The Collector of Dying Breaths (12 page)

Chapter 14

This area of the Tuileries was deserted. Jac kept moving at a steady pace, hoping the sense someone was following her was all her imagination. She didn’t dare turn around. She passed through the outdoor seating areas of two cafés that were open only during the day. Now just empty chairs and tables. She kept walking, not changing her pace. It could just be someone heading in the same direction. But what if it wasn’t? What if this was someone from the Chinese Mafia? . . . What if this was her reckoning?

Damn, she was supposed to have let Marcher know when she was coming back so he could have her watched, and she’d forgotten.

She pulled out her cell phone, found Marcher’s name on her favorites list and tapped it. Marcher had said it was unlikely the vendetta against her brother would extend to her, but . . .

“Jac? Are you all right?”

“I’m in the Tuileries—”

“You were in Barbizon,” he said in surprise. “You were supposed to—” He broke off, suddenly concerned. “What is it?”

She lowered her voice. “I think I’m being followed.”

“Where are you exactly?”

She described her location.

“Okay, I’m going to put you on hold, but keep talking as if I’m still here, talk to me as if I’m your mother or your boyfriend . . . inconsequential things, tell me what you did today.”

For the next few minutes Jac did as she was told, kept talking about nothing to the silence. And then he was back.

“There is a gendarme less than sixty seconds away across from the Crillon Hotel. Turn right and start to walk toward the Rue de Rivoli exit. Don’t hurry and don’t stop talking to me. Be animated. I want you to argue with me, fairly loudly.”

“What?”

“Please, Jac. If you are being followed, I don’t want him to think you’ve noticed him. So here we go. How dare you question where I was tonight? Argue with me, Jac. Pretend you are fighting with your boyfriend. Accuse me of lying to you.”

Jac did as she was told. “You’re lying to me,” she said, raising her voice slightly.

“I am not. I was at work. You are so suspicious.”

“You weren’t at the office. I called and your assistant said you had left hours ago.”

“She was wrong. Haven’t you ever heard of someone being wrong before?”

It was a surreal conversation.

“Are you telling me that you just flat out don’t believe me?” Marcher shouted into her ear.

“Yes!” Jac raised her voice too.

“You have to!”

She saw the policeman now—he was only about thirty feet away. She felt the knot of fear inside her begin to unclench, but the adrenaline that was running through her veins didn’t stop pumping.

“That’s the worst thing to do,” Jac said. “Never tell me what I have to do. You just make me want to do the opposite. Don’t you understand that?”

In other circumstances Jac would have laughed—it was what she had just been wondering about Malachai. In pretending to have a conversation, she had, out loud, explained one of the guiding principles, right or wrong, of her life. She had always done the opposite of what people expected of her. Everyone had thought she’d be a perfumer, but she became a mythologist. The TV show had been a success and people had expected her to ramp it up and take it to the next level. She’d kept it small. Griffin wanted her to fight for him. She’d walked away. Last year, Malachai begged her not to go to the Isle of Jersey searching for Druid ruins. She decided searching was exactly what she needed to do.

“Go up to the policeman and tell him your boyfriend is in your house and you are afraid to go home alone,” Marcher told her.

She did.

The policeman nodded. “You’re all right, Mademoiselle L’Etoile. The man who was walking behind you turned left when you turned right. He’s gone now.”

Jac looked. There was a woman walking a Maltese dog. A father and son riding bicycles. An elderly man with a cane making his way down the path.

“Jac?” It was Marcher on the phone.

She told him what the policeman had told her.

“Let me speak to him,” Marcher said.

Jac handed the policeman the phone. He listened for a few minutes and then handed the phone back to her.

“Officer Passey is going to escort you into the Crillon,” Marcher said. “I’m getting in my car now and will pick you up there in twenty minutes. Go to the bar, have a cognac. I’ll call when I’m out front.”

