I thank Jumah for an excellent day’s work. Send him home. Pop open the laptop and get to work.
Natalie clatters down the Arc de Triomphe’s stairs. They’re closing up; she’s one of the last of the tourists the security guards chased down. For the hundredth time she checks her phone. Calls and texts from Hannah and Uncle Frank. Nothing from Jake.
Natalie hasn’t been certain of much in her life, but she’s certain that her brother isn’t a killer. She longs to talk to him, to just flat-out ask why he came back to Paris early, who he was with, why he lied. She’s sure that if she could only talk to him, all would be clear.
She’s afraid to speak to anyone but him; what other horrible aspersions might they cast?
The sun slants now, although the heat of the day looks like it will linger into the evening, moist and sticky.
Natalie catches sight of her reflection in a store window. Automatically, she picks apart her appearance with derision and scorn. You fat ugly freak. You stupid, hateful, grotesque monster. She whirls away from the window, sickened and ashamed.
She has to find Jake, has to prove he couldn’t have killed their father. She needs to confess her own sins to him as well.
She’s a monster, a freak. But Jake is good. She knows this in every cell of her being. His goodness will be her redemption.
I speak to Frank Burrows around midnight. He hasn’t heard from either his niece or his nephew. He confesses he is going to knock himself out with an Ambien and face everything fresh in the morning. Can’t say I blame him.
Of course I don’t mention I’m in possession of Jake, trussed and drugged unconscious. I have too much work to do; the entire subject has to stay on mute.
The rest of the night is busy. I check in on Elena’s safety, the progress in securing her new papers. Periodically call Natalie’s cellphone, to no avail. Hack deeper and deeper into the layers of Boris’s criminal enterprises until I am able to expose connections to a handful of prominent politicians and several captains of legitimate industry.
Using just the photos from the night-vision camera, I hadn’t gotten a fix on the men lurking outside of my apartment. Now that it’s morning, I’m itching to get back on the roof for another look. I check on Jake. Still out cold, which suits my purposes just fine.
I sneak back up to the cabaret roof, camera in hand. The men are there, still smoking, leaning against a dark blue Renault Talisman that is parked about ten meters from my door. I don’t know if it’s their car, but I take a shot of the license plate all the same.
I climb down the ladder and back into the attic. Run a trace on the license plate number. The Renault is registered to one Patrice Duszu. I run a search on the name. Transfer the new photos of my stalkers into my computer. Hack into Europol’s facial recognition search engine and let the program do its job.
I try Natalie’s cell again, for what seems like the millionth time. Right to voicemail. Where can that girl be?
Stop it. My attention must be on these two strangers lurking outside my apartment. Who sent them? What do they want?
Jumah returns to the attic laden with pastries and café au lait. I thank him and give him his instructions. He’ll work at his father’s spice shop today, an unobtrusive second pair of eyes keeping watch on my front door.
I check my computer as I finish off a flaky pain au chocolat. Bingo. The Europol face recognition software has identified the bulky man outside my apartment as Arpad Lazar, a Hungarian national (aka Patrice Duszu, aka Anton Liszt, aka Jacques Tamas). Arpad is a thoroughly delightful fellow if your idea of charming is human trafficking, extortion, assault, armed robbery, and murder.
Hungary. That night in Budapest will haunt me forever, but now it seems it’s come back to hunt me as well.
I rescued Z from a human trafficking ring after her brother, Balint, sought my help. Freed a dozen other starving, abused girls along with her. After I got the women to safety, their keeper tracked me that rainy night in Budapest. He tried to cut my throat. So I killed him. I had no choice.
Remember those commemorative shoes on the banks of the Danube marking murders committed by the Arrow Cross? X marks the spot.
He was a monster of a man, but still his death weights me. He’s the only person I’ve ever intentionally killed. Odi Lazar. Arpad’s big brother. I don’t know how they found me, but it’s time to turn the tables. With a few quick keystrokes, I launch my plan. Sit back satisfied.
For the hell of it, I try Natalie’s cellphone one more time.
