Page 171 of Blood Game

There was that déjà vumoment as they made their way through baggage claim to transportation, where her publisher had arranged for a driver to meet them, a memory from a year ago, and someone else waiting for her. James Morgan.

They'd exchanged text messages and there had been those Skype calls, linked up by satellite from some place he couldn't talk about. Then weeks when there was neither.

“I'll call when we get back.”

Back, from those secret places, back from things he couldn't tell her about.

She lived in that gray area, limbo, the dead zone, some called it, where she'd been before, when her brother was over there—that place between anger and that raw, naked fear, praying there would be that next call and fear at what it might bring. Holding on.

Prayer.

When had she said that first one again? When had she started to believe in it again? Needed to believe in it?

That horrific night in London over a year ago? At the abbey? Paris? At the quarry? When everything else was stripped away, and people had died?

She often thought of Micheleine Robillard the past year.

What were her hopes and dreams? What had she believed in? The tapestry and the secret woven in it? Or was it something more than that? What had sustained her? Faith as Albert once said? That sent her off to join the Resistance? Faith through horrifying losses? And then faith to face her own death?

The medallion Vilette had given her was warm between her fingers where it hung from the chain around her neck.

Vilette had lived long enough for her claim to be traced back as far as possible, and there had been an article in the French newspapers and on the internet about her claim to be related to Isabelle Raveneau.

Kris smiled, one last time in the spotlight.

“Too bad about the old girl,” Alec Cameron said as the driver made their way through late-morning traffic from the airport. “Since she claimed to be a descendent of Isabel Raveneau.”

He had accompanied her up from London. She'd been coordinating the marketing strategy for Cate's book with him from New York, then working directly with him in the London office as the release date drew closer. There were conferences to book, marketing meetings for the European release, and press meetings.

He had become a good friend, even though that was all it was. He'd accepted it with typical British stoicism.

“You can't blame a lad for trying.”

Now he looked out the window of the limo at the gray sky that hung over the countryside like a soggy layer of cotton.

“Bloody, fucking cold, I say,” he complained. “And wet. Bloody rain!”

“As opposed to London?” She couldn't resist, remembering her last trip over to visit Albert and Valentine.

It had still been warm then. The apple crop that fall had been especially good, and Valentine had launched her website with the apple recipes handed down from her grandmother, with help from Innis in Paris, before he and Luna decided they needed to take a long vacay—some place warm and tropical, as the investigation continued with questions about internet hacking, rogue operators, and Anthony was forced to move his gaming operation from the apartment in the Marais.

Albert chose to remain at the farm in Montigny as the hunt for James of Montfort's final resting place continued through the winter months. The tapestry had been found and Micheleine's role in keeping it safe from the Nazis decades earlier had been recognized throughout France, a country that had suffered much at the hands of terrorists the past several years, and in need of heroes, even if it was a nineteen-year-old girl who had been dead for decades. Like another girl, centuries earlier she had been compared to.

Micheleine.

You can rest easy now, Kris thought,wherever you are, her fingers wrapped around the pendant.

There was no documentation where she was actually buried. There was no stone in the abbey graveyard. A marker had been placed in the churchyard at Montigny, but she wasn't there either, one of those lost during the war.

Kris had worn the pendant since Vilette gave it to her, a reminder of Vilette's faith in her ancestor, the faith of friendship, faith that she had once thrown away, and now needed to hold onto more than ever.

“This is probably another snipe hunt,” Alec grumbled. “This will make the fourth gravesite they've searched.”

“Speaking of snipes…” She glanced out the window as the driver wound their way out of traffic toward Inveresk, and that old parish church where the search had narrowed.

“Have you ever actually seen one?” A long-necked bird with a sprout of feathers on its head, she thought, angling a look at his long frame and red hair spiked up all over his head. Not far off.

“Don't start,” he fired back at her “or I will hand over the dog book author who keeps sending in re-writes.