a few hours.
He pulled Chloe from the back seat, and she moved like an automaton. It might be nice if he could count on her being out of it for the next few hours, but he’d already had more than his share of luck. He walked her through the empty building, up littered stairways, past broken windows and abandoned furniture, up three flights to the empty attics. Her dazed state lasted until he pushed the button hidden at the side of the old chimney and the door slid open, exposing the small room.
He was unprepared for her reaction. She went from limp obedience to full-bodied panic, lashing out at him, trying to bolt, screaming…
There were a number of ways to silence a person, render them unconscious. If he’d realized she was about to flip out he would have been able to do it more gently, but he had no choice but to hit her, just so, and everything drained from her terrified body.
He caught her as she fell, dragging her into the tiny room and closing the door behind them. They were enclosed in darkness, but he knew the space very well indeed. The rest of the house had no electricity, but this one room had once been very well wired. He wasn’t about to check—he wasn’t about to do anything that
would signal their presence here. He dragged her over to the bed against the wall and dumped her down on it, lifting her legs up and pulling his coat around her. There was only one window in the place, overhead and covered with a blackout curtain that no light could penetrate.
She would be unconscious for at least an hour, maybe more. He glanced at his watch, the number glowing in the dark, the only light in the inky blackness. It was just after eight in the morning, and he hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours. It wouldn’t make sense to head out to the airport for another twelve hours, and in the meantime, even an hour’s sleep would make a difference.
The bed was a narrow one, and he had no intention of doing anything to disturb her. He’d slept in worse places, and he was a creature of discipline. He took one of the thin wool blankets from the bed, covering her with the other, and stretched out on the hardwood floor. His body hurt—he felt old at thirty-two. Working for the Committee was a younger man’s game—this kind of shit aged you like dog years.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep immediately. But just as his spirit was rebelling against the Committee, his body was rebelling against its training. He lay there for five minutes, staring up into the darkness, listening to the sound of her breathing, wondering what the hell he was doing.
And then he slept.
She was trapped. Smothered in a blind darkness, the weight of it pressing down on her, stealing her sight, stealing her breath, darkness and the smell of blood all around, and she could see Sylvia lying there in a pool of red, her throat slashed, her eyes staring, her favorite dress ruined by the blood that had soaked into it. She would be furious about that. She would have wanted to be buried in that dress, she loved it so much. He’d slashed her throat—the man had
slashed
her
throat
—the same man who told her he’d kill her? And she’d let him take her, blindly, out into this darkness where she couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only open her mouth to scream….
He caught her as she flung herself off the bed, his arms like bands of iron around her body. She fought him like a crazy woman, alone in the darkness with death and blood pressing down on her, but he was much, much stronger. He put his hand over her mouth to silence her, and she bit him, as hard as she could, her teeth digging in, bit him until she could taste blood, and he didn’t flinch.
“If you don’t calm down I’ll be forced to break your neck,” he whispered in her ear as he held her tight against him. “I’m getting tired of dealing with you.”
She struggled, though not as wildly, and he moved his hand from her mouth, enough to let her speak. She could barely manage to choke out the words.
“I…can’t breathe….” she whispered. “It’s too dark. I…can’t bear it. Please…” She didn’t know what she was begging for, and she wouldn’t have thought it would do her any good, but he suddenly hauled her up against him, so that they were both standing on the narrow bed, and with one arm he pushed overhead, and the darkness fell away as he opened a window in the low roof and held her up to it.
The air was cool and crisp and clean, and she drew in deep lungsful of it, drinking it like water in a desert. Slowly her panicked heart quieted its racing beat, slowly her breathing returned to a semblance of normalcy, and she looked out over the rooftops of Paris on a cold winter’s morning as the first hint of calm touched her heart.
She leaned back against him as he supported her, letting the fear and tension drain from her body. “If you’re tired of dealing with me then why don’t you just let me go?”
He didn’t answer. He simply shifted her body against his, and his face was next to hers as he looked out with her. “How long have you been claustrophobic?” he asked. “All your life? You don’t strike me as someone who’d be crippled by complexes.”
“Since I was eight. We own a lot of land in North Carolina, including an abandoned mine where my older brothers used to play. They didn’t know I’d followed them, and I got lost there, and they didn’t find me until
the next morning. I haven’t been able to bear dark, closed-in places ever since.” She was talking too much, but she couldn’t help it.
He said nothing. The air was icy cold—she could see her breath in front of her, see the mist from his mouth as well, and the two mingled in the sunlight before dissipating. She was still wrapped in his coat, but even through the layers of clothes she could feel the strength and power in his lean, elegant body.