All the avenues of Paris seemed so beautiful from the top of the Arc de Triomphe: broad, tree-lined, the very definition of elegant French order. But the longer Natalie walks, the more the character of the streets shifts. That sense of neat, contained beauty dissipates as fancy shops and restaurants give way first to discreet and tony homes, then dingy townhouses, then graffiti-strewn apartment blocks.
Things get sketchier, the streets grimier, the shadows more menacing. Natalie hastily passes a homeless encampment, avoiding the stares of the blank-eyed children, the supplicating hands of their mothers.
She decides to circle back toward the more commercial areas. She doesn’t know where she’s headed, but she doesn’t care. She has no idea what time it is and she doesn’t care about that either. She doesn’t know where she’s going to sleep. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever sleep again.
Where is Jake? I need Jake.
Light-headed, Natalie feels disconnected, like an alien clinically inspecting this strange place called earth. Passersby seem so carefree; laughter and affectionate banter drift past her. Who are these people? What fucking right do they have to be so happy?
The enticing aroma of grilling sausage assaults her nostrils. She follows the scent, drawn as though by the Pied Piper himself, suddenly flooded with memories of Sunday afternoon barbecues back home in Westport. Mom’s tart, fresh lemonade; Dad manning the Weber.
She turns a street corner and finds herself in the middle of a lively little square. Late-night cafés sparkling with light spill their patrons out onto the sidewalk. The café tables are crowded with people sipping cocktails, smoking, chatting, gesticulating.
The source of the delicious-smelling food is a restaurant in the center of the square, if you can call it a restaurant, as it’s really no more than a door through which cardboard trays heaped with steaming-hot food are passed.
Natalie’s mouth fills with saliva. She purchases a sausage loaded with onions and wedged into a fresh baguette slathered with mustard. Wolfs it down. Chases it with a frigid beer. Orders another sausage and finishes that one too.
She fights against the wave of nausea that comes from the gobbled food and her shameful, shameful, loss of control.
She buys two cold bottles of water and wanders into a nearby pocket park. It’s a triangular scrap, barely able to hold its handful of benches and a gurgling fountain, formed like a little boy gleefully riding a dolphin. She sits down on the first bench she sees. Chugs the two waters back-to-back.
Patting down her bag from the outside, she confirms the presence of her cellphone, wallet, that steak knife she lifted under the plain view of her brother’s anguished eyes. She’s mulled that moment often in her mind, feeling both grateful for her brother and understood by him. Oddly enough, the fact that he let her steal the knife has allowed her to avoid its use. It’s stayed wrapped in a napkin, dangerous ridges muffled and tucked away from her tender skin.
Now she’s grateful she has the knife for protection, here in this anonymous little park, here in the dark.
I’ll stop everything if you bring Jake to me. Everything. I promise. I’ve lost everyone. I can’t lose him too.
She doesn’t know with whom she’s bargaining. If God exists, She abandoned Natalie long ago, of this Natalie is certain.
Hands over her roiling stomach, she leans her head back and tries to find some level of comfort on the unforgiving stone-and-metal bench. She burns with that oh-so-familiar rising tide of anxiety, those f
eelings that can only be dealt with by a pinch or a cut or a burn or a bite. But she’s made a promise. She has to try and keep it.
Please, Jake.
Natalie’s eyes drift closed. She nestles into the bench sideways, a protective fetal curl, restlessly plucking fingers finally falling still.
She sleeps. And dreams.
She dreams her mother is a mermaid, living peacefully in the depths of the silent sea. Natalie’s buoyed with happiness to see Mallory smiling in the ocean blue, hair floating in extravagant tendrils around her lovely face. Natalie swims toward her. They face each other, daughter and mother, underwater, treading water, miraculously both able to breathe. Natalie reaches out to touch Mallory’s face.
She’s so deep in her dream that at first she thinks it’s her mother’s hand, tucking a lucky shell into Natalie’s pocket. But something about the hand’s insistent, stealthy searching corrupts this sweet belief.
Natalie bats away the last vestiges of ocean and peace and Mama.
