Devious: Book Five in the On The Run series

by Sara Rosett

  She could hear the smile in his voice. “Hmm…I think I remember some distinct pursuit on your part. I think you picked me. I had to be convinced.”

  “Yeah. That was the fun part.”

  A man bumped into Jack’s shoulder, sending both him and Zoe lurching to the side of the bridge. Zoe smashed into another pedestrian, then tumbled to the ground, her shoulder knocking against the chain-link of the bridge, which set the locks attached to the fence clanking against each other.

  “Zoe, are you okay?” Jack was still standing and reached out both hands to help up both Zoe and the woman she had collided with. The woman waved Jack’s hand away and got up on her own. She launched into a stream of what sounded like German to Zoe.

  “Yes, I’m okay.” Zoe gripped Jack’s hand and let him pull her up.

  The woman said something in a biting tone with a sharp nod of her head that included both of them then strode away, examining her camera for damage.

  “And I guess she’s okay, too,” Zoe said as they watched the woman walk away. They resumed walking, and Zoe reached up to adjust the strap of her messenger bag, but her fingers only brushed against the fabric of her coat, not the leather strap. “What—” She patted her coat then spun around. The ground was empty. She whirled back toward Jack, who had taken a few steps before he realized Zoe wasn’t beside him.

  “My bag is gone.”

  “Do you think you left it in the restaurant…” he began, but his words trailed off as he took in her face.

  “No, I had it when we left. I know I did. It felt so light without the painting in it. Someone bumped into us to distract us while they stole my bag.”

  15

  “WELL, THAT WAS A WASTE of time.” Zoe stripped off her coat and flopped down on the bed in their hotel room. The police had spoken wonderful English and been invariably polite, but the unspoken message was clear: it happens all the time. After Zoe realized her bag was gone, they had stood on the bridge for a few minutes, scanning the pedestrians for anyone carrying her bag or anyone who looked familiar, but there were too many people. The crowds shifted and moved too quickly for them to spot anyone.

  After inquiring at the hotel on their best course of action, Jack and Zoe had reported the theft at the closest police station. A fresh-faced officer who looked like he might be an understudy for Rolf, the bike messenger from the Sound of Music, had taken down the information about Zoe’s stolen bag and given her a copy of the police report, but it was all done with the sense that it was a regretful occurrence, but nothing could be done about it. He had also explained that thieves often used knives to cut purse straps or even cut open pockets to remove wallets, which explained why Zoe hadn’t felt the strap of the messenger bag being lifted over her head.

  “What is it about me and messenger bags?” Zoe asked. “I can’t seem to hang on to them when I travel…” She was thinking of her first messenger bag that she lost in a canal in Venice. “I’m just so glad we put our passports in the hotel safe. At least, that’s one less thing to worry about.”

  When Jack didn’t answer right away, she looked at him. He was working his shoes off and unbuttoning his sleeve cuffs, all with rote motions.

  “You’re half-asleep, right now, aren’t you?”

  Jack sank down on the bed beside her. “Yes. And it is good that we didn’t have our passports on us. One less call to make.” His eyelids had been heavy earlier, but now they were merely slits. He rubbed his hand across his face and reached for his phone, muttering, “Your credit card—”

  “I’ll take care of that. You get some sleep.” She gave him a shove toward the bathroom. He didn’t argue and went to change while Zoe took her phone out of her jeans pocket, which was where it had been when her bag was taken. Things could have been much worse. She still had her passport and phone, and she had only brought one credit card with her in her messenger bag. She had a different card tucked away in the pages of her passport in the safe, and Jack had another card in his wallet, so they would have access to cash. If she had to be mugged, at least it was only a nearly empty bag that was taken. She was relieved that the painting hadn’t been in the messenger bag. Thank goodness she’d handed it over to Masard after dinner. Dealing with the credit card company took a while, but Zoe was so glad she wasn’t explaining to Poppy that she’d lost her painting that it really didn’t seem that bad.

