Rogue Angel 54: Day of Atonement (26 page)

He had stared at the man’s face, seen in so many pictures, taken from so many years, some almost a century apart that he would even have been able to pick him out in the dark.

Roux.

How the
hell
did he find us? he wondered. Why didn’t he know that the devil was coming?

He tapped a couple of keys to bring up the map with the tracker signal. The signal hadn’t moved. It was still sitting where it had been since early morning, moving north on a highway seemingly heading to Paris. The old man had realized that there was a tracker on the car and switched it to another vehicle heading north. Cauchon’s frustration threatened to boil over.

“Get your weapons!” Cauchon demanded, pushing his chair back from the screen. It didn’t matter
how
Roux had managed to find him. That was irrelevant. He was here now. It saved having to give him directions from Pau. The only thing that mattered was he’d come alone, and that was the last mistake the old man was ever going to make.

The house was full of sound and movement; it was hard to believe that there were only three men and one woman readying themselves for war, but that’s what it was—war.

“Watch the old man’s approach,” Cauchon ordered one of his goons. All he could do now was to put his faith in others; it wasn’t a position he enjoyed.

But he wasn’t completely helpless, even if most of it was illusion.

He retrieved a Browning Hi-Power pistol from its place in the cupboard.

He had tried to fire the gun once and the recoil had almost tipped over his chair, but that didn’t mean that the weapon didn’t offer the same feeling of power that it did to able-bodied men. It was time he came face-to-face with Roux.

He checked the screen again.

Roux’s car was coming into sight of the second camera. He watched the 4x4 travel up the road.

The contractor who’d installed the system had tried to convince him that he was going over the top with the number of cameras he wanted, but the man hadn’t understood that Cauchon was planning for war. This wasn’t about home invasion. He followed the progress from image to image as Roux neared, until the old man reached the last checkpoint.

He called out distances to his men, Monique beside him, urging them to be ready for Roux’s approach. He watched as Roux brought the 4x4 toward the farmhouse,
then stopped watching and wheeled himself toward the door.

Cauchon wanted to be there to greet him.

He wanted to see the look on the old man’s face when he realized that they were ready for him, that whatever trickery he’d used to find his way here hadn’t been enough.

Monique stood at his shoulder, an Uzi at the ready.

“I can hear him,” she said needlessly. The vehicle’s engine was the only sound in the mountains.

Cauchon wheeled himself out onto the stone slab area outside the front door. The snow had been cleared that morning, and with the heat of the sun had melted little that remained on the steps. He sucked in the cold morning air.

The winter sun glinted off the mountain peaks in the distance.

Today was going to be a good day.

Today was going to be the day when wrongs were righted and revenge exacted.

Today was going to be the day when Roux finally met his Maker.

The car crawled around the last tight curve that led to the farmhouse. Two of the guards took a step forward to intercept the driver, not waiting for instructions. They had looked capable of feasting on lions when Cauchon had picked them up, but now, dressed in black, fully armed, they looked like cold-blooded killers, standing out in stark contrast to the whiteness that surrounded them.

The car stopped.

Roux paused before he opened the door to get out.

Cauchon watched him. Did the old man remember him? He had changed, of course. A lot. Life had happened to him. Whereas he would have recognized Roux
anywhere. The man was unchanged. It was as if he’d been carved out of the landscape.

“Welcome,” he said as Roux climbed out of the vehicle.

The old man made no show of acknowledging the guns aimed at his chest.

“I trust you haven’t come all this way empty-handed?”

“Of course not,” Roux replied. “I’ve got what you want, but before I take another step, where’s the girl?”

“Ah, not so hasty. All in good time. I want to savor our reunion. We have much to talk about, so why don’t you come inside out of the cold? It’s been a while.”

Garin approached the farmhouse, keeping low, moving as quickly as he could across the uneven ground, listening to the sounds of the mountain.