As Jac walked with the policeman across the street, toward the hotel where she’d once had breakfast with Griffin, she thought it was an odd coincidence that she was feeling just as panicked now as the last time she’d been here. Eighteen months ago they had been trying to find Robbie and keep him safe; now he was gone, and she was the one who might be in danger. Suddenly her fear gave way to anger. Anger that Robbie had died. That she was alone. That she was floundering. That Malachai might be manipulating her. That her life had become all about dreams and visions and sadness and loss and talking to ghosts.

Or had it always been like that?

Jac ordered the cognac. While the bartender poured it into a lovely crystal glass, she played with the scarlet cord tied around her wrist. He placed the glass in front of her. As she took a sip and felt the burn and then the warmth, she examined her surroundings. In the mid-eighteenth century King Louis XV had commissioned this building to house government offices. Benjamin Franklin had concluded the French-American treaty that recognized the Declaration of Independence here. Everywhere in Paris there was history built on history. Nothing ever died. It was transformed and transmuted. Like Robbie had said about people’s lives. She wasn’t sure if she was remembering him saying it—or if he was whispering it to her again, here in the bar.

Energy can’t die, Jac. It can only be transformed. And our souls are energy. So when we die, that spirit that is us is transformed.

Jac wanted to transform. She wanted to stop trying to escape her own past and instead finally face it and fight it and find out what it was and come to terms with it and then move on.

She knew it then. Like it or not, finishing what Robbie had started was something she was going to have to do. It was the only way to truly leave the past and move on, and moving on was the only way she was going to have a life.

Her phone rang a few minutes later, and Jac was surprised to see she’d finished her cognac without realizing it. She left a twenty-euro note on the bar and walked out to the street in front of the hotel.

Marcher was waiting for her in his car.

“You feel okay?” he asked when she was seated with the door shut.

She nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. Did you find the man who was following me?”

“No. I had two men near the park,” Marcher said as he pulled out and entered the traffic on the Rue de Rivoli. “One focused on you, the other on the people around you. There were three men and a woman in the vicinity. My officer couldn’t identify which of them might have been following you.”

“I don’t suppose any of them were Chinese?”

“That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? If the Triad is actually keeping tabs, the last thing they’d do is use someone identifiable. I don’t think it’s them. There still hasn’t been any chatter that Robbie’s death was deliberate.”

“But they were pleased that he died.”

“They were
appeased
that he died.”

Jac shivered. “Robbie didn’t mean to hurt that man. It was an accident.”

“I know. And they might even know. But the fact is Robbie was responsible for François Lee’s death and he was a high-ranking member of the Chinese Mafia.”

“As you said yourself, it’s not likely that they are after me, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“So I’m just being paranoid.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You are reacting as you should. But after tomorrow you won’t have to. I was going to call you tonight to tell you, but here you are. Tomorrow we are announcing that we are closing the investigation into your brother’s death—”

“You can’t!” Jac interrupted.

Marcher held up his hand. “We are announcing we are closing it and declaring that we accept that it was death by natural causes—strange causes, but natural causes.”

“Even though you don’t really believe that?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. There is no evidence at all that his death was deliberate. There is no evidence that he came in contact with anyone who might have found a way to infect him with what he had. Your perfume workshop was clean.”

“Then why are you still unsure?”

Marcher shrugged. “I’m a suspicious man. It’s my nature.”

They were on the Left Bank now, driving down Saint-Germain toward the cross street that would take them to the L’Etoile residence.

“What should I do?”

“Go on with your life, Jac. Be cautious but not afraid. We are monitoring the Triad. We have an excellent man on the inside. If we hear anything, you will be the first to know.”

“I might leave Paris for a few weeks,” she said.

“You don’t need to run away.”

“I’m not. Robbie left some unfinished business, and I think I’m the one who needs to finish it.”

At home, she called Malachai. When he said he thought she was making the right choice, the excitement in his voice was real. Reassured, Jac telephoned Melinoe, telling her that she was accepting her offer and making plans to drive down the next day.

