[JJ06] Quicksand (16 page)

CHAPTER 30

“I’m fine,” Lane insisted.

“You’re the opposite of fine.”

“I’ll be fine in five minutes.” He stood up, his body swaying in the process. “Maybe ten.”  He fell unsteadily onto my shoulder.

One of the planks had split, otherwise Lane would have been trapped underneath the mess of wood and metal. His left shoulder and arm took the brunt of the weight of a metal pole.

This was bad. I hadn’t thought things could get any worse than being pulled into a museum heist, seeing the blood of an ex-priest who may have been killed, and being complicit in the desecration of a historic landmark. Now on top of all that, Lane was hurt. Badly.

Supporting Lane’s weight, I took stock of our surroundings.

Lane must have felt my body tense. Against my shoulder, he shook his head gently.

“There’s no way they could think this was an accident,” he said. “I mean a non-man-made accident.” He swore and pointed. There was a thick red liquid on the piece of scaffolding that had knocked down Lane.

“Blood,” I whispered.

“They’ll know we were here.” Lane’s body faltered as he tried to walk.

I steadied him against the wall, intending to go on my own to examine the blood left behind on the renovation equipment. Lane grabbed my hand.

“You can’t be serious, Jaya.”

“What?”

“You can’t wipe off the blood. It’s too risky. That tangle of materials isn’t stable. It could fall on top of you.”

“Stay here,” I said.

“Don’t—”

“I’m not going to touch it.” I removed a water bottle from my coat pocket that I’d brought along for the stakeout. Luckily I’d fallen asleep rather than gotten thirsty. Without touching the pile, I used the water to wash away the blood. I couldn’t see if I’d gotten all of it, since I didn’t dare touch the unstable mound. I was out of water, so I hoped it was enough.

Using all my strength, I managed to get Lane back to the hotel. I’m not sure we would have made it if I hadn’t switched to flat shoes. From my jiu jitsu training I knew how to hold the weight so it wouldn’t hurt my back, so I was able to support Lane with his arm draped over my shoulder. But for a skinny guy, he was damn heavy. It wasn’t only because he was six feet tall. Though it didn’t show, his arms and abs were firm. He carried more muscle than I’d realized. 

“There’s no way I can do any more work in the crypt,” he said, sitting down on the hotel room bed. I helped him out of his torn jacket, and he carefully pulled off his shirt. His shoulder was swollen and beginning to turn pur
ple. A nasty gash ran down his upper arm. I touched his shoulder gently. He winced. “I think it might be dislocated.”

“You need a doctor.”

“We can’t go to a hospital.”

“Why not? I thought they had socialized medicine here. They’ll treat you.”

Lane shook his head, then looked at me with such tenderness that I had to look away for fear I’d break down. I wished we were anywhere but here. Or that we were here but on a romantic vacation instead of plotting to foil the theft of a French treasure.

“We can’t do that,” he said, “because now North will be looking for us.”

I groaned. Then paced. I had to get hold of myself. “House calls! We can find a doctor who makes house calls.”

“We have to get off the island, Jaya. If North thinks it’s us who caused that scaffolding to fall, in a few hours they’ll come looking. We don’t want to be here when that happens.”

“Where can we go?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lane winced. “We need to leave.”

“You’re in no shape to make it across the causeway to the mainland.”

“No, but we can request a shuttle at any time, and the room is already paid for. From the shuttle stop, we can call a taxi. I’ll figure out somewhere to go—”

“You know people here in France.” I paced across the uneven floorboards. “Are any of them nearby?”

“We can’t risk going to anyone I know.”

“Because of North?”

Lane nodded. “I don’t know who I can trust not to tell him.”

“I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“If I take the bag, are you up for a taxi and train ride?” 

“I’m fine. I can even carry the bag on my other shoulder.” He swore as he attempted to lift it.

“Give that to me.” My fingers touched his as he handed me the backpack. His eyes met mine and the pain left his face, replaced with worry.

“I’m sorry, Jones. This isn’t your mess to clean up. We’ll get you on a plane home and—”

“What are you talking about? Of course this is my mess. It’s my fault you went through with the stupid plan of robbing the Louvre. Without having me to use as leverage—”

“This isn’t your fight. I’m the one—”

“That’s not what this is about. We were both misled. This is bigger than a trinket for a collector. Not only a piece of history, but—”

“Hugo,” Lane said, closing his eyes. “Part of me wonders if we should go to the police, regardless of what happens to me.”