  By the time Zoe had finished with her phone call, Jack, already in bed, was breathing heavily despite the lights being on and Zoe making noise. She ended the call and decided there was no way she would be able to go to sleep. She was too wound up. She sorted through her email then put her laptop aside and picked up the stack of books Poppy had given her. They had been quite heavy, weighing down her already stuffed suitcase. She climbed into bed beside Jack and clicked on the bedside light. His eyelids didn’t even flutter. He was exhausted.

  Zoe settled back against the headboard and flicked through the first hardcover book titled, A Journey Through the East by Agatha Foley, a travelogue describing the journey of the two sisters to Egypt and the Holy Land. Zoe had thought that she would skim a bit of the text then move on to the next book, but after only a few lines, she was pulled into the story, marveling at the trip preparations as the women traveled from Edinburgh to London to purchase essentials, including tarpaulin-covered wicker trunks, a new type of traveling bag, called a Gladstone bag, and macintosh sheets. Their attitude toward travel was remarkably modern. A tour of the Holy Land was considered “quite the thing” for gentlemen. Why shouldn’t they go as well?

  Jack rolled over, blinked at the light, then burrowed deeper into the pillow while threading an arm around Zoe’s waist. With the pillow muffling his words, he asked, “What are you reading?”

  “Fascinating stuff, about two Victorian sisters who traveled to Egypt.”

  Jack shifted and moved the pillow. “Fascinating how?”

  “It describes the way they traveled…they had to send a portable bath and side saddles ahead to Alexandria. Can you imagine?”

  Jack murmured, “Side saddles? For the camels?”

  “No, for the mules. And it’s written in an entertaining way. Not dry or boring at all. Listen to this. ‘Just as we left behind the Empress of the North a fortnight ago, today we depart from London. Society will whirl on without us—‘” Zoe broke off as a snore interrupted her.

  She turned pages, following the sisters’ journey across Europe via train, carriage, and boat. They were quite devout, stopping to see various religious sites as well as participating in any church service they came across. She glanced at the clock and realized it was getting late. Reluctantly, she used a page from the hotel-provided notepad to mark her place then quickly looked through the other books.

  The second was another hardbound book, this one a detailed account of another of the sisters’ travels, this time to South Africa and the West Indies. Zoe checked the copyright dates on the books. They traveled to South Africa five years after the trip to Egypt and the Middle East. Zoe put that book aside and picked up one of the softbound books. She tugged at the knot in the string holding the leather cover in place.

  She finally loosened the knot and carefully opened the cover. The binding had come loose from the leather, and the yellow, crinkled stack of pages listed to one side. Zoe pushed the edges back into alignment as she deciphered the first entry’s curly-cue script.

  “Departure Preparations, June 1868,” Zoe read then picked out the familiar words “a clever basket that is covered with tarpaulin, which makes it at once light and imperious to water.” A few lines later, Agatha mentioned the Gladstone bag, which held more than it would appear to and could be easily strapped on a mule. Short bursts of description filled the pages, sometimes a few sentences, sometimes only a fragment of a description of a church or piece of art, other times there was only a note with train or boat departure times.

  It was Agatha’s original diary, the one that she had used to keep notes for the travelogue that was pub
lished when she returned to England. Zoe couldn’t believe Poppy had given her this. And, Zoe couldn’t believe she’d stuffed it in her suitcase and dragged it across Europe.

  Zoe smothered a yawn as she tied the string around the book and placed it on the nightstand then looked at the last book. It was another softbound book with a supple leather cover, but this one was in better shape than the diary. It didn’t need a string to hold it together. Zoe opened it to the first page and found the same faded pages and elegant swirling script, but the ink was darker and the pages weren’t so yellow. This book contained lists. Agatha was an organized person. Lists of purchases to be made, items to be cleaned, letters to be written. Zoe’s eyes felt heavy as she glanced through the pages. Reading someone’s to-do list wasn’t nearly as interesting as reading about a journey to Egypt. She found the list of paintings that Poppy had mentioned, three pages of neat columns, but the columns of letters and numbers began to blur together. Another yawn overcame her, and Zoe used a second page from the hotel notepad to mark her place, turned off the light, and snuggled down next to Jack.

