“Or if I had died,” Jane said loudly. “Remember that? The part where someone out there probably still wants me dead?”
He didn’t reply.
“I get that the thing didn’t go well, Agent Hopkins. I was there. I understand that the person who killed my partners is still out there. That’s not going to make it easy for me to sleep tonight. But, look, shit happens, ok? We’ll just try again --”
Booker laughed, a short, sharp sound. “There is no trying again, don’t you get it? Today was our one and only chance of luring whoever’s after you out into the open.”
Jane narrowed her eyes, twisting to face him fully, sitting cross-legged. “What’re you saying? I still have protection, right?”
“For what? So far all you’ve done is waste FBI resources and time.”
“Waste --” She gaped at him for a moment, looking genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry, who was running today’s fun little circus?”
Booker’s jaw tightened, but he turned away, refocusing on his laptop. He wouldn’t be baited by her. “It’s over, Jane. We’re going back to Chicago tomorrow and --”
“No!” She was on her feet, striding around his bed to glare down at him. “You promised me protection, Booker! You said there’d be a deal if I did this, if I let you hang me out like a worm on a hook! You don’t get to dump me with the CPD because your plan didn’t work out, you don’t get to walk back on your promise!”
He felt a flush of heat in his face and a sick weight in his stomach. Booker kept his jaw clenched. “The deal was contingent upon your usefulness,” he said calmly. “If you can offer anything else, maybe we can take another look at it. But for now, there’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
There was a long, ringing silence. He kept his eyes down, focused on his laptop, even though he wasn’t doing anything. Jane didn’t move from his bedside. He could feel her furious gaze on him.
“You’re a real asshole,” she said finally. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. Slowly, she returned to her bed.
He couldn’t quite keep himself from saying it. “And you’re a criminal. Maybe think it through next time you decide to commit a federal crime.”
* * *
Neither of them spoke after that, and the room felt a lot smaller. A new layer of guilt was added to the parfait of bad vibes Booker had been feeling since leaving the park. He told himself it was ridiculous, she was a criminal, and if that truth hurt her feelings, then she should have chosen a different career path.
True or not, it didn’t help.
In the end, they did order room service. Booker’s stomach was growling traitorously by the time the door chimed. He set aside his laptop, on which he’d been playing pinball for the last half-hour. Jane had fallen asleep watching TV; he rose quietly and went to the door, where he signed for their food from the hotel delivery drone. It bleeped happily and trundled off down the corridor with an electric hum.
“Dinner,” Booker said softly, setting Jane’s plate of cauliflower stroganoff on her bedside table. She mumbled something, cracking an eye to peer up at him, then closing it again.
He sighed, sitting on the edge of his bed. The spinach lasagna he’d ordered was piping hot, but he got through a few bites without burning his mouth too badly. Between each one he kept glancing at Jane. She remained lying down, stubbornly pretending to sleep.
After a few minutes of this Booker set aside his food -- it was too hot anyway -- and sighed again. “Alright, look. Maybe you’re right. I haven’t been handling this very well. Honestly, it’s my first…well, it’s my first everything. I’m under a lot of pressure to do this right -- it’s not just my job on the line, it’s my whole department. So, yeah, I’ve been a bit of an asshole, and that’s not fair to you. You’re just as much a victim as you are a perp.”
Jane grunted softly, but didn’t look at him.
“I know we made a deal, and I want to uphold it. I want to help you, I really do. But…you’ve got to give me something I can actually work with. I know, I know,” he said quickly. “Today’s fuck-up was entirely my own. But it won’t matter to my boss or the prosecution. They want someone to lock up for this whole debacle, and right now that’s you. But if you can help me out…” He hesitated. “If you give me access to the dark web community you worked through, I think I can still salvage our agreement. It’ll help, a lot. Not just in tracking down the skull, but in finding out who killed your partners, and why.”
Jane said nothing.
