Dead Run (16 page)

She said at last, “It’s an ingenious idea, but you don’t really have anything more to support it than Brandt does his theory. Yet you believe he’s drawing his conclusions based on circumstantial evidence.”

That was pretty much what Taylor had expected, which was why he hadn’t wanted to broach his theory till he had more to support it.

Oh, and he had a gut feeling, but he wasn’t about to offer
that
into evidence. Especially after the
Monsieur Poirot
crack.

“I think the wife knows. I think that’s why she finally turned on him. She knows he’s back for the paintings, not for her. But she was part of that robbery and the destruction of that museum, and while the original statute of limitations has expired, the possession of stolen art is a separate offense. She gave us what she could without incriminating herself.”

Stone made a small musing sound. “You make a good case. But so does Brandt. The bottom line is I’d rather be wrong and see Helloco get away with a couple of million dollars in French art than be wrong and see innocent Americans injured or killed.”

“I understand.” He didn’t look at Will.

To Taylor’s surprise, Stone added, “However, you
do
make a good case, and since you’re technically on vacation, and since the gendarmes, the national police,
and
the military have all been alerted and will be involved in protecting the Normandy site, if you’d like to follow up on your theory and start looking for those paintings, I’m not going to stop you.”

That was a lot more than Taylor had hoped for. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Coordinate your efforts with the French police. We want to build relations, not risk them.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He glanced at Will. Will stared back at him without an ounce of emotion. No question that Will considered it his priority to make sure David Bradley was safe.

That answered that. Had there really been a question?

Once more the phone was ringing on Arthur’s desk. Taylor thanked Stone again and went to answer it.

Inspector Bonnet said, “Good news, Agent MacAllister. At least, if it is not good news, it is the news you expected. There is no such person as Yannick Hinault.”

Chapter Twelve

Will turned to RSO Stone. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d like to stick with MacAllister while he’s pursuing his hunch.”

Stone looked taken aback. “I’m confused. Normandy was
your
call, Brandt.”

“I know. But here’s the thing: MacAllister’s got an instinct for crime like nobody I’ve ever known. There might be something to this idea of his.”

“I realize that. That’s why I’ve given him permission to investigate.”

“He doesn’t know the city. He doesn’t speak the language.” Will could see Stone thought he was being an ass, but he plowed ahead. “You said yourself we’ve got more than enough manpower assigned to the D-day ceremony. I think MacAllister could use some backup. Whether he realizes it or not.”

“You’re serious?” Stone’s blue gaze rested on his face for a moment. “You
are
serious.” He could see her weighing it. “Brandt, I can’t believe what I’m about to say, but seeing that you shouldn’t be here anyway since you haven’t been cleared for duty, if you choose to spend your sick leave tagging along with MacAllister, that’s up to you. Maybe you can keep him from triggering an international incident.”

Will’s smile was lopsided. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“For the record, I think you’re both wrong, but…” Stone shrugged. She had bigger fish to fry.

Will found Taylor in Arthur’s cubicle, surrounded by framed photos of Arthur’s parents and girlfriend. Taylor was on the phone, his voice quiet but urgent.

“I don’t care. Don’t attend the ceremony.” He was silent for a moment. “I know. I know all that.” Another silence. “I know that too. Just…humor me on this. You said you’d steer clear of any places American tourists might go. Well, Normandy counts.” He listened. “Thank you. I’ll let you know.” Then his face changed, and his tone with it. “He’s fine… Yeah… I’ll tell him you were asking… Yeah. Me too.”

Taylor dropped the handset into the cradle and noticed Will standing in the doorway. “Hey.” Face and voice were neutral.

“Hey,” Will returned. Now face-to-face with Taylor, things were a little different. If Taylor’s expression had been any blanker, Will would have been getting the No Internet Connection message. “Tara?”

Taylor nodded.

“So you’re not one hundred percent sure about this idea of yours?”

Taylor’s face tightened. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, no. And I’m not taking a chance with my family.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m not here to argue with you. I just got the okay from Stone. I’m working the art theft angle with you.”

