Secrets (8 page)

The joy on
Sylvain’s face was undeniable. He ran to give his grandmother a
bear hug, stopping halfway, afraid to hurt her. Realizing his
dilemma, she hugged him and kissed both cheeks, leaning her
forehead against his.

He then led her
to the sofa, where he helped her to ease into a sitting position
and then sat beside her. Not a word had yet been spoken. Watching
from her spot in the hall, Sonya knew that Sylvain was having
difficulty keeping in his tears.

One look at
Madame
Lalonde and she knew why. The stately, stylish lady
had a large cut on her forehead that had been dressed with
steri-strips and which was beginning to bloom in shades of blue,
maroon and purple. She had bruises around her neck and moved as if
in great pain.

“
Madame
Lalonde,” Sonya exclaimed, walked over to her and knelt to take her
hand. “I am so sorry that this has happened to you. Who did this?”
she demanded.

“Perhaps,” BB
stated as he walked into the room, “we can spare
Madame
Lalonde from reliving this disturbing occurrence more than once and
wait until everyone else is here to reveal her story. Is that
satisfactory, Lise?” he asked very gently, almost as if he and she
knew one another.

“
Absolument,
”
Madame
Lalonde replied. “One time
,
c’est bien!”

With that, BB
handed her a drink. What it was, Sonya had no idea, but she nodded
thanks and took a mouthful, tossing it back into her throat and
swallowing with what seemed to be appreciation and surprisingly,
anger.

Within seconds
of each other, Mike and Steve walked into the room and Maurice
simply seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

As they had
lunch, Sonya analyzed the people in the room around her. They were
having a very civilized lunch upon the heels of the Lalonde home
having been vandalized, its owner injured and two of its
inhabitants having been kidnapped. What was not wrong with this
picture?

“Perhaps, Lise,
you would allow me to tell some of the story, the story that the
police have told me. That might be less stressful for you. Is that
acceptable?” BB asked.
Madame
Lalonde simply nodded.

BB began. “From
what we know, whoever kidnapped Lucien and Bryan were looking for
some data that they believed was in their possession. Obviously, it
wasn’t upon their person, so they came to the house to look for it.
Unfortunately, Lise came into the house as they were searching for
whatever it is that they were after. They tried to force her to
tell them where it was, but she had no knowledge of what that was
or where it was. The neighbours called the police because they
heard noises and once the sirens were heard the thugs took off. Am
I missing anything, Lise?” he asked solicitously.

“That is what
happen,”
Madame
Lalonde agreed, taking another somewhat
indelicate slug of her drink, obviously alcohol of some sort.

“Do you know
what they wanted?” Mike asked.

“
Non,
not for certain! I think it was memory card. We have no such thing,
n’est-ce pas, Sylvain
?” she asked her grandson.

“Only in my
camera,
Granmama
,” he replied. “And remember, I lend to my
friend, Gerard, to take to his holiday. The card, it was empty when
I give to him.”

BB continued.
"It was so very fortunate that Sonya and Sylvain left the house
when they did as they, in all probability, would have also been
injured. I am pleased beyond belief that Sonya made the decision to
seek out help from Steven and Mike."

Sonya just
listened. BB called
Madame
Lalonde by her first name,
definitely not their first encounter in her opinion. The people
that took Bryan wanted something, something that wasn’t on his
person. A memory card?

Okay, they had
several memory cards with them. One was in the computer, simply
stored there as a backup to the one in Bryan’s camera. Perhaps, she
would be doing some research after lunch in her room.

The minute that
Sonya was in her bedroom, she quietly locked the door behind her
and rushed over to the bureau to boot up her computer. To her
surprise, her WiFi found and logged onto an unsecured network with
decent strength, something that had been an issue at
Madame
Lalonde’s. Bryan had explained to her that most folks in France
used their cells for communication versus having a computer.

The first
website that Sonya checked was her email. There was nothing from
Bryan and other than checking for family news, she quickly
exited.