And then she decided she needed to make a second call—in spite of all her misgivings and cowardice. If she was going to take on Robbie’s work, she needed all available information.

Jac’s fingers started to tremble when she scrolled down the list of names in her phone. Her insides started to flutter. She tapped the call button, and when she heard his voice on the other end, she felt a rush of heat.

“Griffin, it’s Jac.”

“Hello.” His deep velvety voice that sluiced through her like warm honey. Damn. Just hearing him always did this to her. Despite everything—her mourning, her fear, her anger—she felt the first stirrings of arousal. Just from his voice. Just from hearing him say hello. Would she ever break the spell this man had over her? Ever figure out what subterranean connection there was between them? How could he turn on the switch in her brain that sent her endorphins rushing, made her breasts tingle and her womb throb all with just a hello?

“Jac?”

She realized she hadn’t spoken.

“I’m sorry. Did I disturb you?”

“No, I’m just sitting here on the couch, reading.”

“You’re home? I didn’t mean to bother you at home.” Jac felt her cheeks flush. The last thing she’d wanted to do was call him at home. She’d thought it was his office number she’d called. Was his wife next to him? Was he sitting with his daughter? She felt ill. She’d never allowed herself to imagine this scene, and now she had intruded on it.

“I thought you’d be at work. It’s only three in the afternoon.”

“Actually it’s nine at night.”

She was confused. “Where are you?” For a second she wondered if he were somewhere in Paris. That he’d known she was going to need him and had already come to her. Magical thinking, she knew, but they used to be like that with each other. She’d often just have to think of him calling and he’d call. The connection between them had scared him, but to her it had been proof of the rightness of their connection.

“I’m in Egypt.”

“I—I assumed you were in New York.”

“I haven’t been in New York in a while.”

She was surprised to hear that. When she’d last seen him, he’d said he only went on digs during the fall and winter because it wasn’t good for his marriage or his daughter for him to spend more time than that away.

“Have you all moved to Egypt?” Jac knew she was asking more questions than she should, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“No. Therese and Elsie are in New York.”

Jac couldn’t bring herself to ask the next logical question. Had the reconciliation failed? If she asked and he said yes, she’d have to deal with that, and she wasn’t sure she could.

She had always wanted to be with him—more than anyone she had ever met in her life. Felt that she belonged with him in a way that defied all logic. She was embarrassed by how much she had longed for him and how much of her life she’d spent fantasizing about him. Hated him for how deeply he had gotten inside her head and, to use a most apt cliché, under her skin. Griffin had imprinted himself on her. She’d discovered her sexuality with him. He was her first lover, her only real love.

The first time they’d been together, she was seventeen. They’d been in her bedroom in her aunt’s house. Dusk was turning to night. After they’d made love, he’d told her the story about the two halves of Plato’s whole.

“Humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. We’re each other’s halves . . .” he’d said.

“Âmes Sœurs.” She’d translated the phrase from French. “Soul mates,” she whispered.

That picture was replaced by a more recent image of Griffin on a stretcher, being rushed into the hospital in Paris. Blood dripping from his fingers, leaving a trail on the sidewalk. His voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Jac, are you all right? I’ve called and called since Robbie’s died. I wanted to talk to you.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t . . . Listen, I have a favor to ask you,” she said, not wanting to stay on the phone longer than she had to. It was just too damn painful.

“Anything.”

Were all the implications she thought she heard in that one word really there? Or was it her wishful thinking? Her heart beat harder. Be with me, she wanted to blurt out. But instead she told him, in unemotional, even-toned words, why she had called.

“Were you helping Robbie translate some inscriptions? Do you have them?”

“I was and I do.”

“Great. I’ve decided that I need to finish what he started and I need to know what the writings say. I need to be the one to do this before the woman who owns them brings someone else in to do it.”

“I’d already started working on them but stopped when . . . Robbie got sick. Let me get back to them. Where are you? How can I reach you?”