by R. J. Jagger
DEJA SMASHED HER BACK against the cave wall and rubbed violently from side to side. Three fist-sized spiders dropped to the ground. Two scampered away. The other balled up and wiggled some of its legs but not the dead ones. Deja stepped back, shivered, and then shined the flashlight ahead, to where the cave bent to the right.
She took a careful step in that direction.
Then another.
And another.
Around the corner, she found a chamber about the size of a bus. At first, nothing of interest emerged. As she shined the light and studied harder, however, several pieces of pottery took shape against the right wall, heavily encased in dirt and dust. She brushed one off and found colorful Egyptian markings.
Her heart raced.
She sensed motion behind her and pointed the flashlight that way.
She saw a spider with long hairy legs and a round brown belly, almost the same color as the rocks. At the head were stingers—poison? It didn’t charge her so she let it be.
At the back of the space, the cave twisted to the left.
She walked that way and found a rough opening about the size of a door.
It led to a third space, an incredibly large space, two or three times bigger than her apartment.
SHE STEPPED INSIDE and found pottery containers, dozens of them, much larger and more obvious than the others. Then she saw something she could hardly believe—a large object near the back wall, a rectangular object shaped like a coffin.
A sound came from it.
She stopped and concentrated but now heard nothing.
Weird.
Was she hallucinating?
Was the darkness playing a trick?
She took another step, stopped and listened again. No sounds came from anywhere. She twisted around and looked for spiders.
She saw none.
She took another step.
There it was again, the sound—
Faint, but there.
Vaguely familiar.
Then it was gone.
She stood still and swept the light. She saw nothing alive. She heard nothing. Her chest pounded. Maybe she should leave.
Then the sound came again, louder, pronounced enough that she recognized it.
The attack sound of a viper!
She shined the light at it.
A large snake was twisting violently across the cave floor directly at her.
She screamed.
The flashlight dropped to the ground, popped with a blue flash and went out.
Then the deepest, darkest blackness in the world engulfed her.
Chapter Sixty
Day Six—July 17
Saturday Afternoon
______________
SOMEONE KNOCKED ON DURAND’S apartment door Saturday afternoon, which was weird, because that almost never happened. He looked through the peephole and saw a face he didn’t expect—Nick Ringer, in the flesh, the infamous shipbuilder himself, the man with more money than some entire nations.
With him was his woman, Nodja Lefebvre, who Durand had met only once before, but even then would have crawled across a field of broken glass just to suck her toes. Her body looked just as good as he remembered, but her face more plain.
Durand let them in and said, “This is unexpected.”
“Sorry to barge in like this,” Ringer said, “but I need to talk to you. It’s not about the investigation you’re doing for me. It’s about something else, a new matter.” A pause. “A delicate matter.”
“How delicate?”
“Very delicate,” Ringer said. “I don’t want to talk here. Let’s take a walk.”
THEY TOOK A STROLL through crowded streets filled with Parisians who were happily poised on the edge of an upcoming Saturday night. The first block was chitchat and then Ringer got to the point.
“I had a man doing a project for me,” he said. “Unfortunately, he got killed in a traffic accident last night. I need to replace him and I need to do it fast.”
“And the project is delicate—”
Ringer nodded.
“Yes.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“I want you to either take over where he left off or point me to someone who can,” Ringer said.
Durand cocked his head.
“What’s the pay?” he asked.
Ringer told him.
“Are you serious?”
Yes.
He was.
Dead.
“I’ll do it,” Durand said.
“Do you want to know what it is first?”
“No, but go ahead and tell me.”
RINGER TOLD HIM.
Then he asked, “Do you still want to do it?”
Durand shrugged.
“Sure, sounds like fun.”
AFTER THEY PARTED, Durand went back to his apartment, fired up the laptop and logged onto the net to see who had been killed in a car accident last night.
He found one fatality, a head-on collision between two vehicles north of the city.
A family of four died in one car.
In the other car, a man named Zacharie Mureau.
The father of the family had reportedly been drinking and crossed the center line.
Chapter Sixty-One
Day Six—July 17
Saturday Afternoon
______________
WHEN DEJA LAFAYETTE DIDN’T ANSWER her cell phone, Fallon called the law firm to see if Deja was at work, and was told by the receptionist that she was scheduled out of the office for the next week or so.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“On holiday?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because everyone talks about their holidays and she didn’t. This was something sudden.”
Teffinger listened, not understanding, and frowned when Fallon explained it in English. He said, “Let’s swing by her apartment.”
Right.
On the way, they passed a red windmill that looked vaguely familiar. Teffinger read the sign—Moulin Rouge. “Is that the can-can place?”
