La Brat (26 page)

Later, baby. You will regret that.
His cock was straining the font of his jeans. This was going to be a difficult day.

* * * *

“There. That’s the maid. She was about halfway along the corridor when I got back.”

They sat on the bed, Eugenie nestled between Aaron’s outstretched legs, her bum pressing against his erection. His self-control was sorely tested as he reached his arms around her, his fingers on the keyboard. They had work to do. Aaron halted the recording to note the time the cleaner had come into view. Ten minutes or so before he knew Genie had returned to her room.

They watched the woman push her trolley full of cleaning materials along the deserted corridor. She paused at Genie’s door and knocked. She waited a few moments then continued on her way to the far end of the hallway. There, she turned the trolley around then just leaned on the handle, waiting.

“What’s she doing? She doesn’t look to be doing any work.”

“I’d say she’s waiting for something. Or someone.”

“Me? Do you suppose she was waiting there for me?”

Aaron shrugged, not wanting to give voice to his suspicions. But she was spot on. He used the zoom facility to move in for a close-up of the maid’s features. His heart lurched as he recognized the face.

“Shit! That’s Sara Khalid al-Fulani.” Aaron leaned forward to study the image in the screen. “What the fuck is she doing pushing a bloody cleaning trolley?”

“You know her?”

Aaron nodded, reaching for his phone. “Yes. She’s part of Farah’s household. Deals with her personal correspondence mainly. You’ve probably seen her about the hotel but had no close dealings with her.” He tapped his phone once and put it to his ear. It was answered immediately.

“Pierre? Can you locate Sara Khalid al-Fulani? I want to know exactly where she is at this moment. No, don’t let her know we’re interested, just find her and tell me.”

He thanked Pierre before turning back to the computer. He tapped a few more keys to access his restricted security files and went straight to his personnel files relating to the wedding party.

“I did the checks on all the guests, but not the personal staff of either Farah or Lucas. Their own operations had that covered. Or so we thought. Here, this is Sara.” He hit a key and the screen filled with an image of a young woman, pretty enough, dark-haired, dark-eyed, smiling into the camera.

“I
have
seen her.”

“Yeah, you will have.”

Eugenie grabbed for his arm, her fingers digging into his wrist. “No. Not with Farah. I’ve seen her working as a maid before—or pretending to.” She turned to him, her eyes glittering. “She was there, in the corridor, when I fell down the stairs. I know it was her. I walked right past her, she said good morning to me.”

Realization dawned, the final pieces started dropping into place. There was a reason he didn’t believe in coincidences.

“Holy fucking shit.” He grabbed his phone and in moments had Pierre back on the other end. “How far back do we store CCTV records for? Thirty days?” He turned to Eugenie. “Can you remember what date it was when you fell down the stairs?”

She did a quick tally in her head, then replied, “The twenty-second of last month, I think. Yes, the twenty-second. Definitely.”

“Good. We might just be in time, then. Pierre, can you find the CCTV footage from the twenty-second of June, seventh floor in the staff wing. Particularly the area around the lifts and stairs. Patch it through to me as soon as you have it.”

“Do you think she was the one who set fire to my apartment? Why would she do that? I don’t understand. Why would she want to attack me?”

“I have no idea. But I intend to find out. You’ve been having too many mishaps for my liking, and if Sara was in the vicinity on more than one occasion, that means she has some questions to answer. Apart from anything else, I want to know why she’s been sneaking around the hotel disguised as a chambermaid.”

“She could be a thief. You know, using her passkey to access guests’ suites.”

“That’s a possibility, though no thefts have been reported.” Somehow, his instincts were not screaming ‘thief’ at him. His gut told him this was something else, something more complex.

“Maybe she’s planning something…” Eugenie broke off as Aaron’s phone trilled. He reached for it, saw Pierre’s name on the caller ID.

“Yes?”

“Boss? I’m sending you the CCTV now. You’ll want to see this.”

Aaron wedged the phone between his head and his shoulder as he tapped the computer keys again to go back to the CCTV footage. This time the image was of the section of the hallway close to the lift. The maid—Sara—was clearly visible, dragging a vacuum cleaner along the carpet.

