“That’s where they are,” she whispered on an exhale.
“So it would seem,” Parker said. He’d followed her gaze.
Nadeau found a rusty box against the wall. “Power’s been turned on.”
Obviously.
“And water,” Haubert added.
Miranda’s stomach clenched. This was Yanick’s hidy hole all right. So what now?
The other members of Haubert’s team gathered around and murmured in a mixture of French and English.
Miranda ran her flashlight over the swirling letters painted on the wall. There was a recess here, bricked in. “This entrance is boarded up.” She turned toward the van.
“Has to be another closer to the vehicle,” Parker said starting in that direction.
Haubert muttered something to his staff and two agents scurried over to the van, weapons drawn.
Miranda followed Parker through the overgrown grass alongside the building. She kept her eye on the van, hoping the agents didn’t discover anyone in it. At least not anyone who was armed.
It appeared they didn’t. One of them moved over to the hood and opened it.
Parker came to a stop a few feet from where the agents were working. “Here.”
She lifted her light. It was a hole in the wall.
A rectangular space where a door had been, as if whoever walled up the building had forgotten this entrance. It yawned before them like the opening of a dark cave.
No telling what or who might be in there.
Haubert echoed her thoughts. “Yanick may have more than Kosomov working with him.”
She thought about that. “Maybe not. He’d have to share the money.”
Nadeau leaned toward the opening, tried to peer inside. “Unless he’s going to kill them off first.”
A chilling thought.
The two agents who’d gone to the van returned carrying a hose. They’d disabled the vehicle so if Yanick and his men escaped the building, they couldn’t get away in it. Smart.
“Good work,” Haubert told them. Then he jabbered off quiet instructions to his team. They split up, half of them disappearing around one corner, the other half around the other.
“What’s your plan, Director?” Parker asked.
“A unit at each end of the building in case Yanick runs. A small team on the roof. Another to go in. Would you and Madame Steele lead that one?”
It had been a long time since Miranda had seen that look of satisfaction on Parker’s face.
“With pleasure,” he said and headed inside.
She was right behind him.
###
The air inside the old building felt as stagnant as if it had been there since Napoleon’s day. It smelled of dust and rotting plaster and some unidentifiable substance Miranda didn’t want to think about.
The space they found themselves in seemed fairly large. Cracked and broken walls, the ones intact reaching to a high, rustic looking ceiling. Might have once been some sort of storage room or maybe a back office, but it was hard to tell. Debris was scattered over the concrete floor, trash from squatters who had made their home here a good while ago. Thick cobwebs hung eerily from bowed rafters overhead.
Miranda ran her light over the beams. “Think the roof will cave in?”
Haubert’s goatee angled upward as his gaze followed the flashlight. “A chance we will have to take.”
No argument there.
Nadeau picked his way over to a corner. “There’s a door here.” He kicked at the wood until it gave way.
“Careful, Nadeau,” Haubert warned.
The agent nodded an acknowledgement but poked his head through the opening anyway. “Seems to be a hallway.”
He disappeared through the hole.
Miranda swept her light over the floor, making sure she wouldn’t trip as she hurried to the spot with Parker and Haubert alongside.
She reached it first and climbed over the broken boards and into the narrow corridor. Nadeau was a few feet away. It had a musty, old European smell here.
“Hold up,” she whispered.
He stopped and waited for the rest of them to catch up. Then, lights in tow, they all went exploring.
The ceiling wasn’t as high here, the cobwebs hanging low enough to brush your face as you moved. Miranda wasn’t normally squeamish but she had to grit her teeth at the creepy feeling. They passed doorframe after doorframe. Old offices or closets or whatnot. Parker opened a few of them. Nadeau a few more. But all they found was more dust and debris and decay. And the air was nastier.
How in the heck did the people who used this building decades ago get to other floors?
Nadeau stopped at a recess, kicked at it again. His shoe made a hollow sound that echoed through the air.
Miranda hoped nobody upstairs had heard that. There was a scamper of feet. Tiny feet. Mice. Or rats. Too small to belong to the human kind.
She let out a breath.
Nadeau stuck his head through the gap and looked up. “Seems to be an elevator shaft.”
A shaft with no car. A lot of good that did them.
Parker moved past him and around a corner. Where was he going? Miranda hustled past the other men and followed.
She found him pushing a door aside that actually opened. He gave her a victorious look. “Stairwell.”
Finally.
As Nadeau and Haubert caught up and joined them in the narrow space, Miranda ran her flashlight up the walls. A concrete staircase zigzagged above. It looked sturdy enough.
She hoped.
“Do you think that goes all the way to the fifth floor?”
“Only one way to find out,” Parker said. And he started up the first flight.
The staircase was even spookier than the rest of the place and it made Miranda a little claustrophobic. The air was like a sauna, and sweat beaded on her back as they ascended.
“Careful here,” Parker whispered.
