Unbitten (38 page)

“Mm,” said Marianne, her lips still pursed.
“Let me hear you tell it all to me after I’ve
had some sleep.”

Jo got Marianne settled in her cottage, appreciative of the
way Angélique had made the extra effort of a vase of
flowers and mineral water and a local wine. She closed the
door quietly, Marianne already lying down with her eyes
closed, and started back to the stables. She should have at
least a short session with Drogo today, she thought, but
her usual enthusiasm was lacking.

Instead of taking the path directly to the stables, she
swung around by the Château so that she would pass
Henri’s lab on her way. She felt a little like a
schoolgirl with a crush, but that was a joyful place to be
and she didn’t mind it one bit.

Around Henri’s lab it was quiet. She poked along,
hoping he would come outside; he hadn’t come to
breakfast either, that morning, and she hadn’t seen
him since last night when they had said goodnight after a
passionate kiss.

That kiss
, she thought.

She was standing there on the path, looking blankly up at
the Château, remembering, when she heard the door to
the lab open and there was Henri, in his usual odd
clothing. Jo grinned.

“Good morning!” she called, waving and walking
towards him.

But Henri stiffened. His face was impassive. “Good
morning,” he said, but his tone was dead cold.

“What’s the matter?” said Jo, right away.
She had never seen him like this–distracted, yes, but
not cold. Never like this.

Henri looked into her eyes as though he were looking for
something in particular. Then he turned away, fiddled with
the door, and went back inside without a word, the door
sliding closed behind him.

Dominic was practically salivating, the job was so close to
being finished. If only he could track down that useless
Roxanne. You’d think, after what he and Maloney had
managed to pull off, that they’d send someone more
reliable. God knows the world is filled with desperate
labrim
willing to sell themselves for a couple of
drinks.

They were stuck at the inn, as usual, trying not to call
attention to themselves. Maloney was asleep. Although
Dominic valued Maloney’s special talents–i.e.
his bulk and willingness to follow orders–he was not
exactly a stimulating traveling companion, and Dominic was
anxious to get back to the States to enjoy the fruits of
his labors.

He went to the cooler that was filled with his
company’s synthetic pouches, newly arrived yesterday
evening. He sighed, looking at the choices.

“Our company pretty much stinks, in the blood
department,” he complained out loud, waking Maloney.
“After a month on this stuff, I feel sick to my
stomach even looking at it. And I’m all
bloated,” he said, patting his belly. “I wish
we could risk just one night of hunting,” he said
longingly. “I want to bite a woman so bad I can
hardly stand it. Fucking small towns.”

“I like the almond pastries from down the
street,” said Maloney. At his feet was a virtual
snowbank of the little white papers that the bakery girl
used to pick the pastries up and put them in the waxed
bakery bags. “I’m going to pack my suitcase
full of almond pastries when it’s time to go
home,” he said.

“They’ll just get stale,” said Dominic.

“I don’t care,” said Maloney. “I
like the almond pastries so much, I won’t care how
stale they are.”

“You can get almond pastries back home,” said
Dominic, irritated.

“Shut up, Dominic! Those are not like the almond
pastries from down the street! They are
not!
” Maloney got up and started pacing back
and forth.

Usually Dominic knew better than to argue with Maloney, but
he was losing his cool with all the waiting around.

“When it gets dark,” he said,
“we’re going out to look for Roxanne.
She’s in Mourency, somewhere. I don’t know why
she’s taking so long to show up at the inn–the
text from the office said she’s got to be seriously
thirsty by now.”

“Boss liked Pierre’s papers?” said
Maloney, reaching into a giant bag of Haribo candy and
stuffing his mouth with fluorescent gummy worms.

“Yes,” said Dominic. “Pierre totally came
through. The stuff is legit, and the Boss is happy. For
now.”

We’ve
got
to get the other half of the
documents, he thought, the pressure feeling like a whipster
closing around his throat. Find Roxanne, hand her over to
Pierre who’ll give us the rest of the goods, and
we’re outta here. We need those documents. And
we’ve got to get them
soon
.

Tristan came back to the
gendarmerie
after a long
lunch at the
Lion D’Or
by himself, where he
had spent far too much time thinking about Jessica, so
absorbed in his memories and fantasies that he had barely
noticed what he was eating.
Boeuf en daube
, almost
entirely wasted.

“We’ve received faxes and emails from all those
inquiries,” Roland said, after they had a quick
conversation about what they had had for lunch. "Nothing.
No sign of Callie Armstrong anywhere. She’s not back
home, in Concord, New Hampshire. Her parents haven’t
heard a word from her since just before her disappearance,
and they had expected she would be in Rome by now. But she
was not on any flights to Rome, and has not shown up at the
hotel where she had reservations. Her cell phone is dead.
Her luggage has not been found.

