“If you want to keep Chloé safe and unhurt,” said a robotic voice, “forget Gerard Delavigne. Burn everything. We’ll know.” Click. Left fifteen minutes ago, according to the time stamp.
Her heart hammered. She ran barefoot to the kitchen and parted the curtains. Below, a man leaned on the quai wall, smoking and watching her door. A blue van sat parked. The blue van she’d seen before Nicu was knifed at the Métro. It hadn’t been there half an hour ago, when they’d returned from the park. Or had it? Her hands shook.
Priorities. She had ignored the warnings, the risks, the bodies piling up. And now they were threatening Chloé. She had to think for this little person with the bunny-ear cap.
Something Morbier had told her long ago came back to her—that her mother hadn’t abandoned Aimée as a child; she had left to protect her. Maybe it was true. Could Aimée do the same? Was that a choice she had forced herself to make?
This threat galvanized her into action, her adrenaline coursing. She had to end this. Even if she burned the documents like they asked, even if she and Chloé were safe for today, there’d still be tomorrow or next week. Good God, they’d parked outside her door.
She knew what she had to do. Within five minutes, she’d made two calls and packed up her laptop and essentials for Chloé. Time to travel light.
“Let’s go, Miles Davis.”
He cocked his ears.
“Chloé and I are taking a vacation. You too, with your favorite concierge.” She donned her leather jacket and put a sleeping Chloé in the sling looped over her shoulder.
At Madame Cachou’s, she handed over Miles Davis’s leash. For once the busybody nodded, no questions asked. “Why, it’s just like this spy thriller I’m reading. Espionage, double agents—I’ll keep a look out.”
“You do that, Madame Cachou. But first go talk to that man smoking over there. Keep him occupied. And keep Miles Davis safe.”
Across the courtyard, at Gabrielle’s house, Beno?t answered the door. He was wearing an apron over jeans and nothing else. Impressive abs.
Flustered, she looked away. Wonderful smells drifted from the kitchen—cilantro, mint, citrus, coconut. She wanted to lick the wooden spoon in his hand.
“More pot-au-feu? It was delicious, by the way.”
Lame. She sounded like a schoolgirl. But there was no time to worry about that now.
“Lemongrass soup,” he said. “I heard what happened at the park,” he said. “Babette’s so sorry over what happened. She’s gutted.”
“I know.” Aimée cut him off, cradling Chloé in the sling. “I need a favor. It’s vital, or I wouldn’t ask.”
He nodded, giving her his full attention.
“If anyone, I mean anyone, asks, you don’t know where we’ve gone. When we’re coming back. Can you do that?”
“So it’s true, what I’ve noticed.”
He probably figured her for a paranoid neurotic, based on each of their encounters. “Look, if you could—”
“Say that you’ve probably taken your baby out of the country, non?” He handed her a set of keys. His warm fingers rested on hers, then gripped them. The heat of his hand spread up her wrist like fire.
Down, girl.
“Use my sister’s back carriage door downstairs,” he said. “Leave them on the ledge.”
MICHOU, RENé’S TRANSVESTITE neighbor, opened the door and grinned, still in his show makeup. “You brought my sweet pea!” Michou waved them inside. “An emergency, you said, always an emergency with you, ma chérie. Zut, I came straight from rehearsal at the club.”
While Michou removed his makeup, Aimée put a yawning Chloé down for a nap. Later, over a cafetière full of coffee, Aimée explained in detail.
“Chloé won’t be out of my sight, Aimée.” Michou, a former merchant seaman, held his own and more in a fight. “Or Viard’s, when I have a show. He’s earned his black belt.” Michou gave a big smile. “I’m so proud.”
“You two still in the honeymoon stage?”
Michou’s lover, Viard, who directed a crime lab, had moved in after they’d been together for three years. Aimée had introduced them.
Michou rubbed the stubble on his cheek and sighed. “Now we’ve got a bébé to take care of. Wonderful.” He paused, arching a plucked eyebrow. “Does René know?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.” She needed to keep him out of danger. “I owe you, Michou.” Aimée downed the last of her coffee. “Got to go.” She hoped Michou hadn’t noticed how much her hands were shaking.
“Be careful, ma chérie.” His big hands, with purple lacquered nails, closed around hers. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Wednesday Evening
“REMINDS ME OF when we used to do our homework here after school, Aimée, remember?”
Martine made a face at Aimée over her aunt’s desk, which was tucked in a closet-sized office in back of the nineteenth-century linen shop on rue du Bac.
“Only we’ve got laptops instead of pencils, Martine,” she said. On her screen was a Leduc proposal she was preparing to return to Maxence. Open beside her was Gerard Delavigne’s blue folder, containing the list of names. She’d spent several hours researching them, hoping to trace all the names on the list. But so far her digital search of an outdated police database had only revealed that several on the list were deceased, several others in the police nursing home outside of Paris—in gagaland.
Martine’s Le Monde contact’s archives had turned up Blauet, the former police commissaire, who’d retired to Martinique in 1985 and ran a fishing-boat business. Her phone call reached the canned, impersonal recording on Blauet’s answering machine. She’d come up with what she hoped was a plausible story for a police reunion and left him a message with her inquiry. It was a risk, but she decided to leave him the fax number for Martine’s aunt’s shop. All she could do was keep trying.
The bell on the shop door rang as it opened.