“See. That’s her. I
knew
it.” She peered more closely. “What’s she doing? That vacuum cleaner isn’t even plugged in.”

“It’s a prop, that’s all. Look, this is you.”

The image showed Eugenie walking along the corridor, her stride brisk. She sidestepped to get past the maid and the two exchanged a brief greeting.

“That’s when she said good morning. She looked right at me. I recognized her as the same maid when I opened my door the other evening. That’s why I didn’t think anything of it, I’d seen her before.”

They both watched the screen as Eugenie continued down the corridor to the lift. She pressed the call button then waited a few moments before heading for the stairs.

“My sandal came undone. I stopped to fasten it. I sat on the top step—”

“Look. Watch the maid. She’s coming up behind you.”

“I never heard her. I thought she was still somewhere along the hall. What is she—?” Eugenie grabbed his hand, her eyes startled. “Did you see that? Did you see what she did? She pushed me! The bitch, she actually pushed me down the stairs.”

“She sure did.” Aaron rewound the final few seconds of the recording and replayed it. They watched in silence this time as the maid in the image crept along the hallway and crouched a couple of feet behind Eugenie. As Eugenie started to rise, having fastened her sandal, the maid moved fast. Her hands outstretched, she shoved Eugenie in the middle of the back to propel her head first down the stairs. This time Aaron let the recording continue. Eugenie had disappeared from their view but they watched the maid as she stood on the landing for several seconds, looking down the stairs after Eugenie. Then she turned and marched off in the other direction.

“I never felt the push. How could that be?”

“Probably because you were startled and concentrating on trying not to fall. And maybe because it seemed so unbelievable you just didn’t register the possibility.”

“Maybe. I heard her, though, after I fell. I heard her footsteps. I thought she was coming to help me, but there was just the sound of a door closing then silence.”

“Pierre? You still there?” Aaron had his phone to his ear again.

“Yes, boss. Did you see it?”

“We did.”

“And the other footage? From the other night?”

“What? No, not yet.”

“Look at that too. I’ll wait.” Pierre’s tone was terse.

“You’re on speaker. Eugenie is here too.”

“Okay. Good morning, Miss d’André. I hope you’re feeling better now.” The security consultant’s voice softened, his concern apparent.

“I’m fine, thank you,
Monsieur
Barent.”

Aaron switched the CCTV footage back to the shots of the corridor outside Eugenie’s apartment. He used the fast forward function to flick through several minutes where the maid in the image made no move to perform any duties.

“She’s not there to work, that’s for sure.” Aaron muttered the comment, glancing at Eugenie.

The disembodied voice of Pierre Barent answered him. “You’ll see what she’s there for in a minute. Has Miss d’André appeared yet?”

“No. Yes, here she is.” Aaron leaned forward, concentrating hard on the scene unfolding on the small screen. Eugenie came into the picture, walking down the hallway and letting herself into her room. Moments later, the maid pushed her trolley along the corridor, stopping outside Eugenie’s door. She knocked and waited. The door opened, the maid seemed to be saying something, then she turned to lift a pile of bedding from her trolley.

“She told me she had fresh bed linen.”

“Right. And now she’s handing you the sheets. Shit—what was that? What did she just do?”

“She had something in her other hand, some sort of weapon. It looks as though she hit Miss d’André with it.” The disembodied voice again.

“I don’t remember anything about that. I took the sheets then… Nothing.”

“Carry on watching.” Pierre’s tone was grim.

They watched as the maid pushed the door of Eugenie’s room open and stepped inside. A couple of minutes later, she came out and closed the door behind her. She knelt beside it for a couple of seconds and looked to be fiddling with the lock.

“What’s she doing now? Did she sabotage the locking mechanism?”

Pierre’s reply was curt, “Yeah. She used a magnet. A strong one but wafer thin. She attached it to the underside of the lock housing and it played havoc with the circuitry. An old trick but effective. She locked the door, then she disabled the signaling system so it wouldn’t respond to any more commands. It stayed locked.”

Aaron let out a low whistle as they watched the maid scurrying away from the room. “Will we be able to prove it, though?”

