think he was a good runner?”
“That man? If he hadn’t been shot he probably would have had a heart attack.”
“So, he ended up on foot not far from Notre Dame.”
Sidney leaned forward. “And?”
“And he certainly didn’t plan to use a taxi or the Métro to escape.”
“Maybe.”
Piers leaned back. “If he was going to escape, he’d use a car. The—”
“Renault.”
“Exactly.” He smiled. “All we have to do is find his car, and we find the painting.”
“Damn. You really are pretty good at this thinking thing. Even if you are, you know, a bit annoying about it.”
“And once we have the painting, we’ll be free.”
He grinned, excused himself and headed for the restroom. As he left, he noticed she was typing on her phone, and the café’s males were paying her attention again. He had to fight back the urge to tell them to look somewhere else, but he was being stupid. There wasn’t any romance between them, they were just two people stuck in a bad situation. One of them just happened to be devastatingly beautiful.
When he returned to the table, she smiled. It was close to her full thousand-watt version, but he couldn’t help but think it was tinged with something else.
Auguste’s phone rang. Sidney looked at the display. “It’s them.”
She flipped her phone open and smiled. Not the thousand-watt version; something altogether different. Something filled with boundless confidence—a confidence that bubbled over into her voice. “Yep.”
Piers could hear the short guy’s high-pitched voice rasping out of the back of the phone. “If you’ve stopped for lunch, I take it you’ve found the stuff.”
“You’re a bundle of laughs,” said Sidney.
“More laughs than our boss will be, that’s for sure, missy. You need to get your act together. Spend less time eating and more time finding our stuff.”
“Stuff, stuff, stuff. It’s probably not your stuff anyway.”
“Who says?”
“Piers.”
Piers rolled his eyes.
“Ohhhhh. Lover boy.”
He leaned forward and spoke into the phone, “I’m not her lover boy.”
Sidney turned away from him. “You can say that again. He doesn’t even like my figure.” She winked at Piers.
Piers flushed hot and leaned back in his seat. “I didn’t say that.”
“He sounds like a very sensitive guy,” said the little man.
“Believe me, he is.”
“Don’t forget, you’ve only got 16 hours left.”
“Until what?”
“Until you run out of time.”
“I’ll be biting my nails then.”
“Ho-ho. Very clever. Think I’m simple, huh?”
Sidney hummed for a moment. “Tell your boss we don’t have the stuff and we can’t find it. Have a nice day.”
She clicked off the phone.
Piers shot forward. “Bloody hell!”
She looked indignant. “What?”
“Have you forgotten their threat? And that they’re a good deal bigger than either of us.”
“The little one isn’t.”
“It’s not the little one I’m worried about. Ring them back now. Tell them it was a joke.”
“No.”
“What? They’re outside. They’ll just wait for us to walk outside and beat the daylights out of us.”
“But we know where the painting is. We’ll be in control. They’ll have to do what we want, and we’ll be free. You said so.”
Piers groaned. “Maybe. When we have the painting. It may have escaped your attention, but we don’t actually have the painting yet.”
Sidney’s face fell. Her lips curled down and her eyes seemed to get smaller. “Then what do you want to do?”
“Call them back. Say you’re sorry.”
As she glowered at him, Auguste’s phone rang. She flipped it open without looking.
“What?”
“You need to take this seriously. Our boss isn’t a nice guy. Well, I didn’t mean that, he is a nice guy, but sometimes he’s not, comprende?”
“Comprende? My, you are well-educated.”
“Well, I am, as it happens. Very. Now, find our painting, and pronto.”
“Comprende and pronto, all in one phone call. How lucky can a girl get?”
“Find the bloody painting.”
The phone clicked off.
Piers shook his head. “They found us again. They might be idiots, but don’t antagonize them, because they might be idiots with guns and knives.”
“They don’t look like they could handle guns.”
“You’d be surprised. Especially if you push them over the edge.”
“I’d be only too happy to push them over the edge.”
He smiled. “I’d be only too happy to get rid of them as well, but for the time being we have to put up with them.”
“Maybe we should take the knives, for safety.”
Piers looked at his knife and laughed. “You’d be better off with the fork than this knife.”
She wiped her fork on her napkin and slipped it into her handbag.
He rolled his eyes. “Is there anything you haven’t tried to nick?”
She pulled a face at him.
He took a last mouthful