Booker stood. “I’m sorry. Ok? I am formally apologizing to you. And I’m telling you I need your help, as much as you need mine, if not more. This is…it’s…”
He frowned down at her. Maybe she really was asleep. “Jane?”
No reply.
Booker put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. “Jane.”
She didn’t move. And now he could see how quickly the vein in her neck was ticking, how shallow her breath was.
“Oh shit,” he breathed. Booker knelt and grabbed her by both shoulders, shaking her more violently. “Jane. Jane, come on, wake up. Wake up!”
A sudden, sharp smell filled the hotel room, and a stain spread across the duvet. Her bladder had just released.
“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck!”
The walls of the room seemed to be shrinking. Booker stumbled to his feet, a high whistling sound in his ears that he recognized a moment later as his own, rapid breath. He ran his hands across his scalp, pulling at his hair, trying to shock himself out of the numb paralysis that had suddenly taken hold.
Do something, you idiot!
He hit the emergency services contact on his watch, and a tone buzzed in his earpiece. A second later someone picked up and began speaking.
“I need an ambulance!” Booker roared over them. “My -- my friend, she’s having some sort of fit, she’s --”
* * *
“In a diabetic coma,” the doctor repeated patiently.
Booke stared at the man. They were standing outside the room where Jane lay, hooked up to whatever it was they were using to keep her alive. He couldn’t quite remember the arrival of the paramedics or the trip to the hospital. It almost felt like he had just woken from a deep sleep.
“What?”
“A diabetic coma,” the doctor said, for what must have been the third time. “Hypoglycemia. Her insulin levels were very high when she was brought in, and that seems to have triggered --”
“She’s not diabetic,” Booker said.
The doctor arched an eyebrow. “According to my staff, she is. This is very clearly hypoglycemic shock, Agent Hopkins. There’s really nothing else it could be. I’m not certain what she’s been through in the last twenty-four hours, but her levels are wildly imbalanced.”
“No,” Booker said. “She’s not diabetic. We -- the Bureau has her records, medical records. There’s no history of it, at all.”
The arched eyebrow swooped down into a frown. “Well…it is possible she only recently developed it. Type 1, you know, can occur quite suddenly, even in adults. Admittedly, the timing is very unfortunate, but…”
The doctor kept talking, but Booker took a break from listening. He leaned back against the wall, rubbing his eyes. They felt full of sand.
“This isn’t right,” he muttered.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said this isn’t right.”
“Ah -- which part?”
“All of it!” Booker thumped a fist against the wall. “It doesn’t make sense, for this to happen now. We were in the middle of an investigation, she’s a crucial -- the only eyewitness. It just…”
The doctor was looking at him very strangely. Booker realized he had been rambling, probably sounded like he was drunk. He cleared his throat, trying to collect himself. Focus. He needed to focus, to figure out what to do next. Call Helen was probably step one. At this point, she’d probably be expecting more bad news.
“Agent Hopkins,” the doctor said. “Are you suggesting this woman m
ight be in danger?”
“She’s in a coma, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but --” The doctor glanced at the nurse’s station over his shoulder, lowered his voice, and stepped closer. “She’s an eyewitness. That’s what you said? To what? Do you think someone might be trying to…remove her?”
Booker stared at the man, skin prickling. “Is that possible?”
“There are ways to artificially induce hypoglycemia, yes. I’ve never heard of it being used as a -- a tool of assassination. But it would work. It would be almost impossible to tell the difference, if you didn’t know what you were looking for.”
The doctor continued to stare at him, eyes wide, almost excited. Booker wasn’t seeing the man. Instead, moments from the day were flashing before his eyes like polaroids. The park, Jane walking around the fountain. Passing groups of people. The crowd of tourists briefly engulfing her. A man passing a little too close. A woman bumping her shoulder.
So many moments, none lasting more than a second, all of them the perfect opportunity for a quick injection, a jab so quick she probably wouldn’t even have noticed.
