Broken by a Dangerous Man

by Cleo Peitsche

  Stepping back, he thrust his hand deep into his pocket—I wasn’t sure how he did it because his jeans were skintight. He withdrew his hand and held out a torn-off piece of paper. “This is my local number,” he said, but he didn’t give it to me.

  “Friend or hotel?”

  “Friend,” he said. “And she doesn’t know about any of this. Only call during work hours, when she’s gone.”

  I grabbed the paper from him. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to go to the authorities. Now, I’ve got a lot of questions. For starters, who the hell was murdered?”

  Massimo’s attention went to a point behind me. He squeezed my arm, then melted into the crowd.

  I was about to put his number into my pocket, but I opted for my bag instead, thinking it would be safer there.

  “My apologies for the delay,” Bertrand said as he came to stand next to me. “It seems there were three major accidents on the Périf, and half of France is opting to cut through the city. It’s a mess.” He gestured to the tower. “Shall we? I have a pass that will let us cut the line.”

  “How can I say no?”

  It was true that the view from the top was beautiful, with the streets lit and stretching out forever; we were so high up that the city was compressed into a bumpy, raised-relief map.

  But the wind seemed to be trying to rip off my clothes, and when I realized the tower was swaying, I was finished.

  In any event, my mind was on Massimo.

  If he thought someone like me could help him get out of a murder charge, he was either desperate or naive.

  I suspected he was both, and that didn’t bode well for either of us.

  Chapter 10

  I should have been tired. It was already ten at night, and I’d had an exhausting day, but I felt wired.

  If I were home, I’d either be with Corbin or at work.

  Corbin was out of play.

  But work…

  Maybe I couldn’t track any fugitives from so far away, but it wouldn’t hurt to see what I could find based on the information I’d gotten from Massimo.

  Never one to resist room service in a nice hotel, I ordered a hot chocolate and a brie baguette. Probably a weird combination for the kitchen staff, but I had a craving.

  I grabbed a piece of hotel stationery and a pen. It seemed a shame to use such nice paper to make my notes, but I could only work with what was available.

  Miraculously, I hadn’t lost the piece of paper with Massimo’s number on it. I saved it in my phone. Next I opened a browser and typed in the number.

  The search engine gave me links for tables of random numbers and climatological data.

  Damn.

  In the States, typing in a phone number often yielded at least the name of the service provider, and sometimes it spit out the customer’s name.

  I fiddled with the settings and with the way I’d typed in the number, but it didn’t give me anything I could use.

  Hm.

  Well, on to the next thing. I visited the website of the county paper back home.

  Nothing about a murder on the first page. I went back a few days—when had I gotten the doggie shampoo? It had to have been Wednesday or Thursday.

  Combing through the last week of papers didn’t give me squat. There had been several murders, but they were either gang-related or domestic violence.

  I chewed on the end of the pen.

  There were two other newspapers I could try, but most of what they published was just repackaged content from other sites. Still, it couldn’t hurt to look…

  There was a knocking at the door. It was so polite that I had to laugh. Even though I knew it would be my order, I looked through the peephole before opening the door.

  The sandwich was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The baguette was golden brown, with a deeper shade at the crest of the ridges. The cheese was creamy and perfect, and the lettuce actually looked appetizing.

  My mouth watered so much that I had to swallow. But of course I was starving. I’d had mojitos for dinner the night before, and nothing to eat that day except a few bites of croissant and the falafel sandwich.

  The second the server left, I picked up the hot chocolate and took a sip. It was rich.

  It was… melted chocolate… They had melted actual chocolate to make the drink.

  I decided right then and there that this was my favorite hotel in the world.

  Wanting to enjoy the chocolate, I sat in front of one of the open windows and looked at the dark river. The cool night breeze blew in. In the distance, I could sometimes hear voices talking.

  It was relaxing to take a few moments just for myself. Usually, if I wasn’t running around, I was sitting and trying to solve a problem.

  But at the moment, I had no problems. Work was smooth enough, Corbin and I were ok, and no one in my family was sick. It was a nice change, for however long it might last.

  When the hot chocolate was gone, I closed the windows. I opened one of the bottles of water that sat on the desk and sat in front of the sandwich.

  My phone rang. I looked at the screen and laughed. Corbin had pre-programmed his number into the address book, and the image that came up said STUD in rhinestones.

  “Hey, stud,” I said.

  “You noticed that.”

  “It was hard to miss. You’re usually much more subtle. How’s your night?”

  He sighed. “It’s going to be a long one. I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing.”

  “Actually, I’ve got a question. How do you reverse lookup a phone number in France? I can’t seem to get it right.”

  “Easy. You text it to your favorite stud. I’m not going to ask why you need this, but I expect you’ll fill me in later. Is there anything else you want?”

  “Nope. When will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’ll be very late, and I’ll be leaving early in the morning. They’ve asked me to watch videos of the interviews that were conducted before I arrived.”

  “Got it.”

  After hanging up, I texted him the number. I didn’t know how long it would take him to get back to me, so I prepared to spend a little more time trying to figure out who’d been murdered.