Then she opened
the memory card already stored in the computer. To her utter shock,
it was filled with photographs that she had not previously seen. It
held photos of paintings, beautiful paintings that had been shot
from every possible angle.

She was certain
that these were Bryan’s, despite the fact that his usual work was
much more contemporary and edgy. These were in a much different
style of painting, still contemporary but with a familiar feel and
look. Otherwise, why would he have documented them in the same way
that he documented all of his paintings? Perhaps these were the
paintings that he had made for Grégoire.

There were also
photos of people. The only one that she recognized was Grégoire.
Perhaps the other people were his fellow students and friends.

What gnawed at
the back of her mind more than anything was the lack of knowledge
that she had about Bryan’s time in Paris. Certainly she had been
more than preoccupied at the time with her grandmother’s death and
her parents’ murders. No small wonder she hadn’t kept up to date
with Bryan’s happenings and friends in Paris during that period.
They had been in constant touch by email, but in hindsight, very
little had been said about his day to day life during that
time.

However, she
was here now, and some instinct led her to believe that what she
had in hand was the one piece of information that might be the key
to Bryan’s freedom. The question was what to do with it? Did she
trust anyone enough to share this information? This was, after all,
Bryan’s life that she was dealing with.

Steve was MI5,
that she knew. But he was in France. Did MI5 have any pull here? He
had just been introduced as her cousin and therefore family, but
she barely knew him. Was he someone that she could trust?

Sonya mulled
over what she should do. Her cousin Mike was a possibility. He and
his brother, John, seemed to know Steve much better than the rest
of the family. But, if BB was indeed his father, would there be a
pull towards him and not to her? Maybe at dinner, she would pump
him for information. Maybe.

In the
meantime, she would have to be careful. Certainly if all her
instincts were wrong, she was no match for Maurice or Steve, should
they be the enemy. Even the older BB struck her as a formidable
foe.

Mike, Sylvain
and
Madame
Lalonde were in the same position as she was,
except perhaps for maybe
Madame
Lalonde. She obviously knew
BB previously and that might be a difficulty, given that he was a
dark horse, no matter how accommodating. The bottom line was that
if it came down to a choice, Sylvain would side with his
grandmother. Understanding the closeness she had held with her own
grandmother she deduced that she was on her own.

Added to that,
she had no idea whatsoever where she was. Sonya had chosen not to
add the outrageously expensive roaming option to her cell phone
when they left, deciding that they didn’t need it on their
honeymoon, especially since Bryan knew Paris so well. She certainly
could have used a Google GPS map pinpointing her location right
about now. If need be, she still might use it, no matter the
expense.

In a flash of
insight, she pulled out her cell and composed a text message to
Bryan. Without disclosing anything that she knew or what had
happened, she simply asked how he was and where he was, suggesting
they should fly home ASAP. It couldn’t hurt to try.

Now, what to do
about the memory card? It was too tiny to try to hide anywhere on
her person, it would be lost or damaged if out of its plastic
sleeve. Pacing the floor didn’t help much. It was a small room.

Finally, an
idea! Before Sonya pulled the tiny memory card that held her mp3’s
in her cell phone, she copied the one in the computer and saved it
in a folder named Art. She placed the art card into her cell phone,
and put the MP3 card from the cell into the plastic sleeve and
slipped that back into her computer.

Changing into
her jeans and dark, long sleeved shirt, she French braided her hair
out of the way and then washed her face. The cell phone was slid
into her jeans pocket. It was snug enough that she would know if it
moved or buzzed.

Next the
passports, and then their money. Undecided about the bulky airline
tickets, she made note of their retrieval code, the flight times
and flight numbers on a sheet of paper, and then slipped it into
the passports in her back pocket. If she and Bryan needed to leave
in a hurry, she would be prepared.

A knock on her
door surprised her. It was
Madame
Lalonde.

Ushering her
into the room, Sonya helped her to sit in the bedside chair.

“
Madame
Lalonde, are you all right?” she asked.

