Zero Dark Chocolate (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 5)

by Linsey Lanier

  Parker strode to the desk and peered over his shoulder. “That’s rather long.”

  “The creation is huge,” Fanuzzi said.

  “I can think of ten different number arrangements just from what you have there already.”

  Miranda’s hopes started to sink like the Titanic. “What are you saying, Parker?”

  “It will take a long time to ferret them all out.”

  And they’d probably run out of time.

  “Well, we’ll just have to get busy,” Fanuzzi said. She hustled over to the safe. “Read me the first few numbers. I’ll try it.”

  Chef Emile read off three.

  Fanuzzi twisted the knob one way then back again.

  “There are five in the sequence,” Parker said. “I determined that much.”

  “Okay, give me two more.”

  The Chef complied.

  Fanuzzi turned the dial, tugged on the handle. Nothing.

  Miranda put her hand to her forehead. This was a dead end. They needed to do something else. She was just about to take Parker aside and tell him so when his cell rang.

  He answered it and she watched his face, her stomach doing somersaults.

  “Yes. No, nothing here…We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Miranda’s heart was in her throat. “What?”

  Parker’s steady gaze met hers. “That was Haubert. He has something for us.”

  Chapter Thirty

  They couldn’t talk Fanuzzi out of giving up on the recipe, so they left her with Chef Emile to keep trying to puzzle out the numbers from it.

  It was just as well. As tough as her friend could be, Miranda was sure Haubert didn’t want the distraught wife of a kidnapping victim in his offices. She and Parker had been lucky to get in. And in her emotional state, Fanuzzi would only get in the way.

  The sun had set and Paris was lit up in all its renowned glory.

  As the cab carried them once more along the Seine, Miranda watched the tourist boats gliding along the water and thought of the romantic vacation Fanuzzi and Becker were supposed to be on. If only she and Parker could give just a little of that back to them.

  Under the night sky, the fortress that was the French Intelligence office looked like a dark castle from a horror movie.

  Odd that a place like this could give her hope. But at this point, Miranda had a lot more faith in what Haubert and his people could do than she did in numbers hidden in a hundred-plus-year-old recipe.

  ###

  Inside, the halls were as dark and gloomy as before. But when they stepped into Haubert’s area, they found bright lights and a roomful of noisy activity.

  Agents in dark suits were carrying papers from one desk to another, huddling in groups as they pointed at computer screens, chattering away to each other in animated French with lots of hand gestures. Miranda thought she recognized a couple of them from that afternoon but everyone was too engrossed to acknowledge her or Parker. The air was charged with tense excitement.

  Something big was going on.

  “There you are.” Haubert’s shout came from a far corner as he hurried along the border dividing the small sea of desks. He raised a hand and gave them a come-ahead gesture as he turned to his people and bellowed out a command. “Everyone, briefing room in five.”

  “What have you got?” Miranda hissed when they reached the man in charge. The electric atmosphere was making her dare to hope.

  He shook his head. “It will save time if I show you along with my men.”

  Miranda felt Parker’s hand at her back as they followed Haubert down a plain hall and into a wide, sterile looking auditorium.

  The place reminded her of a college lecture hall with theater seats cascading down to the front and a podium off to the side for the teacher. The room might have held about two hundred. It seemed a little empty with just Haubert’s fifty or so “men”—who were comprised of at least a dozen women. And yet the press of bodies shuffling in and taking their seats, along with the lack of A/C, made the room feel close and stagnant.

  Miranda recognized Nadeau, their chauffeur from this afternoon, setting up a laptop on a table at the front while Haubert moved to a nearby wall and pushed a button.

  A large projector screen slowly descended from the ceiling.

  Like a tardy student, Miranda took a seat near the back. When Parker settled in next to her, she turned to him. “This looks like they’ve really got something.”

  “I hope so.”

  She studied the weary lines of frustration on his face. “You don’t hold out much hope for the safe, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “You could have nailed that combination if we’d had more time.”

  The corner of his lip twitched up in an involuntary smile but it didn’t last long. He hid his emotions well but she could tell the sight of Becker’s severed fingertip this afternoon had disturbed and enraged him as much as it had her.

  She didn’t want to tell him they couldn’t give up hope. It would be meaningless.

  Even if there was no more hope, they would still press on. They had no choice. Not until this thing was over one way or another. But with the news Parker’s former student had for them tonight, maybe there was just enough hope to get by.

  The sound of Haubert’s clap at the podium took her attention. “Ladies and gentleman, please be seated.”

  A few stranglers settled in.

  Haubert gestured toward the back. “Some of you have met Monsieur Wade Parker and his partner, Madame Miranda Steele.”

  Parker got to his feet and nodded. He turned to Miranda and she stood, too, feeling awkward as several of the agents turned around in their seats to check them out.

  “Monsieur Parker is the owner of the renowned Parker Agency in Atlanta in the US.”

  Murmurs of admiration rippled through the group.

  “Your alma mater,” Nadeau said.

  Haubert nodded. “Yes. I am proud to have studied under one of the best. Madame Steele is also a trainee of the Agency and has recently been featured in the news for her investigative accomplishment in London and Brazil.”

