Rogue Angel 54: Day of Atonement (17 page)

The fire blazed, forming a barrier between them.

Annja was on the wrong side of it.

The woman struggled to get to her knees, disorientated by the blow.

She shook her head, trying to gather her wits, leaned forward, hands flat on the cold stone, and spit out a mouthful of blood.

Annja took her chance while she still could.

There was no time to go around the flames; instead, she had to run through the fire, gambling that it wouldn’t catch onto her clothes. Burning fabric wouldn’t be easy to put off with her hands tied behind her back.

She launched herself forward, five rapid steps and she was through and on the other side, rushing awkwardly toward the stairs, her bound hands making it difficult to run properly.

Her foot came down on the first step just as the woman’s hand snaked out to grab her ankle, fingers taking a grip too tight to shake off.

It was enough for Annja to lose her balance.

She stumbled forward with no hope of saving herself from falling even as she twisted sideways, trying to take the brunt of the impact on her shoulder instead of her face. Even so, the pain of impact was jarring. Annja cried out as she hit stone. She gasped for air that was rapidly filling with smoke.

In an instant the woman was on top of her, her weight pressing down, and then Annja felt the sharp sting on the back of her neck.

She fought to dislodge the woman, but even as she did so the strength started to seep away from her struggle. She heard words—they could have been hers, they could have been her attacker’s. They were just a slurred mumble that she couldn’t understand.

Annja barely felt the kick that the woman planted in her ribs.

Roux waited in the lobby.

There was no point in going up to his room while he waited for Garin. Besides, he’d be happy never to set foot in that monastic cell again if he had anything to say about it. He was tempted to go up to the suite, but ordered black coffee and stared out through the glass doors while the drink grew cold on the table in front of him. Twice a server approached to see if he needed anything else; he shook his head to say,
No thanks
, before she could ask.

Eventually Garin appeared in the doorway as the first fat flakes of a new snowfall filled the air.

“No luggage?”

“Traveling light.”

“Any more news?” Roux asked.

“Nothing yet. I take it that he hasn’t reached out to you.”

Roux shook his head.

“Let’s head up to the room. We can talk without worrying about being overhead.” He knew procedure. The museum would have alerted the police to the theft from
their archives, and given them his name as the last known signatory, meaning he was a person of interest. Eventually someone was going to come looking for him if they weren’t already.

“Devious.” Garin chuckled appreciatively when they were in his room. It wasn’t quite the reaction Roux had been expecting.

“Is that what you really think?”

“Of course. Look at it this way. He got you to blame me and put the blame squarely at your door at the same time. I’d say that was pretty devious. And pulling it off without half the world realizing it was missing…brilliant.”

“It wasn’t you?”

“Not this time, boss,” Garin said, shaking his head.

“Pity.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“That’s twice. I’m not used to you apologizing. It’s really quite disconcerting. Maybe now would be a good time for you to tell me what happened to you and why you decided to steal from me.”

“It’s no big deal, really. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was approached by a broker to ask if I could locate some historical documents for his client in exchange for a very generous fee. It was supposed to be the first of a few objects the client had his eye on, and given that I knew exactly where it was, it felt like an easy buck.”

“I hope it was worth it.”

Garin shook his head. “I didn’t see a cent outside of the retainer. Some people just don’t like to pay. Shame, because I’d enjoyed the haggling.”

“What did you take?”

“Papers recording Joan’s burning, documented by Guillaume Manchon, a court scribe at the church court in Rouen at the time.”

Roux knew them well.

They mentioned him by name.

It wasn’t good, but it could have been worse. He remembered Manchon, a particularly disagreeable runt of a man who had wormed himself into favor with Cauchon and delighted in the burning of the young woman. He’d been sure she’d been possessed by a whole host of demons. It was really quite pathetic. But that didn’t stop it from being dangerous.

“You actually handed them over without getting the cash up front? You’re slacking.” It was Roux’s turn to laugh. “I take it there was a woman involved?”

