My whole body was in an uncontrollable quiver. I felt helpless. I had a gun but could I…could I really use it? I could do a lot of things to protect myself—I had done a lot of things—but shoot someone?
I could see the wild, fiery look in Colton’s eyes as he advanced on me. He flanked to his left for a better angle.
Do something, Abbie.
“I’ll shoot,” I said again, thinking it would buy me a few seconds. That’s what Colton wanted, more than anything. He wanted Damon to die by my hand, not his. Then he could shoot me and tell a really good story.
“I’ll do it, Colton. I’ll kill him.” I moved the gun to Damon’s forehead. Damon was on the verge of collapsing.
A menacing grin played on Colton’s face. He was now maybe ten feet from me. He had us in his sights. I watched him pause a moment. One last chance for me to do his dirty work for him and kill Damon Kodiak.
His eyes gained focus. He steeled himself.
Then he froze for a beat, his face going blank. The gun fell from his hands a moment before his legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor. A pool of blood quickly expanded near his forehead.
I looked to the right. Christien. Christien was standing at the top of the same aisle that Damon and I had traveled, holding a gun with a long piece on the end. I assumed it was a suppressor. I certainly hadn’t heard him fire the bullet.
Simon stood against the wall just below the movie screen, stunned. He looked at Christien and then at me.
“Christien!” he said. He cleared his throat, as though he were trying to recover. “Christien, thank God—”
“Simon, tell me something.” Christien aimed the gun at him. “Who told the warden that my Winnie was an acceptable loss?”
“Not me,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “That was all Boulez.”
“Yes, well, I’ve already dealt with Boulez.”
“Christien, I swear—”
Those were the last words that Simon Schofield ever spoke. A dark circle appeared between his eyes and his limp body crumpled to the ground.
Christien lowered his weapon to his side and looked at me. He was wearing the same expression I’d seen in Onzain, one of despair and regret. A single tear trickled down his face as he approached me.
Damon broke free of me and started to run toward the other theater. I couldn’t have stopped him if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.
I pointed my gun at Christien, who stood before me, helpless, his own weapon at his side. For all I knew, he wanted me to shoot.
“Christien,” I said. “Was Jeffrey part of this?”
Christien’s shoulders relaxed. He seemed to be past the deception. It was over, and he knew it. “I can give whatever answer you’d like,” he said.
I thought I knew what he meant. “The truth,” I said. “Once and for all, Christien, I want the truth.”
CHAPTER 140
WE HAD PRECIOUS few seconds. The police or theater security would be here any moment now.
“You were the one who snuck into our hotel suite and got the DNA evidence,” I guessed. “Simon had the key card somehow but you pulled it off. An easy task for a former SIS agent, right?”
Christien grimaced. “Not so easy, it turned out. I only got to the first bedroom—yours and Win’s—before I heard someone in the hallway. I settled for what I could get and got out of there. Simon had been kind enough to bring some trace evidence of Serena with him on the trip, so that gave us three out of four wives.”
That explained the lack of Bryah’s DNA at the crime scene.
“Who killed Devo and Luc?” I asked.
Christien paused only a beat before he released a heavy sigh. At this point, he probably figured, there was no point in withholding anything. Quite the opposite, in fact—it seemed as though he wanted this off his chest.
“Colt shot the bodyguard,” he said. “But I wanted Winnie’s man for myself.”
“Keep going, Christien. And hurry.”
“Simon stood lookout at the harbor, watching for any cars entering.”
I closed my eyes and lowered the gun. “And Jeffrey watched the dock,” I said. It was a guess. I hoped beyond all reason that I was wrong.
“Jeff was the one who spotted the movie star coming off the yacht.”
It felt like a needle through my heart. I’d suspected it, but it was different hearing it confirmed as fact. My husband, the father of my children, had been complicit in murdering two people and framing me. He’d watched as I was sent to prison for the rest of my life.
From the top of the theater, the entrance for regular customers, we both heard the sound of urgent footsteps. The cavalry was coming.
Christien quickly turned back to me. “You don’t owe me anything, love, but for Winnie?”
I choked up at the mention of her name. So did Christien.
“My sister will take Nat and Dory,” he said, referring to his children. “But do make sure they’re okay. And tell them—”
Christien’s voice cut out. He took a deep breath. His eyes were shimmering with tears. “Tell them Pappy tried to do the right thing in the end.”
The door at the rear of the theater burst open. Colonel Bernard Durand came through, followed by a number of his agents, all with their guns drawn. Durand called out to us to drop our weapons as DCRI agents flooded the theater.
Through a heavy throat, I said, “You have my word, Christien.”
I dropped my weapon and held my hands up high, so that there would be no misunderstanding. Durand didn’t need extra incentive to shoot me.
I made eye contact with the colonel, who reached the end of the other aisle and then began to move toward me. Other agents, coming down the aisle nearer me, rushed past me. It was only then that I realized that Christien was gone. He’d fled through the fire door. And they were chasing him.
I made sure to show Square Jaw my palms. Even this creep wouldn’t shoot somebody in full surrender mode.
But as he approached me, Durand’s expression softened. Around him, agents were checking on Colton and Simon, but Durand was simply walking up to me. He even dropped his weapon to his side.