It was.
“Have you ever been there?”
She had.
Everyone in Paris had, once.
“And?”
“And, it’s for tourists,” she said. “There are a hundred better places I can take you if you want to get your blood pumping.”
Five minutes later they came to Deja’s apartment.
They knocked on her door and got no answer.
“Figures,” Teffinger said. “That’s the way my life works.” Then he tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, pushed the door open a couple of inches and shouted, “Anyone home?”
No one answered.
“Anyone here?”
Silence.
HE LOOKED AT FALLON, to give her a chance to stop what he was about to do. When she didn’t, he pushed the door open and stepped in.
The place was trashed.
Pictures had been taken off the wall and slit open at the back. The bed had been sliced open. Food containers had been opened and dumped in the sink—now spoiled and throwing a stench.
“This isn’t good,” Fallon said.
Teffinger agreed.
“This happened days ago, maybe even a week,” he said. “Someone was looking for something. Something small enough to fit in a bottle of catsup.”
“Or mustard.”
“Right, any of your basic condiments.”
They talked to two neighbors on the same floor.
Neither was aware that anything had happened or when it happened. Neither had seen Deja in a week.
FALLON CALLED THE LAW FIRM, got the same receptionist, and asked who at the firm might know where Deja Lafayette was. The receptionist didn’t know.
“Who does she report to?”
“Yves Petit.”
“Is he in the office today?”
“Oui, but—”
“Tell him to stay there, we�
�re going to come down and talk to him.”
“He has clients.”
“We’ll wait if we have to.”
YVES PETIT SHOOK TEFFINGER’S HAND and then smiled at Fallon. He appeared to be in his early forties and had brown hair that he combed straight back. Teffinger immediately took him for a man who enjoyed life. Judging by the size of his office, he held a position of stature in the firm.
“You’re way ahead of me here,” he said to Fallon. “All I know is that this has something to do with Deja. Is she okay?”
Yes as far as they knew.
“We’re trying to locate her,” Fallon said. “Do you know where she is?”
Petit hesitated.
“I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone,” he said, “but I guess this is different. She went to Cairo.”
“Cairo as in Egypt?”
Right.
That one.
“When?”
He scratched his head.
“She tied up some loose ends here at the office on Thursday morning,” he said. “My understanding is that she was going to leave later that day.”
“So what’s in Cairo?”
He didn’t know.
She wouldn’t tell him.
“Something was going on,” he said, “something serious. My suspicion is that she was in some kind of trouble, because she didn’t want me to tell anyone where she was going.”
“So maybe someone was after her?”
Yves shrugged.
“That’s possible,” he said. “I offered to help if she wanted it, but she didn’t. And now you show up. What’s going on?”
Fallon hesitated.
“We’re not sure,” she said.
They talked for another ten minutes. Petit gave them Deja’s email address and the names and numbers of people in the office that Deja talked to on a personal level, but added, “If she would have told anyone, it would have been me.”
OUTSIDE, TEFFINGER ASKED FALLON, “So what do you think?”
“I think he was being straight,” she said. “He doesn’t know any more than what he told us.”
Teffinger shrugged and wasn’t so sure.
Something about the man seemed off.
“She was going to work as late as Thursday,” he said, “but her apartment got trashed a week ago, judging by the food in the sink. So where was she staying in the meantime?”
Good question, very good question.
They passed a restaurant.
Fallon grabbed Teffinger’s hand and pulled him that way.
“I’m starved,” she said. “Feed me.”
Teffinger hesitated.
The place looked expensive, more expensive than food needed to be.
“My treat,” Fallon said.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Day Six—July 17
Saturday
______________
WHEN THE FLASHLIGHT WENT OUT and the world turned black, Deja still had enough of the cave memorized to let her turn and run four or five steps. Then she stretched her hands out and slowed, knowing she might get bit from behind, but not wanting to hit her head and end up on the ground.
Five seconds later she came to a wall.
Now what?
Left or right?
She went left and came to the opening.
When she got through, she saw something beautiful.
Light.
Light.
Light.
Not a lot, but enough to let her move at a good pace through the second chamber, around the corner, to the mouth of the cave. She pushed her backpack out the hole, got on her stomach and slithered out.
The Egyptian sun blasted her face.
It burned her eyes.
Nothing ever felt so good.
“What’d you find?” Alexandra shouted.
“This is it,” Deja said.
But there were snakes.
And she lost the flashlight.
“Okay, plug the hole and come down,” Alexandra said.
THEY GOT BACK TO LUXOR without mishaps or encounters. As suspected, Alexandra’s forearm was broken. She got a cast, but wouldn’t let the doctor run it past her wrist or her elbow, as he wanted.