  A thought occurred to me. Suppose Massimo had severe mental problems? When I’d investigated him, I hadn’t seen anything to suggest a history of substantial psychiatric issues—no trail of hospital visits or patterns of illogical behavior.

  But if he’d been getting treatment in Europe, I wouldn’t have known. And it wasn’t like I’d been able to dig deeply into his medical background.

  Or maybe this was all an elaborate ploy to get back at me for having spied on him. I didn’t believe that, but if it were, I wouldn’t have really blamed him.

  I picked up my baguette and took a bite—it was delicious—and I realized I felt weird stalking people who hadn’t done anything wrong. Bounty hunting was one thing—society was generally better off with those people off the streets.

  It didn’t mean I’d changed my mind about being a PI, but in the future, maybe I’d need to limit it to missing persons.

  As for Massimo, he’d asked me to help.

  “Let’s figure out what you did, Massimo,” I murmured as I resumed my search. But I couldn’t find anything that he might have been involved with.

  Twenty minutes went by, and perhaps I would have gone longer, but a text came back from Corbin.

  Nicole Dubois. And Corbin had included her address.

  Not bad.

  I still wasn’t tired, so I figured I might as well go take a look at the place where Massimo was staying.

  Chapter 11

  The doorman offered to call a taxi, but I declined. In my pocket was some of the money Corbin had given me, and I planned to catch a cab, but not from the hotel lobby.

  It just felt smarter not to. What I was doing didn’t need to be linked directly back to Corbin if something went wrong.

  I’d only gotten about a block away when
my phone rang.

  “Hi, Bertrand,” I said.

  “Audrey, you hurt my feelings,” he said in a mock-wounded voice.

  “I did?”

  “I heard you went for a stroll and didn’t bother inviting me.”

  That made me stop walking. “And who, pray tell, is tracking my whereabouts?”

  “It’s nothing sinister, I promise. I believe, though I wasn’t there so I can’t know for sure, that Corbin was concerned someone might be watching you, and so he asked the front desk to keep track of anyone going to or from your suite.”

  “Lovely,” I murmured, and I reminded myself that I wasn’t allowed to start a fight with Corbin anytime soon. “And they called you.”

  “Oh, there you are,” he said cheerfully. “Right behind you, mademoiselle.”

  I’d sensed a car rolling slowly in the street, and yeah, there he was. He waved and gave me a big smile. The guy was working hard for his tip.

  I got into the back. “I do need to go somewhere, but give me a moment,” I said.

  “No problem.” He rolled down the window and began whistling.

  Shaking my head, I quickly looked up Nicole’s address on my phone. There was a park about two blocks away, and that was where I asked Bertrand to take me.

  “So why did the front desk call you?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid that’s also Corbin’s fault,” he said. “It’s just because of the fellow following you. This was a new request.”

  I sighed.

  Ditching Bertrand at the park was easier than I’d expected. I got out and took the diagonal, then veered to the right once I was out of sight.

  The neighborhood was upper middle class.

  For some reason, I’d been expecting apartments. After all, when I stayed with a friend, it meant sleeping on the couch and trying to stay out from underfoot.

  Instead, I was walking past small but upscale homes surrounded by old trees and expensive cars.

  But I should have known. Even as a self-proclaimed fugitive, Massimo didn’t live like the rest of us. I had to grudgingly respect his talent for collecting wealthy friends.

  I found the house. The biggest and nicest on the block. Unlike the other homes, there was a little white fence around it. Very little. It would have only kept out lazy Dachshunds.

  After looking both ways to make sure no one was watching, I hurried down the driveway, which contained four cars, parked very close together.

  The scent of warm roses hit me. Nice garden.

  As I made my way to the back of the building, I realized that Massimo, or Nicole, was entertaining guests.

  The little fence continued in the back, and I stepped over it. I froze, waiting for an alarm to go off. Because I didn’t know how people did things in France.

  No alarm.

  There was a light on in one of the back rooms, and the door was propped partially open. Sticking to the shadows, I crept closer.

  Cigarette smoke burned the inside of my nose, and I saw a patio table bearing several partially empty plates and drained glasses of wine.

  As I continued, I saw another table inside, and this one had people sitting at it. Well, at least one person. But I heard other voices, and I drew closer, hoping to hear what they were saying.

  My heart pounded in my throat.

  I didn’t know the local laws. I didn’t know what might happen if I got caught trespassing, eavesdropping.

  Though eavesdropping as a charge wouldn’t have stuck; I couldn’t understand a damned thing they were saying.

  I dropped down into a crouch just outside the door and next to the window. I was in a well-shaded patch, though if someone surprised me, I’d have to run through a more exposed area to get away. I followed that thought to its logical conclusion… dialing Bertrand as I ran, telling him to pick me up immediately… jumping into the back seat and screaming for him to go, go, go.

  Well, I’d just have to make sure that didn’t happen.

  The voices, as far as I could tell, were speaking French. Here and there I caught a word or phrase I recognized, though it was all run together so fast, it was impossible to know for sure.