Her eyes pop open. Night. The park. A filthy man of indeterminate age stands over her, bearded, hair matted, skin dark with dirt and sweat. His stink is so rancid Natalie gags.
She realizes it is his grubby hand on her hip.
“Get off me, creep!” She smacks at his hand with her own.
She doesn’t know if he’s trying to rob her, molest her, or what, but whatever it is, Natalie’s not having it.
He yanks his hand away but stays where he is, swaying, staring at her with red eyes.
“Get the fuck away!” Natalie tries to yell, but it comes out strangled.
She remembers being taught in her self-defense class to shout as loud as possible. No one mentioned how fear closed your throat.
Her eyes dart right and then left. Which is the best way to get past him?
The guy mumbles some crazy gibberish. Rises up on his tiptoes. Raises his arms as if performing an incantation. She’s about to break left when he lunges at her.
“I said, get away!” she shrieks.
You don’t want to fuck with Natalie Burrows.
Natalie crosses her arms protectively over her chest, squares her shoulders, and charges, ramming her head into her assailant’s gut with every ounce of power she possesses.
He stumbles backward. Lands on his ass, letting loose a furious string of curses.
Natalie grabs her bag and runs. She pounds out of the park and into the streets, turning her head only once to see if she’s being followed.
Finally she pulls up short several blocks away, winded, drenched in sweat. She struggles to catch her breath. Her shaking fingers scramble for the bone-handled knife in the depths of her bag. She plants her feet and braces herself, unrolling the blade from its napkin, welcoming its heft in her hand.
She scans the street. She seems to be alone, her attacker lost. All she can hear is the distant pulsing heartbeat of a big city in deep night. The streets around her are empty. Shuttered.
Her foot hits a soda can. It rolls away down the street, unnaturally loud, jarring. She spins, whirls to a stop, disoriented. Crap. Where the fuck is she? What time is it?
Her cellphone vibrates. Wary prickles raise the hairs on the back of Natalie’s neck.
She pulls the phone from her bag: 5:23 A.M.
“What?” she blurts into the phone, knowing even as the word comes out of her mouth that she sounds belligerent and childish.
“It’s me. Hannah,” says the voice on the other end.
“Duh. I know that. Caller ID. What do you want?” Natalie doesn’t know why she’s being so nasty to Hannah. She just knows she’s sick of everything. Of loss. Of grief. Of being scared. Of needing her brother so very badly. Of needing anyone.
Why does everybody leave me?
And for fuck’s sake, she slept on a park bench, was practically raped by a homeless creep, she’s thirsty and scared and helpless and angry. Why should she be nice? Fuck nice. Natalie’s sick of the brave face, the secret wounds, her own hollow heart.
If Hannah’s irritated by Natalie’s belligerence, she shows no sign. Calmly, she tells Natalie that she’s found Jake; that he’s fine, sleeping now or Hannah would put him on the phone.
Instantly Natalie feels awful about having been such a bitch. “Where are you? Back at our hotel?” Her voice wobbles with relief.
Jake’s at her place, Hannah informs Natalie. But Natalie should head back to the hotel, her uncle is terribly worried about her. Hannah will bring Jake when he wakes.
The thought of returning to the prison of their hotel to sit in strained silence with her uncle is unbearable. Uncle Frank is yet another thing Natalie is fucking sick of. “I can’t,” she blurts. “I don’t want to go back yet. Not without Jake.”
“Where are you, Natalie?” Hannah wants to know. “Do you want me to come get you?”
Natalie hesitates. “I’ve got to go,” she says firmly.
“Wait,” Hannah implores. “Natalie, I have information about the man who was stalking your father.”
Natalie is silent.
“Natalie? Are you there?”
“Yes,” Natalie whispers.
“Let me come get you. I’ll tell you what I know,” Hannah promises.
“Tell me what you know and I’ll let you come get me,” Natalie counters.
There’s a pause.
“His name is Victor Wyatt. He was hired through an escort service called Le Boy Bleu. Now, where are you?”
Natalie disconnects the phone.
