A little taller than Nat, I had an easier time getting myself up and over. The vanity was a modern slab of concrete, studded with tiny fossils and empty of any toiletries. A sleek, smoked-glass sink sat on top, and I straddled it as I eased my way onto the vanity. Nat held up a hand to help me down, and I dropped to my feet on the flokati rug. We stood in the silence, listening for any sound of movement. There was a faint rustle as Carapaz turned over in bed and a long, rippling fart followed by a snore.
God, I love men, but they are disgusting. We waited another few minutes to make certain he was settled again before we crept out of the bathroom. The bedside light was still on, glowing softly. We paused at the doorway, taking in the scene. He must have fallen asleep reading. A file folder was open on the bed, reading glasses still perched on the end of his nose. Natalie went first, moving noiselessly across the parquet floor. After the modern atrocity of the bathroom, I’d been afraid he had remodeled the heart out of the old house, but I was glad to see he’d kept the original floors. There was a long expanse to cover before reaching the end of the room where the bed stood—a wide, low California king, which seemed excessive in Paris. The room was warm; he’d obviously sprung for central heat at some point, and he’d gotten the duvet twisted around his legs, probably when he was trying to kick it off. It made me wonder if he was sleeping poorly.
Something on your conscience, bitch? I moved in Natalie’s wake until we reached the end of the bed, where we divided. She went right, I went left. He was flat on his back, snores bubbling gently from his open mouth. One hand was tucked under his pillow and I gave Nat a quick nod. It didn’t take a genius to realize a gun was stashed under there, and he was clutching it, even in sleep. A well-trained, fully alert person could react in maybe a second and a half to a situation. Add another few seconds for Carapaz to wake, maybe one or two more to account for age. I still didn’t like it. Five seconds wasn’t much time to disarm him, especially at our age. I had done fine during the climb, but my legs and arms were shaking with the effort, and I didn’t figure Nat was in much better shape.
Nat looked at his arm and nodded. His gun hand was on my side, which meant it was up to me to keep him neutralized while Nat finished him. She reached for her trusty Swiss Army knife again, this time choosing the longest blade. It was only two inches long, but she’d sharpened it to a razor’s edge. While we’d been passing time in the tunnels, we’d debated at length where she should hit him. I was partial to the subclavian artery, but Natalie preferred the carotids.
We looked at each other across the bed and mouthed a count.
One. Two. Three.
We probably should have discussed whether we were going to on three or after three. I assumed it would be one-two-three-go!, but Natalie jumped right on three and I was half a beat behind. She leapt on the bed, thrusting the blade up under his jaw and slicing down hard at a slant. His eyes flew open and he let out a roar just as I rushed him. His hand was still under the pillow but he must have squeezed the trigger reflexively because a bullet whizzed out, puncturing the pillow and sending feathers flying into the air. His neck was putting out blood like a gas pump as his free hand went for Nat’s neck and she sliced at his arm, laying open the sleeve of his pajama top. She got lucky; she hit his ulnar artery and blood spewed in an arc.
All of that happened in a few seconds, but it was enough for pandemonium to erupt. He was bleeding out, sitting in a fountain of blood, yet he managed to hit a button on the nightstand. An alarm sounded, piercing and shrill, and from downstairs I could hear a guard dog howling like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Footsteps pounded up the stairs and we scuttled off the bed. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I snatched up the folder as we ran. He was dying, but Carapaz didn’t give up easy. He still had his gun and he got off two shots, one of them just grazing the top of my shoulder as we hit the bathroom at a dead run. Natalie slammed the door closed and locked it as I dove for the window, wrenching it open.
Nat had flung herself through the opening into the utility chase and was hissing at me. “What the actual shit are you doing? Hurry!”
I shoved the folder inside my shirt, using my bra to hold it in place. Then I hauled myself into the utility chase just as the first crashes came against the bathroom door. We hoisted the medicine cabinet back into place. There was no time to secure it, and there was nothing to do but cross our fingers and hope it would stay.
We scuttled down the chase, half falling in our hurry to get to the bottom. Natalie had edged out of it, backing into the cellar just as the medicine cabinet flew back in a fusillade of gunshots. The mirror on the front shattered against the bricks, showering me in glass as I ducked my head. I was almost to the bottom but Carapaz’s bodyguards were already leaning through. They were big boys, thick as linebackers, and there was no way they could get into the chase. But they had guns, and they started shooting immediately. They were shooting into the dark and the bullets ricocheted off the brick, chipping off bits that flew into my hair. It was only a matter of time before one of them thought to get a flashlight, but before they did, hands grabbed my ankles and yanked hard. Natalie hauled me into the cellar and we scrambled to our feet, wheezing. We didn’t dare stop in case one of those hired guns realized how the chase fit into the fabric of the house.
So we raced through the cellar, tipping over stacks of Paris Match as we went. As they fell, I got a brainstorm and flicked open my lighter. The paper was damp and moldy, but it caught. The wine cave was filling with smoke by the time we made our way out, wedging the door closed behind us. We hurried on, twisting and turning for hours through passages too narrow for them to follow even if they tried. The air got colder and wetter, heavy with odors I didn’t even want to try to identify.
We came to a stop when Natalie had to catch her breath. Her color was bad and she was holding her side like she had a stitch. My sweatshirt was soaked in blood from the wound in my shoulder and Nat pointed, gasping out the words. “You . . . okay?”
“Graze,” I said shortly. I looked around, but nothing about this spot was familiar. “Do you know where we are?”
She shook her head and I would have cursed but I didn’t have the energy. Instead I shoved a power gel into her mouth and we started again. We came into a tunnel which was wide enough for a small road with lots of doors leading off of it. I pushed through the first one and found a flight of stairs. I dragged Natalie up until we came to a locked door. She was nearly spent, but she rallied, rubbing her hands together to get some warmth back into them until she was able to maneuver the wires in her fanny pack to pick the lock.
The door led into a stone hut, small and windowless, a few rusted hand tools sitting with a stack of flowerpots in the corner. “It looks like a groundskeeper’s shed,” I said. There was a door on the opposite wall, but this one wasn’t locked. I wasn’t surprised; there was nothing inside worth stealing. We opened it and icy cold air rushed in, but it was fresh. We emerged into an otherworldly landscape, a sea of pale stone crosses as far as we could see. In the center, on a low rise, was a circular tower.
I grinned.
“Welcome to Montparnasse Cemetery,” I said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “We made it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
JULY 1981