Taylor’s expression came to life then. He looked less thrilled than Will might have expected. “Why would you be? Your theory is—”

There were plenty of things Will could have replied. He cut straight to the chase. “Because we’re partners.”

Taylor’s eyes flickered. “Yeah, only we’re not. Remember?”

“You know what I mean. It doesn’t have anything to do with where we’re posted. We’re a team.”

Taylor looked away. A muscle in his jaw moved. His eyes rose to meet Will’s. “Are we? Where does David Bradley fit in?”

It must have cost him to say that aloud.

In the main room the other agents were making plans for traveling to the coast. Will stepped away from the door. He kept his voice low. “My memory might be shaky on certain points, but I meant what I said in the car. Nobody means more to me than you do. So if I’m going to have to choose who I’m watching over for the next forty-eight hours, I’m watching you.”

Taylor gave him an unblinking look. Then he smiled. It was an odd smile. “That’s because you believe me about the stolen paintings. If you thought the threat to Bradley was—”

“This is going to come as a shock to you, MacAllister, but you’re often wrong. About a lot of things.”

Taylor’s gaze dropped. He shrugged, clearly unconvinced on that point.

Will let it go. This wasn’t the time. When it was all over, they were going to have a serious and uninterrupted talk. As crazy as this whole amnesia thing was, it had allowed him to see their situation from the outside looking in. And what he saw was pretty damned alarming.

Right now they had other things—even if not more important things—to deal with. “So what’s our next move?”

Taylor hesitated. “We’ve got a few hours. Grab some dinner, I guess? Make a plan?”

Now that Will thought about it, he hadn’t eaten since that morning. Maybe that persistent yawning emptiness inside him was just hunger. He nodded agreement.

As they walked down the grand marble staircase on their way out of the embassy, Taylor quickly caught him up on recent events.

“But Hinault
did
exist,” Will objected. “He lived in Burbank. He was married and owned a business.”

“He existed in the States, yes.”

“Helloco lived forty-something years under a false identity?”

“Yep.”

“With his brother?”

“It kind of looks that way.”

“So Yves and Yves’ wife must have been complicit too.”

“Yes. A regular family affair.”

“How does that help us?”

“I don’t know that it does. It eliminates some of the possibilities, though.”

And it raised some.

Neither of them had much to say on the drive to Will’s place. Taylor had to concentrate on his driving—the Parisian evening traffic was a lot trickier to negotiate—and by then Will was starting to feel all his bumps and bruises. He was very tired. In fact, there was nothing he’d have liked more than to go to bed, pull the covers over his head, and wake up with his reality—whatever it was—restored to him.

He was increasingly impatient with the sensation of groping in the dark for his memories. Amnesia struck him as weak and gutless. He hadn’t chosen it, but he was still angry with himself for giving in to it. The doctors had described his condition as retrograde or declarative memory loss, a kind of posttraumatic amnesia most likely resulting from a combination of shock and head injury, and likely to be mostly temporary.

Already things were starting to come back to Will in unsettling lurches. While he’d been working on his own that afternoon, he’d remembered stocking up on bottles of French beer because Taylor liked trying different beers. He’d remembered buying soft Egyptian cotton sheets for his bed—for Taylor. The memory had dried his mouth, but he’d recognized it for the truth. And he remembered that he had bought a small, expensive possible birthday gift—or possible something else gift—that was currently sitting at the bottom of his underwear drawer. And the memory of
that
had reached out and grabbed him by the throat, nearly throttling him.

So whether he remembered or not, whether he thought it was a good idea or not, he and Taylor were most definitely romantically involved. He trusted himself enough to know he wouldn’t have made that choice lightly or carelessly. He’d known what he was doing, and that meant he needed to show Taylor he honored that commitment.

As for Taylor… He’d been through hell during the past twenty-four hours. Will had put him through hell. The memory of Taylor’s stricken expression when Will shoved him away wasn’t something Will was going to forget anytime soon, amnesia or no amnesia, and it was one reason he was determined to stick to Taylor like glue. No way was he letting Taylor walk into potential trouble because his mind was distracted or because he simply didn’t care enough to be careful. The very possibility of that sent Will’s heart into thunderous overdrive.

