by Alex Archer
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“I should hope so.” She made the shape of a gun with her fingers and thumb and mimed putting a bullet through his brain.
Did this woman really value life so cheaply?
Annja’s blade had tasted blood often enough, but that didn’t mean that she would ever kill if there was an alternative. All life was precious.
“And me? Am I just another loose end to be put out of my misery?”
“You? Oh no, not at all. You are far more important than that. I am sure my brother will tell you all about it when you meet him.”
“Brother?”
“Enough with the questions. This isn’t a quiz show. One more and I’ll tape your mouth shut. You’re almost as bad as your friend.”
“What friend?”
“The pretty one. Garin.”
“Have you killed him, too?”
“Killed him? Certainly not, why would I? He’s vital to what’s happening. He’s been most helpful.”
Annja thought of everything Roux had told her about the midnight visit and the theft from the vault and muttered, “I’ll kill him.”
“That’s entirely up to you, but not until we’re finished with him.”
26
Garin woke with an irresistible urge to vomit.
His head was on fire.
The blood inside his skull pounded so fiercely against the bone walls he couldn’t bring himself to move.
The slightest roll set off a drill inside his head.
Garin squeezed his eyes shut tight to drive it away.
The only light, a thin gauze, came from the doorway that had to lead into the bathroom.
His mind was full of jumbled memories that made no sense and had no order.
There had been a blonde woman, that much he remembered. But any more than that he struggled to hold on to.
His mouth was dry, but the lingering taste of whiskey convinced him she’d slipped something into his drink.
“Monique,” he said, testing the word in his mouth. It came out as little more than a mumble.
Then he was hit with the last thing that had filled his mind before it had given up its grip on consciousness.
Garin fought against the nausea as he saw the shape of the body sprawled on the bed.
He had let his guard down, and the woman had taken advantage of the moment.
No.
She had engineered it.
It took a second for him to realize that she most certainly had taken the papers, and more pertinently, he had been tricked out of his finder’s fee.
Not good.
He cursed himself for an idiot, even though there was only a corpse to hear him.
He needed to get out of there before anyone came up to the suite. If anyone found him in here with a body he was in danger, which, of course, was exactly why she’d left him alone with the corpse in the first place.
He was such an idiot sometimes.
He managed to get to his feet, shaky and unsteady, one hand to his forehead—finger and thumb pressing against his temples to hold back the throbbing that increased in intensity as he moved upright—the other against the wall to keep from falling. After a heartbeat or two the intense wave of nausea started to pass.
He opened his eyes again to take a proper look at the body on the bed.
There was something familiar about the man.
More than familiar.
Garin knew him.
Eventually a name came to his lips, a name he had not heard for at least a couple of years. Jake Thornton. Thornton had been in a line of business that Garin took an interest in—the trafficking of relics and mementos of the past—though the dead man had been more interested in stealing them from museums and galleries than digging them out of the ground.
But what was he doing here?
And more importantly, how had he ended up dead?
More and more questions tumbled into Garin’s mind, each one arriving with all the clarity of a nail being driven home.
Twenty-four hours ago this had seemed like a straightforward kind of job, good money for minimal exertion. The money had blinded him. Staring at the bed, he figured Thornton had made the same kind of mistake.
He splashed water on his face and looked at the drawn and drained features that stared back at him in the mirror.
He was starting to feel more like himself, but he had the overwhelming urge to sleep, convinced that it would all feel better when he woke up. Sleep wouldn’t change the fact that there was a corpse on the bed. A corpse he had a connection to. But before he left, he would get rid of whatever traces there were that would lead the authorities to know that he had been in the room.
Garin used the towel from the bathroom to wipe every surface he could remember touching, trying his best to retrace his steps. But it was almost impossible through the drugged haze of memory to recall everything he’d come into contact with since following Monique into the room. There was only one glass on the table in the living area, the other had been washed and replaced on the tray. It didn’t take much to realize that the woman had already erased every bit of her presence. With a last glance over his shoulder, he left and closed the door behind him.
He slipped the do not disturb sign on the doorknob and headed for the elevator.
The short trip down to the lobby was barely long enough to compose himself, get his breathing in order, calm his jittery nerves, with all of the questions playing over and over inside his head.
He needed to think, go back over what he knew, see if he could piece together the component parts: Who could have wanted those documents badly enough to kill for them? Next up, why? Why was Jake Thornton lying dead in that room while Garin was still alive? Was that just because he was meant to be the patsy, or had Thornton retrieved something with extra significance to their scheme? Or had he just become too greedy and paid the price?
The answers would have to wait, at least until he’d gotten out of the hotel.