She looked down as she turned and took the next flight. The cement of the steps was chipped in one place, cracked in another. The result of long years of neglect and moisture. From her construction days she knew that could mean any metal bars inside the concrete could be rusting, which could lead to a collapse.
But if a big guy like Grigori Kosomov had ascended these stairs recently, they should be okay. Unless the kidnappers had gone up another way.
She shined her light through the rails above, casting ghostly shadows. “Looks like these stairs might go to the top.” She couldn’t see all the way to the fifth floor.
“If not, we’ll find another way up,” Parker said.
If no one heard them coming first. She decided not to say that out loud.
They kept on climbing. Silently ascending with lights exploring and pistols drawn, their footsteps barely sounding on the steps.
At last they came to a landing with no more stairs. An ancient metal door stood before them. Miranda’s heart beat kicked up. For all they knew, Kosomov could be standing behind it with a gun, ready to fire.
Parker turned to the others to make sure everyone was ready, then pushed it open.
He stepped through. Miranda followed him and discovered another dark hallway.
Haubert pointed his flash to the left, hunting for the lighted window they’d seen from outside. But there was no clue to guide them. They inched their way along, passing a few boarded up doors. Whoever was going to renovate this building might turn the rooms behind them into apartments some day.
And then on the other side of the hall they found a recess and a door tucked on the side of it, almost hidden from view. Light shone under its threshold.
This was it.
The four of them stood for a long moment, listening for any sound of life.
Not a peep. Had they been seen?
So what now? Miranda had the urge to kick the door down and burst inside, guns blazing. But that would most certainly get Becker killed.
She looked at Parker, remembered what he’d said before abou
t hostage negotiations.
Parker caught her gaze, nodded, turned to Haubert.
Haubert nodded back at him.
That settled, Parker turned to the door and gave it three sharp raps.
“Monsieur Yanick? My name is Wade Parker. I would very much like to speak with you.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“One hundred and seventy-five milliliters of water. Eighty-five grams unsalted butter. Five large eggs.” Joan’s voice trembled as she read the numbers.
It was from fatigue as well as nerves.
They were on the last recipe. The choux dough.
It was to be done in five batches. One for each flavor of filling. But now that she looked at it closely, Joan saw the numbers for each batch were the same.
This was their last chance.
“Are we doing the one and seven and five sequence now?”
She barely heard Chef Emile’s voice from across the room. Her throat was clogging and her eyes were filling with tears.
Again.
She couldn’t help herself. All she wanted was for this nightmare to be over and she was afraid it never would be.
She grabbed another tissue and started to bawl.
Chef Emile got to his feet and crossed to her. “Oh, my poor, poor Madame Joan.”
Then he detoured to the small table near the window and the decanter of Bordeaux he’d had someone bring up a little while ago.
Joan could just imagine what the gossip in the kitchen was like now.
He poured some of the rich red wine into a lovely cut goblet and handed it to her. “Drink some of this.”
Blowing her nose, she shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“It will calm your nerves.”
She batted her hand at him. “We need clear heads.”
“Is your head so clear?”
She turned to look at him. He had a point. “Okay.” She took the glass out of his hand and gulped down a big swallow.
It burned and tasted as delicious and old as the city itself. Of course, he wouldn’t drink the cheap stuff. She felt herself relax a little.
Straightening her shoulders she looked down at the numbers again. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
“That is the spirit.” Once more Chef Emile’s long strides sounded against the floorboards as he went back to the safe.
Joan read off the numbers she’d written down last.
He turned the dial, pulled the handle.
The safe didn’t open.
“Oh, gawd. This is getting us nowhere.”
“We must keep trying.”
“Okay, okay.” She forced air into her lungs and read off the next set.
Nothing.
The next set. The next. And the next. All failed to open the safe.
This was what she’d been dreading. They would get to the last group of numbers and they wouldn’t work. All their efforts would have produced nothing. And that horrible man on the phone would kill Dave.
She’d never see him again.
A tear ran down her cheek and spilled onto the paper. Then another and another. She was falling apart. She always thought of herself as a tough Brooklynite. But the thought of losing Dave this way was breaking her down.
She couldn’t take it.
She looked down at the pad. Her tears had smeared the writing. “Oh, crap.”
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing.” She hadn’t meant to ruin the recipe Chef Emile had so carefully written.
Joan took a tissue and blotted the paper. Some of the words smudged more under the tissue.
“Shit!”
“Madame Joan?” Chef Emile rose from his chair.
She held up a hand. “No, I can fix it.”
She took another tissue, blotted some more. Didn’t seem to help. “I can still read it,” she told him.
Then she stopped blotting and blinked down at a single word on the page.
Choux.
For a long moment she stared at it, then began examining the rest of the recipe, reading it over carefully. “Now this is interesting.”
Chef Emile clumped back to the desk. “What is it, Madame Joan?”
“Did you write this the way your father gave it to you?”
“Oui. Exactement.”
“Word for word?”
