AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
Lost? It was surely impossible! In Paris, her old home city?
Claudette Toussaint paused, shaking her thick brown hair, glancing back toward the alleyway that had led her into this narrow side street as she tried to fight the sense of disorientation. How could this have happened?
And why did she have the uneasy feeling that someone was following her?
She’d been so sure of her route twenty minutes ago. She’d crossed over the Champ de Mars, past the magnificent Eiffel Tower, where tourists were clustered even after dark, and had then veered south, past a few of the major hotels and into the narrower streets beyond.
And from there, she’d taken a wrong turn, gotten confused, and was now trying to retrace her steps and get her bearings, without a view of any landmarks or any idea where the Eiffel Tower was now.
Above her, on either side, the stone buildings were so close together you could have strung a washing line across the upper windows with ease. It gave this street a strangely claustrophobic feel, accentuated by the fact it was now fully dark.
There was nobody behind her, though. Nobody following. The streets had become much quieter as she’d walked, and now, the only person in sight was a woman heading purposefully along the crossroad holding a Galeries Lafayette carrier bag, her blonde hair flowing over her stylish dark coat. She glanced at Claudette as she passed, then turned right, and disappeared from her view.
She should have asked her for directions. Too late now. Letting out a frustrated breath, she decided it was typical that the one evening she decided to leave her almost-dead cellphone charging in the apartment, was the evening where everything went wrong.
Logic prevailing, Claudette tried to reassure herself that her earlier anxiety, her feeling of being watched, had just been a result of being lost. It was stupid to think she'd been momentarily scared, here in a part of the city where other women walked confidently alone, where there was clearly no danger. It must have just been that she felt spooked, after getting lost in a part of Paris where she’d spent years and thought she knew well.
Telling herself she was briefly disoriented, she then decided to think back on the route she'd followed and then reorient herself.
A glance at the road name on the building's wall helped her.
This was Rue Herbillon. She thought that rang a bell.
The boulangerie she was searching for must be somewhere down the next street, surely? She remembered the shop itself vividly from when she was last here. A tiny, hole in the wall bakery, from which the delicious aroma of baking bread emanated, filling the street with its seductive smell. If she got onto the right road, which she now thought she remembered, she might smell this place before she even saw it, in the cool, damp spring air.
Hearing a noise behind her, that sense of unease that hadn't fully dissipated sparked again, and she spun around.
But it was only the rattle of tires on the cobblestones.
Headlights gleamed, and she stepped hastily aside, moving to the narrow sidewalk, her boots slipping on the smooth, uneven stones, as a van turned past her and rattled slowly down the road.
She read the logo on the front."Plomberie."A plumber's van.
This service provider surely knew the local roads? Perhaps he'd stop and help her.
"Monsieur?" she called. "Arretez, s'il vous plait? Je suis perdu."
But even her request to stop, because she was lost, didn't touch the heart of the dark-haired, sallow-faced man behind the wheel.
He gave her a world-weary shrug and drove on, rivulets of water swishing up from the wheels as he traversed a puddle. Only as he passed did she realize he was on the phone, talking rapidly into the speaker, unwilling to stop his conversation to help her.
"Cochon," she muttered. It made her feel better to call him a pig, made her feel like for once she could fling an insult, if only in that narrow alleyway, while talking to a random stranger who couldn't hear her and whose car had already passed.
Having a father who was a career politician meant she had to keep a tight rein on her tongue and temper, neither of which usually liked to be controlled. But since her father's appointment as an ambassador, which had taken the family to Italy, Great Britain, and Turkey in the past ten years, before arriving back in France, she'd had to learn some tough lessons in diplomacy herself.
Now, at the age of twenty-one and supposedly an adult, she was realizing the world wasn't free, and that she still couldn't do what she wanted or behave how she liked. Except now, briefly, and anonymously, to that inconsiderate driver who hadn't even bothered to help her. She stuck out her tongue at him, knowing he wouldn't even notice, that he had forgotten about her the instant he’d passed by.
Claudette stepped off the precarious sidewalk and back into the road, frowning in concentration as she pieced together where she was now.
She was becoming more and more convinced that the boulangerie was on the parallel street. So all she had to do was find the next cross street, and turn down it.
There was one, up ahead, and it seemed to go in the right direction - never a certainty in the warren of alleys and side roads that crisscrossed central Paris.
This tiny roadway was a footpath only, too narrow for any car to drive down. Ahead, she could see the crossroad at its end was wider and better lit, bustling with people and cars. But in this passage, she would be all alone. Was it safe?
Then she saw something, a few yards inside the alleyway, that drew her eye. What was that?
