She plastered herself against the wall, taking even, shallow breaths and listening. No footfalls. Nothing except her heart pounding thunderously. Her back against the blocks, she crept along the alcove, stopping every few steps to listen again.
Now to get out of here.
The sky was lighter outside than when she’d gone in the Chapelle. No, she decided, the inside of the building had just been dark in contrast. Only minutes had passed, not the hours it had felt like. Light from the scattering of streetlamps in the Basse Ville, the part of the town below the cliff, seeped up like the glow from a halo.
Sarah pulled in a sharp breath when she heard a footfall against gravel. A monk! No, not one of the monks. It was Archard. He came around the side of the Chapelle and headed toward her.
“Where the hell were—”
He set his finger to his lips and took the heavy sword from her. Then he nodded toward the stairs. “Hurry,” he whispered in her ear.
“Where were you?” she persisted in a murmur.
“A little more security than I expected.” He pulled her into a niche between the buildings and then grabbed her hand, tugging off her glove and touching her fingers to the tip of the stolen sword. It was broken, jagged. “So it is real. See? The genuine one. You did great. Now get the rest of it. I’ll meet you at the car.” He reached into a pocket and handed her a small GPS device. It blinked softly with her coordinates. From another pocket he produced a chisel. “And, Sarah, speed would be good.”
Getting “the rest of it” proved much easier said than done.
They motored out of the village at dawn, her bleeding fingers gripping the steering wheel of the Peugeot, her clothes torn, her knees badly scraped and every inch of her throbbing.
Chapter 5
Annja couldn’t sleep.
She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed to pull on a pair of sweatpants. Her stomach churned and a bitter taste settled in her mouth. She’d had another nightmare—images of fire swirling all around, bright red and orange, hurtful in their intensity. Like before, there was a face in the flames. Sometimes the face was her own, and she woke up from those nightmares sweating.
She was drenched in sweat now.
Slipping on the athletic shoes that had set her back half a paycheck, she stood and stretched, stuck her hotel key card in her pocket and reached for a fresh T-shirt.
She wanted to be home, curled up on her bed, shutting out the god-awful blare of the Brooklyn traffic. She could sleep through that ruckus, somehow even found it comforting. But in France she often had nightmares. Not always, but enough that she wondered why she bothered to come back. Why hadn’t she told Doug to get someone else for these segments?
She looked at the clock on the nightstand. One forty-five.
A quick run. That ought to get her through this. Certainly safer than picking a fight with a gang of punks outside one of the city’s old train stations.
She made sure the door clicked shut behind her, and then padded past the bank of elevators to the security door at the end of the hall.
She eased that shut behind her, too, wincing at the grating sound it made, and jogged down from the eighth- to the seventh-floor landing, turned and headed toward the sixth. The air was fusty and stale.
The stairwell, dimly lit with energy-saving spiral fluorescent lights, probably wasn’t intended to be used by hotel guests. Emergencies and power outages, Annja figured, and for guests like herself who couldn’t sleep. The walls were painted a hospital-green, reminding her of avocado dip. They and the security doors were thick enough that she shouldn’t disturb anyone’s beauty sleep.
She laughed as her feet hit the fourth-floor landing and she picked up speed. She loved to run.
Annja felt the beginning of an exercise burn in her chest as she reached the first floor and wheeled around to start the jog back up. The smell of cleanser lingered like a thick fog. She thumbed the button on her iPod and then inserted the earbuds, not once missing a step or losing her cadence.
Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries played just loudly enough to muffle her breathing and her slapping shoes.
Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit. As much as Annja loved Elmer Fudd, she flipped the button to bring up another piece. Balakirev’s Islamey. She set her feet in time to the beat and felt the piano riffs travel up and down her spine. The music swelled as she again neared the eighth-floor landing.
Up twelve more floors, to the top of the hotel, before returning to her room for a welcome shower and a few hours of good sleep. That was the plan. She felt wired, as if she’d just thrown back six cups of coffee. Maybe she’d do two circuits instead. That’d be enough. Yeah. Better than a sleeping pill.
As she hit the tenth floor, Balakirev reached a mancando section. Over the whisper of the piano, Annja heard the scrape of a door opening somewhere above her. A snippet of conversation drifted down, and then she heard the pounding of feet. Two more insomniacs.
Annja pressed herself against the wall of the eleventh-floor landing as they thundered toward her—two young women she’d seen in the restaurant during dinner. They sported hot-pink Wales Wrunners T-shirts. They smiled as they bounced by. She recalled reading about a marathon in town in another day or two. These were no doubt entrants.
At the sixteenth-floor landing, Annja nudged the button on the iPod again, wanting something a little livelier. Mikhail Glinka’s Kamarinskaya blared, and she ran faster.
The burn in her chest had spread to her neck. Her face was flushed from the mild exertion and her heart rate was up. The stale air reached deeper into her lungs, and she felt a sensation in her legs that wasn’t quite an ache, but was telling Annja that her muscles were stretching from the climb. It was a good feeling.
She turned her head and blew a hank of hair out of her eyes. She set her feet to the beat as she neared the uppermost landing. Annja brushed the door to the roof with her fingers, leaving four thin streaks of sweat, then spun on her heel and started back down.
She passed the Wales Wrunners again on the sixth-floor landing. They were coming up this time and pressed themselves against the wall to let her continue. Common runner courtesy. One of the girls said something, but Annja couldn’t hear her over the Glinka.
At the bottom the cleanser scent again assailed Annja—bleach or floor polish or both. She touched down on the landing, brushed her fingers against the first-floor door and then started up. She took fuller, even breaths now.
She spotted two more insomniacs when she turned on the seventh floor and started up the next flight. They stood shoulder to shoulder on the eighth-floor landing, blocking her path. Dressed in dark pants and jackets, they reminded her of the Blues Brothers. One was tall, the other shorter and stocky with a pockmarked face. The stocky one wore sunglasses, despite the stairwell’s dim lighting; that fact set her nerves tingling. Annja jogged in place on the stairs, halfway between landings, and plucked out her earbuds.
She waited for the men to move or to say something. Neither did.
“Excuse me,” she said as she reached the step just below them. They backed up, but not enough for her to reach the landing door. She didn’t like the looks of them, and hackles rose on her neck. “This is my floor,” she said, a little louder. She thought about reaching for the sword, but they hadn’t threatened her. Maybe they were with the Wales Wrunners.
The stocky one tilted his head to the side, as though he didn’t understand what Annja was saying, and so she repeated it in French. He nodded in comprehension and smiled, took a step back to accommodate her. Without warning, the tall one’s fist shot out like a piston, striking her on the