The air is sour with the stink of recent revelry—spilled alcohol, vomit, urine, and sweat.
Tucked into a shadowy vestibule, I watch. Dawn reveals shuttered bars and restaurants and damp, trash-littered cobblestones: a single cobalt-blue stiletto, a confetti spill of cigarette butts.
It looks like it will be another steamy day; a trickle of sweat already runs down the back of my black tank top.
The stench and the heat further darken my mood. When juggling a hooded, bound, and drugged Jake Burrows with the launch of my counterattack on the Hungarians, it had felt a reasonably calculated risk to give up Wyatt’s information.
I won’t underestimate Natalie again.
When I finally see her crest the horizon, a tiny, unsteady figure coming over the rise of the street, I’m shocked by her appearance. She’s the thinnest I’ve seen her. Her cheekbones are sharp, her eyes sunken.
What does this child think she’s going to do? Storm into the escort service at the crack of dawn and demand to speak to Wyatt? Now that she’s shown up, I’m almost amused by her misguided spunk.
She checks the buzzer panel at one doorway and then the next. I hurry out of my hiding place and onto the street, my rubber-soled sneakers padding soundlessly. She’s reached the right address now. Her finger is poised over the button marked for Le Boy Bleu.
“Hello, Natalie.”
She whirls. “How did you find me?” she spits angrily.
“I get it,” I say gently. “How badly you just want to do something, but you have to let the police handle this. Come on. Let me take you back to your hotel. Anyway, don’t you want to be there when Jake gets back?”
“He never, ever could’ve killed Daddy,” Natalie shrills.
“No, of course not,” I reassure.
Her eyes flicker to mine, relieved to find agreement. “Why isn’t Jake back at our hotel already too?”
“When I found Jake he wasn’t in the best shape. He’d been on the losing end of a fight, maybe more than one.”
Natalie’s eyes widen in alarm.
“I helped clean him up and then let him sleep it off. He’s fine, though, Natalie. He really is. And so are you. So let’s get you back to the hotel and keep you both that way.”
I put an arm around her narrow shoulders and she lets me lead her away.
He opens his eyes and sees only blackness. Blinks. Still dark. He gasps for air. Cloth flaps against his open lips. He’s going to suffocate. He realizes he is hooded.
Al
l he wants to do is run. But he can barely move. His limbs feel heavy. He realizes his wrists are bound.
What the fuck’s happened to him? Hank. Oh god. That woman on the street. Did she drug him? Has she kidnapped him? Where is he?
He licks his lips, tastes blood. His tongue feels like it’s coated in rust. He tries to speak: All that emerges is a garbled moan.
When the black wave washes over him, sucking him back into unconsciousness, Jake feels only relief.
I’ve delivered Natalie to a somber and exhausted-looking Frank. Both seemed completely spent.
They’ve promised to nap. I’ve promised to bring Jake when he is up and able to travel.
My breath quickens in my chest as I turn the corner onto rue des Archives. The street bustles with activity as usual; its crowded, transient mix is one of the reasons I chose to live here. My apartment’s rented in the name of Mario Paone, a specialty tile manufacturer based in Milan. Mario’s practically unknown to his neighbors in the building. He travels a lot. Lends his apartment out to a succession of young women.
They’ve all been me, of course. But except for Jumah and Akili, no one’s gotten close enough to my apartment to know that.
I can be anonymous here. Have been. Until now.
Carrying a festive spray of flowers to shield my face, I stroll right past Arpad and his young associate, both still positioned a few meters from my front door, smoking.
My heart pounds at my audacity in crossing so close; these men are vicious. My life would be worthless in their hands.
Other than perfunctory swings of their heads to assess my rear view, the men seem utterly uninterested in me. This, and the scrutiny they apply to each passing male confirms my hope that they have a location on me but no other pertinent details about who I am. So often my enemies assume I’m a man. So often I play that to my advantage.
I duck into Chacun à Son Gôut. The cabaret’s blessedly cool but unnervingly dark after the sun-drenched street.
The Burial Society Page 15