“Agent Hopkins?” the doctor said uncertainly.
“Will she live?”
“That’s -- I mean, it’s early. Assuming there are no unforeseen complications --”
Somehow, Booker thought there might be. “Get back in there and give her a full examination. Whatever it is you do. Look for needle marks, sticky patches, things that you wouldn’t think to look for if she was diabetic. I’m going to get someone from the DPD to stand guard at her door. Nobody but you enters or leaves without my permission, understood?”
“I --”
“Good. I need to make a call.”
Ten
Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie
Paris, France
Martin Kingston had planned for everything.
It was a necessity, he’d always said, when you were in a lifelong struggle against a chronic autoimmune disease and a superbug that could claim your life at any time, in any hundreds of direct or indirect ways. Though his health was the reason for this preparedness, it was a philosophy that had extended to all areas of his life. Estelle could never remember her father being caught flat footed. Even after her mother had died and the responsibility of looking after her father fell to her, through the anxiety and fear some part of Estelle had secretly assumed -- secretly known -- that it would be alright.
Because Martin Kingston planned for everything.
Including his own funeral.
The Vigil Service was held at Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie on Rue de Temple in the 3rd Arrondissement, not far from Martin Kingston’s home, as laid out in his final will and testament. Everything had been preordained, the digital document notarized and executed automatically upon the filing of his death certificate. In this final act, Estelle was not responsible for taking care of her father.
The church was small, compared to the likes of Notre Dame or any of Paris’ other celebrity cathedrals, but no less beautiful. Four life-size statues stood watchful in alcoves on its classic façade, depicting Saint Louis IX, Eugenie, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, and two nameless figures, one male and one female. Above the lintel, beneath an arching garland of stone-carved grape leaves, was a bas relief depiction of the Pietà: The Virgin Mary with the body of Jesus draped across her lap, and two kneeling angels flanking them on either side, wings raised high.
The interior was an airy Gothic space, with lofty vaulted ceilings and high windows letting in the clear light of the summer day. Chandeliers hung low on long chains, burning with electric candles. At the far end of the apse, above the altar, a vibrant fresco depicted Mary surrounded by a heavenly host, illuminated from above by a large glass-covered oculus.
Estelle noticed none of it when she stepped through the church doors. The qualities of Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie were lost to her state of exhausted numbness.
She was greeted in the narthex by a group of mourners, all dressed in dark shades of mourning to match her own. As Estelle moved deeper into the church, it seemed every person she encountered wanted to shake her hand and offer their condolences. Names were offered, but she recognized only a handful of them from her father’s academic circles, and even those were more or less strangers to her. Having moved to Paris in his middle years, and being something of an introvert, Martin Kingston had not accumulated much of a social life in the city, with one exception: his membership with Chevaliers des L'Antiquites, a non-profit historical society that he had corresponded with from the United States, and which had been only too happy to officially accept him into their ranks once the move was made. She assumed many of the faces she now saw were fellow members of the Chevaliers, and even recognized a few from dinner parties and dry discussions at her father’s apartment that had gone late into the night. But they had been Martin’s friends, not hers. Of these mourners, only two were known personally to her.
“Estelle.” At the nave threshold, Prêtre Yves Poirier took her hands gently in his own. “You know you have my deepest condolences. I was terribly saddened to learn of Martin’s sudden passing.”
“Thank you, Prêtre”
“We both were,” said the tall man beside Yves, smiling sadly, his grey-green eyes looking faded and flat.
“Uncle Francis,” Estelle said, gratefully accepting his hug. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
“No way I wasn’t going to be here.” Francis Santiago’s voice, normally firm and mellifluous, sounded hoarse and a bit watery. “No seven-hour flight was going to stop me.”
