We bolted from the suite, ran to the stairs, and took them two at a time, emerging in the wide hallway between the hotel lobby and the dining room. A maître d’ holding breakfast menus smiled and then frowned when we sprinted by him toward the lobby.
But an absolutely huge man in a $5,000 blue suit got in our way. He was at least six foot five and 230 pounds of solid muscle, with a thin beard and mustache, and there was a twisting coil of tubing running up his neck to the back of his ear.
“I’m sorry. You can’t enter the lobby just yet,” he said in a Texas twang.
“We have to get outside!” Louis cried. “What is this?”
“We have members of the Saudi royal family checking in. I’m sorry, sir. As I understand it, you may exit through the Dior spa downstairs.”
Rather than argue, we turned and bolted, with Louis telling our ride where to meet us. We emerged from the spa a few moments later, and a BMW sedan skidded up in front of the hotel. We jumped in.
Louis yelled, “Go. Head for George V Métro.”
The driver, whom I’d met only the day before, was Ali Farad, a former investigator with the French National Police based in Marseille. In addition to speaking six languages, Farad had been trained in anti-terror and drove like it. He wove us through the streets toward the George V Métro station, which Louis said lay in the direction Kim Kopchinski had gone in.
We almost caught her.
Her hair and clothes were still dusty from the ductwork when I spotted her crossing the Avenue George V toward the Champs-Élysées and the Métro entrance. Jumping from the moving car, I raced after her.
Cars skidded and horns blared at me as I dodged out into heavy morning traffic. Kim heard the commotion, looked over her shoulder, saw me, and started running as well, but in the other direction.
Crossing the southbound lane on the Avenue George V, a work truck appeared out of nowhere and damn near clipped me. I was forced to halt, gasping and angry. “Kim!” I shouted.
She never broke stride and disappeared into the Métro station. I got there less than thirty seconds later, vaulted the turnstiles, and sprinted toward the sounds of screeching metal and pneumatic doors whooshing open.
I hit an intersection in the tunnel where I had to decide on northbound or southbound platforms.
I chose south.
It was the correct platform.
But by the time I pounded down the stairs and reached it, the train doors were shutting on Kim who waved at me sadly and mouthed the words, “Good-bye, Jack.”
“C’mon!” I shouted. “Really?”
When I ran back out the exit, breathing hard, I found Louis standing there, his cell phone pressed to his ear. He looked pale when he spotted me, held up a finger, and said, “Yes, of course, Evangeline. I’ll go there right now.”
He hung up. “You catch her?”
Pissed off, I said, “She went southbound. Maybe we can still find her.”
Louis shook his head. “We don’t know where she is going. And Private Paris has just been called in on a delicate case.”
“Louis,” I began, “Sherman Wilkerson is one of our biggest clients, and-”
“Jack, you are the boss. I know this. But it is clear to me that Kim Kopchinski is a grown woman who does not want our protection,” Langlois said firmly. “So for the time, while you may go on a silly goose chase after her, I am going to the Palais Garnier. Henri Richard, the director of the Paris Opera and an esteemed member of L’Académie Française, has been found there, murdered. We have been hired to help the police find out why.”
Trying to slow my breath and still pissed off about losing Kim, I said, “By who? His wife?”
“Come, Jack,” Louis said wearily. “This is Paris. That was Richard’s mistress, Evangeline, who just phoned me.”
Chapter 15
6th Arrondissement
9 a.m.
GASPING FOR AIR and sweating, Sauvage rolled off Haja for the second time since they’d returned from the opera house to the small flat where he lived.
Haja propped herself up on one elbow. “Satisfied?”
“More than satisfied,” Sauvage said, lying on his back. “You’re a genius.”
“I pleased you,” she said. “I’m glad. It pleases me.”
The major glanced over at her. Her hair was still red from the evening before, but she’d taken out the contact lenses that had turned her eyes so electrically blue. Now they were back to that ice-gray color, which made her look even more striking. She was smiling, but he caught the envy in her expression.
“Is it ever satisfying for you?” he asked.
“In a way,” she said, tightening and looking away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Haja replied. “You had nothing to do with it.”
Sauvage hugged her and said, “You’ll get your revenge.”
“It’s so close I can taste it like salt.”
The major looked down at her again, and he felt that thing about her that had attracted him almost immediately, that thing that excited him every time he was with her. Haja gave off the sense that she was a true nomad, unfettered by rules, laws, and convention, as if she were limitless, as if there were no boundaries to what she’d say, and no telling what she might do at any given moment. In many ways, she was the most alluring woman he’d ever known.
Haja moved away from him, rose naked from the bed. He watched her cross the room toward the bathroom, her back and arms as powerful as a swimmer’s, her legs and bum as firm as a sprinter’s.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To meet Epée. And you have class in forty minutes.”
The major groaned, looked at his watch, realized she was right. Getting up from the bed a few minutes later, he padded past the bathroom, where she was already rinsing. He joined her, seeing that her hair was no longer red at all and significantly darker, almost back to that deep mahogany color he loved.
“No one would ever recognize you,” Sauvage said.
“Funny that something so superficial as color blinds people.”
“It will be on the news soon.”
“I know.”
“You’re ready?”
“I was ready when I turned twelve.”
“Where will I find you later?”
“At the factory. Working on the beast.”
“Have you figured out how to make it burn?”
She smiled. “Yes, I think so.”
“See?” the major said, taking her in his arms. “I said you were a genius.”
Chapter 16
9th Arrondissement
9:30 a.m.
THE STREET IN front of the Galeries Lafayette remained cordoned off. The air still stank of smoke, and there were firemen still working up on the roof. Then I saw the yellow sawhorse and tape across the rear gate of the opera house, which made me wonder how we were going to get inside the crime scene.
“Make nothing of it, Jack,” Louis said when I asked. “There is only one investigator with La Crim who might try to keep me out. The others I’ve known and worked with for years. They trust Private and they trust me.”
At the barrier, a police officer stopped us, but then Louis and I showed him identification. He got on his radio. A few minutes later, the officer shook his head.
“What?” Louis said, acting offended. “Who is the investigateur in charge?”
“Hoskins,” the officer replied.
“Merde,” Louis said.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “The one detective?”
“The one,” Louis said, his face twisting in annoyance.
“What’s he got against you?”
“She,” Louis corrected. “And hell has no fury like the woman scorned.”