He’d abandoned the warmth and comfort of the car farther from their destination than he would have liked. Hell, in an ideal world he’d have curled up on the backseat with a blanket over him and pretended he wasn’t there, but even a bunch of incompetents would have seen him. He had no choice but to go in by foot.

He scrambled forward, hands pawing at the high snow as his feet sank into the drifts. Each stumbling step ended with the snow up around his knees. The two hundred feet to the crest of the hill was a colossal undertaking. He stumbled and nearly fell three times, dragging himself forward, eyes on the prize.

He crested the next hill, keeping low, and saw the farmhouse up ahead. He made out six people, several of them with odd silhouettes that seemed to have distended and disjointed arms: submachine guns. That was an unexpected and unwelcome development. Garin wasn’t unarmed.
Only a fool went into the lion’s den naked. But he didn’t like the idea of pitting his Colt Mustang against an Uzi. The XSP was good for concealed carry, weighing less than a pound even when loaded with six shots of .380 ACP. But heavy ordnance it was not.

He dropped to his stomach and lay still as Roux made his way around to the passenger’s side of the car. He regretted it immediately. The snow was bitingly cold against his skin. He wasn’t twelve anymore. This wasn’t fun.

The old man retrieved the box from the backseat.

The guards watched him closely.

From this distance, with the wind whipping across the mountaintops, it was impossible to hear what words passed between them no matter how hard he strained to hear. The mountains carried words away on the wind and wrapped them up in snow. He watched Roux and the others enter the house before he made his move.

He had no way of knowing if any of them would continue to monitor the feeds from the security cameras, but had to hope not.

There was a track that ran around the outbuildings, which offered some cover from the windows of the farmhouse. Garin scrambled forward, bolting for cover. He fell before he made it thirty feet, and slid twice as far down the slope, and then was up on his feet again and running hard for the stone wall, dreading one single sound: the crack of bullets from an Uzi echoing around the mountains.

He couldn’t hear anything over the crunch of snow and his own ragged breathing.

Garin kept on running, knowing that he’d feel the killer bullet before he heard it, anyway.

That was no comfort.

He forced himself to go on, driving his legs through the deep snow, staggering and stumbling but not stopping.

He hit the wall, hands out to brace him against the impact, then waited, listening.

Nothing.

Not a sound.

He crept to the edge of the stone barn.

There was no sign of the guard, but that didn’t mean they weren’t scouting the area.

He watched, waiting, but nothing changed.

Silence.

Not even birdsong to break it.

The quiet rang in his ears.

Lights were on in a couple of the rooms. The curtains were open in the largest of the downstairs windows, but in others they were closed. He saw dark shapes move across his eye line inside. No lookout was posted at the window. Garin scanned the farmhouse and parking area, picking out a route to the door that would get him as close as possible with minimum risk of anyone seeing his approach. It was harder than it looked, because he noted that half a dozen cameras had been fixed on the corners of the various outbuildings, seemingly covering most angles of approach. Cauchon really valued his privacy.

Crouching, he rushed from cover to the trunk of the 4x4, keeping low as he hid at the back of the vehicle, making sure to keep it between him and the house. The distance to the other vehicle was about a dozen yards—twelve long strides, a few more if taken in a crouch, but it was all it would take. The problem was that he was going straight through the middle of an area monitored by a security camera, but there was no other means of getting to the front door—assuming the front door was the only entrance.

He took a breath and closed the distance before he released it.

Cauchon might not be expecting reinforcements, but surely he wasn’t so arrogant as to leave the front door unguarded.

Garin edged a little farther around the vehicle, keeping low, inching forward, coiled, ready to sprint for his life, twelve steps to the corner of the house. It wasn’t a lot. Twelve steps.

Now or never, Garin thought, pushing himself to his feet in the exact same second that one of the guards stepped out of the house. Garin froze—half up, half down—and didn’t dare move so much as an inch. The guard didn’t look particularly interested in securing the area. He scanned from left to right and back again, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He adjusted the gun that was slung on his shoulder and leaned against the wall, but even so, that made lighting up his smoke awkward, so he slipped the gun off his shoulder and balanced it against the wall.