  What I could be certain of was that they weren’t speaking Italian. I thought I picked out Massimo’s voice. He sounded tired.

  I decided to sneak a glance over the bottom of the window, because I had to be certain.

  In addition to Massimo, six people lounged around the table and a nearby sofa. Three women, three men. They ranged in age from mid-twenties to early forties, I guessed.

  I slid back down into a crouch, my weight on the balls of my feet.

  Yeah, he was speaking French. How proficient he was, that I didn’t know, but he wasn’t noticeably pausing and searching for words. When I’d investigated him, I hadn’t come across anything that indicated he’d once lived in France, yet he clearly had good friends in the country.

  Very carefully, I pulled my bag off my back and took out the cell phone. I angled the screen down, toward the crushed grass by my feet, then inched it up until I could see. Even with my hand cupped partially over it, the screen was still too bright. I quickly scrolled through the dozens of pages of apps, looking for a voice recorder.

  Either there wasn’t one, or it was named something unintuitive. I appreciated that Corbin had tricked out my loaner phone, but it wasn’t ideal for a woman with a job to do.

  I snorted softly. Maybe I’d discovered Corbin’s true intention: stop me from working.

  The people inside the house burst into laughter. It died down for the most part, but through the noise, I wasn’t sure if I heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor.

  That was my cue to slip around to the side. Better safe than sorry.

  A moment later, I was glad that I had.

  Massimo stood in the doorway. He wore a loose cotton shirt and soft pants that were messily rolled up to just below the knee.

  He had ridiculously nice calves, the sparse hair on his legs perfectly straight and orderly, like it had been brushed. I had a sudden urge to stroke his shins.

  There was a cigarette between his fingers, but he didn’t light it, didn’t even raise it to his lips.

  He hung his head, and I saw his brow furrow, like he was trying to withstand great physical pain. He inhaled in short, choppy bursts. I’d had plenty of panic attacks, and I knew what he was going through.

  Little by little, his breathing evened out, until finally he stood quietly, staring out into the darkness.

  The sadness on his face was beautifully tragic, and the way he was lit only added to the impression that his soul bore a great burden.

  What that burden truly was, I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, he’d had nothing to do with any murder anywhere.

  So then why was I there? Just killing time? An inability to break the habit of skulking in dark places and spying on people?

  I didn’t think so. Instinct, formed during a childhood filled with bounty hunter obsessions, then honed over years of actively tracking people down, was what had driven me here.

  I just didn’t know why.

  But on the way from the house, I took a moment to snap photos of the cars and license plates in the driveway.

  Chapter 12

  Bertrand picked me up and drove me back. We chatted a bit. He didn’t ask any questions about what I’d been doing, and he didn’t seem offended that I hadn’t volunteered.

  It occurred to me that having someone to drive me to and from stakeouts made things a lot easier. For example, no worrying about stashing the car a few streets away, then returning to find that a busybody neighbor had called a tow truck.

  “I’m in for the rest of the evening,” I said as I got out of the car. “You can go home.”

  Bertrand gave me his little salute. “Have a good night,” he said, and he put his hands together, tilted his head and mimed going to sleep.

  “Funny guy,” I said.

  My phone rang as I was opening the hotel room door.
<
br />   I recognized Rob’s cell number. “I was just about to call you,” I said, thinking he could do some deeper research on Massimo’s situation for me.

  “Psychic twin bond,” he said. “You must have sensed a disturbance in the force.”

  “The force?” I walked through the suite to see if Corbin hadn’t returned in my absence.

  He hadn’t.

  “The force that keeps the family happy. I didn’t want to disturb you again on your vacation, but Dad insisted.”

  “It’s hardly a vacation. Paris is nice, but Corbin’s busy, and I’m not so good at sitting around.”

  “Any updates?”

  “Not really.” I hadn’t yet told Rob that Corbin’s wife was definitely alive, and I didn’t feel like going into it now. “So what do you need?”

  I slumped onto the sofa and eyed the bags that the front desk had sent up when I checked in. Corbin hadn’t said anything about them—we’d had more interesting topics to discuss—but now that things had calmed down some, I was curious to know what was inside.

  “Are you ready?” Rob asked. “This is going to blow your mind. Hold on.”

  I heard someone talking in the background.

  “Right,” Rob said, but he wasn’t addressing me. “Audrey?”

  “Still here.”

  “Kat wants to know why you gave permission for Erin to date Martin. Earlier today Dad wanted to know if you gave permission.”

  I frowned. “You know I did. I guess it turned out badly, so I get to take the blame. Fine. And I don’t want to know details. Just tell me… Did anyone quit, and are we being sued?”

  “Quite the opposite. It’s true love, with lots of PDA.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Maybe it’ll be good for morale?”

  “You can be the one to spin it that way to Dad. We got some interesting new cases.”

  Rob was wrong; my mind was definitely not blown.

  The top of the bag was full of tissue paper in three shades of pastel blue. I didn’t know if it was for me or not, but Corbin and I didn’t have secrets, other than the government kind. I dug through the paper until my fingers touched soft fabric.