Admittedly there were cameras, and almost certainly the woman had booked the room in his name. Her mysterious boss wouldn’t have brought the bodies to his own door. There was too much that would connect Garin to the room, and not a lot he could do about any of it.
The elevator door slid open.
He took a first step onto the plush red carpet that covered the lobby.
He focused on the glass doors that exited onto the street, not making eye contact with anyone as he made his way across the foyer. He stepped aside as bellmen carried luggage in from the taxi that stood outside.
A woman struggled to keep in check a young child who was clearly overtired, but she didn’t even seem to notice him.
The door opened almost silently as he approached, the air that rushed in feeling warm against the chill of the air-conditioned lobby.
The doorman looked up from his conversation with the taxi driver and gave him a smile.
“Good evening, Mr. Braden,” he said. “Would you like me to get your car?”
So much for anonymity. The man knew his name. He’d been set up good and proper. “My car?” He was about to say that he hadn’t brought his car, but thought better of it.
“Yes, sir. Your lady friend dropped it off for you a little while ago. I trust you are enjoying your stay.” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.
“Absolutely,” Garin said, wondering just how deep a hole she had left him in.
The doorman not only knew his name, but could put him in the hotel where Thornton’s body was slowly decaying. Sooner or later he’d be tied to the man’s murder. He needed to know who was behind everything before then if he stood a chance of wriggling out of this mess.
He knew that there was only one person who’d be able to help him, but given that he’d just robbed him, he didn’t imagine Roux would be very forthcoming. Life was funny like that sometimes.
27
Roux was having a hard time keeping the smile from his face as he left the police
station.
He’d promised Cauchon’s goon that he would make a few calls, and that he should just relax, enjoy the solitude of his surroundings, because he’d be getting out of there before too long. He enjoyed lying to the man. He had no intention of helping either thug, even if they had given him the first solid clue he could follow back to Cauchon. He couldn’t afford to waste the opportunity he’d just been handed. If Cauchon got wind of the fact that Roux had the number, he would destroy the SIM card, and that would be that, another dead end.
As soon as he was back at the hotel, he tried to call Annja’s room, but there was no reply.
There was something going on here. He didn’t really understand it, but there was no denying the danger that Annja was being dragged into because of him.
He tried her cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail.
“Call me,” he said, and ended the call, frustrated. He tossed the phone onto the bed.
He needed to do something. The only problem was he didn’t really know what.
He hoped that Annja would be able to help.
Part of him wanted to call the only person he was sure would know someone who could trace the call, but he couldn’t bear to even think his name right now, let alone hear his voice. He would do this without Garin. Somehow. There were always alternatives. He just had to find them.
Ten minutes later Roux was still pacing the small room trying to work out his next move. Even though he had checked his cell phone every couple of minutes there was still no sign of Annja returning his call. His anxiety was broken at the sound of the courtesy phone at the side of the bed. He snatched up the receiver.
“Annja?”
“Philippe.”
“That’s no help at all. I don’t know a Philippe,” Roux said, realizing how cranky he sounded.
“Annja’s cameraman,” the other man said. “I was hoping she might be with you. I saw you together in the lobby earlier. I had to bribe the receptionist to put me through to you. She wouldn’t give me your room number.”
Roux hadn’t noticed him. He was getting sloppy in his old age.
He didn’t make a habit of befriending Annja’s colleagues. Distance was the best method to retain his privacy. That was something he valued above everything else, which was why he could not understand how Cauchon—whoever he really was—knew so much about him. Although, this wasn’t the first time someone had gotten too close to him. The memory of the young journalist twenty years ago still haunted him sometimes. He hadn’t wanted him dead; he had just wanted to be left alone. It shouldn’t be a lot to ask of the world.
“Are you telling me that you don’t know where she is?”
“Annja was supposed to meet me at the cathedral. She said she was on her way so I hung around for almost an hour, but she didn’t show. I tried her phone, but she didn’t answer and she hasn’t replied to the message I left on her voice mail.”
Roux didn’t like anything about that. “Where would she go?”
“I have no idea,” the Frenchman admitted. “But it doesn’t seem to be out of character. She gets the whiff of something interesting and off she runs without giving a second thought to anyone else.”
“Sorry. I haven’t seen her,” Roux said. “I’m waiting for her to call back. I’ll let you know when she does.”
“Great. I’m in room 221.”
Roux replaced the receiver and listened to the noise of movement in the hallway: people opening and closing doors; housekeepers starting their daily routine, pushing cleaning carts along the corridor. They were the sounds of normality, the world going on as if nothing had changed, but it had. Annja hadn’t just gone off chasing another story. He knew her better than that. She might not have heeded his warning and still left the hotel, but she would have kept her phone with her so they could remain in touch. That thing was glued to her hip. If she wasn’t answering her phone, it was because she was in trouble.