“That’s the blood loss talking. Let’s get you out of here.”

I called to request an off-hours shuttle and did a three-minute sweep of the hotel room for anything that could identify us.

“We don’t have anywhere to go, Jones,” Lane said.

“Yes, we do. After the shuttle drops us off, we’ll get a cab to take us back to Rennes. From that hub we can catch a train to where we need to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To see a friend.”

CHAPTER 31

North didn’t know about Sanjay’s friend Sébastien, since Sanjay’s message had been in code. He was the only person I could think to turn to. We could have gone to a hotel, but I felt more comfortable going somewhere private. I was hoping Sébastien knew a doctor we could trust. Based on the information from Sanjay, I found Sébastien’s address. He was something of an institution in Nantes.

I had no choice but to throw away Lane’s bloody jacket, wrapping it in a shopping bag before tossing it in a trash can. There was no way he’d fit into my coat, so I bundled him in my bulky sweater, which became a formfitting fashion statement on his lengthy torso. He looked paler after squeezing into it, but I wanted to make sure he kept warm until we could get him to a doctor.

“Maybe we can stay after all,” Lane said in a French accent as he hobbled down the cobble-stone walkway. “Get me a cane and I’ve got a perfect disguise. Nobody would recognize me.”

“Not funny.”

The sun was beginning to rise when a taxi dropped us off at the train station hub in Rennes shortly after eight o’clock. Using Lane’s stash of euros, I booked tickets on a train to Nantes that was departing shortly.

I wanted to go over what we’d learned, but Lane promptly fell asleep. I poked his side when we were a few minutes outside of Nantes.

“I thought we should talk before we get to Sébastien’s,” I said. “You slept enough.”

He opened his eyes. “I’m injured. My body needs the rest.”

“We’ll find you a doctor who makes house calls as soon as we arrive.”

“Tell me again how you know this guy?”

“He’s a magician friend of Sanjay’s. He’s not a magician himself exactly. He’s the behind-the-scenes guy. He’s ninety years old, and he helps stage magicians come up with mechanized illusions.”

“And he knows who you are?”

“Sanjay has certainly mentioned him to me.”  I didn’t want to tell Lane that I’d reached out to Sanjay in code since arriving in France. Instead, I told the truth, except for saying
when
I learned about Sébastien. “Your invitation to Paris—which I now know was North’s invitation—didn’t give me any way to contact you. I wasn’t sure what was going on. It was too good an opportunity to pass up a trip to France, but I thought I might need more to do. Sanjay said Sébastien was an amazing guy.”

It was midmorning when the high speed TGV train pulled into Nantes. I hadn’t expected it to be such a big city. We took another taxi to the house. Lane’s cash was running low. 

“You sure this is the right address?” Lane asked after the driver stopped on a dirt road.

“
Oui, monsieur.
This is the Renaud circus.”

We were outside of the central part of the city. Most likely outside of the city limits, based on the look of things. The driver lifted our bags out of the trunk as Lane and I stared at our surroundings.

We stood at the edge of a scraggly vineyard. We were near the heart of wine country, yet this field looked like it hadn’t been watered or harvested in years. In the distance, two motorcycles kicked up clouds of dust as they sprinted through the vines. Neither the dead vineyard nor the joyriders were what Lane was commenting on. His gaze was fixed elsewhere. Next to the vineyard were two structures, a barn and a house. At least that’s what we had to assume they were. Neither of them looked like a normal house or barn.

The wooden beams that made up the barn’s structure looked as if they had been put together like pieces in a game of Tetris. Their placement looked haphazard at first glance, as if a large child had constructed the building like a toy built out of dominoes. But the differently-shaped geometric beams fit together perfectly.

“If you’re sure,” Lane said. I nodded and he paid the driver, who disappeared in a cloud of dust down the dirt road.

Next to the barn was a two-story house. The underlying structure was a simple French Norman-style house, with a sloping roof that dominated the building. It looked normal except for the added metalwork on the door, windows, and roof.

I pressed what I hoped was the doorbell. What sounded next wasn’t a bell or buzzer, but a whirring noise, f
ollowed by a loud chirping that sounded like a dragon-sized bird was sweeping down on the house. 