  More murmurs from the agents and Miranda felt her cheeks redden. She hated media attention.

  “This morning they brought me the case some of you have been working on. But most of you do not know all the details. And only a few know about our recent discovery. I think you will find it most interesting.”

  Miranda sat down again. Parker did as well.

  “Recent discovery?” she murmured to him.

  “Let’s see what he has to say.”

  Haubert clicked a button on a remote. The lights went down, and a huge image of Dave’s picture from Fanuzzi’s phone filled the screen.

  Miranda’s heart broke at the sight.

  Becker’s big, expressive brown eyes were full of joy and expectation. A happy family man on a second honeymoon with his childhood sweetheart. Looked like he was standing in front of a big church. Notre Dame, she thought. The sight of his big nose, his crooked smile, his longish dark hair curling around his ears, made her eyes water. Once again she thought of the bloody fingertip in that box at the hotel.

  Dear, God, she thought. Please let us find him.

  Haubert continued. “This is Monsieur David Becker. A current investigator of the Parker Agency. Last week he and his wife Joan came to our city for a vacation. For Madame Becker it was a working vacation. She is a caterer and won a set of classes at Le Gastronomique Divine. These classes are being taught by Chef Emile Amando of Chez Amando.”

  The group murmured with various degrees of recognition of the name.

  “This Wednesday Monsieur Becker went missing. Distraught, his wife called in Monsieur Parker and Madame Steele. They began a search and discovered several interesting things.”

  He clicked the remote and Odette’s photo from her ex-fiancé’s phone filled the screen.

  “Madame Becker has been contacted twice by
the kidnappers. The first call came from this woman, Odette St. Fleur. She is the niece of Chef Emile Amando and recently had a falling out with him. She told Madame Becker she could have her husband back when her uncle ‘gave her what she wants.’ We assume she was referring to the job she was recently fired from.”

  Next picture. The one in front of Jacques du Coeur, the department store on the Champs Elysees. The back of Becker in his dark green shirt, the guy with the hooked nose turned to him. The big, scary dude in the background, leaning against the white van, watching.

  “This photo was obtained by Monsieur Parker and Madame Steele. It appears to be of the victim just before he was taken.”

  Miranda studied the photo, her stomach twisting. Not that she hadn’t studied it before. And so had Haubert. They knew all this but from the reaction in the audience not everyone here had seen the photo. Suddenly Miranda wondered if the top agent was stretching the truth with his talk of a discovery.

  Were these photos all he had? Had he brought her and Parker to headquarters just to give his people a couple of warm bodies to motivate them?

  Haubert waved the remote at the screen. “Agent Desselle has been running this shot in particular against our databases. He has come up with some interesting matches.”

  Again he pressed the remote. This time a picture Miranda hadn’t seen before appeared on the screen. Murmurs rippled through the assembly.

  Miranda sat up. Okay, she’d been too cynical. “This is new,” she whispered to Parker, feeling him tense.

  The photo was frightening.

  It was a wanted poster of the big dude who had been watching Becker in the previous photo. He looked really rough, maybe in his mid-thirties. Thick wavy dark hair fell just under his chin. A tight black T-shirt covered bulky muscles only a lot of two-hundred-pound-plus bench presses could produce. Broad biceps were covered with familiar tattoos in the black and sickly green. He wore a hard, tight mouth posed in a fuck-you grimace. A wide nose that had been broken in several places stretched between mean dark eyes.

  Haubert waited for the impact to sink in before he went on. “This is Grigori Kosomov.”

  They’d ID’d him. Miranda wanted to applaud.

  More murmurs went through the audience. A woman at the front raised her hand. “We went after him last year.”

  “Yes, after those three drug dealers were found in the Seine with their throats cut.”

  Miranda’s mouth went dry. Drug dealers? Bodies in the Seine?

  “Kosomov is definitely Russian Mafia,” a man in the third row said.

  Haubert nodded. “From the reports we have he appears to be a hit man for them.”

  Miranda’s hand went to her mouth. Dear God. Becker was being held by the Russian mob? She glanced at Parker and saw rage and heartbreak in the lines of his handsome face, though to anyone else he’d appear totally cool and composed.

  “You each have a dossier on Kosomov. Read it over thoroughly. As you will see, we do not believe Kosomov is running the current case.” Haubert glanced back at his old boss, took a breath and pressed the remote again.

  Another new image appeared. The figure in it wasn’t as big but his picture was even more horrifying.

  A headshot featured the flowing dirty blonde hair, the sharp, narrow features, and the deep, cruel-looking lines in his face. There was a mole under the right eye that made him seem a hundred times meaner than the Russian dude. The end of his long nose hung down past his nostrils, nearly touching his upper lip.

  His eyes were a deep blue. And in them Miranda saw a coldness that cut straight to her bones.

  Beaknose.

  Haubert cleared his throat. “Madame Steele, is this the man you saw watching you today?”

  Her throat was so dry she had to swallow before she could speak. “Yes. We chased him to the Eiffel Tower and lost him there.”

  “Monsieur Parker?”

  “Yes, that’s the man.”