“
Oui!
I
wish to thank you for take care of Sylvain. He is just baby,” she
declared as tears formed in her eyes. “If he was at the house…”

Sonya knelt to
hug her landlady. “He wasn’t there,” she stated. “But you were, and
I’m so sorry that you were hurt. Is your arm broken?”

“
Non!
They dislocate to find memory card. I do not know where is.
Mon
pauvre
Sylvain! If they find him…” the older lady dissolved
into tears. Sonya embraced her until she was over her emotional
outburst. There was absolutely nothing that she could do to help
her, other than allow her to release the awful pressure and pain
that she obviously felt.

“Can I get you
a cup of tea?” Sonya asked.

“
Non,
Chérie, merci!
We both are in same situation. The men that we
love
son perdu
, lost! It is a pain that no one else can
feel.”

A large sigh
escaped and Sonya nodded. “Yes, we are alone, I agree.”

“Ah, not alone,
Chérie
, but in mind, there is
solidarite
with pain we
feel. We must do something, but it is something that I do not know.
Help me up, and I go to my room. We will talk at dinner.”

With that Sonya
assisted Madame Lalonde out of the chair and watched as she
gingerly walked across the room, out the door and across the hall
to her room.

Dinner was very
civilized and under other circumstances, would have been absolutely
divine. The dining table was perfect, the china obviously expensive
and the crystal exquisite.

“Is this your
house?” Sonya couldn’t resist asking.

“It is,”
replied BB. “Is it to your liking?” he asked, swirling his wine
casually.

“Most
definitely!” Sonya replied lifting her wine glass in salute. “It is
absolutely perfect. Thank you for taking us into your home,
especially under these circumstances.”

BB appeared
surprised by her statement. “The pleasure is mine,” he replied
graciously. “My home is greatly enhanced by her guests.”

Steve took a
deep breath and began what Sonya believed to be a somewhat
rehearsed speech. “Sonya, I need to ask, as difficult as it might
be, if you can perhaps give us some insight into the people that
you have met since you and Bryan have been in Paris. Of course,
other than
Madame
Lalonde, Sylvain and Lucien.”

Sonya thought
for a few minutes. “The only person that immediately comes to mind
is Bryan’s professor while he was studying here, Grégoire. I don’t
even know his last name to be honest.”

“So where did
you meet Grégoire,” Steve continued.

“At the
university, just after we arrived in Paris. We met again later that
day, at a bar called
Le Cavern
. To be brutally honest, in my
opinion Grégoire is a total asshole!” Realizing that she had sworn
unintentionally, Sonya blushed.

“I apologize
for using rude language, but that guy really, really is a pig! Can
you believe that he hit on me, not only at the university, but
again at the bar? He also made some comment about Crusader and
being a wizard. I dislike him so intensely, and I cannot give you a
reason why. I can’t understand why Bryan even gives him the time of
day!”

Several
eyebrows at the table rose in surprise at the mention of Crusader
and wizard, but no one remarked.

“This is the
only person you have met here?” Steve continued.

Sonya thought
for a second. “There was a woman, Mimi. She was at the bar when we
were there with Grégoire. We saw her again at
Montmartre.
I
liked her! According to Bryan, she really rang Grégoire’s bell at
some party when he got totally gross with her. Flipped him flat on
his back! I’ll raise a glass to that lady – she is A-okay in my
book!”

Steve grinned
at her. Obviously, he liked what she said. BB flitted a glance at
Steve and all Maurice did was nod and take a swallow of his
wine.

“You met no one
else?” BB prompted.

Sonya shook her
head. “Not that I can remember. We have been playing tourist, we
haven’t met many people other than those two. There were others at
the bar, but they were just students kissing Grégoire’s ass. I
labelled them Grégoire’s Groupies.”

Maurice choked
a bit on his wine, his hazel eyes sparkling in a face handsome
enough that it could have been in the movies, and then he seemed to
try to hide his rather large grin.