“Sir?”Hatch sounded confused.
Harrison Wallace, aka Mace—a disgraced physician who’d falsified clinical trial data—was an impatient bastard.Might as well make him feel useful while Archer focused on more…strategic initiatives.
Two fucking weeks.The slowest two weeks of Ford’s life.Technically two weeks and three days, but who’d been counting?
Him.Every goddamned minute.
The outer door of the jail opened and he crossed the threshold, taking a deep breath of freedom.The bright afternoon sun and warm breeze on his skin felt amazing, but he didn’t take a second to bask, or slow his roll even a little.
He wanted the hell away from this place.Away from the stench of sweat, metal, industrial cleaning products, and desperation.Away from the overcrowded spaces, being indoors for twenty-three hours a day, doing his best to keep his head down and avoid conflict.Away from lying in a narrow bed, worrying about Natalie and…thinking about her in other ways.Ways that made him uncomfortable to admit, but that had become necessary for getting himself through this hell.Her beautiful smile, her playful nature, and her determination to right the wrongs of the world made her an embodiment of sunshine in a place where he’d found little joy.
Dreaming of her had become his mental escape from the grim days and long nights, even though it was a hell of a different kind.Jail in Switzerland might be nicer than in the US, but it was still confinement.Thankfully, his cellmate had been a scared twenty-year-old who avoided talking as much as possible.Small favor.
Ford’s assistant Sabine had visited every day, updating him on the news, and assuring him that Henri still checked in nightly.His lawyer had also come regularly, keeping him abreast of her efforts to free him.
According to the prosecuting attorney, being a foreigner had made Ford a flight risk, so he’d been denied bail and put in a cell, all based on a bloody knife found by the couple who cleaned his house once a week.The “murder weapon” must have been planted either by the police or Deschamps’ men.
Unfortunately, Ford couldn’t prove his innocence without revealing Henri’s whereabouts—likely the outcome someone had been hoping for—so he’d stayed in jail until his lawyers found a way to show that the blood on the knife was “clean.”It had been a match for Henri, but the bodily tissue had been from a pig.Given that, along with the lack of a body and no obvious motive, prosecutors had been forced to admit that it looked like a setup and drop the charges.
Whoever had framed Ford likely hadn’t expected the evidence to pass muster for long.Just long enough to get the information they needed.Since their ploy had failed, no doubt they’d look for another way to get Henri’s location.
Ford had covered the doctor’s tracks well, but the press’s renewed interest in the case wasn’t ideal.With Henri’s pictures back in the news, Ford worried that someone might recognize the man at the grocery store or farmer’s market, despite the subtle changes he’d made to his appearance.Probably not a concern so far from Geneva, but the story was lurid enough to reach outlets beyond Switzerland’s borders.
According to the scenario Ford had devised, the doctor had canceled his protection services, taken out the boat he kept docked in Menton—on the French border with Italy—dropped anchor several miles from shore, and jumped into the Mediterranean.He’d even left behind a note, professing his grief over the loss of his wife.
Of course, given the circumstances of her death, there was much debate over whether Henri had staged his own death, or the appearance of a suicide was a cover for his murder.Either way, the resurgence of news coverage increased the danger of discovery for both HenriandNatalie.
Ford could only hope his release would cause the media to move on.Walking quickly away from the jail with his head held high, he hopped into the passenger seat of Sabine’s Dacia Duster, and didn’t release a full breath until they were a couple kilometers away.
“You okay?”Sabine finally asked in French.She understood English, but felt less confident speaking it.
Thanks to his Parisian grandfather—and a summer exchange to Montpellier in college—he’d been a decent French speaker before moving to Switzerland, but after three years in Geneva, it came naturally to him.“Better now.Did you sweep the car?”
She nodded.“I’m glad they let you go before the weekend.”
“Me too.”He relaxed into the seat, but still censored his words out of habit and caution.“I need to check on my…clients.”He hadn’t intended to drop Natalie on Henri’s doorstep and disappear until the first week of August.
She was probably going out of her mind stuck in the country without access to the outside world, or anything to do.But Deschamps—or whoever had been behind Ford’s arrest—would probably ramp up surveillance now, expecting him to check on Henri after so much time away.
Which meant he had to be patient and careful.If Deschamps employed a big enough team, it would be nearly impossible for Ford to get to the farmhouse outside of Marseille without being followed.He couldn’t just run a surveillance detection route and call it good.They could have people on all the exits out of town, and be watching the trains and buses.
The best option would be one where the guys on stakeout never even realized he’d left.Figuring it out required more brain cells than he had right now.Jail was not exactly a relaxing place to sleep.
“No one who knows you believed you killed Monsieur Michaud,” Sabine said, pulling him back to the present.“And now that the evidence has cleared you, we have already received several calls from people inquiring about helping them disappear.”
Ford groaned.Despite recent evidence to the contrary, he wasn’t generally in the business of faking people’s deaths.And he didn’t want to be.“I assume you told them to look elsewhere.”
“Of course.”She sounded offended that he’d expect otherwise.
“Sorry.”He let his head fall back against the seat.“I couldn’t run this place without you, Sab.Honestly.”
Shetskedand shook her head.“You could, but it would be much harder.”
For the first time in weeks, he laughed.
But then he entered his home and could instantly tell that something was wrong.Not only was Blitz skittish, but there were subtle signs that things had been disturbed.Things that his landlady Katja would never touch.Someone with the skills to sidestep his high-end security system had been inside.
According to video footage he pulled up on his alarm app after Sabine drove off, the culprit—a man, based on his height and build—wore a mask and gloves, and hit early this morning while Katja walked the dog.Ford would’ve been impressed if he wasn’t so pissed.