“What the—” Lane began.

I couldn’t help laughing. “I’m certain this is Sanjay’s friend.”

We watched as a mechanical bird moved along the rain gutter at the side of the house to a spot perched above the door. The bird chirped, and was joined by a second bird that ran along the gutter from the other side of the house. When the second bird reached the first, they chirped a short song together.

When the sound of chirping ceased, a three-inch peep hole in the front door sprung open. It wasn’t a person who had pulled open the small window. Instead, I stumbled backward as a clawed metal hand squeezed through the small opening in the door. The well-oiled fingers clutched a cloth. Once the hand was all the way through the opening, the fingers opened their grasp. The cloth fluttered to the ground.

I picked it up. Words had been painted on the white cloth.

Find me in the studio
à

“Definitely Sanjay’s friend,” I said. “Come on.”

I dropped our bags in front of the door, picked up the cloth message that had dropped from the door, and walked to the studio. The arrow on the cloth was less than helpful since it had fallen to the ground, but there was only one other structure near the house.

The converted barn didn’t have a discernible doorway. In between the house and barn sat a beautiful picnic table of solid wood with two benches that looked like sanded tree stumps. Upon closer inspection, that’s exactly what they were.

“Stay here,” I said to Lane.

“My pleasure.” He sat on one of the stumps.

Failing to spot a door, I circled the barn. As I rounded the side, two startlingly large lop-eared rabbits hopped in front of me, one white and one gray. As I walked further, the fuzzy creatures turned and followed me. Confused, I stopped. The braver bunny—the gray one—sniffed my foot. He looked up at me with his black eyes. I could have sworn he scowled at me.

I continued walking, and a movement in the distance caught my eye. I turned to see a dozen rabbits scampering away. I had to find Sébastien before I went completely insane.

At the back of the barn was a wooden deck that led to what did
not
look like a door. However, when I stepped onto the first step, I felt my weight shift ever so slightly. A click sounded. The wooden paneling of the barn began to shift, and within a few seconds, a doorway opened. I climbed the remaining few steps and walked inside. The interior of the barn was as bright as the outside, so it took my eyes no time at all to adjust. I rather wished they had. I was greeted by an eight foot man made entirely of metal.

A tall, spry man stepped out from behind the contraption. Bright white hair framed a thin, almost bony, face. Even brighter blue eyes looked at me through small round glasses. His movements made him appear younger than ninety, but this must be Sébastien Renaud.

“Ah!” he said, pulling off thin cloth gloves. “I know who you must be! Sanjay told me I might see you, Mlle. Jones. English is best, yes?”

“Thank you. We wouldn’t get very far with my French.”

Sébastien’s knobby hands belied a firm handshake. “I’m delighted you could make it to my humble home. I hoped you would visit, but I did not wish to presume. I was unsure if Sanjay spoke only with his own desires that we should meet, or if you truly wished to see me.”

“I’m very happy to meet you.”

His smile turned to a frown as his gaze fell to the object in my left hand.

“
Merde
,” he said. “The message did not remain in the hand?”

“It fell.” I handed him the cloth the doorbell had triggered. “It’s very ingenious.”

“What good is ingenious if it doesn’t work? Ah well. Please, come inside.”

“I’m not alone,” I said.

“No? When I spoke with Sanjay, I believed him to be in the States.”

“I’m here with another friend.”

“An invisible one?”

“He’s outside sitting on a bench. He’s not, uh, feeling well.”

“We should go to the main house, then! Jeeves will make us tea.”

He hurried past me, leaving me to wonder why, if he had a butler, the man hadn’t answered the door.

Before turning back, I couldn’t resist taking another look behind Sébastien, now that he was no longer blocking the view. I could have sworn I’d stepped through a time warp to another century, although oddly, I wasn’t sure if that century was in the past or in the future.

Mechanized contraptions of all shapes and sizes filled the barn. I’d seen some of them in history books—automatons from the 1800s. And some of them in science fiction movies—a bird with wings of wood that must have stretched at least fifteen feet and hovered close to the ceiling high above. Was the bird’s beak opening and closing? I found myself compelled to get a closer look.

Sébastien popped his head back inside. “Whenever you’re ready, your friend and I will be in the main house.”