Both men had been lifetime friends of the Kingston family and of Martin especially, ever since their college years. Yves had been Martin Kingston’s personal liaison with God and gaming buddy, the two of them sharing a dorm at the University of Minnesota. Uncle Francis, who wasn’t really her uncle at all, had attended a different school, but a summer trip to Jerusalem had brought all three of them together. His demeanor was always kind and gentle, and both men had been a constant throughout Estelle’s childhood. They’d been there for Martin when her mother died, but that had been years ago. It had been a long time since she had seen either of them, but right now they were a welcome beacon of familiarity.
“Tell me,” Yves said, taking her hand again, his voice gentle. “Did you know of his illness?”
Estelle shook her head, not meeting his gaze, focusing instead on the wrinkled skin of the hand that enfolded her own. “No. It was all…very sudden.”
“Well, that’s just like Marty,” Uncle Francis said, with a hint of his usual dry humor. “Played shit close to chest. Sorry, Yves.”
The priest waved off the apology. “Well. His suffering has ended. Martin was always fighting – you know, of course. It is a shock, but we must also rejoice.”
Estelle nodded automatically. Privately, she had never felt less like rejoicing in her entire life.
As if reading her mind, Uncle Francis said, “I don’t think anyone’s in the mood for a party right now, Yves.”
The narthex had emptied around them. She glanced past Yves into the church, where the pews were filling. “I never realized there were so many of you.”
Yves followed her gaze. “Les Chevaliers has a long history, yes. And we cherish our members like family. They have gathered to say goodbye to your father.” He drew a breath “There is a place for you, with Les Chevaliers. Should you want it.”
He seemed oddly nervous, bashful, even. Uncle Francis cleared his throat. “She doesn’t have time for our dusty old meetings, Yves. She’s too busy actually changing the world.”
The priest’s smile seemed to stiffen at that.
Estelle shook her head lightly. “I never really even understood what it is you all do at your meetings.”
Uncle Francis shrugged. “Talk, mostly. Usually there’s some topic of the month – ancient Persia, the Punic Wars, some Egyptian dynasty or other. Every era has its mystery. We liked to fancy ourselves a bunch of historical Sherlocks, puzzle it o
ut over drinks. Boring stuff, like I said.”
It was almost comfortable, reminiscing with her father’s friends, selecting only the brightest moments to look back on. It gave Estelle an excuse to avoid going into the funeral. But a question was intruding upon her, rising in her throat, and even though part of her simply wanted to file it away and forget, another, stronger part of her wouldn’t allow that. It urged her forward, with what felt surprisingly like anger.
“So,” she said in a forcedly calm tone. “Do either of you know why my father went to Africa this summer?”
Both Yves and Uncle Francis blinked at her, apparently caught completely off-guard. “Did he?” asked the priest. “I didn’t even know.”
“Neither did I,” grunted Uncle Francis. “Research?”
“Apparently,” Estelle said. “Only he told me he was going to Nimes.”
There was another silence. Yves cleared his throat. “Well…Perhaps he simply did not want you to worry.”
Estelle smiled. It felt stiff on her face. “Right. Liked to play things close to the chest, like you said, Uncle Francis.”
He was rubbing his face. “Yeah, well. Africa. That’s…out there, even for your dad.”
“And he never talked to either of you, about his latest project? He was working on a book, but I never -- never really asked what it was about.”
Both men exchanged a glance, then shrugged. “I am sorry,” Yves said.
“Only it’s just -- it’s just that he seems to have gotten sick in Africa. Malaria, you know, according to the doctors. That’s what killed him. So it would be nice to know why --” She laughed suddenly, a harsh sound. “To know what could have possibly possessed him to go there on his own. To lie to me about it.” She paused, suddenly aware of how heavily she was breathing. “Because, see, I think he knew he was sick. After he got back.”
Again the two men exchanged glances. “Did he mention,” Yves began.
“No. No, he didn’t say anything. But when I found him, his medical tag had been deregistered. That has to be done manually. And I can’t understand why he would have done that, because if he hadn’t, if I had known -- if there had been some sort of warning --”
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