As we stood nearly face-to-face, I lowered my hands and held them out, readying them for handcuffs. Durand looked at my hands as if amused by my gesture.
And I wouldn’t swear to this, but I even thought I saw the trace of a smile cross his face.
CHAPTER 141
OUTSIDE THIS TINY movie theater, it was bedlam. The guests watching Der Führer had been oblivious to what had happened. The only gunshots, after all, had come from Christien’s suppressor, and the soundproofing was obviously good in the Lamarcke.
But once DCRI had shown up, everything turned upside down. The police were engaged in full-scale crowd control, corralling the guests and paparazzi on hand. These reporters were accustomed to covering celebrity divorces and judging red-carpet fashion shows; they hardly knew what to say to me as I navigated through them, with Colonel Durand lightly holding my arm at the bicep.
We walked into fresh air, where more photographers were snapping our photos and the Champs-Élysées was swarming with onlookers. Someone opened the rear door of a long black sedan and Durand helped me into the car.
Durand sat across from me in the spacious rear compartment and heaved a heavy sigh.
“You know the truth,” I said to him.
He nodded.
I cocked my head. “How?”
Durand came forward, his elbows on his knees. “I wish I could take credit for solving this…puzzle. But the truth, Miss Abbie, is otherwise. It was the papers you filed with the court just before you escaped.”
At my direction, my lawyer, Jules, had issued requests to subpoena a number of documents, including the cell phone records of our husbands on the days surrounding the president’s murder. We requested the passenger manifests for all Simon’s jets, hoping to find evidence of travel to or from Monte Carlo. We also requested all documents connected with the financing
of Damon Kodiak’s new movie, Der Führer. We had asked for the surveillance videos from the Hôtel Métropole for every day from the time that Simon had made our reservation until the president’s murder.
And finally, we had requested the phone records of my favorite warden, Antoine Boulez, for the entire time I was housed at JRF.
And we explained our theory that the husbands had been complicit in the murders and a frame-up. Simon had the key card, which he used to gather DNA evidence. They bribed Damon to go along with their story by financing an otherwise unfinanceable movie. And in further covering up those crimes, they bribed Boulez to pressure me to confess, as the others had done.
“You gave me reason for suspicion,” Durand said. “So I…pursued the matter more…vigorously.”
He produced from his pocket a small voice recorder. “Colton, Simon, and your husband,” he said to me before hitting PLAY.
The sound wasn’t perfect, and had some accompanying static. I leaned forward and listened with a combination of dread and morbid curiosity.
“You’ve got to relax, Jeffrey.” Simon’s voice. “This court filing will be embarrassing, yes. But ultimately she can’t prove anything.”
“You don’t know Abbie like I do.”
Jeffrey’s voice. I felt a catch in my throat.
“No, but I do know the evidence,” said Simon. “Or lack thereof. The manifests were taken care of long ago, you’ll recall. There is absolutely no evidence of any of us traveling in or out of Monte Carlo. None. Zero. And the phone records?”
“Ag, brah, that just proves we talked to each other.” Colton joining in. “And I don’t think we used them much at all once we were together.”
“We didn’t,” said Simon. “For this very reason. Christien was adamant, remember, Jeff? He said cell calls could be triangu—triangulated, I think was the word. So we didn’t use them. You’re panicking, Jeff. You’re just not remembering.”
“Okay, fine,” Jeffrey answered, sounding very much panicked, as Simon had pointed out. “And your phone calls to Boulez, Simon? Could those be traced back to you?”
“They could,” Simon replied, “if I were a complete idiot. But lucky for us, Jeff, I’m not. The calls I’ve made to Boulez will not trace back to me. And neither will the cash—if they ever even discover the cash, which they won’t. Boulez had strict instructions to keep the money out of a bank account. I promised him I’d make up for the lost interest earnings with an extra million on the back end, once his job was completed.”
I did a slow burn. “Once his job was completed” meant my confession or my death.
“And the Hôtel Métropole?” Simon went on. “She’s reaching. She can’t prove I got hold of a key card. And it seems our good friend Christien, wherever he may be, lived up to his billing when he snuck into the suite. If there was any evidence of him being there, they’d have found it by now.”
“We still have the actor,” Jeffrey said. “How do we control for that?”
“Jeffrey, Jeffrey.” Simon sounded as though he were laughing. “If the actor comes forward now, he admits to perjury on the witness stand. And you’ll recall, if you can make your brain work a little harder, that we have that camcorder with his fingerprints on it.”
“Right. Okay. But there’s still the money for the movie.”
“Yes, you’re correct, Jeffrey. It’s possible that Kodiak will be forced to disclose that information. But even if he does, what does it prove? We set up the financing so that Colton and I had equity in the deal. For this very reason, Jeff. So if it ever came to light, we would simply look like people making an investment.”
“And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, brah, but this movie is setting records,” Colton added. “We’re in for tens of millions of dollars of return.”
“Right, Colt. So Jeff, in the end, what does that money prove? It proves that Colton and I are shrewd investors. And I’ll tell you, Jeff, that I will have no trouble admitting to that under oath.”
