I walked along the stone paths. The sun had barely risen, so it was nearly pitch-black as I navigated the forest area. The paths wound almost all the way through the acres of forest. Almost. I discovered that there was a decent patch of woodland in the back where nobody seemed to tread.
I looked back to be sure I was alone. It was just me among an acre of quiet trees. The ground was blanketed by fallen leaves that crunched under my feet as I found a secluded spot behind a thick tree.
I took another deep breath and burst into tears. I dove into the leaves, rolled through them, dug my hands into dirt, tasted and smelled and felt freedom for the first time in more than a year. I cried out and laughed and moaned. I looked up through the trees at the morning sky and marveled at its majesty. I could stare up at the sky as long as I wished. I was free.
Finally, I rested my head against the tree trunk and felt my eyes swim beneath my eyelids. I’d been up all night and I wouldn’t be any help to myself if I didn’t catch a little sleep.
Just a little. And then I had some work to do.
Because they were coming for me. And I knew one man, in particular, who wouldn’t rest until he found me.
CHAPTER 111
THE PLANE TOUCHED down at the Aéroport de Limoges-Bellegarde at a few minutes before seven in the morning. Colonel Bernard Durand—Square Jaw, to Abbie—took the stairs briskly and walked straight into the back of a waiting black car.
“Good morning, Colonel,” said a man named Rouche, the highest-ranking DCRI official for the Limousin region, which included Limoges.
“I want an update,” Durand answered in French.
“Yes, sir. The army is on the ground, fanning out with a hard-target search of every home within a five-mile radius. Her photo has been flashed to all known transportation options. And we’ve alerted the CNI,” he said, referring to the Spanish intelligence agency, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia. “They’re searching every train, every bus, every car, every plane that crosses the border.”
In addition to Spain, France shares borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Monaco. Rouche explained that each country’s intelligence services had been notified and were prepared to search vehicles of all kinds at the border.
Spain had been considered the most likely option, given its relative proximity to Limoges and the fact that Abbie Elliot spoke its language fluently, but Durand didn’t buy it. She’d used the overnight train as a head fake, to get the authorities moving south. More likely, he thought, she was moving in the opposite direction.
Or not moving at all. The Limousin region was almost entirely rural countryside, offering countless places to hide.
“She’ll want things to die down first,” Durand speculated. “She’ll hunker down for a few days somewhere before she makes her move.” He looked over at Rouche. “Now explain to me again how this happened.”
Rouche went over it again. It was the third time Durand had heard it. He always liked to hear the explanation more than once; at least one additional fact would emerge with each recounting of the events.
“It was the overnight shift,” said Rouche. “The prison staff is lighter, because the inmates are locked down.”
“And yet she escaped.”
“The first one in twenty-two years, sir.”
Yes. Well, Durand had always found Abbie to be formidable, from the first time he interrogated her at DCRI headquarters to their last encounter, when she was the lone holdout, refusing to confess even with a generous promise of a twenty-year sentence, even after the other three women’s spirits had been broken like twigs.
“I want to know everything Abbie did within the past week,” he directed. “Everyone she talked to. Every visitor. Every phone call. Everything she read. Everything she did.”
“Yes, sir. The warden, Boulez, is overseeing it personally as we speak.”
The warden. He couldn’t keep a prisoner imprisoned, which, the last Durand checked, was pretty much the beginning and end of a warden’s job.
“I don’t want Boulez overseeing his own dick,” said Durand. “I want you handling this. Do you understand, Rouche?”
“Understood, sir.”
Durand leaned back for the first time against the seat. “If she stayed close, the army will find her. But if she didn’t, do you know what that means, Rouche?”
Rouche looked perplexed. He didn’t want to admit he wasn’t following.
“It means she had help,” said Durand. “And that’s how we find her.”
CHAPTER 112
MY HEAD JERKED forward as I spun out of a dream that drifted away like smoke. My heart was pounding. I held perfectly still and listened until I was satisfied that I was hearing only the sounds of nature, not the urgent footfalls of a nationwide manhunt.
I didn’t have a watch, so I didn’t know what time it was. The sun, filtering its rays down through the tree branches and their few remaining leaves, was high. I figured it was somewhere around eleven in the morning.
I walked about thirty yards or so, back to the stone path. Now I had company. Couples milled aimlessly about, hand in hand, admiring the forest and enjoying their time away from the real world. A few of them looked me over briefly, but they were vacationing, not conducting critical analysis, and I had to assume they would soon forget me altogether.
I took the Audi and spent the afternoon in downtown Blois, first stopping at a café for a croissant and café américain. A simple bread twist and basic coffee, but the meal was like a symphony to my taste buds. I had a copy of Le Monde laid out on a table along with a notepad. I was facing a wall so I could keep my back to the other patrons. Nobody would expect to see the infamous fugitive sitting in this quaint little restaurant, but I didn’t have to make anyone’s job any easier.
There was a bar in this place, and therefore a television, and the news was all about me. If I turned around I probably would have seen an unflattering photograph of myself splashed across the screen.
