“I’m not saying that,” said Adele. I’m not not saying that either, she thought. “I just need to ask. Well?”
She waited, hope spinning through her, causing her heart to pound. But, before she could receive an answer, Agent Paige cleared her throat and stepped forward.
“Can I get anything for anyone to drink?” she asked in an innocent tone. She sidestepped in front of Adele, cutting off her view from the table.
The four friends shook their heads quickly, and Agent Paige shouldered past Adele, moving toward the bar, the limp in her gait more apparent than ever.
A surge of guilt at Paige’s limp gave way to frustration at the interference. “We’re on the job,” Adele snapped.
“Welcome to Paris,” retorted Paige, without looking back.
Tomas, a clever look in his eyes, glanced between the two women, and a slight frown creased his expression.
“Well,” said Adele, muffling her emotions once more. She glanced back at the young friends. “Do you know anyone with red hair?”
“There’s Stephan,” said Sarah, who didn’t seem to have noticed the tension between the two agents. “He’s a few years younger than us, but was in school with us.”
“No; Stephan’s family moved,” said the girl with dark hair. “Besides, he’s not interested in women.”
Adele shook her head. “I think it would be someone older. Perhaps someone my age, or maybe even older than me. Like Agent Renee.”
John cleared his throat in indignation, but didn’t say anything, waiting for the kids to reply. Again, they all shook their heads.
“We don’t know anyone like that.” This came from Tomas, after glancing around at his friends and noting the blank expressions on their faces. “But… Marion was friendly to everyone. Even tourists.”
A couple of eye rolls from around the table met the word “tourists.”
Adele paused at this, feeling a jolt of sympathy for the murdered girl. Though she’d never met Marion, it mattered that she was friendly to foreigners—especially in a city that had an opposite reputation at times. Adele had spent most of her life moving from place to place, required to prove herself again and again to the locals. It had been a rare thing to have someone greet her with a kind word and a smile.
But had that friendliness killed Marion? The killer had fled the US. Perhaps he’d used his status as a tourist to lure Marion into a false sense of security. But if so, how had the man known the girl’s age? Had he stalked her?
Adele’s thoughts were interrupted by Tomas. “May we go now?” he said in a weary voice.
The other man with the high cheekbones held up a halting hand. “Hang on,” he said. “What happened exactly? If it is true you can tell us what happened, Agent Sharp, then why aren’t you?”
“It’s obvious,” said Sarah, full lips forming a thin line as she pressed them tight. “Something terrible happened.”
Tomas frowned. “Marion is dead. That’s terrible enough.” He ignored his friends and pressed on, determined. “Did she suffer?” Tomas demanded, glaring at Adele.
Adele resisted the urge to turn toward where Agent Paige was at the bar; she knew her old supervisor was intentionally going out of her way to make this difficult. Now Adele was in an impossible position. If Marion’s friends actually knew what had happened, it would haunt them. But Adele refused to lie. “It was bad. But she’s not suffering anymore. And I promise you, I promise,” she glanced to each of them in turn, locking eyes, “I’ll find who did this. And I’ll make them pay.”
The four friends slumped even lower in their seats. Then, with a great sigh of resignation, Tomas pushed himself up, stepping backward over his stool and retrieving a coat set on the table behind him. He gestured with a small jerk of his head at the others, and they quickly followed his retreat.
It would take Adele a little bit of time to re-acclimate to the way things were done at the DGSI. There were no checkouts for the interview room, no clerk to escort the interviewees out of the station. They were in a bar in the afternoon in Paris. The French agency often afforded more freedom and less red tape. But, as she glanced toward where Sophie Paige hung her head at the bar, holding a drink which she wasn’t sipping, it also allowed the worst sorts too much leeway sometimes.
“Farewell,” Paige called without looking back. Her words seem to propel the four friends even quicker out the door, and Adele could hear the scattered sound of their rapid footsteps as they hastened along the sidewalk outside, and then the sound faded with the dull thump of the shutting door.
Adele glared at the Paige’s back, frowning. Her hands tingled, her fingers tapping incessantly at her upper thigh.
John stepped forward, his elbow brushing against her shoulder. “Do we go now?” he asked, his voice low. “What is this about red hair?”
Adele ignored him, and she hurried forward, shoving past Paige’s partner and surging toward the seated woman at the bar.
“Sophie,” the round, balding man barked in warning.
Adele stormed forward, and Sophie Paige turned slowly, glancing over her shoulder and swiveling in her stool.
Adele found her fists were bunched at her sides, and she quickly unclenched them. It wouldn’t do to get into a fight in a bar the first day on the job.
“Can I ask what you think you’re doing?” Adele snapped.
Agent Paige gave a half smile, presenting the sort of leer that belonged on the mouth of a shark. “You may ask whatever you want. Hells, do what you want. You always have.” Page spoke in French, rapidly, as if she were trying to shake Adele off the scent of a trail.
But Adele’s French was coming back to her, and she replied just as quickly, “Do we need to talk?”
Paige glared. “The time for talking was six years ago, don’t you think? Before you knifed me in the back!”
“I didn’t—”
“Go deal with your case and get out of my face.”
“I never intended for you to get in trouble,” said Adele. “I didn’t know you had been demoted.”
Agent Paige’s left hand tightened around the filled glass, and she spun around sharply, tossing the contents at Adele.
John and Paige’s partner rushed forward, but Adele stood her ground, allowing the alcohol to seep down her face and stain her clothing. It dripped from her chin against the faux floorboards with rhythmic taps.
She could feel all eyes on her, including a couple of the daytime customers and the barkeep behind the counter. She inhaled shakily through her nostrils, smelling the whiskey on her chest.
“You’re a mess,” said Agent Paige. “Clean yourself up.” She grabbed a dirty towel from behind the counter and flung it at Adele. Then, without paying, she shoved off the stool and strode away from the bar, toward the door. Her partner quickly fell into step.
Adele found that her left hand was bunched up against her pants, holding her trousers tight.
“I didn’t realize it was that bad,” said John, his shadow falling over her, cast by the glowing lights in the square fixtures above.
Adele shook her head, causing sticky liquid to slip along her face and continue to drip down her chin. “I knew she was going to be trouble.”
“You weren’t lovers, were you?”
Adele glanced up at John and shook her head, noting his coy smile and the slight wiggle of his eyebrows. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“That would’ve been incredible,” John said, smiling fondly, looking off into the distance. Then he glanced back at Adele and sighed softly. “Come, you should clean yourself up. There are bathrooms in the back; I saw a sign.”
He pressed gently on her shoulder, guiding her toward the back of the bar, but Adele shrugged off the helping hand and stomped away, her legs stiff, her arms straight at her sides.