“How did you guess?”

“I know you, my friend,” Roux said, and for a moment it was as if all of the betrayals between them had never happened. “Any idea who she was?”

“Not a clue. She certainly wasn’t the person I spoke to on the phone. He certainly wasn’t a beautiful blonde.”

“Beautiful blonde?” Roux’s mind raced, making connections.

It was another of those coincidences that could be a coincidence but absolutely wasn’t. He knew that deep down in his ancient bones. One day a beautiful blonde is outwitting Garin, the next another drives by on a scooter blowing him a kiss? They had to be one and the same.

“I may have seen her,” he said, “which confirms my suspicions that it’s all connected.”

Garin shook his head. “How long has it taken you to work that out? Both of us getting phone calls from people we don’t know, the only person that we both know well going missing? Absolutely it’s all connected. Every single thing that’s happened is connected. It’s a web. Every strand, from the museum to the library to the falling masonry to us getting here, all strands of the same dark web.
I’ll bet I can even tell you who they got to pull off that robbery at the museum and how he set you up to take the blame.”

“Who?”

“Jake Thornton.”

“Should I know the name?”

“He’s a thief who likes to try his hand at robbing institutions. He also likes to think of himself as a bit of a high-end cat burglar, or did at least.”

“Do you know where we can get hold of him?”

“By séance.”

“What?”

“That problem, I mentioned? Being framed for murder. Thornton’s corpse was on the bed in the hotel suite where I was expecting to meet my buyer. I was drugged, and pretty effectively framed, right down to them stealing a Ferrari the same color as mine and putting my plates on it, and making sure the valet knew my name. Like I said, a little problem. I called in the cleaners and left them to it. I’m assuming his body’s long gone now and there’s nothing left in the room to tie me to the crime—and no actual evidence of a crime for that matter.” They had both seen enough death over the years, but that didn’t mean that they were completely immune to it.

“And Annja is missing,” Roux said, not finishing the thought. It went in an obvious direction. Neither of them wanted to follow it.

“So what’s the plan?”

“We don’t have one.”

“That’s not ideal.” Garin chuckled mirthlessly. “We could tap into the hotel CCTV system to see if we can spot Annja leaving the hotel, but it’s not like this place is wired, eyes everywhere. It’s an ancient settlement. It’s going to be filled with blind spots even if we get in.”

“But it’s a good start. Can you get the equipment you need in a place like this?”

Garin smiled smugly. “With these fingers I can work magic, my friend. Even in a place like this. All I need is a laptop and an internet connection.”

“Fair enough,” the old man agreed.

Garin picked up the phone at the side of the bed and spoke to someone at the reception desk. Within a couple of minutes he had the directions to the nearest computer store and was heading out the door.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you order from room service? I’m starving.” He closed the door behind him without waiting for a response, leaving Roux alone in the room.

Annja felt the bruises even before she was completely awake.

Her body bounced up and down on the unforgiving metal floor as the vehicle rocked and rolled on its suspension.

The ties binding her wrists had been supported by another set around her ankles and there was a gag across her mouth. She could taste the wad of cloth that had been stuffed in behind the gag to make sure she couldn’t be heard. Swimming back toward consciousness, it felt like she was drowning on the material, choking and gagging as she tried to suck down precious air. It took her a moment to master the panic and focus on breathing in slowly, calmly, through her nose.

She had no idea of where she was or what their destination might be.

The rear doors had small windows at the top. They’d been whitewashed, but still let in a faint glow of light that kept the darkness at bay. She couldn’t see anything through them, though. The most she could glean was that
it was daylight outside—not that she knew if it was the same day, the next day or any day of any week. Gravity pulled her toward the doors as the vehicle jounced and shuddered up a rough track, climbing.

It was already cold in the pickup, but there was no mistaking the fact that the temperature was dropping as they traveled.

In her head she tried to visualize a map of the region in her mind, thinking about the hills and twisting roads. It gave her something to concentrate on as she tried to fight her way out of the drug-fog that still lingered inside her head.