Suddenly he felt absolutely helpless to do anything about it.
His cell phone rang while he was staring at it, willing it to ring. He grabbed it, praying that it was her, but it wasn’t. It was the last person in the world he wanted to speak to.
“Garin,” he said flatly. He should have just ignored the call, let it go through to voice mail. He wasn’t ready to talk to the man yet.
“Roux,” said the voice at the other end of the phone. “I think I might be in trouble.”
28
Annja listened as the blonde woman walked away from her.
She took the opportunity to try to work her hands free, but the plastic ties that bound her wrists bit into her flesh, cutting deep into her skin until they were slick with her blood.
She fought against the pain, but the restraints showed no sign of giving way.
Annja shuffled along the ground, sliding her back against the crypt, feeling for the edge of the stone in the hope of using it to burn through plastic, working it back and forth quickly.
Beads of sweat started to form on her forehead as she concentrated, worrying the plastic against the stone. No matter how furiously she worked the tie, there was no sign of the tension changing.
She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes against the fierce burning sensation and tried again, the sound of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears, blocking out everything else.
Annja concentrated so hard on freeing herself, only one thought was on her mind: being able to call her sword from its resting place.
She closed her eyes.
Breathed deeply.
She had no doubt that the woman would be no match for her in a fair fight, with or without the sword, but she wanted the sword. She wanted to close her fingers around the hilt and feel its reassuring strength in her hand, to feel its energy sing in her blood, the thrill of it bringing her truly alive again.
Annja screamed, unable to remain silent as the air was expelled from her lungs and her ribs exploded with pain.
She opened her eyes to see the woman standing over her.
She had been so caught up in the effort to free herself that she hadn’t even heard her return.
“You’re going to have to work harder than that to get out of those,” the woman said, her voice dripping with smug loathing.
Annja resisted as her captor put her hand on her head and pushed Annja onto her side. She went down. The woman yanked her arms back agonizingly in the joints to examine her efforts. She felt a sudden surge of pain as the woman tightened the plastic ties, burying them deep in Annja’s bloody wrists.
Annja gritted her teeth, bracing herself as best she could against the added tension.
The woman was stronger than she looked, and as long as she had her hands tied, there was nothing that Annja could do apart from wait. She’d tell her why she was here eventually, and what her brother had in mind for her. Until then she would just have to stay calm, conserve her strength and gather her wits. She needed to learn as much as she could about where she was and what was going on in the hope that anything she did find out might be useful later.
“You won’t have too much longer to wait,” the woman said, as if she could read her mind. “We’ll be leaving here soon enough.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might. You tell me.”
The woman laughed. “Oh, the naiveté. Let me just squash that hope right now. It won’t make any difference to what happens to you. I’m going to have to leave you for a while now, but please, don’t waste your time trying to escape. Even if you did manage to somehow work yourself free of those ties, there’s no way out of this place. One door, one key, and believe me, I’ll be locking the door behind me when I go. I should be back before the lamp runs out. Unfortunately for you, I won’t be gone long enough for you to dig a tunnel.” She smiled. “And just in case it had crossed your mind, no one will be able to hear you, no matter how loud you scream.”
“People will be looking for me.”
“The sa
me people we are looking for, so let them come. It only makes our job easier. Besides, let’s be honest. No matter how hard they look, they are never going to find you down here.”
Annja listened to the sound of heels on the stairs, counting the steps as the woman climbed.
Ten steps, then a pause as she opened a door.
The groan spoke of centuries of accumulated rust on hinges.
Even the sound of the key turning in the lock echoed in that quiet chamber, the bolt dropping into place with a heavy clunk.
The flame in the lantern flickered for an instant as the air moved, then settled down to a steady burn once again.
It was all Annja could concentrate on.
It helped to drive the other questions out of her head, allowing her to concentrate on the very first one: How was she going to get her hands free?
29
“Roux?” There was silence.
Garin assumed that the old man had hung up on him.
He had made some lame excuse to the doorman about leaving his keycard behind in the room, and turned around and gone back inside. At least while he was there he could delay the discovery of the body, until the smell became a problem. He needed to come up with a plan for dealing with the disposal of a corpse. The one thing on his side was that he was a creative thinker. He knew people. Get rid of the body. That had to be his course of action. If he could pull that off, then there was a chance that he’d get away with a murder he hadn’t committed.
“What do you want?” Roux replied eventually. “Haven’t you taken enough from me already?”
Garin didn’t have a plausible lie, and wasn’t about to pretend he hadn’t been the one who’d broken into the old man’s vault. The fact was that lies came more easily to his lips than the truth, but this time he was going to have to be straight with the old man.
