Suspects(52)

Guy told him what had happened and Mike was worried sick as he listened, but grateful too. “Thank God for your guy at the scene. Do you think it’s the same group?”

“I’m almost sure of it. I’d stake my life on it. They knew the house, the whole style was very similar. We’ve got prints and DNA all over the place. We should have them all ID’d very quickly. Three of them got away, but this time we won’t lose them, and one of them is badly injured. My agent is a great shot. He took a hell of a chance shooting the foreman, but Ms. Morgan is unhurt. They’d probably have killed her if they took her, just as they did last time with her husband and son. They’re not the smoothest group.” Even not speaking the same language, one could tell that they were rough and uneducated.

“Thank you for letting me know. Is the one you’ve got in custody liable to talk?” Mike asked Guy.

“I think that’s a certainty,” Guy said with a small smile at his end of the conversation. “We have a translator with him now. I hate to do it, but we’ll offer him a lighter sentence if he talks.”

Mike’s hand was shaking when he hung up the phone. If they had killed her, or taken her, he would have been devastated, and he was still worried about her, with three of the kidnappers on the loose. He called Robert Richmond next. He had already been filled in by Guy Thomas. He wanted to call Theo, but Guy said she was on her way home and somewhat in shock.

“I don’t know if they’ll show up here, but I’ve reached out to all our informants,” Robert said. “They may be a little sloppier now with their leader gone and one of them injured. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. And the DGSE has her well protected. She needs to lie low for a while till we see what they do next. It must have been a hell of a scare for her.”

“I’m sure it was,” Mike said. “Guy said she was covered in their blood and brain matter when he got to her. They had one of their best marksmen with her. They don’t want a replay of last time,” and neither did he. “I’m going over in about a week, but I’ve got my hands full here right now, waiting for a big deal to play out. I can’t leave at the moment.”

“Good luck with that. I’ll keep you posted,” Robert said succinctly.

“Thanks, Robert,” Mike said and hung up.

Mike called Theo next, she had just gotten home and was about to take a bath. She sounded stilted and strange and still in shock. It had been a hard morning for her, even before that, going through Axel’s things and overwhelmed with memories. And now she had fully understood the danger she was in as long as the kidnappers were out there, even three of them. They were on a mission, with their own lives probably at stake if they didn’t complete it successfully. Men who were after a fifty-million-euro ransom didn’t take it lightly.

“Are you okay?” He knew she wasn’t, but as much as she could be in the circumstances. The terror she must have experienced when they grabbed her must have been even worse than being poisoned.

“Yes, I am,” she said in a small voice. “I thought they were going to kill me.”

“They probably would have,” he said, and thought they still might. He just prayed that the DGSE agents were equal to the task this time, and able to protect her if the kidnappers tried again.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” she asked softly.

“There’s a chance they will. You have to be very careful. Stay below the radar right now, don’t go out more than you have to, and I’ll be back in a week.” She sounded very meek when they hung up, peeled off her blood-soaked clothes and slipped into the tub. Their blood was still on her skin and in her hair, under her nails, and on her eyelashes. She felt as though she would never be able to scrub it off her adequately. All she wanted to do afterwards was come home.

After the crime detail and forensics experts had gotten all the evidence they needed, the police had promised to bring her crates from the chateau to her apartment. She didn’t want Axel’s things to get lost in the shuffle.

She lay in the tub with her eyes closed, playing over in her mind everything that had happened that morning. Her ears were still ringing from the shots that had been fired, and she could still see the foreman’s head as it exploded inches from her. It could all have turned out so differently. She could have been tied up in the back of the moving truck by then, her fate sealed, in exchange for the rest of the ransom they hadn’t gotten before.

Agent Guy Thomas called her at five o’clock. The fingerprints and the DNA were a match for all six of them. It was the same crew as before, but at least two of them were dead, and two were injured, one of them in custody. They didn’t have the team they needed to pull it off smoothly now, which might mean they’d use greater force and more violence if they tried.

“We’ll have your property delivered to you tomorrow,” he promised her. “I’m sorry today was so traumatic.”

“It’s all right, if it leads to your catching them and putting an end to this,” she said in a tired voice. She was exhausted. Guy Thomas knew that even if they did catch them, one day there would be others. She would have to be carefully protected forever. It was the legacy her husband had left her, along with his business and his fortune.

As promised, her crates and boxes arrived the next day in good order. She put all the wooden crates with the art in one of the guest rooms to deal with after the holidays. She carried most of Axel’s boxes up to his room herself, and supervised the others that were too heavy for her. It felt like her final act of motherhood for him, like his funeral with the small pine casket sixteen months before. They were acts she had never wanted to have to do for him. She wondered what the new owners of the chateau would do with the stars on his ceiling that she had put up with so much love and care, according to the real constellations. He had loved it. She hoped they’d leave them there, just as a tiny souvenir of him, the little boy who had lived there, the last of the Pasquiers. The family name had died with him.