Rogue Angel 54: Day of Atonement (12 page)

“You are teasing me, aren’t you?”

“Just a little bit. Perhaps
bored
would be a better word?”

“Ah, but I’m never bored,” Garin said. “Just thirsty.”

“What can I get you?”

“Scotch,” he said, spying a familiar-looking bottle on a drinks tray.

She poured a generous measure, ice cubes clinking together as she handed the glass to him. She made herself a gin and tonic. A lot more tonic went into the glass than gin. No ice for her, but she speared a slice of lemon that had already been cut and laid out.

“So, I can’t pretend I’m not curious. What’s your boss like?” he asked. “Is he good to work for?”

“He is a powerful man.”

“Which doesn’t answer the question.”

“But it’s the best answer you are going to get, Mr. Braden.”

“Well, if you ever get tired of the cloak and dagger, I’m always on the lookout for good people.”

“I really don’t think he’d be very happy to hear that you were trying to steal me from him,” Monique said.

“Well,
steal
is such a vulgar word.
Entice
, more like.”

“I’m not sure the size of your vocabulary will make a lot of difference if he decides that you are disrespecting him.”

“Oh, rest assured, I’d never disrespect a man of such obvious wealth. You make friends with rich people if you are smart. But it’s out there. I won’t mention it again. But if you were to reach out to me after we’ve finished our little piece of business here I wouldn’t say no.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she said, and took a drink, her eyes glancing away for a moment.

He took a pull at the whisky, feeling the heat on his tongue before it slipped to the back of his throat. He swallowed.
The liquid burned his chest as it slid down, a familiar warming that held him like an old friend. He held the glass up to the light and watched the ice cubes drift through the amber liquid.

“Only the best,” he said.

“Would you expect anything less? My employer doesn’t do things in half measures. His belief is that if you want the best in life you have to be prepared to pay for it, and that goes for everything.”

It was hard to disagree. Garin had the same philosophy. He took another mouthful, holding it in his mouth a little longer this time, allowing the fire to melt in his mouth before swallowing.

“Does that include you?” he asked, pushing his luck.

“I certainly don’t come cheap.”

“And what exactly do you do for him apart from pick strangers up from the airport in a fancy car?”

“Whatever I’m asked to do,” she said, and settled down in chair opposite him. Her legs stretched out in front of her, impossibly long. She swirled the ice in her glass and he listened to the steady
clink, clink, clink
as if it was building into a rhythm, like a song or a heartbeat.

The sound seemed to mean something to him, or was it the smell, or the heat?

Clink, clink, clink
.

His thoughts tumbled as he tried to hang on to a single thread of thought, wanting it to make sense, but it was getting hotter in the room, and the
clink, clink, clink
was less like a heartbeat now and more like the banging of a drum. Incessant. Driving.

He loosened his collar, feeling uncomfortable.

The room swam around him as Garin reached out to place his glass on a marble-topped table. He misjudged it. The drink splashed over the side in slow motion, the
glass tumbling to the plush carpet, the ice cubes falling out like a pair of dice.

He needed to get to the bathroom as quickly as he could.

When he tried to get to his feet his legs refused to hold him. He leaned on the arm of the chair, struggling to find his balance.

“I think you should sit back down, Mr. Braden. I wouldn’t want you to have an accident,” Monique said. Her voice sounded strange, her words echoing.

“What’s…?” His tongue struggled to wrap itself around the next word, his lips numb as he worked his jaw.

He clung to the arm of the chair, stubbornly refusing to collapse, but it was a losing battle. The bathroom door seemed to be moving closer, swimming toward him across the silk carpet, but he couldn’t tell if his feet were moving or if he was pitching headfirst toward it.

She’d slipped him something in his drink.

He tried to curse his own stupidity, but was incapable of doing even that.

Somehow he managed to reach the door, his palm sweating as it grabbed for the knob, slipping as it opened at his touch. Instead of the hoped-for bathroom he fell into a bedroom that seemed far too white, a brilliant white that dazzled him apart from the vicious splash of arterial red on the bed and the wall beyond it.

He tried to focus, tried to hold on to his grip on consciousness, even though he knew he was failing.

All he could see was the shape on the bed and the splatter of blood.

“It’s done,” was all the voice said before killing the call.

Two words.

Small words, but so very important.

There was no more that needed to be said, no need for small talk.

She would be on her way to join him now that she had everything he needed.

Patience was a virtue.

But getting what you wanted was so much more satisfying than being patient.

It had taken so very long to locate everything he needed, but now all of the pieces in the puzzle were beginning to come together, the long game he’d been playing paying out. He was determined to enjoy each and every little victory now. This was what it was all about.

He put the phone on the desk in front of him.

How long would it take for her to reach him?

Too long for his liking obviously, he thought wryly. Knowing how long he’d waited for this moment, a few more minutes couldn’t hurt.

He felt the familiar pain in his legs even though he knew that it was no more than a memory; it had been a long time since there had been any significant feeling down there. His lower limbs were little more than an ornament, their presence an elaborate charade meant to make him feel close to normal. Not that he would ever feel normal again.

He had spent years watching military advances into the field of exoskeletal frames, willing the breakthrough to come, dreaming of walking on his own two feet again. The time would come, but not yet, and maybe not even in his lifetime.

There were times when he had wished that the surgeons had just cut them off instead of fighting to keep them intact. Their very presence meant he clung to hope despite the torment hope entailed.

Now, though, he had a mission of his own.

He hated having to rely on other people to do the work for him, but he would find his own reward. All he had to do was to continue with the work of the man whose name he had adopted.

On the table in front of him lay a copy of the document.