For all his stubborn resilience, sometimes Taylor took things too much to heart.

Still preoccupied with their separate reflections, they reached Will’s apartment and went inside. In unspoken accord, they went downstairs to the kitchen and started to put a meal together. They didn’t speak—didn’t need to—and Will found the familiar rhythm of being together like this soothing. It brought back good memories of winding down after other operations.

As far as Will recalled, they’d never cooked beef bourguignon together, but the old mind meld seemed to be working again. Will cubed the stewing beef while Taylor chopped the vegetables.

“Where do you think the paintings are hidden?” Will asked while the oil heated in the pan.

Taylor didn’t hesitate, so he must have been giving it some thought. “Père Lachaise Cemetery.”

“Because Helloco kept painting it?”

“Because it’s huge and crowded with lots of tombs and crypts and nooks and crannies. Lots of great potential hiding places.” Taylor scraped the vegetables from the cutting board into the heavy skillet. “And, yeah, because Helloco kept painting it. He was obsessed with the place. That’s got to mean something.”

“You really believe the bomb threats were all about setting up this giant diversion so he could retrieve the paintings?”

“I do. I’m guessing Helloco already has buyers lined up because transporting the paintings would be complicated and dangerous.”

“Nothing he ever shied from before.”

Taylor considered that. “True.”

Will poured enough wine and bouillon to cover the meat and vegetables. “Why do you think he came back now?” He covered the pan. The dish would need to simmer about three hours, but that was no problem. Taylor was adamant that they didn’t want to show up at the graveyard until well past closing hours.

“I don’t know. Maybe he needed the money. He must have always intended to at some point. Maybe he knew it was now or never. He’s not getting any younger.” Taylor drank from his bottle of beer. He flicked a drop from his full lower lip, and Will found himself mesmerized by that unconsciously sexy gesture.

“Yeah. Well.” Will filled a glass with water. He’d have preferred wine or, better yet, bourbon, but his brains were scrambled enough. “And our plan is what? We’re going to stroll around the cemetery until we spot Helloco with his trusty spade?”

Taylor laughed. Will’s heart lightened. It felt like it had been a very long time since he’d heard Taylor laugh.

“No. I’ve got a list of the gravesites we need to check out.”

“Aren’t there something like seventy thousand graves?”

“Seventy-something plots. Over three hundred thousand graves.”

“Please tell me you narrowed the list?”

Taylor’s eyes tilted. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his private joke. “Don’t worry. We’re only going to be checking out the graves marked
Hinault
.”

* * *

Chopin’s grave was alight with flowers and burning candles. Bright moonlight illuminated the downbent head of Music atop the pale pedestal and gilded the composer’s profile within the stone medallion beneath the statue. The profusion of red roses ringing the tomb rustled in an invisible breeze.

“Wait. I think maybe we’re going the wrong way.” Taylor stopped walking. The moonlight also delineated his features as he studied the map he’d purchased from the florist shop outside the walled city of the dead.

Will peered over Taylor’s shoulder. The night air smelled of Taylor’s—actually Will’s—soap, damp earth, and sycamores.

“We have to go back.” Taylor folded the map again.

“Don’t think I’m criticizing, but—”

“We’re not lost.”

“Okay. But if—”

“This way,” Taylor said briskly, turning back the way they had come. Will followed.

Taylor was a little in the lead as they started up two sets of stairs, turned right toward the intersection of small chapels, and turned right again onto avenue Laterale du sud. They took the steps of avenue Transversale #1 briskly, the pound of their boots in perfect time as they moved—straight to a dead end.

Taylor swore.

They stared up at the towering obelisk to the right.

The gravesites at Père Lachaise encompassed everything from simple, unadorned headstones to towering monuments like the obelisk puncturing the heavy canopy of stars above them. There were statues too numerous to count, fenced plots, and even elaborate minichapels dedicated to the memory of a well-known person or family, and all of it crammed together in an architectural hodgepodge. Many of the moss-covered tombs provided perfect hiding places, roughly the size and shape of phone booths, with just enough space for a mourner—or a shooter.