AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We waited until the notes trailed off. There was a pause, a rattle of something metal, and then awhooshas the toilet flushed. The wastewater rattled down the pipe next to us and Natalie made a gagging motion. “God, I hope that was just pee,” I muttered. She flapped her hand at me and I made the universal gesture for zipping lips. She tapped her watch and I nodded. It was just past oneamand hopefully that late-night bathroom trip meant Carapaz would be out again soon.
To be safe, we gave it half an hour before Natalie started to work again. She took ages, prying open each little metal clasp. She alternated sides, then did the top. When that was finished, she motioned to me, and I squeezed in next to her.The metal panel wasn’t just a sheet, it was a box—the medicine cabinet of Carapaz’s bathroom. Together we eased it forward slowly, working it free. The hardest part of the entire job was maneuvering the medicine cabinet into the bathroom and setting it on the vanity in perfect silence. The opening where the medicine cabinet had been was a vacant rectangle and Nat popped her head through, surveying the bathroom. She gave me a thumbs-up and we moved on to phase two. I laced my hands into a cat’s cradle for Nat, giving her a boost over the edge of the opening. She shimmied through, and after a minute, a hand came back through, giving me another thumbs-up.
A little taller than Nat, I had an easier time getting myself up and over. The vanity was a modern slab of concrete, studded with tiny fossils and empty of any toiletries. A sleek, smoked-glass sink sat on top, and I straddled it as I eased my way onto the vanity. Nat held up a hand to help me down, and I dropped to my feet on the flokati rug. We stood in the silence, listening for any sound of movement. There was a faint rustle as Carapaz turned over in bed and a long, rippling fart followed by a snore.
God, I love men, but they are disgusting. We waited another few minutes to make certain he was settled again before we crept out of the bathroom. The bedside light was still on, glowing softly. We paused at the doorway, taking in the scene. He must have fallen asleep reading. A file folder was open on the bed, reading glasses still perched on the end of his nose. Natalie went first, moving noiselessly across the parquet floor. After the modern atrocity of the bathroom, I’d been afraid he had remodeled the heart out of the old house, but I was gladto see he’d kept the original floors. There was a long expanse to cover before reaching the end of the room where the bed stood—a wide, low California king, which seemed excessive in Paris. The room was warm; he’d obviously sprung for central heat at some point, and he’d gotten the duvet twisted around his legs, probably when he was trying to kick it off. It made me wonder if he was sleeping poorly.
Something on your conscience, bitch?I moved in Natalie’s wake until we reached the end of the bed, where we divided. She went right, I went left. He was flat on his back, snores bubbling gently from his open mouth. One hand was tucked under his pillow and I gave Nat a quick nod. It didn’t take a genius to realize a gun was stashed under there, and he was clutching it, even in sleep. A well-trained, fully alert person could react in maybe a second and a half to a situation. Add another few seconds for Carapaz to wake, maybe one or two more to account for age. I still didn’t like it. Five seconds wasn’t much time to disarm him, especially at our age. I had done fine during the climb, but my legs and arms were shaking with the effort, and I didn’t figure Nat was in much better shape.
Nat looked at his arm and nodded. His gun hand was on my side, which meant it was up to me to keep him neutralized while Nat finished him. She reached for her trusty Swiss Army knife again, this time choosing the longest blade. It was only two inches long, but she’d sharpened it to a razor’s edge. While we’d been passing time in the tunnels, we’d debated at length where she should hit him. I was partial to the subclavian artery, but Natalie preferred the carotids.
We looked at each other across the bed and mouthed a count.
One. Two. Three.
We probably should have discussed whether we were going toonthree orafterthree. I assumed it would beone-two-three-go!, but Natalie jumped right on three and I was half a beat behind. She leapt on the bed, thrusting the blade up under his jaw and slicing down hard at a slant. His eyes flew open and he let out a roar just as I rushed him. His hand was still under the pillow but he must have squeezed the trigger reflexively because a bullet whizzed out, puncturing the pillow and sending feathers flying into the air. His neck was putting out blood like a gas pump as his free hand went for Nat’s neck and she sliced at his arm, laying open the sleeve of his pajama top. She got lucky; she hit his ulnar artery and blood spewed in an arc.
All of that happened in a few seconds, but it was enough for pandemonium to erupt. He was bleeding out, sitting in a fountain of blood, yet he managed to hit a button on the nightstand. An alarm sounded, piercing and shrill, and from downstairs I could hear a guard dog howling like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Footsteps pounded up the stairs and we scuttled off the bed. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I snatched up the folder as we ran. He was dying, but Carapaz didn’t give up easy. He still had his gun and he got off two shots, one of them just grazing the top of my shoulder as we hit the bathroom at a dead run. Natalie slammed the door closed and locked it as I dove for the window, wrenching it open.
Nat had flung herself through the opening into the utility chase and was hissing at me. “What the actual shit are you doing?Hurry!”
I shoved the folder inside my shirt, using my bra to hold it in place. Then I hauled myself into the utility chase just as the first crashes came against the bathroom door. We hoisted the medicine cabinet back into place. There was no time to secure it, and there was nothing to do but cross our fingers and hope it would stay.