He ran his fingers down the paper, realizing that while this might not be as significant as the moment that the other Cauchon had added his name to the warrant that led to Joan of Arc’s execution, this was his moment and that meant savoring it. He had no doubt now. It was fated. He was going finish what Cauchon had started six centuries ago.

He picked up his pen and unscrewed the cap.

There were no witnesses to what he was doing.

That didn’t matter.

He wasn’t looking for fame or immortality; his writing
would not be stored in museums and libraries beyond the next generation.

This was about ending things—one thread that had been dangling for centuries, another for considerably less time but promised the sweet succor of vengeance. He ached for satisfaction.

Cauchon took a deep breath, the nib of the pen still a hairsbreadth from the paper, then added a name into the space where the Maid of Orleans’s name would once have been.

His hand trembled.

He steeled himself.

This was not the time for doubt or hesitation.

He wrote the name that belonged there.

Annja Creed.

“What have you done this time, Garin?” Roux said. There was no mock-exasperation in his voice. There was only cold fear. He rubbed at the white bristles of hair along his jawline. “I thought this Cauchon had worked out our connection, and convinced myself that he was using you to get to me. I was wrong. This proves that. I don’t know how, but he knows about what you are, Annja. He knows who you are.”

Annja sat on the edge of the bed, trying to take it all in. “But how…?”

She looked at the old man, but he couldn’t look her in the eye.

Did he know something else that he wasn’t telling her? Was some secret from his past about to come back to haunt him, to haunt both of them?

Could someone really have stumbled across the truth about what she had become?

“Do you think there are others?” she asked.

“Others? I don’t follow.”

“Like you and Garin. Like me?”

His expression didn’t change. He shook his head slowly in denial, but Annja was sure that the thought had flashed across his mind. Had he ever considered the possibility before?

Why would they be the only ones like this in the world?

If it was possible for people like Garin and Roux to defy time, held here for some higher purpose, then why couldn’t there be others?

“We have to find him and stop this,” Roux said. “He’s still here, I’m sure of that.” He was thinking on his feet. “He will have been watching you. He must have been, to make that call. We can only assume he won’t leave until he’s finished whatever it is he’s planning to do. So we have to make sure that we stop him.”

“Easier said than done. Where do we start?”

“We have one obvious link to him—the two men who tried to kidnap you,” he said finally. “If he doesn’t come to us, we go to him. Through them.”

“You must have forgotten about the whole police custody thing. There’s no way that the gendarmerie is just going to let them walk away because we want them to.”

“Who said anything about walking away? We’re going to walk in there.”

“You mean spring them?” Annja asked, not quite sure she was following the old man’s thought processes. Every now and then he acted like the law just didn’t apply to him. It took her a moment to switch gears sometimes and remember that. “I’m not sure I want to know.” The one thing she was absolutely sure of was that no matter what she said, Roux would go ahead and do whatever he wanted.

It was something they had in common.

“So, we just show up at the police station and ask to speak to a couple of gunmen they’re holding in custody?”

“I can do anything I set my mind to, young lady,” he
said, flashing her a dangerous grin. “All we need are the right credentials, and they can always be arranged for a price.”

“Credentials?”

“In this case, a business card, a good suit and a dose of confidence that will border on arrogance, as if I’m used to people prostrating themselves at my feet and saying yes to my every whim. Our boys will no doubt be sitting there hoping that Cauchon has hired a top-notch lawyer for them rather than throw them to the wolves. I shall be their advocate.”

Annja shook her head. “You’ve been spending far too much time with Garin.” She laughed before realizing just what she was saying. It was enough to kill the conversation stone dead. She checked her watch. Philippe, her on-site cameraman, would be waiting for her. As much as she wanted to get swept away with the chase, the adventure that came with keeping company with Garin and Roux, she still had a job to do, no matter who might be watching.

As long as she stayed in public places, no one was going to try anything.

And if she wandered off the beaten track, she was more than ready to protect herself.

In fact, she was kind of hoping that someone
would
try something.

Annja left Roux making calls, barely getting a raised hand in acknowledgment as she walked away. She needed to pick up some things from her room before she hit the road. There was still plenty of daylight left. She called Philippe as she hurried along the corridor, and was fumbling in her pocket for her room key by the time he took the call.

“Where are you?”

“I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes,” she said,
avoiding answering the question. He wouldn’t appreciate the fact she was back in the hotel while he was working. She’d worked out that much about him already. “Have you managed to get the shots you need?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “But I should warn you, my throat is starting to long for an ice-cold beer, so if you want to get this bit finished before I give in to the siren song, you better hurry.” He was grinning as he talked, pretending to be indignant, and hamming up the French reputation.

“You better tell me where you are, then.”

“I’m outside the cathedral, but I’ll be finished what I want to do here in ten minutes, fifteen tops.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

She hung up, slipped the phone back into her pocket and unlocked the room. It had an old-fashioned charm. She liked that the floors weren’t quite even, that the walls weren’t quite straight, the corners not quite square. The building might not be as ancient as the city walls, but it was old and it belonged there. It had the kind of gravitas you couldn’t manufacture with new builds.

A breeze fluttered the curtains as she closed the door.

An instant too late, she realized there was someone in the room.

She tried to turn, reaching into the otherwhere for the sword as she moved, but the crushing weight of a body slammed her against the wall before she could close her hand around it. She felt the searing stab of pain as rough plaster gouged into her cheek. An involuntary cry escaped her lips as she was pinned, unable to move, a huge muscular arm pressing into her nape, a hip into the small of her back.

She smelled a cheap cologne that was doing a poor job of masking stale sweat.

She tried to speak, but that only increased the pressure on her body, until she felt a scratch on her arm.

Annja threw everything she had into trying to push the man away, but he was incredibly strong. A brute. She realized just how vulnerable she could be without her sword.