“I translated word for word. Just the way he made me memorize it.”
“Look at the word choux. It’s mentioned in each part.” It was called pate a choux in some places, just choux in others.
Chef Emile picked up the paper and frowned at it. “I do not see your point.”
“At the end of each of the pastry cream sections, it says, ‘This filling is to be piped into the choux.’ The same sentence is repeated each time.”
“So?”
“This recipe isn’t for beginners. Any good chef would know that.”
He scratched his chin, which was beginning to show a light gray beard.
She picked up another page. “And look at the part for the glazes. ‘After baking, each of the choux will be dipped in the glaze.’ Again that’s obvious. It’s stated at the beginning. No need to repeat it.”
Still rubbing his chin, the chef read the paper again. “That does seem a bit repetitious.”
“Don’t you see? There must be a clue in the word choux.”
“Perhaps. But what?” He sat down on the old desk and held the paper so they could both see it.
They stared at it for what seemed like an hour. Joan’s eyes began to burn. This was too hard. If there really was a fortune in that safe and the old man wanted his son to use it, why had he made this so damn difficult?
She felt her lip quiver. She was on the verge of another crying fit.
Then she sat straight up.
“Madame Joan, what is it?”
“I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“A kid’s game I read about in a magazine years ago. I used to play it with my kids on rainy days and they were driving me nuts in the house.”
“A game?”
“A word game. The boys were just starting to read. Tommy was in first grade. Anyway, I used to write the numbers from one to twenty-six on little pieces of paper, fold each one and put them all into a bowl. Everyone got a turn to pull out one paper. They went round and round until one of them could spell a word. Callie was too little at first. She mostly put the paper in her mouth. But when she got older she used to beat her brothers.”
Confused, the chef shook his head. “A word game?”
“The number on each piece of paper corresponds to a letter in the alphabet. One is a, two is b, and so forth.”
Again he frowned at the paper. “What are you saying?”
“What if your father made it that simple? The word ‘choux’ has five letters.”
“And the French alphabet has the same letters as the English one.”
“Yes. So in either language, C would be three. H would be eight—”
Chef Emile’s eyes started to glow. “Op is fifteen,” he grinned, uttering the French way of saying the letter O.
“Uh huh. U is twenty-one.”
“And Ex is twenty-four.” He raced across the floor to the safe.
This time Joan got up and followed him. She held her breath as he began to turn the dial. They recited the numbers together.
“Three. Eight. Fifteen. Twenty-one. Twenty-four.”
At the last number, Joan heard tumblers click into place. Her heart began to race like she’d just crossed the finish line at the New York City marathon. It pounded faster as she watched Chef Emile’s long fingers slip around the handle and pull.
The safe opened.
He pulled the door to the wall and together they bent down to peer into it.
And when she saw what was inside, Joan felt her heart might stop altogether.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Monsieur Yanick? I assure you it’s in your best interest to open this door.”
Thr
ee times Parker had tried to get a response out of whoever was inside the room and three times there had been no answer. Iron-nailed nerves clawed at Miranda’s insides.
“There are no police here,” Parker said, using that oh-so-smooth, promise-you-anything tone of his. “Again I assure you everything you asked for will be delivered.”
Still no answer.
The maglite was too warm in Miranda’s hand. She felt a drop of sweat trickle down her back. What the hell was going on in there? Why weren’t they answering? Was it a ploy? Was Becker already dead?
“Can we speak face to face, Monsieur Yanick?”
Silence.
This wasn’t working. How long were they going to stand here talking to a wooden door?
Miranda was tired of waiting. She was supposed to have been in charge of this case, at least her and Parker’s part of it. But even if that were clear, she wouldn’t make the call without a consensus.
Time for the same ritual they’d performed when they got here.
She locked eyes with Parker and nodded toward the door. Parker turned to Nadeau, then to Haubert. The Director hesitated a moment then nodded back. Nadeau agreed.
Okay.
She reached for the brass doorknob. It had a flowery embossed pattern that dug into Miranda’s palm as she gripped it hard. A keyhole sat in the middle of it. She swore if it was locked, she’d kick the door in without asking permission.
Holding her breath and her gun, she gave the knob a turn.
To her shock the door opened, yawning before her like the mouth of a cavern. She shoved it aside and stepped into darkness.
She felt Parker’s breath on her shoulder as she stood a moment, her eyes getting adjusted to the dark. Then she realized she was standing in a small alcove. She turned to her right and stepped around a corner.
It was a living space. An oblong shaped one.
An old-fashioned pendant light hung from a long cord on the ceiling, bathing the place in a dull glow. A ratty brown couch sat at one end, a mattress on the floor beyond it. A plain table stood near the adjacent wall. A niche with a recessed kitchen-like area was behind it.
Her light and gun still raised, Miranda moved over to the spot. She peeked inside. No one there. Dirty dishes sat in the sink. A fly buzzed around on the crusted food.
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