Whatever she had been injected with wasn’t doing her any good. She felt slow, lethargic and like she didn’t really have control of her limbs. Having that stuff pumped into her veins twice within a matter of hours was not good at all.

There was an empty pit in her stomach where the hunger gnawed away.

She tried to ignore all of it, all of those different sensory inputs and distractions, as the map came into focus.

How far could the woman have taken her in an hour or two, assuming that was how long she’d been out?

Could she have reached any mountains?

Of course she could.

In that time they could have made it into the Pyrenees.

They could have been crossing into Spain or Andorra.

So why take her into the mountains?

What could be gained from that?

Apart from finding a nice secluded spot well off the beaten track to dump a body where it wouldn’t be discovered for months?

Annja didn’t like it, but it made a grim kind of sense.

But if the woman had wanted to kill her, she could
have done it back at the church, put her corpse inside one of those old sarcophagi, and it would have taken years, if ever, before someone stumbled on it. So no, it was something else.

Every time she tried to move to ease the slowly mounting pain in the muscles around her shoulders, Annja felt the plastic dig deeper into the raw wounds, and that just made the pain worse. There was no point in trying to fight against the restraints. They weren’t going to break. If she’d been awake when they’d cuffed her, maybe. There was a way to brace your wrists against each other so when you pulled down hard and sharp the ties broke, but not from behind your back. So now she was just going to have to hope that the kidnappers gave her the opportunity to make a run for it.

The truck braked suddenly. She heard the tires spit gravel, spraying against the underside of the vehicle, the clattering chips of stone against the metal sounding like a hailstorm inside. Up front, the driver killed the engine and the world fell silent. She heard the cab door open and slam shut and the crunch of feet on deep snow moving around the side of the truck.

She closed her eyes and slumped, giving her best imitation of someone still doped up.

A key slipped into the lock and turned.

The back doors swung open together, letting in a sudden wash of light.

Annja squeezed her eyes shut against the invasive sun; even so it seeped through her eyelids, stinging.

“Time to move, sleepyhead,” the woman said, leaning into the back of the truck.

Annja had no plans to make this easy for her.

She lay motionless, waiting for the other woman to make her move.

The woman reached in and took hold of Annja’s ankle.

Annja moaned, like someone trying to claw her way back to consciousness, not resisting. She kept herself as limp as possible, expecting the woman to try to drag her out.

Instead—and so much better than she’d dared hope—she felt the tension suddenly go as the ties binding her ankles were cut.

The woman muttered to herself all the time, but Annja couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“If you think I’m going to carry you inside, you can think again,” she said finally, so Annja had to assume she was talking to her.

The chilly air filled the back of the truck quickly, bringing the temperature down fast. She was beyond cold, even in the thick fleece she was wearing. Without it, the cold would have been unbearable. She let out a groan, faking the slow return to consciousness, gambling that the woman wouldn’t stick her with another syringe. She didn’t. She reached toward Annja and yanked the gag away from her mouth and pulled out the wadding. Obviously they were somewhere remote enough she didn’t care about noise anymore.

“What the hell did you do to me?” Annja moaned, struggling to raise her head.

“Ah, so you are still with us. Pity.” The woman ignored the question. “It’ll take you a few minutes to come around, quite a while longer to clear your head completely.”

“What did you hit me with?”

“The same stuff they use to tranquilize elephants,” she said, holding another syringe where Annja could see it. “You should think yourself lucky my brother wants you alive. It would have been so easy to get the dose wrong.”

“Why are you doing this?” Annja asked, just to keep her talking.

“You’ll know soon enough,” she said, but there was something in her voice, a quality to it, a vagueness, that made Annja doubt that she knew herself. If her brother was keeping her in the dark, did that mean he didn’t trust her? Was that an angle she could work? If she was reading the woman right, she’d have been just as happy to kill Annja as deliver her alive, so she was going to need all the angles she could work to get out of this situation.