Chapter 336: Paris Is Lovely From the Floor of a Car

Damien was at the curtain before Jade finished speaking.

He looked past her, down the length of the shop to the gap at the edge of the blind. Then he took out his phone.

"The bike across from the florist," he said. "Now."

He hung up.

Madame Aubert sat in her chair. She looked at the biscuit tin in Aria’s lap, then toward the street, and her face settled, as if she had been expecting this part too.

She pointed past the sink. Behind a stack of empty buckets stood a narrow door, painted the same green as the sign out front.

"La cour. Puis le passage. ?a sort rue du Mont-Thabor."

"The courtyard," Damien said. "Then a passage to the next street."

He was already moving the buckets.

Aria stood with the tin pressed against her stomach. "What about her? That man watched us walk in. If they come back—"

Damien translated. Madame Aubert lifted one gloved hand toward the clock over the sink.

"Il est midi passé. Je suis fermée."

"It’s past noon," Damien said. "She’s closed."

"That’s not an answer."

Damien set down the last bucket and dialed again. "One man stays with the florist. Inside. All day."

He hung up and drew the bolt on the green door.

Madame Aubert looked at him the way she had when he first walked in. This time she seemed to find something.

Then she turned to Aria and reached up. A strand of rose-gold hair had worked loose from the coat collar. She tucked it back inside with two gloved fingers.

"Reviens un jeudi."

"Come back on a Thursday," Damien said quietly.

Aria nodded.

The courtyard was a square of wet cobbles boxed in by six stories of windows. Bicycles were chained to a drainpipe. Somewhere above them a radio was playing, and someone was frying onions.

Damien went first. Jade followed close behind him, and Aria came last with the tin, until Damien reached back, caught her wrist, and put her between them.

The passage at the far end was barely wider than his shoulders. It ran under a building, dark and smelling of stone, and ended at an iron gate. Damien pushed it open.

A grey Peugeot sat at the curb with its engine running. One of Damien’s men sat at the wheel.

Damien opened the back door and put her in first, his hand cupped over the top of her head. Jade scrambled in after her. He came in last, and the car was moving before his door shut.

His phone buzzed. He read it.

"He left before they got to him."

The driver turned toward Rue de Rivoli. In the side mirror, Aria watched a black motorbike swing out of a side street behind them.

Black helmet. Visor down.

"Damien."

"I see him."

The driver held his speed and merged into the traffic under the stone arcades as if he had all afternoon. The bike slid in three cars back and stayed there.

At the edge of the Tuileries, a second bike came out of a cross street and fell in beside the first.

Jade had both hands wrapped around the grab handle above her door.

"Down," Damien said.

His hand closed on the back of Aria’s neck and pressed her forward until her cheek lay against his thigh. His other hand went inside his coat and stayed there.

Aria held the tin against her chest and stared at the floor mat.

She could hear the bikes now, a high whine weaving in and out of the traffic, closer, then farther, then closer.

’They need Leo alive,’ she told herself. ’And they think I know where the Key is.’

The car swung hard left. Her shoulder hit the seat in front of her. Through the gap between the front seats she glimpsed a gold-tipped obelisk, a blur of fountains, tour buses on every side. Then the road tipped downward, the light went orange, and they were in a tunnel along the river.

The engine finally opened up.

The bikes came after them, the sound doubling off the concrete walls.

The driver braked, cut across a lane, and dropped down a ramp tucked behind a row of pillars. A barrier lifted. They spiraled into an underground car park, one level, two, three, and stopped beside a white delivery van with its side door already open.

"Out," Damien said.

He pulled her across the gap and into the van. Jade tumbled in after them, and the door slid shut. Through the tinted rear window, Aria watched the Peugeot roll away toward the far exit ramp.

Thirty seconds later, two motorbikes came down the ramp and went after it.

Everyone in the van held still until the engines faded.

Then the van started and rolled toward the opposite exit.

Aria sat up. Her fingers were knotted in the front of Damien’s coat, so tight they ached. She kept hold.

"You planned this," she said.

"Yes."

"When?" ℯ

"When we parked."

He took her face in both hands and turned it toward the light, checking her over. Then he pressed his mouth to her temple and held it there.

She breathed in.

Across the van, Jade sat with her knees pulled up and her forehead resting on them.

Aria checked her phone. 1:02 p.m.

***

The hotel was on the Left Bank, on a street so narrow the van had to fold in its mirrors.

The van pulled through an unmarked carriage gate into a cobbled courtyard lined with potted bay trees, and a woman in a black suit stepped out of a side door to meet them. She handed Damien two keys on brass tags and went back inside.

Their rooms were on the top floor, at the end of a hallway. Jade stopped at her door with her hand on the knob.

"If she sends anything—"

"I’ll wake you," Aria said.

Jade looked at the tin under Aria’s arm. "Are you going to listen to it?"

"On what? It’s a cassette."

Jade nodded and went in. The lock turned behind her.

The suite was all grey light and tall windows. At the bottom of the street the Seine slid past, flat and brown. There was a fireplace, a writing desk, and a bed long enough for Damien to stretch out full length.

Aria set the tin on the desk. She laid her hand flat on the lid and left it there.

’Not yet,’ she thought.

Her hands had started to shake, here in a warm room with the door closed.

Damien stood at the window, one finger holding the curtain an inch from the glass, watching the street below. When he was satisfied, he let it fall.

Then he turned and looked at her.

"Come here," he said.

She crossed the room and took hold of his coat with both hands. She could feel his heart under her knuckles, going faster than his face let on.

"You said," Aria said, "after the florist."

He looked down at her for a long moment. His eyes went dark.

He reached past her and turned the lock.