Garin had just gotten lucky.

Someone should have told this bozo that smoking would kill him eventually.

He wasn’t about to let the man enjoy the cigarette.

Garin ran the numbers in his head, calculating the time it would take him to cover the distance between them. He knew it was impossible for him to sneak up on the guy, and he needed to be close enough to overpower the guard before he realized what was going on and grabbed for the Uzi. The answer was: too long.

The man took two satisfying puffs on his cigarette.

Garin watched the smoke corkscrew with the vapor of his breath. He pushed himself all the way up, ready to burst into movement, but stopped suddenly as a hand clamped over his mouth.

“It’s been a long time, Roux,” the man in the wheelchair said.

“You’ve changed your name.”

“I’m a different person now.” Cauchon waved one hand as if to highlight the state of his legs and the wheelchair that he relied on to get around. “I’m the man you made me.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Patrice Moerlen is dead. If you searched the internet, you would find plenty of reports of his tragic death.”

“And yet you’re still here, living and breathing.”

“You shouldn’t have left me the way that you did.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen, not like that. I only wanted to scare you off,” Roux said. It was as though it had happened only days ago, not decades. The image of it was so vivid in his memory. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Cauchon sputtered. “No. Don’t be sorry. I want to thank you.” Roux looked at him, not understanding. “My sister—” he reached up a hand to rest on the woman’s hand, which in turn rested on his shoulder
“—managed to get me to the nearest hospital, get me the best treatment. She even identified another body as mine, allowing her to claim the not insubstantial insurance policy on my life, which paid for everything I could possibly need. So, no, don’t be sorry, Roux. I’m not sorry. I’m not even bitter. I was angry for a few years, but even that passed. The truth is, without you, without what happened at the Eiffel Tower that day, I would never have made the discovery that will soon make me so much more than I am now, so much more than I was before.”

It would be easy to dismiss him as deranged, a dangerous lunatic, damaged forever by that accident, but Roux knew that would be a mistake. The woman stood behind her brother, not breaking contact with him. It was the woman who had waved so flirtatiously at him, the same woman who had drugged Garin and tried to frame him for murder. The old man had absolutely no doubt that she was capable of identifying another man’s body as her own brother, or that she would have put on a good act doing it: handkerchief at the ready, leaning on the supportive policeman’s shoulder for comfort when they peeled back the sheet to reveal the wrong dead man to her, the choking sob, the nod. He had met people like that before. He recognized the type, knew the body double had been living and breathing when she found him.

“I hate to admit it, but you have me at a disadvantage here,” Roux said. “I’ve brought what you want, but I still don’t know what I’m doing here, why you are so interested in getting me here.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “Where is Annja?”

The man nodded and the two guards who had been standing behind Roux took the box from him. They pulled his hands behind his back. His instinct was to fight against the restraints, but there was no point. Until Annja was
free he had no choice but to go along with whatever they had in mind, no matter how much damage it did to him physically.

When she was safe, then things would be different. Then he could rain holy hell down on these people.

The two men pulled the plastic cuffs tight and pushed him into a chair, putting him on a level with Cauchon. Face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. The woman took the box from the guard and placed it in her brother’s lap. Her smile was vile. His eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning.

“Not to put a damper on things, but this is meant to be an exchange, but right now I feel more like Santa Claus. Where’s Annja?”

Cauchon didn’t look up from the ancient box until he had pulled the sacking away, revealing the lid. The expression on his face was cruel and twisted.

“Gone,” the man said.

“What do you mean gone?” Roux felt rage surge up inside, from the depths of his being. They were lying. They had to be. He said as much.

“Now why would I lie to you? Your little friend is
very
resourceful. You should be proud. She managed to escape from my little prison, and bested Monique.”