“Tell me the last tracker location, René.”
“Champ de Mars. Hasn’t moved for at least seven, maybe nine minutes. Leseur must have wised up, found the tracker and ditched it. There’s another expensive piece of tech down the drain …”
She’d have hell to pay if she didn’t recover René’s pricey toy. Up ahead by the bushes near the bench where Fran?oise had argued with Leseur, Filou was barking nonstop, dragging Fran?oise on the leash behind him.
“Filou’s gone crazy,” Fran?oise said as Aimée caught up, the phone still to her ear. “I don’t know what’s the matter.” She pulled the dog’s leash hard, commanded him to heel.
But there was Roland Leseur, sitting on the bench just where Fran?oise had left him. Determined to get what more she could out of him, she hurried ahead.
“Monsieur Leseur?”
No answer. Then she noticed the way his head slumped on his neck.
“Can you hear me, Monsieur?” In the rising mist tinged by the yellow-orange glow of the Tour Eiffel, she shone her penlight. Blood pooled on the gravel by his shoe. She gasped. Stepped back. Then she stepped closer again and felt for a pulse. None. Her throat caught. His wrist was still warm.
“Deactivate the tracker, René. Now.”
“Doing it as we speak. That was an expensive move, Aimée.”
“Go call SAMU from the pay phone down in the café,” she said. “Tell them to respond to an incident on the fifth bench up from the corner of rue Marinoni.”
“What kind of incident?”
“Roland Leseur’s not on the move after all, and he never will be again.”
“What?”
“He’s dead.” She looked down at his chest. The dripping red slit blossoming on his shirt. “A shiv in the ribs.”
Like Nicu. A scream behind her, then a frantic voice shouting. “Roland?”
“Call me a taxi for the corner of rue Marinoni and Avenue de la Bourdonnais.” She thought again. “No, make it corner of rue Saint-Dominique and Avenue de la Bourdonnais. Quick, René.” She clicked off. “Don’t look, Fran?oise. We need to get out of here.”
“Roland … Non, non.” Fran?oise burst into sobs.
“Don’t touch him.” Aimée pulled Fran?oise away, grabbed the leash and pulled the frantic dog away from the corpse. “Let’s go. Quickly, move.”
“But we can’t leave him like that.”
“The ambulance and the flics are en route.”
Fran?oise struggled and broke away.
Aimée caught up with her and wrapped her arms around the flailing woman. “They’re here somewhere. I don’t know how many or who. But we have to get away. Get to safety. Do you understand?”
“But my house is right here, my daughter’s waiting at home. The dog.”
Didn’t the woman understand the danger?
“You’re all going to a hotel. With the dog. Just do what I say.”
Aimée dragged her by the arm and across the entry to the marionette theater.
Fran?oise let herself be led, finally. She was breathless and weeping, but she was no longer hysterical. “It was true,” she said as Aimée guided her, one arm tight around her shoulders. “Someone’s been trying to kill him.”
Aimée’s gut clenched. This sobbing woman shaking under her arm, the barking dog and a siren screeching closer didn’t help.
“Please, can you make it to the corner? There’s a taxi waiting.”
“I want to go home.”
“You can’t. We’ll call your daughter. They’re watching.”
“My daughter’s deaf.” Fran?oise wiped her tear-stained face. “They won’t be watching the servants’ entrance. It’s round the back.”
Fran?oise fumbled in her trench coat pocket and pulled out a key ring. Tried repeatedly to insert the large old-fashioned key in a metal door of the back gate. The jangling keys were frying Aimée’s nerves.
“Here, let me.”
On the second try, the key turned. Aimée pushed and the door scraped open. Wet leaves lined the garden’s rear service path. Once inside the house’s service entrance, she followed Fran?oise up a musty wooden staircase. Fran?oise opened the door to a dark pantry, and Aimée wiped her boots and stepped inside behind her. Filou ran to a water bowl and slurped.
They passed through the kitchen and entered a tapestry-lined dining room. Wooden crates and half-filled cardboard boxes gave the room a forlorn feel.
“I’m packing up the house. In the midst of moving everything—”
“Keep the lights off,” Aimée interrupted. She immediately wished she’d phrased it more gently. The woman was in shock. “Désolée, but you don’t have much time. Do you have your passport?”
“But my daughter—”
“Does she have one?”
“Why should I involve my daughter?”
“Diplomatic passports would be even better. Do you both carry them?”
“Of course, but … what kind of security are you? I’m through with being a pawn passed between the services. Who do you work for?”
“Explanations later. You and your daughter could be next.”
Fran?oise’s mouth tightened. Strands of hair loosened from her ponytail as she shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“So you’d prefer to wait and find out, like Roland did?”
She didn’t know if Fran?oise was actually next. She didn’t know what the hell was going on. But she’d made too many mistakes already. Everything in her vibrated with fear and told her to get them out of here.
“What if you were the target?” said Aimée. “But no one counted on you arguing with Roland and taking off, or on me entering the picture. Maybe that saved you—Roland was collateral damage because he suspected or knew too much.”