The front page of Le Monde didn’t cover me; news of my escape had presumably come well after the paper went to press. Anyway, I was concerned with the section devoted to arts and entertainment, where a half page was dedicated to none other than Damon Kodiak. I’d read about him in prison, his upcoming movie about Adolf Hitler. Apparently the opening-weekend box office in the States had exceeded all expectations. Damon was probably happy that Hollywood had turned its back on the project, leaving him to privately finance the movie; all the more money for him now. And this week he was off to Europe, hitting all the major cities. The premiere in Germany was expected to be controversial, to say the least, which would surely translate into millions in box-office receipts. How nice for Damon.
Enough of that jerk. I left the café and walked over to the train station to familiarize myself with it. I wondered briefly if the police would have it covered. They didn’t. There was only a single uniformed officer, whom I avoided.
I found a pharmacie in town and got some hair products. I added some basic toiletries and accessories—soap, shampoo, some eyeliner, and lipstick. Then I grabbed a cheap Mickey Mouse watch, scissors, a hand mirror, a small flashlight, sunglasses, and more bottles of water. I went down the street to another store and bought a cheap costume wig that roughly matched my current hair color and a baseball cap bearing the emblem of some soccer team.
On my way back to Le Domaine, I wondered, just briefly, how things were going at JRF.
CHAPTER 113
COLONEL DURAND WALKED over to the guard, Lucy Denoyer, who was seated in a chair, rubbing her forehead. He squatted down so he could make eye contact with her. She had a rough look about her, not helped at all by the vicious scar across her left cheek.
“I don’t believe you,” he said to Lucy in French.
“I’m telling the truth.” Her answer, also in French, was not convincing—especially given that her eyes were averted—though it could have been because of her nerves. Lucy, after all, was royally fucked at best. Her
negligence—if it was just negligence—bordered on the criminally inept.
“You expect me to believe that you were simply checking on the prisoner in the secured room. You, having served a double shift, and having been brutally scarred earlier in the day by the very person lying in that room—you just wanted to check on her well-being before you headed home.”
Lucy folded her arms. She wasn’t going to move off that story.
Durand looked over a map of the prison. “You could have taken the stairs down to the parking garage from E Wing, where you were assigned,” he said. “But you took a detour all the way to G Wing because you wanted to check to make sure Abbie was resting comfortably. That’s your statement.”
Lucy’s head bobbed up and down.
“And this was acceptable to Sabine? The chief correctional officer let you waltz into the infirmary to pay a friendly visit to the woman who’d attacked you earlier today?”
“She said it was okay.” Lucy shrugged. “Sabine’s my boss.”
“And while checking on Abbie’s well-being, you decided to violate regulations and arm yourself with a loaded Glock.”
“I didn’t bring that gun in,” Lucy snapped. “Abbie already had it.”
“Abbie already had the gun?” Durand searched her eyes, though the guard avoided eye contact. “Abbie Elliot somehow got through a secured door in the infirmary, then through the secured booth outside the infirmary, stole a loaded Glock, snuck back into the secured room, and somehow locked herself back in, all without Sabine noticing.”
Lucy’s posture tightened; her shoulders closed in. Classic defensive reaction.
“And you’re sure that Sabine told you it was perfectly fine to visit Abbie?”
“Sabine said it was okay. I already told you.”
Durand rose to a standing position. Lucy’s eyes peeked up at him.
“I wonder what Sabine will say about that,” said Durand.
He walked out of the room. One of the first directives that Durand had issued to the local DCRI agents responding to the prison, upon learning of the escape at 4:00 a.m, was to sequester the guards involved in the escape. Most escapes from prison didn’t happen without help. The guards were natural suspects. Keep them separated, he demanded, so they couldn’t get their stories straight.
They’d been heavily drugged, anyway, and hadn’t snapped back to the real world until sometime after five. By the time their eyes opened, Lucy and Sabine had long been isolated from each other.
He walked into the next room, H-12.
“Tell me again,” he said to Sabine, who was seated in a chair in the center of the room. Upon superficial appraisal, Sabine seemed even less pleasant than Lucy. But he saw something behind those hard, bloodshot eyes, and that something was fear.
“I was off my station,” Sabine said. “I already told you. It was—wrong, I know, but I’m the head guard, and sometimes I conduct surprise inspections of the others.” Sabine kept her eyes focused on the floor. “Lucy must have gone in there while I was gone.”
“You didn’t see Lucy go in there?” When Sabine didn’t respond immediately, Durand took her by the shoulders and gave her one abrupt shake. “You didn’t see Lucy go into the infirmary?”
“No! I keep telling you, no!”
Durand nodded. One of them was lying. More likely, both of them. Each making up the story that painted herself in the best light.
“G Wing has guard stations at the infirmary, the underground parking garage, and solitary. Why was only one of those three stations staffed?”
“Solitary was empty,” said Sabine. “A guard isn’t required if—”
“Because you emptied it.” Durand grabbed a file off the nearby table. “Earlier that evening, you transferred three inmates out of Le Mitard.”
Sabine tucked her chin into her chest. Her breathing was becoming more rapid.
