“Tuck your hand inside the waist of your jeans to keep it steady until we get out of here.”
She glanced past him to the bodies, outlined in the light from Malik's flashlight, Marcus’s shattered skull all that remained.
“Valentine?”
“Here,” the girl called out. She crawled out of the shadows where Kris had shoved her. She stood, bruised, shaken, but alive. She swore in French.
“I tried to stop her, but the bitch got away.”
“She won't get far,” James assured them. “Are you all right?”
Her face was a mass of bruises, and blood was smeared on her neck where Faridani had cut her. She nodded. She tried to smile, then the tears came. She cursed again, then looked past them to the bodies on the floor.
“They wanted to destroy it,” Valentine whispered.
She crossed the room and knelt beside the tapestry that Micheleine had fought to protect so long ago.
“She was here.” She touched the edge of the tapestry. “In this place, and it was important to her to keep it safe.” She took a deep breath.
“We need to go,” James told them both. They needed to find Albert, then contact the French authorities.
Had Alyia Malik gotten past Albert? Or had she escaped through one of the other tunnels?
There were dozens of them spread throughout the quarry. She would have needed to find one of those rooms with the roof caved in, and she would be gone.
They retraced their steps, following those images that Micheleine had drawn on the edge of that letter in the last days and weeks of the war, and finally reached the main passage that led to the entrance.
A loud explosion echoed off the walls of the passage.
“Stay here,” James ordered. He ran ahead, disappearing into the looming darkness.
“Grandfather?” Valentine whispered, and ran after him.
They reached the entrance to the mine, coming up behind him. Albert looked up, the old shotgun he used to scare the crows from his apple trees in the crook of his arm.
Alyia Malik lay sprawled across the limestone floor near the entrance, the pistol under her hand where it had fallen.
Albert patted the stock of the shotgun and shrugged.
“She tried to escape.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
LONDON
Kris grabbed the remote and turned up the audio on the midday news feed from the BBC.
The broadcast was live from Paris, outside the office of the Directeur Centrale de la Police Judiciare. A reporter from CNN thrust a microphone at the white-haired man who had just emerged from the building.
Albert appeared on screen, in his field coat, work pants, the white hair tucked beneath the beret, his favorite shotgun in the curve of his arm—for shooting the crows that invaded his orchards. Valentine stood beside him.
“There are reports circulating that you were instrumental in stopping a recent terrorist attack, and responsible for the deaths of several terrorists. Can you comment on that now that the official investigation has been closed?”
She smiled at the correspondent's persistence, thinking of someone else who had a reputation for being equally persistent.
“We got them, Cate,” she whispered.
