Left to Kill (Adele Sharp #4) - Blake Pierce Page 0,9

her father’s had to this point?

“Others, how many others?” said John.

Foucault shrugged. “He didn’t know. She didn’t say. Hopefully, if she wakes, we can ask her. But for now, I wouldn’t rely on her making a recovery.” His voice was grim once more. “She’s in a bad way.”

Adele moved a bit, circling around John’s other side and glancing out the window into the city streets below. Many of the buildings were still streaked with lights, as Paris wasn’t the sort of city to go to bed early.

“The girl, what do we know about her?”

“Amanda Johnson,” said Foucault. “Twenty-one years old. A college student from the US, who was in Germany over the summer backpacking with some friends. She split up from the friends a month into it, to travel on her own. A missing person. Fell off the face of the radar, and wasn’t seen again.”

Adele felt a slow shudder creeping up her spine. “Amanda,” she said, softly. “She’s been here since the summer? Months?”

“Five months,” said Executive Foucault. “She’s been missing for five months.”

John handed the photo back to Foucault. “What has he been doing with them? Her? Five months? Evidence of sexual assault?”

The Executive still looked troubled, but at this, his expression lightened, if only a little. “Not that they can tell. There doesn’t seem to be evidence of that kind.”

Now Adele was shaking her head. “No sexual assault? But she couldn’t say anything else? She went missing months ago, and apparently others were missing too? Her friends, the ones who traveled with her?”

Foucault shook his head. “No. They’re all accounted for. But the Black Forest, in Germany, you hear stories,” he said with a shrug.

“What sort of stories?” said John.

This time, though, Adele answered. “Disappearances. Some say kidnappings, others say random accidents. Whatever the case, there are a lot of missing persons reports in that area. I tracked a case there once before—turned up a dead end. Still, the lore sticks with you.”

Foucault clicked his tongue. “At least that’s what the locals are saying. I don’t know. That’s as much as we know. John, I’m being serious, keep your nose clean on this one. I can’t cover for you again.”

John held his hands up in surrender. “I hear you loud and clear.”

Adele tried not to sigh too loudly. The last time they’d been to Germany together, John had thrown a camera crew’s equipment off the edge of a cliff. It had nearly cost John his job. After a series of performance reviews, he’d been reinstated the previous week, but he was on thin ice. Another incident, and it might prove fatal to his career, if not his freedom.

“We’re heading out tonight?” said Adele.

“First thing,” said Foucault. “Tickets are booked. Chauffeurs waiting. Good luck, you two. This is a bad one.” He trailed off, his countenance darkening. “I can feel it. There’s something wrong about this one.”

“Something wrong about all the cases we get,” John said.

The Executive nodded and waved a hand, sighing as he did. “Perhaps. Good luck.” And with those words, he gestured delicately toward the door.

***

Another plane—another journey. Adele had picked up a small book from the airport bookstore for the flight, but now found herself ignoring it where she’d tucked it into the elastic compartment on the back of the seat in front of her.

John, next to her, was snoring. He had an uncanny ability to fall asleep wherever they went. She glanced over at him, her eyes moving past his muscled chest toward the window as she glanced out into the night sky. Moving, moving—from place to place. The sky itself never changed much. The clouds above France were the same as the clouds above Germany.

Killers were the same.

French or German—the devastation they caused was identical.

Adele crossed her arms but remained turned toward John, peering across his chest out into the night as she settled for the few-hour flight back to Germany.

CHAPTER FIVE

Adele awoke to a polite knock on her motel room door. She groaned, stretching, feeling the discomfort of the night settling on her body. The small airport motel they’d been shacked up in, next to Zurich Airport, had been about as comfortable as it sounded. Most of the night had been shaken by the rumble of airplane engines above. And if not that, the broken heating unit, spewing a lukewarm stream of heat through the room, had made a churning noise through the night. Adele was someone who valued her sleep, but also someone who prided herself on waking before an