Page 148 of Blood Game

Who was she now?

Jehanne, the name the partisans had given her? A simple farm girl who wanted only to go home?

But as she looked around the kitchen one last time with its scarred counter, porcelain metal sink, and the emptiness that looked back at her from every corner, she realized that what she remembered no longer existed. It was gone, just as Etienne and Edouard were gone, their father, and so many others.

A light snow had started to fall as she left the farmhouse. She hesitated just outside the door at the thought that she should lock it, then laughed to herself.

There was no lock, only the latch that her father always set in place. And the reality that no lock would stop the Germans if they chose to come there. They would kick down the door, then not finding whatever they were after, they would torch the house as they had burned so many in other towns and villages she had seen. But the tapestry was safe. They would not have that.

She pulled the field coat more tightly about her as she entered the orchard. She found half-frozen apples the crows had left behind beneath the layer of snow, and smiled faintly. Albert was right. They were not so bad once she brushed off the snow and dirt.

She looked back as she made her way deeper into the orchard, almost certain that she heard her mother calling her as she had when she was a child.

But it was only the sound of the crows.

CHAPTER

FORTY-THREE

PRESENT DAY, PARIS, THE MARAIS DISTRICT

The display lit up, the small icon pulsing across the darkened apartment.

Innis rolled over, his feet hitting the bare floor, swearing as cold air hit his bare ass.

“What is it?” Luna asked, sleep thick in her voice.

“Go back to sleep.” He tucked the comforter around her, then grabbed his jeans and left the room, hopping barefoot from the floor to the frayed area rug, then over to the table with the computer screen.

Bloody Christ, it was cold.

He slid into the chair, goose bumps in the cold apartment playing across a vivid tattoo of Khal Drogo that glared back from Innis's chest as if he had sprung from his flesh.

Hugging Khal Drogo with arms wrapped around himself against the cold, he opened the message from the gamer in Turkey who had taken on the persona of 'Warlord,' and claimed to have sources into a large Islamic group.

Warlord was hard to pin down, more so than other gamers he communicated with, maybe because of that connection—gamer by night, local terrorist by night?

“No go,” the message opened. “The one you asked about was last seen riding into the woods, two winters past.”

'Riding into the woods'—gamer-speak for disappeared—two winters past needed no explanation. The wanker hadn't been seen in two years. He could be anywhere.

Innis signed off, then attempted to access a rogue server he'd used in the past; a new player in cyberspace that was there one day, gone the next, like disappearing into a black hole.

He knew the logic—limited time at any one location, pass on information, contacts, or redirect funds from point A to point B, possibly to point C. Then disappear. No trace, as if it never existed. These blighters were sophisticated and experienced at hiding out—disappearing into the forest.

He swore when the access failed—not just denied, but came back with the message that it didn't exist. At least for now. Over the past twenty-four hours, most of them trolling around cyberspace, he'd come across the same thing, his screen lighting up with the contact, then cutting off.

A little cyber sleuthing, and he'd discovered a pattern, a sequence in the information string that changed, then changed again. But there was a pattern if you knew what to look for. And he did.

Whoever was driving this engine had programmed it to randomly connect to other rogue servers, then move on after a certain amount of time, signals bouncing from one to the other like ping-pong balls. But it was done almost seamlessly, so that anyone using the server probably didn't even notice the hand-off.

Hiding in the forest. Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my, he thought. Security at its best, or worst, depending on how you looked at it, and depending on who was using it. And what they were using it for. Brave new world.

He loved that book and had read it several times. He shook his head, talk about being ahead of your time, clued in to things that other people hadn't even thought of yet. Before he and his mates were even born!

He caught the alert from downstairs, the feed from the security camera appearing on the little screen in the lower corner. Anthony returned and entered the apartment, then the faint click of the door a few seconds later.

“You look like shit!”