  The next morning, Zoe and Jack had a couple of hours before they were to meet Masard to get the results of the tests on the painting, so they took the funicular that whisked them up a steep rock face to the white-walled fortress built on a rocky outcropping above the town. It was a cloudy morning, threatening rain, but even with the wisps of clouds drifting across the city below and the rolling hills beyond, it was quite a view. They looked at the sturdy cannons still poised to defend the castle, and made their way through the displays about Salzburg’s military, which didn’t interest Zoe as much as they did Jack, so she drifted around admiring the ornate and heavily decorated doors throughout the interior, which were beautiful and had some interesting designs on their panels. “Okay, I’m ready.” Jack leaned over to look at the photos Zoe had just taken with her phone. “Pictures of the doors?”

  “They’re interesting, and they are about the only thing to take pictures of. Apparently Napoleon carted off most of the furniture when Salzburg surrendered.”

  They emerged into the fortress’s rather barren, but spacious interior courtyard. Zoe scanned the hard-packed ground crisscrossed with a neat grid of rock-lined drains. A couple of trees and a small patch of grass were the only greenery in the place. “I would hate to be cooped up in here for days at a time. There are only a few trees and a tiny square of grass. Everything else is stone, rock, or dirt.”

  “There is a well, though. Better alive in here than dead outside the walls, at least that is probably what the people would have thought back then.”

  “I suppose so,” Zoe said. “But seeing it first-hand makes me glad I live now, not then.”

  “Ready to head down, or do you want to see the marionette exhibit?”

  “Let’s go, if you’re ready. I can’t think about much else but the painting.”

  As they headed for the exit, Jack said, “Masard won’t mind if we’re early.”

  They rode the funicular down again and followed the departing crowd through an exhibit about the city’s waterworks then moved with the crowd along the cobblestoned lane to a graveyard tucked between a church and a sheer rock cliff. The multi-language chatter of the tourists died away as they entered the area, and only the hiss of whispers was audible. Each of the graves were meticulously cared for garden plots with different types of flowers growing in each one and a tall marker with a cross or candle at the head of the grave. A row of iron-gated graves ran along the base of the steep rock wall, “I think—” Zoe paused to look around then said in a quiet tone, “—yes, I think this is it. I remember reading about this place in a couple of the guidebooks I worked on for Smart Travel. It’s the cemetery that inspired the graveyard scene at the end of The Sound of Music.”

  “Good thing I liked that movie,” Jack replied, matching her soft tone, “or I’d be getting pretty tired of it by now. Does everything in Salzburg have a link to the movie?”

  “The fortress didn’t.”

  “And the Salzburg tourist department is probably still kicking themselves over that.”

  “If I remember right, there are catacombs around here—” Zoe broke off as her phone rang, sounding extremely loud in the quiet reverence of the cemetery. Zoe answered as quickly as she could and retraced their steps to the edge of the cemetery.

  “Mrs. Andrews, this is the front desk. We have received a package for you.”

  “A package? Who is it from?” She felt Jack move to her side, and she mouthed the news to him.

  “There is no name. I am sorry.”

  “We’ll be there to pick it up shortly.” They had fallen into step together, moving toward the Kapitelplatz, an open area dominated by a modern art installation, a giant gold ball with the figure of a man perched on top. Zoe thought it was a jarring and rather odd sight, especially since it was surrounded by buildings with such classic architectural lines.

  “Maybe that’s the point,” she had said to Jack when they’d stopped to look at the weird site on their way to the fortress, but neither of them gave it a second glance as they paced by it quickly. “Could the package be the painting?” Zoe asked, then immediately shook her head. “No, Masard wouldn’t have sent it back without contacting me.” She looked again at her phone, checking for missed calls, but there weren’t any.

  “Does he even know where we’re staying?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Zoe said. “But maybe I mentioned it to him during dinner? Do you remember?”