“Of course, she is young, and could easily have
changed her plans and simply not let anyone know yet. But
from all accounts, Callie Armstrong was not that
sort–she was responsible, she stayed in touch, she
was not given to unpredictable wildness.”

“You’re using the past tense, Roland,”
said Tristan softly. “And I will add, that it is not
even a bit unusual for travel to a foreign country to bring
out some of those qualities you say she does not have. A
young woman could be the epitome of responsibility and
level-headedness, and still, on a holiday away from her
usual life, fall into a romantic situation where she
behaves rather differently than usual.”

“I have not met any of these women,” said
Roland with a laugh. “Too bad for me!”

Their laughter died down quickly as they considered the
girl.

“So it appears, does it not,” said Tristan,
“that Callie Armstrong is still somewhere at the
Château. One way or another. That is what you think
as well?”

Roland nodded. “I thought for sure we would find her
in Rome,” he said. He got up and stood by the window,
looking out as though there was some chance she might
stroll by on her way to the café next door.
“But now I agree with you, that our best efforts
should be spent searching the Château and its
grounds.”

“No small job,” said Tristan.

“No,” concurred Roland.

Both men had being doing police work for years, but in
small Mourency, neither had ever had to face the prospect
of searching for a body, a body that would not be fresh.
They were not looking forward to the coming days.

After Henri had gone stonily back into his lab with barely
a word, Jo ran to the barn and the comfort of her horse.
She mounted Drogo and took off galloping into the forest,
making a loop around to a side path where she and Thierry
had constructed a number of jumps, some very wide and some
very high. The ground was hilly, and it was arduous for
Drogo and for Jo as well, and they both welcomed the hard,
sweaty work.

She was walking him afterwards, letting him cool down, the
reins loose, when from a distance, she saw Thierry leading
Prunelle out of the ring, with Marianne not only no longer
napping, but mounted on the horse. Since Marianne,
throughout their friendship, had been adamant that riding a
horse was something she would never, ever consider doing,
Jo looked on with interest.

As she and Drogo got closer, she saw Thierry stop and walk
back beside Marianne. Prunelle, the gentlest mare in the
world, reached down to munch some grass while Thierry took
hold of Marianne’s leg to show her the proper
placement. He pulled down her heel and put both hands
around her calf to rotate it in, towards the horse’s
flank.

Jo saw Thierry look up at Marianne, still holding her leg
with both hands. She could not hear what either of them was
saying, and wasn’t quite close enough to see their
expressions. She thought she saw them laughing.
Thierry’s hands went a little higher. He took one
palm and swept it down Marianne’s leg, from her hip
to her foot, and with the other hand, he reached up to her
ass and seemed to be rubbing it slowly, as he continued
talking.

Marianne, holding tight to Prunelle’s mane, stood up
in the stirrups then, plainly on his direction, and he
appeared to still be talking as he continued to touch her,
reaching and stroking down the inside of her thigh, and
then again.

Jo had taken a lot of riding lessons in her life, by a wide
variety of teachers with different styles of teaching, and
she had never experienced anything that looked like what
Thierry and Marianne were doing.

She felt a stab, suddenly, of feelings she had managed to
put away during her hard ride that morning–feelings
not even so much of missing Henri, but of missing his
goodwill towards her. Missing how his face went from
distracted to warm when he saw her, like he had just
unexpectedly stumbled on a long-lost friend. She had no
idea what had happened, what had changed, but sadly, that
unaccountable unpredictability was exactly what she was
used to.

Not that it was any less painful for being so.

She was closer now, and could see the brightness on
Thierry’s and Marianne’s faces, how lit up they
looked, and then, slowly, really slowly, as though they
were in a movie and they were in slow motion–Marianne
bent down and Thierry turned his face up, he reached up
with his strong, rough, horseman’s hands and pulled
her down to him, and kissed her. Honestly, Jo could
practically hear the music swelling as she watched them.

It hadn’t occurred to her, because she didn’t
have the matchmaking tendency, but now that they had
thought of it first, yes, it was completely obvious that
Thierry and Marianne would be great together. Of course,
there is never any accounting for chemistry, but it
appeared from the length and intensity of the kiss that
chemistry was not a problem. At all.

Jo turned Drogo towards the stable and away from her
friends, to give them privacy.

If she could stop thinking about the frozen sound in
Henri’s voice, she would be thrilled for them. But as
it was, instead she felt tears welling up, as she was
flooded with mixed up, contradictory emotions.

One thing she loved about Henri was exactly that he was not
capricious, not moody. From the first time she met him, he
had seemed to her a person you could completely rely on.
Someone who was not dying for you one minute and spurning
you the next. Stalwart. Loyal. Someone who showed up, even
when things were difficult.