I trotted after Sébastien, stopping one last time to look at the bird. Its head was definitely moving, its eyes following me. I walked more quickly.

Sébastien and Lane were already seated on the couch. A wheelchair-bound robotic man wheeled its way toward the two men, carrying a tray with teacups and a steaming pot of tea. Ah. This mechanical man must be Jeeves.

Lane grinned at me.

“Feeling better?” I asked.

“A doctor is on the way,” Sébastien said.

“Was I gone that long?” I asked.

“Not at all,” Sébastien said. “I am efficient. Unlike the dangerous
voyou
—the hooligans who ride their motorbikes through the vineyards.”

“They came out of nowhere,” Lane said. “I was telling Sébastien how I tried to get out of the way in time, but fell.” He avoided meeting my eye, but I knew him well enough to go along with his story. I remembered seeing the two motorcycles weaving between the rows of shriveled grapes, making it a plausible story.

The doctor arrived before we were done with our tea. The water the robotic Jeeves brought us wasn’t quite steaming, but I forgave him. Chocolate-covered cookies also adorned the tray.

I was expecting a jovial country doctor approaching Sébastien’s age. The kind of man I’d seen in a black and white movie. He was, after all, making house calls. The only part of my expectation that proved true was the style of the black leather medical bag in the doctor’s hand.

“
Bonjour,
Monsieur Renaud,” she said, kissing the air next to Sébastien’s cheeks in greeting.

She looked around my age. In high heels, she was only an inch or so taller than me. She wore a skirt that made it clear she weighed at least ten pounds less than me. It made her appear almost skeletal, like one of the specimens she must have studied in medical school. But balancing out her tiny body was a warm, wide smile.

“Ah!” she exclaimed as her eyes found Lane. “Sébastien,
montrez-moi où je peux examiner le patient
.”

Sébastien and I helped Lane up from the couch.

“
Parlez vous français?”
the doctor asked Lane.

“Oui.”

“Très bon. Mon anglais n’est pas bon.”

Sébastien showed the two of them through an arched doorway.

“Thank you,” I said to Sébastien.

“Of course.” He smiled and took a bite of cookie. “Jacqueline is a superb doctor. She will see to your friend.” 

Sébastien and I finished our tea and cookies in companionable silence while my eyes wandered around the room. My wide-eyed wonder must have made me look like an eight-year-old child.

It was as if the laws of physics didn’t apply here in Sébastien Renaud’s house. Stepping inside from the unkempt farmland must have been how Alice felt going down the rabbit hole. The house created the feeling of being at least twice as large as it looked from the outside. It was an illusion, I knew, but that didn’t stop it from feeling real.

Unlike the shriveled grape plants next to the house, the inside was filled with thriving plants of all kinds. They were all miniature, which helped give the house the appearance of being larger. In between living plants were mechanized contraptions. These weren’t works in progress, like the creations in the barn studio next door, but completed works of art.

I wanted to ask Sébastien about the items that surrounded us, but I couldn’t decide where to start. Before I could make up my mind, he spoke.

“Would you like more tea or cookies?”

“This was enough, thank you.”

“
Merci beaucoup
, Jeeves,” Sébastien said, carefully enunciating the words. “
C’est tout.
”

The robot bowed its head. The wheelchair backed up, its wheels squeaking ever so softly.

“Brilliant,” I whispered. “Jeeves—and all this—it’s absolutely brilliant.”

“You are friends with The Hindi Houdini, I presumed you would appreciate this. I am confused about two things, though.”

“Yes?”

“From the way Sanjay spoke of you, I assumed the two of you were...what is the English expression? I thought you two were ‘an item.’ But this man here, Lane. The two of you have feelings for each other. This much is clear.”

I felt my face flush. I still didn’t know what to make of the brief moment Sanjay and I had shared, but the more time I spent with Lane, the more certain I was about where my passion lay.

“Sanjay and I aren’t romantically involved,” I answered quickly. “He’s my best friend, and he feels the same about me. You must have misunderstood the nature of his affection.”

“As you say,” Sébastien said, but he didn’t look like he believed it.

“What was your second question?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“Ah, yes. About the nature of your visit, and your friend’s injury. Why don’t you tell me the truth about what has happened and why you are
really
here?”