Free The Paris Caper by Nina Bruhns Page B

that in your stack?”
    Pierre frowned. “I’ll
have to go back and check my notes.”
    “Here. Let me.” Jean-Marc
shuffled through the hand-written pages, skimming over the sea of dates and
figures. “Look. Here’s one more that fits. Another piece of silver.”
    His lieutenant gave him
an incredulous look. “How the hell did you see that so fast? My head is
spinning with all these facts and figures.”
    “It’s a gift,” Jean-Marc
said with a grin. “I was a national math scholar in school. Statistics were
always my favorite.”
    Pierre rolled his eyes. “ Merde .
It’s unnatural.” He gave him an appraising glance. “Remind me never to play
poker with you.”
    Jean-Marc laughed. “Don’t
worry. I only gamble when I want revenge on someone. Well, actually, no one
invites me to poker night any more. Sore losers.”
    “Don’t bloody blame
them,” Pierre muttered.
    By late afternoon,
Jean-Marc had already gotten a positive response from the ever-efficient
Germans, including an email with all the pertinent data on five matching
robberies over the past three years in that country. So before quitting time he
appropriated one of the incident rooms, then he and Pierre tacked up a large
map of Europe and also one of Paris on the wall. Using stick pins, they marked
all the places where le Revenant had struck: red for jewelry, silver for
silver items, and blue for the three paintings that fit the profile.
    They stood back and
looked it over for a moment. Suddenly they exchanged broad smiles.
    “The train,” they said in
unison. “He’s been taking the train.”

Chapter 5
     
    “Are you all right?”
Sofie asked for the fifth time since they’d sat down at an outside table at
Café Constantinople, which was across the street from Valois Vieilli.
    Ciara mustered a smile.
She wasn’t. It had been six hours since Jean-Marc had left her bed, and she was
worried as hell. Emotionally, she felt like she’d been through a blender. But
Sofie didn’t need to hear about her problems. She had plenty of her own.
    “I’m fine,” she said.
“How’s your face today?”
    “Better,” the girl said
softly, touching a finger to the largest bruise on her cheek. Despite the thick
layer of disguising make-up, it still showed livid purple in a circling ring of
blue and yellow. “I’ve been taking aspirin and it hardly hurts at all anymore.”
She picked up her pen and went back to doodling on a napkin.
    Ciara watched the gentle
brown eyes of the girl she had grown to love as a little sister and knew she
was lying, too. Ciara wanted to kill Beck for what he’d done to her. Renewed
anger welled up within her, and she embraced it. She’d brought Sofie along on
her excursion to Valois’s shop specifically to remind herself of the
consequences of associating with cops.
    A reminder she
desperately needed after last night.
    She heard the faint
tinkle of a bell and glanced across the street. Valois had returned from his
errand and was unlocking the shop’s front door. She’d give him a few minutes
before walking over for their meeting.
    “You’re glowing today,”
Sofie said, yanking her out of her thoughts.
    “What?”
    “Glowing. And yet, you look
so incredibly sad. Why?”
    Ciara lifted her cup and
took a sip of the sweet Turkish coffee that was the specialty of the café. “I
can’t imagine,” she evaded.
    “It’s a man, isn’t it?”
Sofie pressed. “That detective you said you met the other night,” she concluded
with a nod, shocking Ciara. “You’ve seen him again.”
    “Maybe,” she said,
schooling her expression. The girl was too perceptive by half. Or maybe the
incredible night she’d spent making love with that detective showed on her face
as plainly as Sofie’s bruises. “But it won’t happen again,” she said. It
couldn’t. No matter how much it hurt to think about never seeing him again.
“I’ll have to move now. So he can’t find me.”
    Which is why it was a
mystery that she’d hit