Left To Die

“Call him? It will take some time, like I said. There won’t be results.”

“No, I know. But I have a way for him to narrow it down. It should speed things up a ton.” Adele motor-mouthed her way through the sentence, propelled by her own excitement, her fingers tapping against her thigh in impatient spurts.

“How?” said John.

“The accent,” Adele said, trying to keep her calm.

“I don’t understand? What accent?”

“I spoke to the kids, and they heard his accent! You know how kids are, like parrots, they can mimic anything back. Well, I was insecure about how I spoke when I was younger, when I first moved to France. My mother was kind enough to hire someone to help me. They did strange tricks, even including chocolate chips placed on the tip of my tongue to help me learn how to stretch my consonants. But, most importantly, I learned about aspirated stops.”

John was staring at her now like she was crazy, but she pressed on. “The attacker clipped his aspirated stops. He dropped the ‘s’ instead of a ‘t.’”

“I really don’t—”

“He’s German!” Adele cried. “It’s dialectical. He’s not American. He’s not French. He’s German. Call your lab tech, tell him to narrow down the tox reports based on German companies, both private and public. Understand?”

John frowned, shaking his head. “You can’t know for sure based on the mimicking of a child—”

But Adele shook her head again. “I’m sure. I feel it. The pronunciation is like a fingerprint to me; I’ve heard the differences in language my whole life. I know he’s German. Just do it. Please.”

Renee sighed, but then shrugged and reached for his pocket, pulling his phone out. He pressed it to his ear and then waited, peering out into the park, toward the dark trees and leaves, along the abandoned trail with scattered dust.

Adele also turned, glancing back toward the children, her eyes settling on the girl. She did look quite a bit like Marion.

“…Yes. German companies,” John was saying behind her in a murmur.

Adele continued staring out into the park, allowing herself the faintest of smiles.

They had him now.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Gasping, hands jammed into his jacket pockets, cap pulled low over his forehead, the man stumbled through the streets. He resisted the urge to curse with every shuffling step. He had to stay calm, stay collected. He could already hear the sirens in the distance, tolling like wedding bells announcing his marriage. But he was a runaway bride. They were here for him, but they wouldn’t catch him.

The tourist forced his breathing to calm, willing his pounding chest to still. He rounded a corner, curling past a shuttered newsstand and ducking beneath one of the safety lights, keeping his head low.

He bumped into someone and nearly lashed out with his knife. managed to glance up just in time. He noticed the blue and black uniforms of gendarmerie.

Immediately, he smiled politely, suppressing the tingle of excitement creeping up his spine. Fear was not for him. Fear was for others. No, he was in control.

He tried not to look at their rifles, nor did he glance past them toward the flashing sirens of their parked vehicles.

“Good evening,” he said, politely, and then continued on his way, not moving too quickly nor too slowly.

He could feel their eyes boring a hole into his back. Any moment now, they would call out after him. He was sure. But he was smarter than them. So instead, he turned, facing the officers.

As he suspected, one of them had a hand half-raised, his mouth open in preparation to cry out in the nighttime street. But at the sudden about-face, the gendarmerie frowned.

The tourist pretended he hadn’t noticed, and he approached the officers once more. A criminal fled the scene of a crime, but an innocent civilian would be curious. Because a citizen who had nothing to do with the crime would want assurance of safety. They would want to know the comings and goings in their city. Why the flashing lights, why the sirens at night?

The man was not a stupid criminal. He wasn’t a criminal at all, but the evolution of a species.

He adopted a grin, but then notched it down and kept his expression nervous. “What’s going on? Not another terrorist attack, is it?” He knew his accent would come across, but it didn’t matter. France was filled with tourists. The gendarmerie glanced at each other and eyed him up and down, likely searching for a weapon.

But he kept his arms at his side, loose, his hands now facing open-palm toward the officers.

Inwardly, his emotions raged, but he couldn’t allow them control. The Spade Killer hadn’t been caught—it would be a pitiable testament to his hero to fail where the savant had succeeded.

“Where are you going?” one of the officers snapped.

“Back to my hotel. Is everything okay?”

The other glanced at his partner, and they whispered to each other, then addressed him again. “Hurry back to your room, you don’t want to be out at night. Go!”

“But is everything okay?” he said, selling it with a final flourish.

“We can’t discuss it. You need to leave, now!”

The man held up his hands in mock surrender and then turned, hurrying away again. His neck prickled, but he didn’t look back. He could feel the tension in the air; he could taste the fear over the city.

Now was time to go home. His feet thumped into the sidewalk in long, angry strides. He clenched his fists, then paused for a moment beneath a light post, listening vaguely before turning the corner.

The gendarmerie were whispering again, but taking less care to lower their voices.

“Did they find the man?” said one of the officers. There was a click, followed by the buzzing sound of a radio.

The static continued for a second. Then a replying, fuzzy voice said, “Agent Sharp is at the scene. She thinks she has an idea. We don’t know; keep an eye out.”

The man continued moving. Any moment, they might call after him. He had to get away. He turned down a side street, then another street.

The fuzzy radio words haunted him with each step.

He cut through a couple of alleys between tall, looming red brick buildings. His hotel wasn’t far, but he’d have to get back to the bar where he parked his car.

He was sure he’d make it, though. They wouldn’t find him. Not now. He had to head home. He wasn’t done yet in France, but his vacation had been cut short. He would have to return again some other time.

The name, though…

He knew that name.

The man ground his teeth, scowling into the black as he moved through the city streets back toward the bar. Agent Sharp. The FBI agent had been called Sharp, too. The same agent who’d interviewed his host family back in the US. The one who’d been hounding him for months now. Agent Sharp.

The name fueled him forward, out into the night, and away from the crime scene.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Christ, American Princess, you were right. I can’t believe you were right.”