She needed to be able to climb.
They bought new flashlights.
More rope.
A digital camera.
A large knife.
And a number of burlap sacks because they had to get the snakes out of there before they could work.
“How many do you think there are?” Alexandra asked.
Deja shrugged.
“I only saw the one,” she said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a whole nest.” She frowned and added, “The big question I have is—what do they eat when I’m not around?”
Alexandra grinned, then got serious.
“We can’t get bit,” she said.
“Trust me, I don’t want to.”
“I’m serious,” Alexandra said. “Getting bit on the valley floor is one thing. But up in the cave—”
“Maybe we should think of a Plan B,” Deja said. “This has gotten way bigger than just you and me.”
“No it hasn’t,” Alexandra said. “We just need to be careful.”
“I have a bad feeling.”
Alexandra patted Deja’s shoulder.
“I’ll take the lead tomorrow, once we get inside,” she said.
“Assuming you can get up.”
Right.
Assuming that.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Day Six—July 17
Saturday Night
______________
SATURDAY EVENING AFTER DARK, Durand picked up Prarie, drove twenty kilometers north of Paris to a place not far from where his predecessor Zacharie Mureau got killed in a head-on collision, and pulled over to the side of the road.
He powered down the window and killed the engine.
The sound of crickets permeated the air.
“I want you to know a few things about me,” he said. “It’s for your own good. I told you I was an investment broker. I’m not. I’m really a private investigator. I get paid well and most of what I do is legal, but not everything. Sometimes I have to find things out the hard way. Sometimes I have to do things I’d rather not. You have a right to know. That’s why I’m telling you.”
She asked questions.
He answered them, truthfully.
At the end she said, “None of that bothers me, and if you ever want me to help, just say the word.”
Durand studied her.
“You’d have to keep it confidential.”
“I already know that,” she said. “Trust me, I know how to keep my mouth shut if I have to.”
Durand fired up the engine.
“Let’s find out,” he said.
Ten minutes later he turned right on a pitch-black road and pulled over to the shoulder next to a field. “Just letting you see me stop here is secret information,” he said. “Are you sure you can keep it that way?”
She kissed him.
“Yes, stop worrying.”
He pulled a black bag out of the back seat, opened it and removed a black mask and a pair of latex gloves. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a half hour, give or take.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
He kissed her, stepped out and walked briskly into the field. When he turned around fifty steps later, he couldn’t see the car any longer.
The night was that black.
HE GOT BACK FORTY MINUTES LATER, out of breath, and slid behind the wheel.
“Everything go okay?” Prarie asked.
“No problems,” he said. “There’s something I forgot to tell you before. I was in the house of a man named Luc Trickett, snooping around for a client the other night. While I was there, another man showed up—a hitman. I hid upstairs and he never saw me or even knew I was there. When Trickett came home, the hitman put three bullets in his hea
d and then left. I stayed upstairs to make sure it was safe before I headed down. Unfortunately, that was a bad move. A couple of the neighbors heard the shots and came over. One was at the back door just as I was coming out. I punched him in the face, and escaped, but he saw me. He then gave the police a sketch. That sketch appeared in the paper the other day. That’s why I changed my hair. Here’s the important thing for you to understand. I did not kill anyone.”
Silence.
“Okay.”
“I need you to believe me,” he said.
“I do believe you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He paused, then exhaled.
“THERE’S ONE MORE THING,” he said. “I got a look at the hitman, from behind the door upstairs. He looks a little like a caveman and I might even know who he is. But here’s the twist. If he’s the man I know, that means he also knows me. He might figure out that the sketch in the paper is me and might also figure out that the reason my sketch is in the paper is because someone saw me at the scene. If the pressure starts coming down on him, he’d have a lot of motivation to be sure that the one witness who could identify him wasn’t alive any longer. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah—someone might try to kill you,” she said.
He nodded.
“I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” he said. “If it is the man I know, there would need to be a lot of pressure before he’d turn on me. The more dangerous situation is if it’s someone I don’t know, and he finds out who I am. That guy wouldn’t hesitate to put me away. But that’s a long shot too, because he’d have to figure out who I was based on the sketch in the paper, which doesn’t look that much like me.”
“Okay.”
“The reason I’m telling you this is simple,” he said. “First, I want to be honest with you about everything. Second, if I do end up being a target, you could also be in danger by association. I don’t want to put you in that position without you knowing about it.”
“I’m not worried about it,” she said.
“You sure?”
She was.
Positive.
“You’d protect me, right? If it came to it?”
Absolutely.
Without a doubt.
Without even a shadow of a doubt.
