Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,82

Sweat broke out on his forehead. He rubbed his watering eyes, which kept darting toward the stall door—looking for his backup.

“Now you’re an accomplice to murder and robbery, and I’ll be sure to implicate your friends.”

“Good luck, bitch.”

“No luck involved.” She reached up to the alarm system box. Pulled it.

Silence. No piercing shrieks. Merde.

Only blinking red lights. A silent alarm designed to avoid frightening the horses? She hoped so.

At the half-door she turned. “What made you remember the woman who got out of the taxi?”

“Reminded me of you, bitch.”

This is what she’d expected him to say, but bile rose in her throat nonetheless. But she couldn’t think about that now. She grabbed a riding helmet from the wall and strapped it on. Panic filled her as she crouched down behind hay bales and shooed off buzzing flies.

Goran was shouting something in Serbian. She heard approaching footsteps and banging stall doors. Any moment now, they’d discover her.

On her left, a stable hand led out the last horse by the reins. Straightening up, and shielded by the horse’s body, she kept pace with its front legs as the Serb thugs passed by the stalls.

She couldn’t count on the silent alarm working. Once clear, she hurried through the side stable and found the fire alarm box. Broke the glass and pulled the switch. Loud whoops blasted in the stable and barn. Horses neighed in the exercise ring.

“Where’s the fire?” the stable hand shouted at her.

“No fire. Terrorists. Lock down the stable.”

“Aren’t you with the Red Cross?”

“Undercover.” His mouth dropped open. “No time for explanations. Tell the team it’s the Serbs. Give this to the vet.” She handed him the autopsy. “Seems Goran ripped you high and dry.”

By the time she made it to the bus stop, fire engines and unmarked cars were whizzing toward the stables. She took the first bus that stopped. Concentrated on breathing deep, the window beside her open to the pollen of the chestnut trees. The rest faded in and out, passing in a blur. Nerves, the residual effects of the drugs, and the revelation of her mother warred in her system.

She changed buses and boarded one in the direction Denfert-Rochereau. Why couldn’t the driver go faster? She had to get back to the office. Somewhere ahead there had to be the Métro station.

From the window, she saw a van pull abreast of the bus, honking at straggling schoolchildren on the zebra-striped crosswalk. A white Renault van with temporary license plates, sporting a chrome muffler held to the bumper with wire.

And then it all came back to her—the dark lane, Saj honking at the white van with its bumper trailing on the cobbles. That’s what she couldn’t remember, what Goran heard but couldn’t see. The driver had stopped to reattach the dragging muffler so he wouldn’t be noticed or given a ticket.

Aimée had to get off the bus. She rushed toward the back doors, which were closing. She wedged herself through and got a mouthful of exhaust as the bus took off.

Worried, she looked around for the van. Traffic surged ahead at the green light. Where had it gone so fast?

The pavement shifted like sand under her feet. Passersby scurried around her. Didn’t they feel this shifting, this rumbling from the Métro trains below? Or were the underground quarry tunnels fissuring, cracking open, the streets opening to sinkholes?

Blood rushed to her head. She put one foot in front of her, yet she stood stuck in the same place, under the globed street lamp glinting in the sun. Why hadn’t anyone noticed? Why was she sinking to the pavement? Slipping into darkness.…

AIMÉE OPENED HER eyes. Sunlight streamed through shutter slats, warming her toes. She lay curled on soft pigskin leather—a toffee-colored divan—luscious. She stretched.

Then it hit her—the white van.

“You’re pale, breathing shallow.” A young woman with short red hair à la gamine and tortoise-shell glasses felt her pulse. “Eaten today, Mademoiselle?”

“But I have to catch.…” She tried to sit up. Her elbows slipped and her legs didn’t cooperate. The tang of old leather-bound books and paper hovered in the warm air.

Where in the world …? A ticking wooden ormolu clock on the wall read 1:20 P.M. Twenty or thirty minutes had gone by. The van was long gone by now. Hopeless.

“Desolée, but I don’t know where I am.” She shook her head. Felt a wave of dizziness. “Or how I got here.”

“You fainted in front of the Observatoire’s side entrance,” the woman said. “A teacher on a school field trip