For a moment the world stopped; scurrying police and walkie-talkie static around her ceased. “What’s going on here?” she said.
He edged down the stairs toward her.
“Who wants to know?” said a stocky blue-uniformed policeman beside her.
She turned and showed the flic her PI license, glancing at the badge with his rank. “Sergeant, my friend Anaïs de Froissart called me from inside the école matemelle. Is she in danger?”
“You could say that,” he said. “Attends, I’ll get the inspector.” He walked over to a knot of uniformed men in deep discussion.
Yves’s deep brown eyes met hers.
“Some things never change,” he said, coming down the stairs and standing beside her.
“I thought you were in Marseilles,” she said returning his look, taking in the flak jacket over his bullet-proof vest. “You’re still undercover, aren’t you?”
“And you’re still smack in the middle of things,” he said.
She felt her face grow warm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Certain things are better left unsaid.”
“Like your wife?” she said. Right away, she wished she’d bitten her tongue.
“My ex-wife?” he said, his eyes narrowed. “Did you think—?”
“Policy must have changed,” she interrupted, “if they let you come front-line on hostage situations.”
“I pulled up before the area got cordoned off,” Yves said. “To meet Martine when she dropped Simone at school. We planned to interview Hamid.”
She didn’t believe him for a minute. A brown curl escaped from his jacket collar. She’d almost forgotten the curving nape of his neck.
“Why was Anaïs taken hostage?” Aimée asked.
“Everything’s unclear,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He shook his head. “The sans’papiers were removed from the church, and Ha-mid’s been taken to the hospital. I’m going to meet Martine there.”
The smell of burnt grease hovered near the marble staircase. Someone had forgotten to shut off their stove. Aimée struggled to look away from Yves’s face. A man motioned to Yves from the barricades. “There’s my colleague. I’ve got to go,” he said. “But I know where to find you.”
“Don’t count on it, Yves,” she said turning away, now determined. “If you can’t speak the truth, forget me.”
“The less you know the better,” Yves said. “The other part doesn’t work.”
“What doesn’t work?”
“Trying to forget you.”
Why did everyone have secrets and keep her in the dark?
“I forgot you until you popped up in my flat,” she said, unable to meet his gaze.
“Liar.”
But she’d turned and strode toward a knot of men in the foyer. By the time she looked back, he was gone.
Technicians and RAID teams speaking into headsets hurried past her. The hell with Yves. She had to get back on track, talk to the head honcho to find out how to help Anaïs.
“Who’s the commissaire in charge here?” she asked.
“Mademoiselle Leduc, I understand a hostage has been in contact with you,” the clipped voice of Hubert Sardou, a former commissaire in the Twentieth Arrondissement, came from behind her. His long, sallow face hovered near hers.
“Please elaborate as to whom and when,” he said.
She recalled Sardou, once a colleague of her father’s, from his three-inch platform shoe, which fooled few as to his clubfoot. But now he wore the distinctive badge identifying him as part of DST, the French Internal Security Service. “Hubert feels he must prove he’s the equal to the rest of us,” her father had said. “Every day.”
“Oui, Monsieur Sardou,” she said. “Anaïs called me on my cell phone twenty minutes ago. She wants my help. Why has she been taken hostage?”
“Seems the AFL wants a bigger audience,” he said.
In stunned disbelief she stepped back. “But the AFL policy is peaceful.” Aimée wondered if Hamid’s power had been usurped by factions. Or if the “ST196” photos played into this.
“We believe an AFL member’s holding everyone in the school hostage, but so far,” Sardou shrugged, “there’s been no contact.” Sardou crinkled his face, whether in distaste or indigestion, she found it hard to tell. “We’ll take it from here. Your cell phone, please,” he said, snapping his fingers at her.
“Won’t help much,” she said, keeping her expression neutral with effort and handing it to him. “Dead battery.”
Sardou studied her phone, raised it in the air, and barked, “Alors, anyone have a battery for this phone?”
Aimée could have sworn everyone in the foyer reached in their pocket to check. The French obsession with phone communication produced a matching battery. Sardou inserted it, beckoning to a man with NEGOTIATOR in large black letters on a flak jacket. An officer copied down the number while another hooked a wire from the cell phone into a tape recorder. Several pairs of headphones were connected, and the commissaire donned one quickly.
“Call Anaïs, tell her—and this is very important—to identify which room they’re being held hostage in. An experienced negotiator wants to speak with him.” He hit Call Return and nodded to Aimée as he handed her the phone.
She heard the phone ring several times before it was answered.
“Anaïs?”
No answer, only heavy breathing.
“This is Aimée, Anaïs’s friend. Who is this?”
Sardou nodded, then put his finger to his lips.
A sob erupted, sniffles, then a child’s voice lisped. “I made pee-pee … on my new dress. Maman will be mad at me!”
Surprised looks painted the commissaire and police officers’faces. The negotiator put his hand forward but Aimée shook her head.
“Simone?” Aimée asked. “I’m Aimée, remember me? I’m your maman’s friend.”
Loud crying answered her. Obviously Simone knew her mother was in the building. Had Anaïs come to see Simone after being released from the clinic?
Aimée kept her voice even. “Simone, that’s happened to me before too. I’ll clean your dress. Where are you?”
“Can you?” The sobbing ceased.
“Of course. I’ll do a good job,” Aimée said. “No one will know the difference. Where’s your maman?”
“The clown took her.”
“A clown?”
“He took her away.”
“Took her where?”
Aimée looked to Sardou, who signaled to keep talking. Outside the window, apart from the sun-dappled trees, no sign of life showed behind the school windows. Near Aimée in the foyer, a line of marksmen stood, checking their rifles and telescopic sights.
“Maman gave me her phone. The clown got angry with her and pushed her. She whispered it was part of the game, we were playing hide-and-seek with him, so we should all run away.”
Aimée wondered what had happened to Anaïs.
The commissaire’s face tightened. A worried expression appeared in the negotiator’s eyes.
“Where are you and the other children now?” Aimée asked.
“I’m in the closet under the stairs. Everyone else ran away with my teachers,” she said. “The clown looked funny. Not like a real clown.”
“What do you mean, Simone?”
“He didn’t have balloons,” she said. “Only fat sticks that you can light like candles. He said they’ll go bouml”
Dynamite.
Aimée froze. How would they defuse a terrorist carrying dynamite in a preschool full of hiding children?
Sardou barked an order to the waiting marksmen, who straightened to attention. Blue lights flashed outside in the narrow street as a truck screeched to a halt. That meant only one thing in Paris these days: the bomb squad. Aimée forced herself to keep her voice steady.