“You cleared out G Wing, Officer. You cleared it out so that you were the only guard stationed there. You cleared a path for Abbie Elliot to escape.” He threw the file down on the desk. “What did Abbie promise you?”
Sabine’s head snapped up. “You think—I helped her escape? ”
Durand watched her carefully as she continued to protest. Her reaction had been visceral, natural—convincing, he thought. She had lied about plenty so far, but she wasn’t lying about this.
He walked out of the room into the hallway, where the local DCRI guy, Rouche, huddled with him.
“The guards were working together, no doubt,” said Durand, looking back at the rooms. “But I don’t think they were helping Abbie escape.”
Rouche nodded. “You think it was just Lucy wanting some payback for Abbie attacking her earlier in the day? Sabine turns a blind eye and lets it happen?”
Durand made a face. “But with a loaded Glock? That violates twenty different regulations, and it’s just plain stupid. She had a canister of OC spray and a baton and plenty of other things she could have used. Every guard knows that a firearm is the last resort, because it can be taken off you.”
Rouche shrugged his shoulders. “Then what? If not a conspiracy to break Abbie out, if not an old-fashioned assault—then what?”
Durand sighed and shook his head absently. “They were trying to kill her,” he surmised. He thought some more and nodded firmly. “They were trying to kill her and she used that to her advantage and escaped.”
“Wow. Maybe so.” Rouche brought a hand to his chin. “But even if you’re right—even if they wanted to kill her—does that get us any closer to finding Abbie Elliot?”
Durand thought about that. “It might,” he said. “If we can figure out why.”
CHAPTER 114
BOULEZ STARED AT himself in the bedroom mirror. He hardly recognized the man staring back. He was beyond tired, of course, having lost a night’s sleep. And he was essentially still in a state of shock, still unable to fathom what had transpired. He was like someone who had taken several punches in such rapid succession that he hadn’t yet realized he should fall down.
But he was ready to fall now. The final blow had come a half hour ago, a call from the man himself, the Minister of Justice and Liberty. Boulez had been relieved of his duties. Not demoted. Not suspended. Not placed on administrative leave. Fired. Gone. Au revoir.
He fingered his cuff links out of his shirt and pulled at his tie. His career was in ashes now. And that might be the least of his concerns. The DCRI was all over Lucy and Sabine, interrogating them separately and probing for inconsistencies. What would they say? Would they put this on Boulez? It would make sense. He could deny things all he wanted, but it might be two against one. If each guard, separately, broke down and confessed to trying to murder Abbie Elliot, and if each of them said the directive came from the top, Boulez’s denials wouldn’t be convincing.
Boulez froze as he felt something change in the bedroom. Something intangible, an adjustment to the temperature or something—
He whipped around and saw the man. He hadn’t heard him. How had he—
“I won’t say anything,” Boulez said to the man. “I can keep a—”
Boulez didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t take another breath. The bullet between his eyes saw to that. The impact sent him back against the chest of drawers. The last thing he saw was a small insect crawling across the ceiling. The last thing he felt was the release of his bowels. The last thing he thought was: I can’t believe she beat me, I can’t believe Abbie Elliot won.
CHAPTER 115
I DROVE BACK FROM downtown Blois to Le Domaine as dusk settled over Onzain. I parked my car in the same distant corner of the lot and, in the backseat, changed from my nice clothes to the running outfit. I carried a bag of items from the pharmacy and the sleeping bag and made my way back to the forest, the portion that was off the beaten path, where I planned to hide and, I hoped, sleep in obscurity.
I found a good spot and positioned the sleeping bag just as I wanted it. Then I walked about ten yards away and sat behind
a thick tree trunk. I needed the flashlight to read the directions on the kit. It had been more than a decade since I’d dyed my hair, and that was in a beauty salon, not following the instructions on a box. But how hard could it be?
When would I leave this little hideout? I had to admit that I felt pretty safe here. It was tempting, though illogical, to stay here for days.
But I had to get moving. I had a small window of opportunity and once it closed, it would stay closed.
“Oh, Abbie,” I whispered to myself. “You better know what you’re doing.”
CHAPTER 116
“OBVIOUSLY, I HAVE no intention of revealing any communications with my client.” Jules Laurent, Abbie Elliot’s defense attorney, raised his chin defiantly.
Durand remembered him from the trial. A good lawyer, he thought. Not some polished shyster but a sincere advocate. He had protested when DCRI agents stormed his law office in Paris this morning, but he hadn’t been given a choice in the matter. He had arrived at the prison just before dusk, under a DCRI escort.
“You are aware, Mr. Laurent, that client confidentiality will not shield you if you aided and abetted an escape.”
“I didn’t do anything of the kind,” Jules said. “Abbie never said anything to me about breaking out of prison.”
“She never said anything about prison?”
Jules said, “She never said anything about breaking out of prison.”
Durand blinked. The lawyer was making a careful distinction.
“She thought they were trying to kill her in here,” Durand said, then waited for a reaction.
Surprise registered in the lawyer’s eyes, in the parting of his lips. Not you-must-be-kidding surprise but how-did-you-know surprise. But Jules seemed to be calculating what he could reveal to Durand, and so far he’d come up with nothing.