The men’s laughter cut off in mid-burst. Durand killed the recorder and sat back in his seat. “When I saw your papers, I spoke with your colleague at the embassy, Mr. Ingersoll. We…collaborated on a plan.”
I was still shell-shocked by all this, but I nodded.
“He invited the Americans…your husband and Simon, to the embassy. He showed them your court papers to…elicit?…elicit a reaction. And while they met, we planted recording devices in their cell phones, which they left with the marine guards at the station outside.”
The car began to move into traffic on a boulevard that was filling up with police cars and ambulances and media trucks and people who were just plain curious. I put my head back against the cushion and closed my eyes.
“You know what’s pathetic?” I said. “All that time during the investigation and trial, while I was trying to figure out who framed us, I considered everyone in the world a suspect. I even considered you, Colonel. But I never once considered our husbands.”
The colonel clucked his tongue again. “This is not…pathetic. It is because you are a good person. You would not suspect those closest to you.”
I sighed. I never thought I’d see the day that Colonel Durand called me a good person.
“Miss Abbie,” said Durand, “I am so very sorry.”
CHAPTER 142
THE PRESIDING JUDGE looked stately but slightly uncomfortable in his red robe. He and the other judges listened attentively as the prosecutor, Maryse Ballamont, completed her formal recitation to the court.
“I will ask the accused to please rise,” said the presiding judge. As before, his French was translated through our headphones into English.
Serena, Bryah, and I had been seated with our lawyers at the table outside the cage where defendants normally sat. Technically, they could have placed us inside the cage, as they had previously. But it would have been a pure formality, and a tacky gesture under the circumstances.
The presiding judge nodded to each of us respectfully. “There is a principle deeply embedded in our republic’s consciousness that it is far better for the guilty to go free than to convict even a single innocent person. There is nothing more offensive, no greater harm that a government can inflict against an individual, than to imprison her wrongly. Ms. Gordon, Ms. Schofield, Ms. Elliot: the French Republic owes you an apology.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply and let those words wash over me. Words I thought I would never hear.
“On motion of the prosecution and with the consent of the defense, the court finds unanimously that the newly discovered evidence has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the accused are not guilty of the crimes as charged in the transfer judgment. The accused are to be released from custody at once. This court is adjourned.”
The courtroom erupted in applause. Serena, Bryah, and I held hands and then broke down into tight embraces and then, finally, inevitably, into violent and joyful sobs. So much passed between us in those moments. We had each fallen so far and so hard, our lives turned entirely inside out, only to unexpectedly come out the other end in one piece.
In one piece, but not unscathed. Each of our children had, in a very real sense, lost their mothers, only to regain them at the expense of their fathers. Katie Mei, for over a year, had only a father, and now in an instant her mother was back and Simon was dead. Bryah’s boy suffered the same result.
And my Richie and Elena—teenagers, both of them, since Elena had her birthday last month: I tried to tell myself that it was different for them, because they didn’t live with Jeffrey, they’d been at boarding school, they were more emancipated than Bryah’s and Serena’s young kids. But it was a reach, I knew. They were old enough to understand that their father had been part of a horrific crime and had done what still, after all this time, seemed utterly unthinkable—he had framed me for it. They had believed in my innocence, and even if they hadn’t, no doubt they would have stood by me anyway. But now it was different. They knew their father was guilty, and at lea
st part of the crime he’d committed was against me—and, in that sense, against them as well.
And I couldn’t leave myself out of the list of casualties, either. I was alive and I was free and I was reunited with my children. But I didn’t kid myself. Something like this changes you. It breaks you into pieces and puts you back together, but the sum total is different. I felt like a car that had been in a violent collision—you can get it to run again, but it’s never quite the same.
It would be a long time, I knew, before the bitterness left me. A longer time still before I could trust anyone again. I didn’t want the book deals offered to me. I didn’t want to sit down with 60 Minutes or People magazine for an exclusive interview. I only wanted the one thing I couldn’t have—my life, before all this happened.
Richie and Elena came through the barrier and laid themselves gently against me. I cupped their heads and fought back more tears. We’d been together three days now, since the French flew them to Paris and put all of us together in a hotel in the Latin Quarter. That, I thought, had been decent of Durand. Technically, I was still a convicted felon, so the compromise was that they made me stay under police guard while we ordered room service and watched pay-per-view movies on DCRI’s tab.
Over Richie’s and Elena’s heads I saw Giorgio Ambrezzi and Dan Ingersoll in the gallery. I felt a squeeze of my heart when I thought of Linette, the love of Giorgio’s life, dead not because of anything she did but because of me. I couldn’t have done this without Giorgio. I never could have escaped from prison. Colonel Durand seemed to understand this on some level, judging from comments he’d made to me, but there was no direct proof of Giorgio’s complicity and, in any event, Durand clearly lacked the appetite to pursue the matter. All’s well that ends well, or something like that.
Dan Ingersoll had been more than a government official doing his job. He’d been my friend. He’d gone to bat for me as much as he could and, according to Durand, it had been Dan’s idea to bring Jeff and Simon to the embassy so Durand could plant recording devices in their cell phones.