We scuttled down the chase, half falling in our hurry to get to the bottom. Natalie had edged out of it, backing into the cellar just as the medicine cabinet flew back in a fusillade of gunshots. The mirror on the front shattered against the bricks, showering me in glass as I ducked my head. I was almost to the bottom but Carapaz’s bodyguards were already leaning through. They were big boys, thick as linebackers, and there was no way they could get into the chase. But they had guns, and they started shooting immediately. They were shooting into the dark and the bullets ricocheted off the brick, chipping off bits that flew into my hair. It was only a matter of time before one of them thought to get a flashlight, but before they did, hands grabbed my ankles and yanked hard. Natalie hauled me into the cellar and we scrambled to our feet, wheezing. We didn’t dare stop in case one of those hired guns realized how the chase fit into the fabric of the house.
So we raced through the cellar, tipping over stacks ofParis Matchas we went. As they fell, I got a brainstorm and flicked open my lighter. The paper was damp and moldy, but itcaught. The wine cave was filling with smoke by the time we made our way out, wedging the door closed behind us. We hurried on, twisting and turning for hours through passages too narrow for them to follow even if they tried. The air got colder and wetter, heavy with odors I didn’t even want to try to identify.
We came to a stop when Natalie had to catch her breath. Her color was bad and she was holding her side like she had a stitch. My sweatshirt was soaked in blood from the wound in my shoulder and Nat pointed, gasping out the words. “You... okay?”
“Graze,” I said shortly. I looked around, but nothing about this spot was familiar. “Do you know where we are?”
She shook her head and I would have cursed but I didn’t have the energy. Instead I shoved a power gel into her mouth and we started again. We came into a tunnel which was wide enough for a small road with lots of doors leading off of it. I pushed through the first one and found a flight of stairs. I dragged Natalie up until we came to a locked door. She was nearly spent, but she rallied, rubbing her hands together to get some warmth back into them until she was able to maneuver the wires in her fanny pack to pick the lock.
The door led into a stone hut, small and windowless, a few rusted hand tools sitting with a stack of flowerpots in the corner. “It looks like a groundskeeper’s shed,” I said. There was a door on the opposite wall, but this one wasn’t locked. I wasn’t surprised; there was nothing inside worth stealing. We opened it and icy cold air rushed in, but it was fresh. We emerged intoan otherworldly landscape, a sea of pale stone crosses as far as we could see. In the center, on a low rise, was a circular tower.
I grinned.
“Welcome to Montparnasse Cemetery,” I said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “We made it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
JULY 1981
Wearing their darkest clothes and rubber-soled shoes, they slip out of their tents and into the excavation pit. The entrance to the tunnel has been shored up with lumber, and they ease inside. Thierry Carapaz is carrying a small backpack; the rest have flashlights and a few tools small enough to fit into a pocket. The air in the tunnel is stuffy and damp, and they are all rolling in sweat by the time they reach the cellar. They are moving in silent single file by the light of the miner’s torch Vance Gilchrist has strapped to his head. He turns it off when they emerge into the cellar of the main house and they wait for several minutes, crouching in the cool darkness and letting their eyes adjust. This is the third time they have been in the cellar on reconnaissance. Apart from a stack of empty olive oil cans and a flurry of dead flies, there is nothing in the stone-walled room. The telephone line snakes down one wall, and Mary Alice snips it. The baroness’s villa is cut off now from the outside world.
A short flight of steps ends at the door into the house, and Natalie is dispatched with a set of tools to gently oil the hinges and pick the lock. She works by touch, and when she finishes, she gives a soft whistle. They join her on the steps and wait for Vance to give the signal, another whistle that mimics the birds in the garden. At his mark, they slip, one by one, into the kitchen, where a low night-light is burning. The kitchen is small and grimy, carved out of the dining room by a flimsy partition wall. The stove is tiny, tethered to a tank of gas by a cord, and Carapaz kneels next to it. He silently begins to unpack his tools while Vance and the women separate. Mary Alice is to provide any backup that Carapaz requires, and Helen and Natalie wait for the signal to begin removing the art.
Three months earlier, a Provenance agent posing as a plumber gained access to the house and drew a map from memory—a map they have all memorized. Billie has walked these shadowy rooms a thousand times in her mind, and she counts off the steps as she follows Vance through the dining room and down a low, wide hall to the baroness’s bedroom. Vance pauses, his hand on the knob, waiting until they hear the squeak of bedsprings and a low, rattling breath.
He eases open the door and steps over the threshold. Instantly, the bedside light snaps on. The baroness is awake, holding a revolver in one hand and the telephone in the other.
Vance holds up his hands, smiling. “Good evening.”
He doesn’t reassure her with lies or pretend everything is going to be okay, and Billie respects him for it. The baroness unleashes a litany of German, spitting the consonants as sheshouts at the phone, at her caretakers. But no one is coming, and at the last moment, she seems to understand that.
She drops the phone, cupping her free hand under the revolver to steady it. She points it squarely at Vance, and Billie moves into the room. It is standard procedure in such situations, and it is how they have been trained to respond. Two possible places to shoot confuses a target, buying them extra time.
“It’s alright,” Vance says confidently. “If she hasn’t shot yet, she won’t.”