  A woman in the front raised her hand. “I could be mistaken, but he looks familiar. Almost like someone who used to work here.”

  Haubert nodded, his face filling with disappointment. “Yes, Desselle also thought he looked familiar. That was helpful in narrowing down our search. We started with our own people.”

  The room went quiet.

  “This is Monsieur Jean-Claude Yanick. He was indeed one of our employees. For ten years, in fact. He was trained in Iceland, deployed to Lebanon for several years. There he worked primarily in the bomb diffusion unit.”

  Miranda felt her skin grow cold. The dude she and Parker chased over half of Paris had been in French Intelligence?

  This was bad. Really, really bad.

  “When Yanick returned,” Haubert continued, “he did some training here at headquarters.”

  Miranda shot up a hand. “What sort of training?”

  The pointy end of Haubert’s beard honed in on her and he almost grimaced. “Generalized, Madame Steele. Ballistics, hand-to-hand, investigative methods.”

  Sounded like the stuff she’d learned at the Parker Agency. Same place Haubert had learned them.

  Another hand shot up near the front. This one belonging to a shaggy-haired dude. “I took some courses from Yanick. He included explosive training in them.”

  Haubert nodded an acknowledgement. “After a few years Yanick requested street work. This required further training.”

  “Which included—?”

  “Undercover techniques,” Haubert replied. “A thorough knowledge of illegal drugs and the black market. And other things I cannot go into.”

  Secret spy things. And things that would equip him to behave as if he were a criminal. Good preparation for someone who’d eventually decide it was more lucrative to be a criminal.

  Disappointment deepening on his face, Haubert went on. “Yanick was good at the work. He infiltrated several terrorist cells and with his skills, prevented several explosive-related attacks. Last spring he was up for a promotion. But it was an internal position requiring Yanick to leave street work. We decided he served us better in the field. The news was not well received.”

  “I remember that,” said a man in the third row. “I wasn’t in his unit, but I heard about someone around that time who went a little crazy and tore up his boss’s desk. Was that Yanick?”

  Slowly, Haubert nodded. “Yes, that was him. Agent Valcourt was his boss at that time. It was his office that Yanick destroyed. Valcourt thought perhaps we had made a mistake in sending Yanick back into the field. He perhaps had been out there too long. Valcourt decided on a psychological evaluation. But when he ordered Yanick to have one, Yanick walked off the job.”

  Now the murmurs in the audience became a gossip fest as agents traded various stories they’d heard with their neighbors.

  Haubert held up a hand. “I have confirmed all this with Agent Valcourt so there is no need for further speculation. He is unable to join us as he and his team are preparing security for the Bastille Day parade tomorrow. However, if any of you have further questions—”

  A bang came from the side of the room.

  Miranda jumped. She turned as the big man who’d just pushed the door open rushed in. Jabbering in French he made his way toward Haubert.

  “We have a hit, Mon Directeur,” he said waving one arm and placing the slim laptop he was carrying on the table at the front of the room.

  Haubert turned off the projector and went to the table as well. “What are you saying, Turmel?”

  “We have the cell tower the victim’s phone pinged this morning. The police have just now confirmed it.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Once again Nadeau and Deselle moved equipment around, plugged in wires, pressed keys.

  “Is this legit?” Miranda hissed to Parker.

  “Let’s hope so.” His voice sounded far away.

  He was summoning all his emotional strength for this, just as she was.

  At last the projector came on again and an internet map of the cit
y appeared on the screen. She could make out the curve of the Seine. The aerial outline of gray buildings and green trees.

  The agent named Turmel took a laser pen out of his pocket and pointed at the upper left corner of the screen. “It is here. The northeast edge of the city.”

  Just the opposite direction Yanick led them when they were at the Eiffel Tower, the bastard.

  “Where the abandoned rail line is?” Haubert asked.

  “Yes. It would be reasonable to assume the victim is being held in one of those deserted buildings.”

  “Very reasonable. Good work, Turmel.” Haubert glanced at his watch then turned to his people again. “We have no time to lose. Let us get a plan together and go find Monsieur Becker.”

  At last.

  Hope burning in her ribcage, Miranda shot to her feet as Parker rose beside her. She could tell he was as keyed up at the news as she was.

  “Locked and loaded,” he murmured in her ear as he let her whisk ahead of him.

  Right. She was glad they had already picked out their weapons.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Joan sat at Chef Emile’s half moon desk in his office, her heart aching, her head pounding, her eyes so swollen from crying half the day she could barely see. Three sheets of paper covered with numbers lay on the polished surface before her.

  And yet she forced herself to write down another set while Chef Emile paced back and forth from the window to the corner, his oversized shoes clumping across the old hardwood floor.

  She stopped and put down her pencil. There were so many parts to this recipe for the Chez Amando piece montée.

  Five different flavors of pastry cream. Vanilla, coffee, lemon, chocolate, raspberry. Each one had its own set of measurements. The choux dough varied with how many the piece was to serve. And then there were the chocolate and caramel glazes.

  Sighing, she studied the filling recipe she was on now. Two hundred and twenty-five milliliters of whole milk. One hundred grams of sugar. Two large egg yolks.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Are you sure your father would have used metrics?”