[JJ06] Quicksand (13 page)

CHAPTER 25

“What did you find out while I slept?” Lane asked.

I handed him my list and told him that I’d placed the 12
th
century desk from a Benedictine monk scriptorium acquired by the Louvre during the French Revolution. “I must have inadvertently exclaimed aloud when I saw this additional faded word telling us to follow the stonemasons.”

“Not bad for an hour’s worth of work.” 

“Weren’t you listening? We don’t know anything! I don’t even know if you were right to listen to me. Maybe I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“You know what I am?
Hungry.
I didn’t realize it until just now, but I’m starving. I don’t think I’ve eaten all day.”

“I don’t think it would be good for us to go out to eat together.”

“I figured as much. Do you have any canned food in this miniature kitchen?”

“Hey, don’t knock the kitchen. It’s where I’m going to cook us dinner when I get back from the market.”

Lane turned to grab a canvas shopping tote from a hook on the back of the door with one hand while he ran his other hand through his hair. When he turned toward me again, he was a different man. He was the stooped, disheveled man who rode the metro and walked up the stairs while speaking in a British accent.
Chameleon
, indeed. No wonder North liked the moniker.

“Who
are
you?”

“Right now?” The voice was hesitant, almost scared. “I’m an unassuming Englishman originally from the small town of Nether Wallop.”

I laughed. “Knowing English village names, I bet that’s a real place.”

“Most assuredly.”

“And what’s your name?”

“I’m far too shy to get to know the neighbors, so they don’t know my name, only that I’m a quiet neighbor.”

“You’re spooky, is what you are.”

“I say, the quiet gentleman from Nether Wallop isn’t spooky.
Odd
, perhaps, but
spooky
is going a bit far.” With a wide-eyed expression of false outrage, he grabbed the door handle.

“Hang on. Aren’t French shops closed on Sundays?”

“Not in modern day Paris. Unless there’s a strike. Which, to be fair, is a frequent occurrence in this country. But the nearby market does close early, so I’d better get going if we want to eat.”

Breaking character, he grinned and blew me a kiss on his way out the door.

I rested my back against the door and closed my eyes.
What are you doing here, Jaya Jones?
Instead of thinking about buying a plane ticket home or figuring out the treasure North was after, all I could think about was Lane shopping for fresh food from a Paris market—as long as there wasn’t a strike.

My eyes popped open. The French had
always
had a tradition of protesting, going all the way back to the French Revolution. It was the same timing as both the letters North showed me and the Louvre’s acquisition of the desk. The 1790s. The illustration had been painted on the old parchment by monks and hidden inside a French scriptorium desk at the same time Trenton Smith had written home to England from India—about the same treasure.

I flung open the apartment door and ran onto the landing overlooking the staircase leading down. The twisting stairs were empty. Lane was already gone.

I ran back to the apartment and opened the computer. There was one incredibly important religious site with cloisters and a crypt that I knew had come under siege and had its belongings seized during the French Revolution. And it was right next to Saint-Malo, the town where Dante had purchased chocolates.

Mont Saint-Michel.

One of the most iconic sites in France, Mont Saint-Michel was constructed on an island off the coast of Normandy. It had been a monastery, a scriptorium, and a prison. Because of its strategic location surrounded by dangerous tides and quicksand, it had been a relatively secure fortress during periods of history that were anything but secure.

I began to research in earnest to fill in the details about the Mont. I could barely contain my excitement as I read about the hilly island off the northern coast of France in Normandy that was transformed into Mont Saint-Michel after a local bishop had a dream in the year 708. Saint Michael appeared to the bishop in his dream and asked him to build a monastery. It was a difficult process, building on a rocky hill rising out of the ocean, but several miracles were attributed to making the seemingly impossible construction a success.