  “No, I was focused on staying conscious. A lot of the conversation went right by me.”

  They walked briskly through the old town, across the bridge, and cut through the beautiful Mirabell Gardens. They had admired them this morning on their way to the fortress, but now Zoe only gave the elegant landscaping a passing glance. At the hotel’s front desk, the clerk handed Zoe a large padded envelope. Only her name was printed in exact strokes on the front. She ripped it open.

  “Careful—” Jack said, then broke off as she pulled out her messenger bag.

  16

  “IT’S TOO WEIRD. EITHER THAT person was the worst thief ever or…”

  “He suddenly was overcome by remorse?” Jack finished for her.

  “That doesn’t make sense either,” Zoe said as they walked along the tree-lined street to the address where they were to meet Masard, her messenger bag gently bumping against her hip with every step. The hotel manager, after a quick call to housekeeping, had produced three sturdy safety pins, which now held the two cut edges of the strap together. The cut was clean and smooth. Someone had used a knife to slit the strap and remove the bag, which gave Zoe the creeps every time she thought about it. It was still unbelievable that someone could have been that close to her with a weapon, and she hadn’t realized it or felt a thing.

  “How would the mugger know which hotel we are staying at? I didn’t have anything in the bag with the hotel’s name or address on it. And what kind of mugger doesn’t take anything from a stolen bag?” She’d been amazed when she opened the bag and found not only her wallet, but all her cash and her credit card as well. Things had shifted around a bit, but everything was definitely there.

  “I don’t like it either,” Jack said briefly. “Here we are.”

  The address where Zoe and Jack were to meet Masard was an enormous pink-toned building with elaborate swirls and curves detailing the white trim around the windows and doors. Situated on a tree-lined boulevard that curved along the Salzach River, it was only a few blocks from Old Town. The day was still overcast, but the rain had held off, so they had walked. Zoe was too antsy to sit in a cab even for a few blocks. At least striding through the slightly damp air let her work off some of her nervous energy.

  They moved under an arched entry to a recessed door, which was glossy dark wood and about twelve feet high. Zoe tilted her head up to study the coved ceiling. “That’s imposing. I feel like we should look for a servant’s entrance.” Zoe didn’t see
a doorbell in the frantic twists of stucco that framed the door.

  “It might take us a while to get around to the back of this place.” Jack rapped sharply on the door, which swung open, revealing an expansive two-story entry with so much going on architecturally that Zoe couldn’t take it all in: a checkerboard marble floor, gigantic paintings trimmed in ornate gold frames, curly-cue plasterwork covering the ceiling and the walls, gilded accents decorating the walls and doorways, and tall chandeliers glittering overhead even though the bulbs were off. It was only after a few seconds of scanning the enormous room that the more ordinary things, moving boxes and piles of quilted blankets scattered around the room, registered.

  A man in dark blue overalls backed through one of the many doorways lining the entry and maneuvered a dolly loaded with cardboard boxes through the doorframe. Masard, dressed in a gray suit with a pale blue tie, emerged after him. “Ah, good afternoon. I thought I heard you. This way, please.”

  They left the man with the dolly and followed Masard through a series of rooms, each with more eye-popping decoration. “Wow. Just wow. I know that’s totally inadequate and sadly inarticulate, but that’s all I’ve got right now,” Zoe said.

  “Summed it up pretty well, I think,” Jack said in an undertone as they followed Masard through a chain of connected rooms into a room decorated in blue.

  The scale and decor of the room weren’t as grand as the areas they had just walked through, but the room was beautiful, too, with more sedate moldings and a patterned oriental-style wallpaper of bamboo plants. A man with curly hair in a white lab coat was seated at a table in the center of the room. A portrait of a woman rested on the table in front of him. It was obvious that the room’s furniture with its elegant lines and subtle blue tones had been pushed aside to make room for the portable table, which was lined with equipment. Near the table, one of the floor-to-ceiling glass doors was propped open a few inches, letting in a cool breeze.