Page 16 of Icebound

They would also have all her money and the rest of her identification. At least she had nothing on paper to prove who she was—Bastien had taught her to keep everything in her head. They wouldn’t find any link to Peter Madsen or the Committee—it was all in her brain.

If they took everything with them, she’d have no way to escape. Only Peter’s phone number, and he had no idea she’d gone off looking for Bastien. He thought she was safely back in North Carolina, waiting impatiently.

But what if Peter found them? She would have to hope for that. Peter and the Committee were frighteningly good—sooner or later, they’d find out where Bastien had disappeared to.

She suddenly realized the man had been watching her, and she hoped to God her face hadn’t reflected any of her frantic thinking. “You have a problem with that, chérie?”

“No,” she said meekly. “I would like to change my clothes.” She felt unbelievably grungy, and she would have killed for a shower. Clearly, the subterranean tunnels didn’t come equipped with anything as civilized as a bathing room.

“Our accommodations don’t suit our guest, Luc,” he said. “We will have to do better.”

“The farmhouse should provide,” Luc said.

“Farmhouse?” she echoed. They were getting out of Paris. That would make escape even more difficult if she changed her mind.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, chérie,” Bastien said. “It’s deep in the country, far away from everyone. No one will be able to find you when they finally decide to come looking. In fact, I find it surprising that no one had noticed that you’re missing.”

“The hotel will,” she said.

“The hotel will not care as long as they’re paid and the room vacated. American tourists are plentiful, and there are always new ones to take their place. Accept it—no one is looking for you. Your husband has abandoned you, and no one seems to care where you are. Don’t you have any children to look after?”

“We never had children,” she said, wondering if she was saying the right thing. On the one hand, she didn’t want them knowing about Sylvie and Swede. On the other, the knowledge might jar Bastien’s memory.

“Tant pis,” Bastien dismissed her words. “No mother, no sisters or brothers?”

“My parents are dead and I’m an only child,” she said without a trace of guilt. She only hoped her parents wouldn’t try to get in touch with her. They respected Bastien’s security measures and usually expected her to get in touch with them. But they knew Bastien was missing, and if Chloe disappeared as well, they might give in and raise the alarm.

She would have to hope for the best. She had seen no sign of a computer in the underground lair—they didn’t appear connected to the outside world. Bastien simply kept poring over his diagrams and papers with single-minded intensity, but the three men seemed cut off and working on their own. Though what they were working on left Chloe totally baffled.

“We seem to have kidnapped the perfect American tourist,” Bastien drawled. “No family or friends to search for her. By the time they discover she’s missing, we’ll be long gone.”

“Gone where?” she asked.

He simply laughed. “Give her one of those tiny blue pills, Luc. We need her compliant for the trip.”

Fear spiked through her. The last thing she wanted was to be drugged and in Flambeau’s care. “You don’t need to give me anything,” she said quickly. “I promise I’ll behave.”

“When we drive past gendarmes?” Bastien said. “I wonder why you’re being so amenable. You’ve been taken by dangerous men and yet you’re willing to stay with us. Why is that?”

She took a deep breath. This was taking a risk, but the situation was already bleak. “Because I’m not convinced you aren’t my husband.”

Luc rolled his eyes. “You told me you knew he wasn’t.”

“I told you what you wanted to hear. If he really is my husband, I don’t want to leave him.”

Luc turned to Bastien, who was watching her with no expression on his face. “She’s not safe, Jean-Marc.”

“Oh, I disagree. If she thinks I’m her missing husband, then she’d hardly turn me over to the gendarmes. I think she’ll behave herself quite well if she thinks it will bring her husband back to her.”

“But you’re not her husband.”

The man who insisted he wasn’t Bastien smiled then, a cold, dangerous smile. “Sooner or later she’ll realize that, and then it will be too late.” He glanced at his thin gold watch. “Take care of the hotel—we’re running late.”

Bastien never wore a watch, or anything ornamental, nothing to identify him, and new doubts assailed her. She had to stop second-guessing herself. This was Bastien, whether he knew it or not, and she wasn’t going to leave him. Not if she could help it.

Two hours later, Chloe saw her first trace of sunshine in two days, and she breathed it in deeply, then wished she hadn’t. Flambeau had a death grip on her arm, and he clearly hadn’t been able to bathe in days, perhaps weeks. Neither had Bastien nor Luc, but they didn’t have Flambeau’s particular aromatic charm. He shoved her in the back seat of an older Renault and then clambered in after her, much to her distress. He was huge, and the car was small, and she tried to shrink away from him as much as possible. He simply spread further, his heavy thigh up against hers.

Bastien drove, and she knew a moment of fear. Driving in Paris was always tempestuous, and Bastien drove like a madman, whether he was in a city or on a country road. There was a good chance they were going to die.