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“Merde,” said Beauvoir.
The three stared at each other. Those caves were twenty minutes away. If they left mont Royal, there was no turning back. If they were wrong … The only comfort, cold as it was, was that it was probably already too late.
Keep searching, he texted the Montréal police captain. We’re trying another area. Then he put the siren on and swung back onto the road, his foot heavy on the gas.
Not like this, not like this, dear God, please.
Not yet.
Not like this …
Her legs were heavy, the muscles burning. Her back was spasming from the effort of arching. Then, without warning, her legs dropped an inch. And as they did, the rope around her ankles pulled taut and her head was pushed back as the rope around her neck tightened.
And she gagged.
With a huge effort, Evelyn arched her back again and brought her legs back up, loosening the garrote slightly.
Not like this …
Oh, God, please. Help me.
Out of the corner of his eye Gamache noticed Lacoste had returned to the room with the Chief of Staff. Isabelle was looking stern. Payette was looking sick.
Lacoste nodded toward Gamache. So it was true. The PM’s Chief of Staff had confirmed their suspicions.
Shona saw it too and slowly slid her hand into her pocket. Preparing …
If the guards saw her, they wouldn’t care. They’d searched her and found nothing. But they were wrong.
Gamache had counted on the guards being in full combat gear. Which included Kevlar.
“When they approach to frisk us, which they will,” he’d told Shona, “you need to palm your phone and slide it into the pocket of their vest so that when they search you, they don’t find anything. Then take it back.”
Shona had looked at him, astonished and angered. “You assume because I’m a Black woman I know how to pick pockets?”
“No, I assume you’ll do as I tell you. The Kevlar vest is designed to stop a bullet. And because it does that, it’ll also stop the guard from feeling anything you do. You could put a Volkswagen in the pocket and they’d never notice.”
She’d smiled at that and felt her tension lower. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“You’ll do more than that. You’ll succeed. You must.”
And she had.
Now the time to act was near. She could sense it.
Shona brought the phone out and waited, waited … They were almost there …
Beauvoir had never been to the network of caves beneath the parc Pie-XII, and never hoped to. The first cave had been discovered decades ago, but a huge second cavern, essentially a network of passageways, was only recently found.
He’d read about it and seen photos and watched with some dismay as Honoré had become pretty much obsessed with the caves. He’d begged his father to take him there. But just the news reports were enough to send Jean-Guy to the verge of a panic attack.
Where the Chief was terrified of heights, Beauvoir’s terror was holes. And what they’d discovered in the middle of Montréal was an epic hole.
He hoped Honoré would forget and move on to another obsession. He kept feeding the boy stories about mummies, and spaceships, and dinosaurs, but no, Honoré kept at it, showing his father photos of archeologists and cave explorers actually kayaking through the narrow passages with sheer rock walls. He’d even gotten his little sister, Idola, hooked. Her face lit up when Honoré showed her the videos.
His father’s face did something else entirely.
“You okay, Papa?”
