“It’s a chip that allows someone to track the location of this phone. Did you, at any time, leave your phone while you were in your cousin’s house?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes. I left it in my room the first day I was there, when I went to the pool. And of course, I took a couple of showers. And now that I think of it, I left it upstairs when we had dinner. But would that be enough time for someone to doctor my phone?”
“Certainly. The question is why they would do so before they had an idea you were connected with me.”
“I didn’t even think of that,” she said, her fingers tightening on his arm. “I know I’ve been sheltered until the last four months, but that’s not normal behavior, is it?”
“No.” He puzzled over the question for a minute. “You did not mention seeing C. J. Dante at all, did you?”
“No. Were you thinking he knew you and I had met, even if we hadn’t really met?”
“Possibly.” He glanced at his watch. “It could be something as coincidental as general paranoia on his part. You did contact him out of the blue.”
“Good point,” she said, nodding. “But if he knew where I was, and that I was with you, why didn’t he try to get us at your house?”
He smiled. Oh, it was a grim smile, to be sure, but he felt he deserved credit for mustering up any form of smile. “My house has protection against such things. The best they’d be able to do is trace us to the town, and then you would effectively disappear. Likely they waited until they had a strong signal they could follow.”
“Which was in Nice,” she said, sighing. “Who would have thought Carlo had that in him?”
Merrick said only, “What do you wish to do? Go back to Nice or somewhere else?”
She slid a look up at him that had him wanting to shut them both away in a room for a day or two. Possibly a few years. “What happened to Bossy McBossypants telling me that I’m going to your house and will stay there and be safe, because clearly when I go out on my own, things happen like I get kidnapped?”
“You are a grown woman.” He ignored the spurt of fear that accompanied the reminder of just how close she had been to a man who very well might turn out to be the murderous Victor. “If you do not wish to return to Nice to be available for contact, then I can hire someone to do the same.”
She seared him with a scornful look. “Are you kidding? This ismyadventure. I’m not letting someone else have it.”
“Tempest—” he said warningly.
She stopped him with an upraised hand. “I know, I know—it’s not all fun and games, and Cousin Carlo is probably a super-bad man who hurts people, so I shouldn’t be flip about it. And I’m not, although it sounded like I was. I’m very well aware after the last few hours that he does not have my best interests at heart.”
“Good. See that you stay that sensible.”
“I plan to. This isn’t just a ploy to get me out of the way?” she asked when they maneuvered through the incoming crowds to the ticketing area. “Because I’m so going to have some things to say to you if it is.”
“He knows where to find you. The hotel is definitely not a place of safety,” Merrick pointed out. “Sending you there is risking your life, so, no, it’s not a ploy. It’s a way for you to help locate a man who has the potential to destroy a great many people.”
“I am so with you on that,” she said, lifting her chin and looking determined. “And I’m glad you’ve finally realized that I’m the ideal person to help find Carlo, so if you’ll tell me what train to take, Kelso and I will head back to Nice.”
He bought her a ticket and was just giving her instructions when Savian appeared and headed their way. “Be sure to pick up a new mobile phone and send me the number. And don’t leave it anywhere.”
She smiled and gave him a swift kiss that he felt like the kick of a mule in his gut.
Dammit, he wouldnotfall for this woman. His life was simply too dangerous for that.
Chapter Thirteen
“Well, this is just as anticlimactic as all get-out.”
Kelso panted at me. I patted his head, and obligingly stopped skulking around the building across the street from the Hotel Mad Goats, and ignored Kelso while he had a little personal time on the grass verge. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest, that there were no men in black cars parked obviously on the street, or street vendors who just happened to lurk outside the hotel’s entrance. Instead, it was business as usual with the bright lights of all the nightclubs and restaurants making the town positively glow, while a dull throb of bass came from a bar a few doors down. People dressed in varying degrees of fashion wandered up and down the streets, laughing, calling to one another, and generally creating a party atmosphere. There was nothing sinister about any of it.
I checked the cheap phone I’d picked up at the Nice station to see if Merrick had texted back a response to me telling him my new number, but the phone was just as uninspiring as the rest of the evening.
“And just when I was set to be Bond, Jane Bond,” I told Kelso when he was finished, using a bag from the Nice station shop to scoop up his offering and deposit it in a nearby trash can, before glancing around one last time.
No one cast so much as fluttered an eyelash our way. We peered in through the glass door of the hotel, but the lobby was empty. The same clerk was at the desk, though, and he looked just as bored as he had the first time I’d seen him.
“Hi,” I said, giving him a firm look and a friendly smile.“Bonjour.”
