Pause.
“It’s not like that,” Morbier said, shaking his head.
“Look me in the face for once and tell the truth. You’re Tesla.”
His voice grew cold. “If I tell you what really happened, you’re dead, Leduc.”
Fear shot through her. “You’d kill me just like that.”
“This thing’s bigger than you and me,” he said. “You’ll never know how big. We’re just tiny cogs in the big machine.”
Cogs in the machine—Dussollier’s words.
“Don’t try shifting the blame. You can’t just claim conspiracy.”
“We were all in it, Leduc. All of us.”
Her papa … non, non. She couldn’t hear this from Morbier too. “Liar.”
“Your insistence on finding your mother.” Morbier shook his head. “Good God, do you know how that hurt him? He’d sacrificed his career to get her out of the country. Have you ever thought about the deal he had to make to protect you and her?”
Her cheeks felt wet. She rubbed her face. She couldn’t stop the shaking in her legs.
“What do you mean?”
“He cooperated. Otherwise your crazy mother would have ended up in an unmarked grave. He couldn’t face that. Or face you.”
Realization seared her. The timing—it added up. Her mother vanishing, then Papa helping cover up the Leseur affair? Had he cooperated because he’d struck a deal?
“Your Papa had had enough. Wanted out. So many times I tried to tell you,” said Morbier. A sigh. “But I knew you couldn’t hear it—would refuse to understand.”
“That you killed Papa?”
“That I didn’t get to Place Vend?me in time,” he said. “Couldn’t warn him.”
Was that true? “And you expect me to believe that?”
“You’re like a daughter to me.” Morbier’s voice choked with emotion. “Don’t you think I wanted to stop lying? I’ve tried to do right, to make it up. When I did they trumped up charges against me, threw me in jail. Remember? You got me out.”
“That’s history now.” Then it hit her. She’d been so stupid. The scene outside her door on the quai after the baptism—she’d been crazed with anger because of Melac’s threat at the church. Dussollier had already left—he couldn’t have overheard Nicu’s plea. She wanted to kick herself. “You overheard Nicu at my door after the baptism, and then you disappeared. It was you who told Dussollier I was on my way. You abducted Drina.” She grabbed the bench, trying to still her shaking hands. “Then had the gall to come back with cold hands, drink tisane in my kitchen. And when I thought you were having a heart attack you … made me promise …” Her throat caught.
Morbier’s brows knit. “I warned Dussollier, tried to reason with him, but the crazy fool—”
“You went along with Dussollier, always have.”
“So did your papa. What does that matter now? Move on.”
“I’ve got the whole list of contacts on Dussollier’s phone. Incriminating voice mails. One from you, too.”
“You’d do that, Leduc?” His voice, tired and flat.
“Dussollier’s out of the picture.”
“What do you mean?” His jowls sagged.
“Veuve Cliquot or no, it came down to him or me, Morbier.”
He stared at her. Her swollen hand. Understanding suddenly shone in his eyes.
“I never thought I’d do this.” Morbier reached for the thick bulge under his jacket. Where he kept his shoulder holster.
“Nor did I, Morbier.” She flashed her penlight twice, three times. Almost at once on her signal, the bushes rustled. Three gendarmerie officers from l’école Militaire emerged in blue uniforms, their Uzis leveled.
“Hands up! Nice and slow,” barked the lead officer.
Morbier had reached in his pocket. The shot slammed his shoulder. Seconds later they’d grappled him to the ground. Cuffed him, bleeding and facedown on the gravel. Pulled a shaking Aimée aside.
“What’s that in his hand?”
She kneeled down. Shone her penlight. His nicotine-stained fingers clutched the photo of her holding Chloé, smiling at the baptism. His grip slackened, his hand went limp and the photo fell on a trampled hydrangea leaf.
THE SEINE FLOWED slick and black under the night sky. The clusters of globed lights strung from the Left Bank to the Right over Pont Alexandre III made her think of a sparkling necklace. Her head leaned against the cold glass of the ambulance’s window, which was streaked with her tears.
Loud beeping came from the cardiac monitor. “Step on it,” said the medic to the driver.
“Will he make it?”
“That’s for the ER to say,” said the medic.
THEY WOULDN’T LET her beyond the swing doors to the operating room. Her last view of him—tubes in his arm, blood-soaked chest, crumpled Gauloise packet, and the basset-hound eyes she loved—was unfocused and brimming with tears.
René met her in the waiting room at l’H?pital de l’H?tel-Dieu.
“Let’s go, Aimée,” he said. “You can’t do anything here. They’ll call.”
She shook her head. How could she live with herself after this?
A surgical nurse in green scrubs came through the swing doors.
Her heart clenched.
“Before we wheeled him into surgery,” the nurse said, “he insisted I find you and say, ‘You’d be late to your own funeral. Go home to Chloé.’ ”