by Ally Blake
CHAPTER FOUR
ARMAND KNOCKED ONCE before striding into Jonathon’s office.
Imogen looked up from where she was taking notes. Without a word she unfolded herself from the chair and melted from the room. Why couldn’t Evie be more like her? Dignified, mindful, not disturbing in any way?
Jonathon checked the contraption on his wrist where a watch ought to be. “A little over three hours till you stormed into my office. My money was on one. How goes it?”
“Interminably.”
“You don’t say.”
“She can’t sit still. She’s always shifting position. Twirling, stretching, rocking back and forth.”
Armand had had a kid in his first platoon with an attention-deficit condition. A good kid—super-fit, keen, but a total daydreamer. Armand was sure he’d lost years off his life trying to keep the kid alive. Until the day the kid’s number was up.
He ran a hand down his face. Not going there. Not any more.
“Are you punishing me for something? Did I bruise your delicate feelings in some way?”
“When will you realise Evie Croft is not penance, she’s a gift. Learn from her. Guide her. Find common ground. Find a way to work together. You’ll thank me.”
Armand slouched into the chair across from Jonathon’s desk. “She’s on to me.”
“She’s into you?”
“On to,” Armand enunciated, certain Jonathon had heard him just fine. “She called me out for not having a computer.”
“Armand, old friend, anyone with eyes could tell you’re a Luddite. Your watch is ancient.”
“It’s vintage.”
“Your phone is arcane.”
“It makes and receives phone calls. Anything else is superfluous to requirements. The moment I feel myself pining for a selfie stick I’ll upgrade. She also did something to your computer.”
Jonathon’s face lit up. “As in...?”
“After rolling her eyes at the screen so often I thought she’d burst a blood vessel suddenly she was done. Twenty-four hours of videos finished in a morning.”
Jonathon barked with laughter. “Told you I can pick them.”
“Why are you smiling? She cheated.”
“She’s industrious.”
“You act as if this is a trifling consideration. She is the kind of character I would usually be hired to uncover, not someone I would ever choose to work alongside.”
Jonathon waited for Armand to finish his denouncement. “You done?”
“Quite.”
“Did she sit back and stare at the ceiling once she was done...?” Jonathon waved a hand.
“Being industrious?” Armand helped. “She did not.”
“Did she pretend to work while surreptitiously checking her phone?”
No, and neither did she appear furtive or nervous. Check over her shoulder or blink excessively. All signs of guilt. “She appeared utterly delighted with herself. Then asked to be put to work.”
Jonathon held out his hands in supplication before his phone rang.
“A moment,” said Jonathan, holding up a finger. He pressed a button and took a call, leaving Armand with his thoughts.
Armand brought out his phone. He did indeed have one. Though he mainly used it to ignore concerned messages from his family back in Paris who were terrified he was working on something dangerous.
He wasn’t a technophobe, as Evie had declared. He’d built a ham radio while at uni. Fixed a walkie-talkie once in the middle of a mortar attack.
His brain worked better with the tactile feel of paper and pencil in hand. No doubt an echo of growing up in a family of art lovers, gallery owners, generations of Debussey auctioneers, where the senses were meant for the appreciation of beauty, form, history, not for looking into a person’s eyes, peeling back layers of their soul and seeing to their darkest heart.
“Everything okay?” Jonathon asked.
Tired of having to assure people he was “fine”, Armand didn’t deign to answer. He stood. Said, “What now?”
“Regarding...?”
“Ms Croft.”
“I meant it when I said that is entirely up to you. Whatever it takes for you to get to the bottom of whatever the hell is wrong with my shiny new app. It’s the only reason I brought you here after all.”
“Really? From memory you brought me here because... Let me try to bring up the exact words. I was ‘wasting away in my big, ivy-covered chateau like some tragic hero in a gothic novel’.”
“Heroine. I believe I used the word heroine.”
Armand moved to the door.
“Evie can help you, Armand. If you don’t believe me, kick her to the kerb.”
With that Jonathon pressed another button on his desk and took another call, and this time Armand walked away and kept going, all the way to his room at the end of the hall.
The door was shut, but he could hear noise from within. A throb, like a heartbeat. He pressed his thumb onto the discreet pad and the lock clicked open.
In the short time she’d been back from her break, Evie had made herself at home. She’d figured out the lamps had dimmers and had switched them all to bright. She’d plugged her phone into a tiny speaker in the shape of a pineapple, and it was pumping out music.
She’d pulled her hair into a messy knot on top of her head and it bounced from side to side as she swayed on her feet, fingers tapping over her keyboard. The light from the monitors shining on her contented face.
And the whole room smelled like cherries.
“Ms Croft. Evie.”
Clearly not having heard him enter, she nearly jumped out of her boots, her short skirt flapping and swishing around the tops of her long legs. In the brighter light the instant rush of pink to her cheeks was clear.
She pressed something on her phone and the music went dead. “I saw you in Jonathon’s office. Am I fired?”
