on that.”
CHAPTER 39
CHARLIE
I stopped outside the restaurant and stood gulping for air, as though I’d just stumbled out of a poison cloud. I could still hear that flat metallic voice telling me he’d reported Rose to her death just to be safe. That it had pleased him.
Eve had described him so often. The unwavering eyes, the long fingers, the elegant surface. But she had not done him justice. That hadn’t been a man sitting across the table from me. It had been a human viper.
I wanted to be sick. But Eve moved past me, heading down the street nearly at a run, and I forced myself into motion.
“Eve, we don’t have to run.” Dashing to catch up. “He’s not coming after you.”
“No.” Eve never stopped. “I’m going after him.”
For an instant my heart howled agreement. I thought of that man, and I didn’t feel any of the queasiness I’d experienced when I first realized Eve’s revenge might be murderous. Half a glass of champagne in René Bordelon’s company would be enough to convince anyone that sometimes even old men deserved to die.
But common sense struggled through the red haze of fury, and my heart lurched. “Eve, wait. You can’t risk it, you—”
“Hurry up!” She kept striding, blazing eyed, through the twisting streets. A tall Frenchman took one look at her expression and stepped out of her way. My mind raced, pulled in two directions. Stop her, common sense argued, even as rage screamed, Why?
Turning the last corner, I saw the Lagonda in front of our hotel, blue and gleaming. I sagged in relief. I needed Finn: his calm, his quiet logic, and if all else failed his implacable arms keeping Eve from charging into disaster. But he wasn’t beside his beloved car, and inside, the desk clerk passed me a note covered in his back-slanting scrawl. “He went out to have drinks with the garage mechanic,” I said, replying to Eve’s look of brusque inquiry. “They’re offering him a job, something about engine restoration—”
“Good.” Eve took the stairs two at a time. I crammed the note in my pocket and followed.
The desk clerk called after me. “Madame, a telegram for you from Roubaix—”
“I’ll come back for it,” I flung over my shoulder. By the time I burst into Eve’s room, she already had the Luger out of the bedside drawer. The sight of it stopped me dead. “Shit,” I said for the first time in my life.
Eve gave a grim smile as she peeled off her gloves. “You cannot possibly be surprised.”
I pressed my fingers against my pounding temples. Fury was definitely giving way to fear. “You’ll go to his house and kill him, then? Just wait till he comes home from slurping up rillettes, walk up to his door, and put seven shots into his skull?”
“Yes.” She pushed the first bullet home. “‘A charming little villa,’ the waiter said. Just p-p-past the mimosa fields off the Rue des Papillons. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Put that pistol down and listen to me. Whether you succeed or fail, you’d go to prison. Don’t you understand that?”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.” I seized her by the arm. “I want my daughter to have a godmother.”
She slid the last bullet into place. “And I want to see that man dead.”
Part of me agreed. But his life wasn’t worth trading for Eve’s future—he’d already eaten too much of her past. And I wasn’t going to risk ruining my own future, just as it was starting to be patched together, by assisting in a murder. “Eve, stop and think.”
“I have.” Eve checked the Luger’s barrel. “If I kill René at his home, there shouldn’t be any witnesses. He hasn’t got a wedding ring, so there’s no wife or children to get in the way. I intend to leave his rotten body on the floor and walk out free as a bird.”
“The restaurant knows you were looking for him, asking where he lived. Not just the restaurant today either. We’ve been making inquiries all over Grasse for weeks.” Maybe logic would reach her; I scrambled to marshal my arguments. “If he turns up dead now—”
“The police might look for us, but how? We all gave false names, to the hotel here and everyone else. Besides, I d-don’t intend to stay in Grasse long enough for people to come looking for me.”
“And how are you getting out of Grasse, with Finn not here to drive? How are you even getting