Rapture's Edge

25

“Is this an interrogation, or are you trying to ask me out on a date?” she said coldly.

His face hardened. He straightened and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Interview,” he said, looking down his nose at her. “It’s called an interview. If this was an interrogation, there would be pain involved.”

“There is pain involved.” She leaned sideways and stuck her bandaged leg out, then bent her arms to give him a good view of the handcuffs behind her back, her wrists red and chafed inside them. Just to provoke him, she added, “And my bare behind is frozen to this chair.”

Again, he didn’t take the bait. His mouth just puckered as if he’d been sucking on a lemon. “You’re lucky Jean-Luc gave you his shirt. I’d have hauled you in as naked as we found you, and your bare behind would have been on public display for all those reporters. Your bare behind would have made the cover of Le Monde.”

Eliana flushed. “Charming,” she muttered. She sat upright and adjusted herself in the chair so her tailbone wasn’t flush against the cold seat. Her entire rear end was numb. And her leg throbbed. When she saw Caesar again, she was going to kill him.

“You’re the one who likes being naked so much. And I may be rude, but I’m not stupid,” he rejoined. Something odd had crept into his voice, and she glanced up to find him still staring.

“I know who you are, belle fille,” he said, eyes glittering. “I know how you think. I’ve been studying La Chatte for years. I’ll admit you became something of an obsession for me. A thief who evaded all security systems, who never triggered a single alarm, who drifted in and out of locked buildings and rooms and vaults like…a ghost? Impossible. You made us look like a bunch of incompetent fools. You made me look like a fool. All those rich, important people screaming for your head, and not a trace of you to be found. So I studied your pattern, the things you took, the specific times and dates and places of the crimes. And I discovered something.”

Eliana waited, a growing sense of dread gnawing at her stomach.

“Even ghosts get bored.”

He smiled, and the predatory curve of his lips sent fear lashing along every nerve ending.

“Every theft was a little more daring than the last, a little harder,” he continued. “Either you were getting desperate, which didn’t seem likely as you weren’t under any heat from us, or you needed a challenge. It was me who predicted La Chatte would get tired of poaching from fat old goats and go for a bigger prize. I knew one day you’d hit the Louvre. And because, as you’ve guessed, we’ve never managed to capture you with normal surveillance video, I ordered a few special, very high-tech cameras designed by some old friends in the American military. Cost a pretty penny, too, and all very hush-hush top secret, but it was authorized by the prime minister himself. Because you, belle fille, are at the very top of his s**t list.”Cameras? Special cameras? She couldn’t be seen on cameras—

“He’s still holding a grudge over two Picassos you stole from his house while he was sleeping,” Édoard continued in a conspiratorial tone, as if they were two girlfriends talking over cocktails. “In fact, he’s given us carte blanche to do whatever is necessary to get them back, along with the rest of the things you stole, some of which were from his personal friends. Whatever is necessary, including resorting to the interrogation you so casually mentioned before. Which, by the way, I’m particularly well qualified to do having served as an interrogator the entirety of my ten years with the counterterrorism unit of the bérets verts.”

An interrogator with the green berets. High-tech cameras. Several things clicked into place, and the fear simmering in her bloodstream rose to a dark, violent boil. Her stomach lurched.

As an afterthought he added, “Did you know the word torture comes from the French word meaning ‘to twist’?”

His lips curved into a dark, triumphant smile, and she went ice cold.

“You’re bluffing,” she said, pulse racing. “You can’t lay a finger on me. There are laws against that, and the entire world saw you take me in—”

“I won’t go into the particulars of how photon cameras work, but the images are quite interesting, to say the least,” he interrupted as if she hadn’t spoken at all. He uncrossed his arms and pulled out the chair opposite hers, then sat with unhurried grace, crossed one leg over the other, and folded his hands into his lap. “Weren’t you curious how, in a seventy-thousand-square-meter museum as you so helpfully pointed out, I knew exactly where to find an invisible woman?”

She didn’t answer. A cold trickle of sweat rolled down the back of her neck.

“So I’ll ask you again.” Still smiling, he regarded her with those green, glittering eyes. “And I’ll ask you nicely, one more time, before I hand you over to un médecin. And it won’t be for your injured leg, my dear. The good doctor and I are going to conduct a few…experiments.”

He emphasized carefully each next word he spoke. “What. Are. You?”

Horror tightened its sharp, freezing claws around her throat. She sat there like a statue, frozen, unable to answer, unable even to blink.

The doctor. Interrogation. Experiments.

Oh God.

D made the thirteen-hour drive from Rome to Paris in under ten.

He’d have been even faster on the Ducati, but his plan involved heavy explosives and those took up a lot of room, especially with what he had in mind. So the motorcycle was out, left behind in its usual spot in a parking garage not too far from the sunken church and the entrance to the catacombs where he and the other members of the Roman colony lived.