He eyed her, hard and cool. Then he nodded. “Unlike you terrorists, I am civilized. Get your coat.”
“Thank you.” She edged toward the office.
“Oui.” He jerked his gaze to the phone. “I am at the bookstore Green Leaf Books. Terrorists pass messages inside the books. I have evidence, and the owner is in my custody.”
Lucie stepped inside the office doorway, where Wattenberg could see her. She reached a trembling hand to the hooks on the wall and grasped her coat. Her distinctively green coat.
Holding her coat below the hook out of Wattenberg’s sight, she punched her hands into the sleeves and whipped them inside out. Then she yanked on the coat with the black lining facing out.
Wattenberg kept talking, kept watching.
Six feet stretched between her and the short hallway to the back door. Her bag rested on the floor, but if she reached for it, she’d draw Wattenberg’s attention and his fire.
“The store is on rue Casimir-Delavigne. Send officers right away.” He glared at Lucie.
Standing with her left side behind the doorjamb, Lucie pretended to do up the buttons on her coat. She extended her left leg, poked her foot through the strap of her bag, and slowly curled her leg up behind her inattitude derrière. With her left hand, she slipped the strap off her ankle.
“The number? I do not know.” Wattenberg frowned at Lucie as if realizing she’d never give him the address.
Heart pounding, Lucie wound the strap around her left arm several times. She only needed a moment’s distraction.
“I’ll read the number across the street.” Wattenberg leaned over the counter and peered out the window.
Now! Lucie sprang out of the doorway, and in three leaps she reached the back door.
“Nein!” Wattenberg cried.
Lucie flung open the door to the stairwell, then the door to the courtyard, and she sprinted across the courtyard toward the porte cochère leading to rue de l’Odéon.
A door banged behind her. “Halt! Halt! Or I shoot!”
Lucie’s wooden soles clomped on the stone pavement, and she fought for traction in the melting snow.
“Halt!”
She ran through the porte cochère. A shot exploded in her ears. Stone shattered beside her, pelted her.
She screamed, jumped in aglissadeto the right, spun, sprinted, half running, half leaping.
Passersby ducked out of her way.
“Halt! I will shoot.” Boots pounded behind her. “Stop that woman! She is a terroriste.”
Would he shoot among innocent civilians?
A startled elderly woman stood in the way, and Lucie darted around her. “Pardon, madame.”
“Quinault!” the woman cried behind her. “Quinault.”
Quinault? The printer? Two stores up, with a back door to the rue Monsieur le Prince. “Merci!”
“Out of my way!” Wattenberg yelled. “All of you—move!”
Lucie opened the door to Quinault’s and ran the length of the store.
Monsieur Quinault stood up from his desk. “Mademoiselle Girard? What is the meaning of this?”
“Pardon, monsieur.” She ran down the back hall and through the door, out onto the street.
