“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Can this get any freakier?”
“And her bodyguard used to be Swiss special forces, like the US Navy SEALs.”
“So, that’s dude number three who has better resources than you do to get her out of there.”
“Oh, and my older brother Pierre, the one she married, was also Wulfram’s close friend when we were all in boarding school. They were roommates. She’s known him since she was five.”
“Wow, Auggie. This girl is nothing but a pretty bag of skin stuffed with red flags.”
Yes, that was Max’s favorite kind of woman. “This sounds crazy, but I think some Russian mafia guys were threatening her, either keeping her there or threatening her if she left.”
“Dude, you have a lot of problems with the mafia. I’m kind of nervous, just sitting here with you.”
“But if she was kidnapped, shouldn’t I get her out?” he demanded of Dree.
She stared at him. “So, your ex-girlfriend, the one who married your actual brother, threw him over and went back to her previous other boyfriend, and she’s staying with him in his family’s house in Switzerland, and you’re worried she was kidnapped?”
“She seemed scared.”
“Was she afraid ofyoubecause Pierre the sociopath sentyouto take her back to him?”
Maxence mulled over the events in his head, still trying to figure out what was going on. “I don’t know. I know she didn’t want to go back to Pierre. She seemed happy to see me at first.” She’d thrown her arms around him, and he’d thought, for a moment, that maybe,somethingcould happen between them.
Dree said, “So, again, and I’m going to ask you this seriously, is there anything else that you feel you should do now to help her?”
Maxence played it all over and over in his head. “I don’t see what else I could do, short of getting an assault rifle, which isn’t easy to do in Europe, and walking into that mansion in Geneva, shooting the place up, and dragging her out of there with me.”
Dree shook her head at him. “I think that’s your answer. Just to be clear, I think the whole getting an assault rifle and shooting up a mansion is a terrible idea, so I think you can’t do anything else right now. You said that you told people where she was.”
“And other people already knew. Pierre told me where she was and to go negotiate with her. At this point, her location is a pretty open secret.”
“Can you call the cops?”
“I called better people than the police.”
“Do you have any other way to contact her?”
“I don’t think she has a cell phone, but I could get word to her through friends.”
“This is obviously troubling you. Contact these mutual friends and get word to her that if she needs you to come back that she should tell these mutual friends.”
“Okay.”
“Do it now,” she told him.
Maxence pulled his phone from his hip pocket and texted his cousin, Maria-Therese, and some of their mutual friends, telling them to get word to Flicka that Maxence could be back in Geneva within a few hours if she needed him.
Maxence said, “It’s done.”
“If she told you to leave her where she is, shouldn’t you?”
“But what if I shouldn’t?” Maxence said.
“Maybe you should listen to her.”
Maxence nodded. “Right. I should. I should listen to her.”
“Good. Now show me this museum.”