Looking at pictures of the castle-like Mont, it was easy to see why it had spiritual significance. The island had an ethereal look to it, rising out of the fog and surrounded by the ocean during high tide, but allowing people to pass during low tide. To this day, people died in the waters surrounding the Mont, either by getting caught unawares in the dangerous tides that seemed to come out of nowhere, or by stepping into quicksand that was deceptively the same color as solid sand. I shivered at the thought. The Mont tricked people, painting a perfect picture of calm tides and pristine sand, yet both were an illusion. Danger lurked just beneath the surface.

The monastery attracted many monks who wanted a place of solitude, and it also became a major destination for Christian pilgrims. Over the years, the significance of the site grew, and the abbey grew in size accordingly. More and more rooms were built over the centuries, and ramparts were constructed surrounding the Mont to protect it from invaders. The island monastery and village held fast through different rulers, wars, and periodic mudslides and fires. Through it all, the monks continued their work of serving God through prayer—and creating illuminated manuscripts.

Why wasn’t Lane back with those groceries yet? The more I read, the more sure I became that this was what we were looking for.

Buildings on the Mont were frequently damaged through both natural and man-made disasters, and they were rebuilt with current architectural techniques, leading to a hodgepodge of styles that combined thick Romanesque walls with ornate Gothic arches. With that history, there were plenty of opportunities for treasures to be hidden within its walls.

Even now, the site was often in a state of disrepair and in need of renovation. In fact, a huge renovation project was currently underway. Much of the Mont was currently surrounded by scaffolding. The majority of the renovations were scheduled to be completed the following month.

That was it:
our ticking clock
.

The renovations were why North had to act now—and why we did, too.

CHAPTER 26

When Lane walked through the door twenty minutes later, vegetable greens poked over the top of the shopping bag and he carried two cups of coffee in his hands. I took both cups of coffee from his hands, set them down, and threw my arms around his neck.

“If I’d known the reaction that good French coffee would evoke, I would have gone earlier. You should appreciate how difficult it is to find somewhere that offers coffee ‘to go’ in Paris.”

“I’ve got it,” I said, letting him go and bounding on the balls of my feet. “I know where North is going and why there’s a ticking clock that made him rush into this.”

“Slow down. I don’t think you need this coffee after all.”

I filled Lane in on what I’d pieced together.

“You said Dante had a lot of things in his pockets,” Lane said. “A lot more than chocolates from Saint-Malo.”

“Yes, but—”

“And I’m sure there are other religious sites that were sacked during the French Revolution.”

“But not one that’s so old and sprawling, is known for its famous illuminated manuscripts, and that’s currently undergoing a major renovation wrapping up next month. There are tons of workmen and scaffolding around right now. Once the renovations are complete, it will be nearly impossible to do any secret digging for a hidden treasure. This ticking clock explains all of North’s odd behavior that’s out of character. He had no choice but to act more recklessly than usual.”

“You could be right,” Lane said, but he didn’t look convinced. “It’s only a couple hours drive. Worth checking out.”

“How are we going to rent a car? I thought you wanted to stay under the radar?”

Lane left the bag of groceries in the kitchen, then disappeared into the hall closet and returned with a UK passport. It was his face on the ID, but the name was “Al Monkshood, Jr.”

“You’re not serious,” I said. “What kind of alias is that?” I handed the passport back to him and sank onto the couch with my coffee. I took a sip, happy he’d remembered exactly the way I like it, thick with sugar.

“There’s history to the name,” he said.

“But it’s not your name!” I felt my stomach tighten. “Is it?”

“You know my name.”

“Do I?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t be serious about using a fake passport. I thought all that was behind you.”

“It is. But this situation—”

“You never got rid of your old fake IDs.” My voice trembled as I spoke, the truth sinking in. “You never planned on getting rid of them.”

I was so rattled by what I’d realized that I thought my head might pop. It was one thing to have thought he wasn’t completely honest with me about his past. This was his future. A future I had been stupid enough to think I might be a part of. We knew each other so well in some ways, but in other ways, we hadn’t begun to scratch the surface.