Pierre chuckled. “We have the footage. And I have the magnet. She’s not wearing gloves so her fingerprints will be on it. I reckon we can make that stick.”

“You have the magnet? How?”

“I saw this footage last night, remember? As soon as I realized she’d tinkered with the lock, I went to investigate and found the magnet. It was subtle. The police and fire service both missed it. In fairness, they weren’t looking.”

As they watched the continuing sequence of images, they caught sight of the first wisps of smoke creeping from under the door then, seconds later, Aaron came into the picture, hurtling down the corridor carrying the fire extinguisher.

“Thank God you came.”

“I wish I’d been there sooner. Christ, I was so scared. I thought I’d lost you.”

Eugenie winced as she saw him launch himself at her door, splintering the frame on the second attempt. She turned to bury her face in his chest. He closed his arms around her and kissed the top of her head, oblivious for once to her nakedness. He was only aware of the warm, living, breathing woman that she was. That she still was, despite the repeated efforts of this would-be murderer.

Suddenly Eugenie stiffened in his embrace. She looked up at him, her eyes alight.

“She was in the garden too. That day. When I burned my hand.”

“What? How?” The last piece of the puzzle was dropping into his grasp, the one remaining anomaly about to be explained.

“The gardener. There was a different gardener that day. I assumed it was a lad, an apprentice perhaps. He was slim, not tall. The usual guy is elderly, walks with a bit of a limp. He was nowhere to be seen and that day there was another man
pruning the bushes. Except I think now i
t wasn’t a man. It could have been her.”

“Pierre, I want the staffing roster for that day. What grounds or maintenance staff did we have on?”

“I’m already checking, boss.” They waited in silence as the seconds ticked by, then Pierre came back on the line. “No one outdoors that day. It was Edouard Leclerc’s day off—he’s the guy with the limp—and everyone else was deployed inside. Whoever was in the terrace garden that day had no good reason for being there.”

“Where is she now?” His voice was cold. Arctic. Aaron had seen enough.

“In Ms. Ajram’s suite.” Pierre’s response was immediate.

“Right, we’re on our way there. Could you meet us? And we’ll need a security team.”

“The team’s already outside the suite. I didn’t want her slipping off anywhere while I brought you up to speed. I’ll see you there in five minutes.”

Aaron looked at Eugenie, who had already started to pull on some of the clothes borrowed from Elise.

“Better make it ten.” He had no intention of leaving her behind. She stayed right by his side until he was sure this thing was over—really over.

Eugenie slanted him a quick look. “Five minutes will be fine, Sir.” She pulled a loose sweatshirt over her head and started for the door.

Chapter Nineteen

“If we’re right, she’s tried to kill me three times. At least.” Eugenie muttered the words as they jogged the length of the hallway. They veered to the left to take the stairs, ignoring the elevator.

“Looks that way.”

“But why? Why me?”

“I’m working on a theory, but we need to talk to her.”

“What theory?”

“Well, suppose her real goal is to sabotage this wedding, prevent it happening somehow? She might think she could do that by eliminating the wedding organizer.”

“But that would never work. They would just hire someone else, or go somewhere else.”

“Yeah, that’s the flaw in my theory. Look, here’s Pierre.”

They paused to wait for Aaron’s second-in-command as he marched toward them from the direction of the management suite. The three of them made their way to the executive guest accommodation together. A group of six security guards awaited them at the door to the honeymoon suite where Farah Ajram was already in residence. Her husband to be would join her there after the ceremony.

“Anyone go in or out in the last hour?” Aaron’s question was curt.

One of the guards was quick to respond, “Just the bridegroom, sir. He arrived about thirty minutes ago.”

Aaron grinned. “Not a traditional sort, then. It’s supposed to be bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

“They’ve been living together for over a year. And the Muslim ceremony took place a month ago.” Eugenie leaned against the wall, slightly winded from their dash down there so soon after her close encounter with a smoke-filled room.

“Are you okay,
cherie
?” Aaron’s businesslike demeanor was instantly transformed into concern. He rubbed her back as she gasped in large gulps of air. “Maybe you should sit this out.”