“Did you do something that would make that a concern?”
She held up the Post-it note. In his handwriting it read, “Finish the training videos.”
“I believe Jonathon would have been disappointed if you hadn’t found a way around them.”
She held a hand to her chest as she laughed, clearly relieved. “I get why HR would insist—it’s the age of the lawsuit after all. But he needs to invest in better videos.”
“Feel free to tell him.”
“Did you have to watch them?”
Armand breathed out before saying, “Of course.”
She pointed a finger his way and laughed. “Liar!”
He’d held eye contact. He’d not shifted his feet. His nostrils had not flared. Every sign of lying subjugated by years of specialised training in the Legion. And yet she’d seen through him.
He could tell himself his heart had not speeded up, his hands did not sweat. Those feelings, that level of care, had been worn down to the nub.
Which had nothing at all to do with his change of subject. “Your lunch companion seemed fond of you.”
“Jamie? No. Do you think?”
“There was no need to think. He made it perfectly clear.”
“How? No. Don’t tell me. It wouldn’t matter if he was...fond.”
“And why not?”
“Work and play don’t mix. Lines become blurred. Trust misconstrued. Boundaries breeched. And when things fall apart...” Evie turned her fist into a bomb which exploded with accompanying sound effects.
Her mouth quirked. Such a pretty mouth. Light, soft, prone to laughter.
“You Australians are too uptight,” Armand chided. “In France such things are not a concern. Lovers are found where they are found. In a bar, at a party, at work. The location is merely scenery.”
“Right,” she said, her huge brown eyes no longer blinking. Instead they held on to his in such a way
he found it hard to disengage. “I’ll make sure to remember that.”
Growling, mostly beneath his breath, he said, “Would you like to know what you are going to do with all that stuff or not?”
Instantly deflected, she placed her hands on either side of a screen as if covering a pair of sensitive ears. “This stuff, I’ll have you know, is beyond your wildest imaginings. Yes, I would like to know what I am going to be doing with all this stuff!”
“You signed the confidentiality agreement?”
Her eyes narrowed, temper crackling. “Of course I did.”
All that energy, Armand thought. Was there ever a time when he’d burned with such passion? About anything good?
He held out a hand, motioning to the lounge. She took one end, he took the other. A face-off.
“Jonathon has recently purchased a start-up app and wishes for us to give it a once-over before it launches.”
Evie was up, moving back to the middle of the room, where she stretched her arms over her head, did a small pirouette before stopping and pinning him with those dark eyes of hers. “He’s already bought it?”
Armand nodded.
“And now he wants me to have a look?”
“Yes.”
“That’s like buying a house and then checking for termites.”
“I believe I have mentioned Jonathon can be reckless when over-excited.”
“Any one of the guys downstairs could check the code, could Beta-test. Why would he need me? Armand?”
“Yes, Evie.”
“Does Montrose’s shiny new app have termites?”
“We believe so.”
Evie slapped her hands together, then had the good grace to look chagrined. “It’s not uncommon. No program is perfect. Unless... Unless he’s concerned that the problem is systemic. Or deliberate. Is that why he has us holed up here? He believes his app was sabotaged?”
Armand ran a hand over the bristle on his chin, chiding himself on how staunchly he’d resisted. It was time to stop thinking of her in terms of her relative youth. Her innocence. Just because he’d lived a dozen more lifetimes than she had, it did not diminish her resourcefulness, her value.
“Jeez,” she said, pacing now. “Who would do such a thing?”
“People whose proposals he has rejected. People whose companies he has bought and dismantled. Competitors. Anonymous...”
“Okay. I get it. You’ve had to cast the net wide.”
“You have no idea.”
“If I’m finding termites, what’s your part in all this?”
“I figure out who put them there and why.”
“How?”
“My background is in history. Finance. Law. I talk to people. Comb through online chatter, phone records, bank statements.” Mostly above board. A man with his responsibilities had to do what he had to do. “They’ll have given themselves away at some point. Via a pay-out, a boast in a pub, a line in a contract. Everyone does.”
She glanced over his shoulder to the pile of folders on his desk, the legal books on the shelves behind. “Clever. A little scary, but impressive. And you’ve been doing all this on your own?”
He nodded.
She twisted her fingers together. Cracked a few knuckles. “Well, you’re not alone anymore. Point the way, partner.”
Armand felt a skitter of something flicker to life behind his ribs. He wouldn’t go so far as calling it zeal, or gusto, but it was something. An echo. A memory. The thrill of the hunt. “What do you need?”
Her mouth curved into a Cheshire cat grin. “Nothing that’s not already there. Programmers always leave breadcrumbs. Snail trails. Their personal signature. If they’ve left tracks I’ll find them. Wow, I sounded pretty fierce just now. I bet you’re not used to that kind of talk in your field.”
Before he even felt the words coming they came. “Ah, but I wasn’t always the dashing paper pusher you see before you. Not all that long ago I worked in search and rescue.”