“It’s coming in handy, if you hadn’t noticed,” he snapped. I’d hit a nerve. A nerve that was there because he hadn’t fully committed to giving up his old life.

“You never planned on giving this up, did you?” My voice was flat. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t angry. I was hurt. I’d been betrayed. At every turn, I tried to trust him. I wanted so much to believe him. But how could I? It wasn’t just the fake IDs. There were also the multiple hidden apartments.

Lane swallowed hard. “This isn’t the time for this conversation, Jaya.”

“If you use that fake ID,” I said. “I’m out.”

“Good. That’s what I wanted all along. You
should
be out.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m the one who figured out what’s going on!”

“We don’t know what’s going on yet. You know I wish you could stay with me. I wish, more than anything, that there was a way to have you in my life that wasn’t like this. You know that. But I don’t want you to be a part of
this.
I never did.”

“You can’t do this alone.”

“I’ll manage.”

“We do this together. But we do it above board.”

“After robbing the Louvre, isn’t that a little late?”

“That was different,” I insisted. “We were being coerced. From this point on, do this right.”

The rational part of my brain told me I shouldn’t trust him. And yet, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I trusted him completely. I didn’t blindly trust Lane to give up who he was, but I believed his motives were good in all the ways that mattered.

“We can do things without the fake ID,” Lane said, “but you’ve given me another chance to think about your involvement in this. I don’t want North seeking retribution against you, after everything we did to protect you in the first place. If he knows you’re coming after him, all bets are off.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. What if we can find the treasure and catch North, all without him realizing it’s us who did it?”

“How do you propose we pull that off?”

“The same way North is pulling it off. If we’re right about what he’s doing, his men are disguised as workmen who are working on the renovations to the Mont.”

Lane shook his head. “Even if we put on the best disguises, North would know us.”

“Not if he doesn’t see us,” I said. “He doesn’t know we’re onto him. We can spy on them, then make sure their work happens to be discovered by the proper authorities, tipped off by an anonymous good Samaritan who saw what they were doing. If we do this right, there’s no way he’ll know it’s us.”

Lane studied my face for a moment before speaking. “That might just work.”

“There’s one more thing.” My voice quivered, but I had to ask. “Show me your passport. Your
real
one. You’ve never let me see it. If you want me to trust you, you need to trust me completely.”

Lane’s face flushed red, but he nodded. “Here goes nothing. If you don’t walk out the door after you see it, I know you’ll stick with me through anything.”

He retrieved a passport from a hidden compartment of his bag. “This,” he said, “is the real Lane C. Peters.” He handed me a U.S. passport.

“
Lancelot
?”

“You can see why I prefer Lane.”

“
Caravaggio
?”

“I completely understand if you no longer want to be under the same roof as me.”

“Lancelot Caravaggio Peters,” I said. “It’s a bit fanciful for your father, isn’t it? From everything you’ve told me about him—”

“It was my mother who named me. She was bored from my father being away at work so much. She retreated into art and literature. I bet you can guess who two of her favorites were. She didn’t think too much about the significance of either one. At least I hope not. And I doubt my father even noticed what she’d named me until it was too late to change the birth certificate. So here I am.”

For dinner, Lane made bowls of mushroom risotto, and an arugula salad with beets, shaved radish, and a tangy vinaigrette.

“How did you make this in that tiny little kitchen?” I knew I’d been concentrating on additional research, but I hadn’t thought I’d missed so much.

“A chef never reveals his secrets.”

“I thought that was magicians.”

He shrugged. “Same difference.”

“God, this is good,” I said through a mouthful.

“I cheated. Risotto is one of those dishes that sounds complicated, but really all it needs is patience. With only two burners, it’s a good choice. I boiled the beets for the salad on the other one.”

“Thank you, Lancelot.”

“If you ever call me that again, I’ll slip a sleeping pill into your risotto and put you on the next flight home to California.”