Instead, all I can think to say is, “Would this be the lederhosen evening wear from Bavaria, or is it the Austrian version?”
For once, he will not be distracted by his wardrobe selection. He’s sitting behind a desk made of black ironwood, the carved, shimmering slab runs from one end of the room to the other. There is nothing on it except a glass of wine and his laptop.
“Ye can see why I might have been unwillingto stay in captivity.” There are no chairs, so I settle my arse on the end of his desk. He looks horrified, but allows it. A good sign, that I still have some special privileges left with him.
“If this is true, why did you return?”
“Because…” I’d had a smoother line planned, but I decide to go with a half-truth. “Because you were the first man to admire my mind first, rather than my face or my family. I’ve never seen the likes of something as complex as C-1161 before. I want to conquer it.”
His placid face splits into a huge grin.“Magnifique!That is the only answer I could accept.”
“We will need to have a stern conversation at some point about ye raining down hellfire on my flat. I had family in that building, Hugo. That was very rude.”
Looking mildly chastened, he says, “I could not get your attention in any other way,mon chere.”
“I saw the results of your first…” I shove down the nausea churning in my gut, “your first live test. Did it follow all the parameters as expected?”
“Oui,I am very pleased.”
This cheerful bastard is pleased that his Frankenstein poison murdered over twenty people. I’m going to be the one to kill him.
“How far did you get with the data you stole from my lab?” Hugo’s lounging, indolently swinging his office chair back and forth but I can almost smell his desperation.
“Soclose.” The words and my frustration escape my composed exterior and he chuckles.
“Very few understand this moment,oui?Knowing that you are on the verge of a breakthrough.”
“Ye canseeit on the horizon…” I say, more wistfully than I’m willing to examine.
“I knew the joining of the minds with you would be more powerful than the joining of the loins,” he says, and I’m just barely holding back a gag.
“Now that I’m here…” I look pointedly out the window. They blindfolded me, but I’m guessing based on the length of time of the flight we’re in France somewhere. “Do you have a lab set up for me?”
“Non,not here.”
Which is how I end up blindfolded and put back on a jet, this time accompanied by the madman I fully intend to murder.
Three hours later…
Hugo allows me to take off my blindfold once the jet takes off and courteously offers me a drink.Well, Édouard does after gazing at me with an expression that screams, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”
“We do have to address one tiny detail,” Hugo says. He’s changed from his lederhosen to a flowing white shirt, khakis, and a Panama style fedora.
Are we going somewhere more tropical?
“What would that be?” I ask, pushing the drink away from me.
“This jet is encased in a material that blocks GPS transmissions,” he steeples his fingers. “You were scanned thoroughly, of course, before you entered my office. It seems you’ve picked up a bit of a… what shall we call it? A bit of a hitchhiker since last we met.”
Shite.
“Curse my romantic nature!” He pounds the arm of his enormous leather seat. “The head of my security wished to shoot you then and send your head back to your family, but I believe, perhaps, that this precaution was not of your choosing.”
“A hitchhiker? You’re going to have to be more specific.”
He knows. Of course, he knows. Our tech wasn’t advanced enough.
“There is a lovely, very well-made trackerinserted under the muscle in your thigh.” His expression stays the same, but some kind of darkness falls over him, the darkness that created that poison. Holding up a scalpel, “I will need to remove it. No fear, I do have a medical degree as well.”
