Free The Dragon’s Mark by Alex Archer

station serving Paris-Orléans, so she hadn’t fully escaped the tug of form and design, but it now housed one of the more formidable displays of art in all of Paris, short of the Louvre itself. Once there she spent hours wandering up and down the long rows of displays, drinking in the creative talents of Renoir, Degas, Monet and van Gogh, just to name a few.
    Her visit was marred, however, by the memory of the figure she’d seen in the chapel and the now-constant feeling that she was under observation. More than once she tried to catch someone in the act, but each time she looked, she was unable to see anything or anyone out of the ordinary. No one turned away too quickly. No one let their gaze linger too long. The museum was full of patrons and they had their eyes on the paintings, not on her. Yet the feeling persisted and made her uncomfortable enough that she eventually decided to call it a day.
    She returned to the hotel around sunset, took some time to freshen up and to calm her nerves and then, after picking up her rental car, she headed out of the city for her rendezvous with Roux.
    The drive south passed without incident and it wasn’t too long before she was pulling up in front of the massive gates that guarded the entrance into the estate.
    As usual, once inside the house, Henshaw led her to the study, where she found Roux seated in the leather chair behind his desk, reading the day’s copy of Le Monde.
    Seeing her, he rose and smiled. “Annja, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
    She had already decided to play it straight. “I wanted to talk to you about last night.”
    “Of course.” Roux ushered her over to a pair of leather armchairs and offered one to her while settling into the other one himself. “Before you say anything else, let me apologize for my boorish behavior at the end of the evening. My remarks were totally uncalled for and I hope you let them pass as the angry grumblings of a man whose home had just been invaded by thieves.”
    He smiled pleasantly and Annja realized that he was being sincere; he really did feel bad for the things he had said to her. She gracefully accepted his apology and moved quickly past it to the reason she’d made the drive all the way out here.
    Reaching into her backpack she withdrew a cardboard box in which she had safely tucked away the paper dragon, then withdrew the latter from inside the box. She stood the little paper dragon on the table between herself and her host.
    “What’s this?” Roux asked, picking up the dragon and turning it over in his hands. “What a marvelous specimen. I didn’t know that you did origami.”
    “I don’t,” Annja replied. “I discovered it in the display room last night while helping to clean up in the wake of the attack.”
    Roux stopped looking at the figure and turned his head in her direction instead. She wasn’t surprised by his carefully blank expression—after all, he was a world-class poker player—but the very fact that it was there told her what she needed to know.
    Roux understood the significance of what he was holding.
    He wasn’t going to make it easy, though. “I’m sorry?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.
    She relayed the tale as quickly as possible—how she’d gone back to the display room looking for something, she didn’t know what; how she’d found the paper dragon and what she’d done afterward to try and understand just what the simple figure might mean. She told him of her suspicion that it had been left there intentionally, as a type of calling card, to let them know that this wasn’t yet over and that they were up against a foe who made your typical hired gunman look like a schoolboy compared to the skills the other could bring to bear.
    “I think your life is in great danger,” she told him finally, and then sat back to await his reaction.
    Roux had been silent throughout, had let her get her facts on the table and had patiently waited through her explanation as she