Evie stopped her pacing and slowly sat on the armrest, drinking him in like a sponge. “You? How?”
“A family friend’s little girl had gone missing.”
“Come on, you can’t leave me hanging. What happened? How on earth did you get involved?”
Realising he’d put himself in it, Armand saw only one way out: the truth.
“I’d had...experience tracking bad people down. My father’s friends begged my family to ask me to help. I put together a team of colleagues from my previous employ whom I believed would have the requisite skills, the emotional stamina, the trustworthiness. For her father was prominent. French government. A good man, with divisive left-wing views. The chances of recovery, even if we tracked her, were slim.”
“Then what?” Evie asked, her face grim, her voice a mite breathless. “Please tell me there’s a happy ending coming.”
“We—as you said—followed the breadcrumbs and recovered the little girl in less than twenty-four hours. Alive. Unhurt. Happy ending.”
For all his covertness word had spread through the highest echelons of power. Problem on the down-low? He was the man to fix it. Without even meaning to, Armand had built himself a posse of men like him: skilled but untethered, having witnessed a lot of bad and now looking to do some good.
And it had been good. The perfect blend of his experience and education.
No matter how hard he tried to cap the recollection there, to the good times, his mind flowed to its logical conclusion. To Lucia. The little girl’s aunt. They’d met the day he’d brought her niece home. Coolly beautiful, polished, and from a family as venerated as his own, she would, he’d believed, be his way back to the real world. He’d been wrong.
“Wow, Armand,” said Evie on an outward breath, her husky voice tugging him gently back to the present. “You’re a real-life hero. You and your Action Adventure All-Stars.”
Armand shook his head. “No more than anyone with skills who knows how to use them.”
“Come on. You’re allowed to feel a little smug. You did that! You saved a girl.”
She was so chuffed at the thought, Armand felt a smile tug at the edges of his eyes. It caught, ached, as if those muscles had not been used in a very long time. He didn’t realise he was sitting forward, leaning in, until he breathed in and caught the scent of cherry.
He rubbed both hands over his face before pulling his heavy body to standing then walked purposefully back to his desk and sat.
All the while thinking, Breadcrumbs. Snail trails.
Every life followed a path. Straight, meandering, going around in circles. Paths that were broad and gentle or treacherous and overstretched. Paths that were halted by sudden mountains, the traveller stopped, stymied, stuck before finding a way over, or around. Or not.
It made sense that computer programs—programmed by humans—would be the same. It made sense that Evie, knowing the terrain, would be able to follow the map and find Jonathon’s mountain. Leaving Armand to find out who’d put it there.
He’d planned to give Evie only pieces of the puzzle, to ensure the security of the project. Now he found himself saying, “Blue icon.”
Like a team member he’d worked with a hundred times, she had his shorthand down. She bounded back to her desk and beamed at the screen. “Got it.”
He gave her the password. She typed it in and waggled her fingers as she waited for it to load.
He saw the moment she noted the name of the program. Not so much a new start-up app as Game On—Jonathon’s new flagship telecommunications software. The one the entire country was waiting for.
Evie turned to him with comically wide eyes. “Are you kidding me?”
Armand shook his head.
Then watched as a calm came over Evie. As she breathed in and out. As she pressed her feet into the ground and shook the jitters from her hands. He�
��d seen those moves more times than he could count. She was preparing herself for battle.
“I can do this, Armand.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said, and meant it.
For the next several minutes they worked in silence—Evie tapping away, fingers flying over her customised keyboard, the mouse. Face a study in concentration.
Armand tried to find his rhythm. Marking up red flags in correspondence between Jonathon’s lawyers and the company from whom he’d bought the base software. But he couldn’t settle. “How’s it going?”
Glints of gold snapped in her big brown eyes as she turned them on him. “No termites as yet, if that’s what you wanted to hear.”
Armand wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted, so he let it go.
But after a few seconds, Evie asked, “If I’m the Exterminator, then what do we call you?”
“Armand will do just fine.”
“Come on,” she said, half closing one eye. “A title gives you focus. Even Napoleon wanted to be Emperor. So who are you?”
Evie couldn’t possibly know how much that question had weighed on him his whole life. Who was he? A Debussey. A scholar. An art historian. Yes, but also a foot soldier. An enforcer. A leader. A helper. A shadow. A blade. Until the day he’d realised that even the most determined, most skilled, most focussed fighter for good could be brought to their knees by bad luck.
Right now he was a friend doing a friend a favour.
And to do that well he needed a partner on the mission. For that was what she was. Her knowledge of the playing field was stronger than his.
He’d believed Jonathon had given him this young woman as a move in one of his games. But there was far more to her than exuberance and a knack for being underestimated. Armand felt a flicker of self-reproach, when he’d thought he was done with feeling much at all.
He cleared his throat. “You can call me the Undertaker.”
Evie laughed, the sound husky and sure. Then she shot him a sideways glance.
Another very different sliver of sensation shimmered to life in parts of him he’d thought were nothing but dust motes, pain and remorse.