“All right, now that we’re being all civilized, do you want to tell me what’s so special about Carcassonne?” he asked.
“Annja’s there,” Roux said as though that answered everything.
“So?”
“So, think. I get an anonymous call asking if I’ve heard from her. When I eventually get hold of her, I find that she’s had a near-miss with half a castle wall, and both the phone call and the near-catastrophe originate from Carcassonne.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that—two events, same town. So you think your caller fired a warning shot? But was it meant to kill her, or screw with you?”
“I don’t know. Yet. But we have to work under the impression that option number one is true, and just hope the answer to number two is the reality we’re actually facing.”
“Motive? Why would someone want to kill Annja? Revenge?” There were any number of people she’d crossed in the past who could come looking for some kind of payback. It wasn’t impossible even if it was improbable. But who, then, would tie her to Roux? That changed everything in Garin’s mind. It surely meant the trail ran instead from him to her. They hadn’t exactly broadcasted their relationship. Roux was the kind of man who lived his life in the shadows even if his protégé was one for living in the spotlight.
“Possibly, but I’m inclined to send the questions the other way. Who would want to draw me out by threatening her? Who would have the wherewithal to get hold of my phone number and orchestrate something like this?”
“It’s not that hard to get hold of a telephone number. Telecommunications companies don’t exactly have the most effective security systems in place, even given your special arrangements, so we can assume he bribed someone, or has an element of technological know-how. The thing is, it didn’t take long to source the call, did it? So he can’t be that clever.”
“I suppose not,” Roux said thoughtfully. He raised his snifter to his lips and took a slow swallow, then rolled the remaining brandy around the glass. “Of course, it would be a lot easier if the caller already knew the number, or knew someone who did.”
Garin could feel the old man’s stare burning into him.
“You can’t really believe that I have anything to do with this?”
Roux said nothing.
“Do you really think so little of me?”
Roux said nothing.
“Seriously, this has nothing to do with me. I was in bed with a beautiful woman when you called. I would tell you who so you could corroborate this, but I didn’t get around to getting her name. I’ve got nothing to do with this. Come on, Roux, we go back a long way. You know I wouldn’t hurt Annja.”
“No, but you’d screw with me, so if you knew she was never in danger?”
“She’s one of us, Roux. She’s just like you and me. It’s the three of us against the world.”
“Is it? Is that how you really see things? I thought it was, but after the Pass of the Moor’s Last Sigh it’s hard to believe you sometimes. I think the things you want are very different from the things we want.”
“Okay, so I like the finer things in life. I would say that’s not a crime, but obviously sometimes it is. But you know me. You know I’d never hurt her.” It was true, and he was very delicately dancing around the fact that he’d come here with every intention of stealing from the old man. The objects of his nefarious intention were only a few feet away in his hidden vault. There was wealth beyond imagining in that vault, not just in monetary value, either. The old man was a hoarder. He had works of art and irreplaceable antiquities all around the house. He wasn’t worried about prying eyes seeing those, so he didn’t keep them under lock and key. It was only things that could lead back to who he really was that ended up in the vault. Secrets.
“You may be telling the truth,” the old man said, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced. Garin was a gambling man. He knew a safe bet when he saw one. Roux still thought he was behind the whole scheme. Old habits died the hardest. Garin had to force himself not to look over the old man’s shoulder at the vault.
He could almost taste the money heading his way once he had his hands on Guillaume Manchon’s papers. It would only become a tough choice if, after examining them, Garin found something incriminating in the writings that tied them back to Joan of Arc’s execution, and that was almost certainly not the case, even if Manchon had recorded their names. Lots of Frenchmen had been called both Roux and Braden in the intervening years.
“Okay, worry about me if it makes you happy, but what do you want to do?” The old man shrugged for an instant, revealing the years that lay behind his eyes. “My instinct is to go and find her.”
“Which, for argument’s sake, if it were me behind the call, is exactly what I’d expect you to do, so you’d be walking right into the trap.”
“But you’ve convinced me it isn’t you,” Roux said with irritating smugness. “So, if the caller is in Carcassonne, and Annja is in Carcassonne, that’s exactly where I want to be.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But we don’t know who’s behind this. The number’s dead, so it’s either a burner phone or they’ve just destroyed the SIM card and we’re going to be chasing shadows once we touch down.”
“Then we make ourselves the bait to lure him out,” Roux said. “If he wants me, I’ll give him the chance to come at me and hope he makes a mistake.”
“And you wonder why I think you have a death wish sometimes, old man? You have no idea who you’re going up against, what he looks like, nothing.”
“I’ll recognize the sound of his voice.”
“Great, let’s hope he offers a nice convenient threat before he cuts your head off.”
“So you’d rather sit here and wait to see how things play out?”
“Yes. Think, Roux. If this guy really has it out for you, he’ll call you to taunt you again, won’t he?”
“And what if the next time it’s because Annja’s dead?”
“Have you met that woman?”
Roux shook his head. “How do you live with a lifetime of regret when your lifetime might never end?”
“I hate you when you get like this.”
“You mean when you know I am right?”
“Okay, fine. He’ll call or he won’t. He’ll make another attempt at Annja or he won’t. He’ll be waiting for you, though, that’s for sure. And that’s like putting your head in the noose and taunting the damned hangman.”
“Or perhaps, just perhaps, going to Carcassonne means we are in the safest place in the world, as he’d expect us to sit here and wait for his call and is lining up an attack on the house.”
“Not if he knows you, old man.”
“So you stay here, answer the phones, while I go out and risk my life for our mutual friend.”
And there was an offer that was almost impossible for him to refuse: Roux out of the house, and him having the run of the place and all the time in the world to infiltrate the vault and liberate Guillaume Manchon’s papers. The temptation was incredible. But he could hardly say yes. Instead, Garin moved to take control of the situation by seeming to agree with Roux.
“All right, all right. I’ll make you a deal. If he hasn’t called by the morning, we head to Carcassonne, okay? There’s nothing we’d be able to do tonight, anyway, so a few hours aren’t going to kill us. Get some