“Jesus,” Natalie breathed. “Is this what passes for foreplay with you two?”
“If so, Taverner is in for a raging case of blue balls because he’s not coming to Switzerland,” I answered flatly.
He took a half step closer to me. “So that’s how it is.”
“That’s how it is,” I said.
Nobody said anything for a long moment. I don’t even think the cats let out a breath. We stood locked in opposition, waiting for the other to blink. Finally, Taverner put his hands up, palms out.
“Fine.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You never give in that easily. I don’t trust it.”
He shrugged, his expression unreadable. “Why would you trust it? You don’t trust anything else.”
It was a good line, so I didn’t blame him for using it as an exit. He didn’t even bang the door as he went out. Instead, he closed it quietly, as if shutting something in the past. I’d have liked it a hell of a lot better if he’d slammed it.
—
The four of us leftthe next morning. Mikeli taxied us to the ferry port where we took the first boat to Ajaccio. Somewhere on mainland France would have been more logical, so we opted for Corsica instead as the less expected option in case anybody was watching. From there it was a quick hour and a half to Basel by plane. By lunchtime we were in a rented Mercedes, speeding east. We’d stopped at a pharmacy long enough to collect a top-of-the-line wheelchair for Helen and spent the rest of the trip going over everything Minka had dug up online about the facility we were visiting.
“Discreet and expensive,” Mary Alice said, reading from her notes. “It’s actually two separate wings, one for elder care if you’re rich and connected. The other is for recovery, also for the rich and connected.”
“What kind of recovery?” Helen asked, peering over her shoulder at the screen of Mary Alice’s smartphone.
“It doesn’t say, but if you read between the lines, it sounds like everything from plastic surgery to Oxy addiction.”
“A full-service facility,” Natalie mused. “You know, Helen, you don’t have to pretend to be old. We could wrap you up in bandages and tell them your facelift was botched.”
“Or we could tell them you need help with a sex addiction,” Helen replied coolly. “Your collection of dildos is frankly alarming.”
I nearly drove into a hedge. It wasn’t like Helen to bite back, and I wasn’t entirely sure she was joking. Neither wasMary Alice. She shot me a surprised look, but Natalie hooted all the way to the facility.
We pulled up to a set of gates that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Buckingham Palace. There was an intercom and camera, and I managed to pantomime through a series of apologetic gestures that I didn’t speak German. A lie, but they didn’t need to know it. I heard the voice on the other side mutter a few choice Teutonic insults—mostly disparaging my mother, but it was nothing I wouldn’t have said about her myself. After a second another voice came on, smoother and more diplomatic. “Please follow the signs and park to the right.”
The gates opened onto a drive, wide and curving and lined with sternly clipped, geometrically precise hedges. “Damn, the gardener must use a protractor,” Natalie remarked.
Beyond the hedges, the grounds were just as tidy—broad expanses of grass punctuated here and there with well-behaved trees. A few benches were scattered around, but the morning was chilly and nobody was using them. The building was a grey stone mansion, old-fashioned but impeccably clean. Just behind it, I could make out a more recent addition of glass, silvery and cold. Stone terraces were set with outdoor furniture in conversation groupings with all the pieces arranged at right angles. Even the potted trees stood at attention.
“You have to love the Swiss,” I muttered. The sign directing traffic to the parking lot was discreet, set low to the ground and lettered in tasteful grey. I pulled into a vacant spot and hopped out to set up the wheelchair, taking care to roll itaround to Helen’s side of the car in case anybody was watching. She settled herself, and Nat draped a cashmere blanket over her knees, tucking it carefully.
“Showtime,” Mary Alice said, taking charge of the chair. The front door opened as they approached and a middle-aged woman appeared, smiling the tight, slightly insincere smile of someone who is irritated by an interruption but can’t let it show for fear of offending a potential client with a fat checkbook. I waited long enough to hear her greet them and gesture for them to enter before I hotfooted it around the side of the building. The terrace on this side had an occupant—an old fellow tucked into a wheelchair, so swaddled in blankets and quilts that only his face was visible. Even his wrinkles had wrinkles, but the eyes were sharp. He flicked them open as I trotted up.
“Guten Tag,” he said, raising a finger out of the bundle of blankets to wave hello. He was wheezing like he’d just run a mile, and I remembered the fashion for sending tubercular patients to the mountains in centuries past. The cold clear air is supposed to be good for lung complaints, but by the sounds coming out of him, it wasn’t helping. I’d heard healthier noises from recently castrated cattle.
“Guten Tag, mein Herr,” I replied. “Es ist ein schöner Tag.”
He shrugged. “Die Tage sind für mich alle gleich.” He leaned forward a bit, looking me over from head to toe in a way that was frankly a little gross, even in someone who probably had a cocktail date arranged with death somewhere in the near future. “Du hast schöne Titten.”
No matter how many times a strange man tells you that you have nice tits, it’s always creepy. I sighed. I wasn’t going to kill him—we had rules about that sort of thing—but damn, I was tempted. It wouldn’t take much, just a quick release of his brake and a friendly shove towards the edge of the terrace. From there, it was a steep drop-off to a handy ravine with lots of nice sturdy pine trees and some rock outcroppings that wouldn’t do him any favors. I glanced up at the eaves of the building. There weren’t even cameras mounted outside. It was practically an invitation.
But I was better than that. Instead, I cocked my head, thinking. The facility was old-fashioned with its personal greeter at the front door and lack of obvious security. They would have client information locked up nice and tight, thanks to all their Swiss training. It would be a miracle if the other three managed to learn anything useful about Auntie Evgenia. They’d get a tour and a bundle of brochures, but we had a short amount of time, and I was feeling impatient. I didn’t like how I’d left things with Taverner and I didn’t trust him to stay put. I knew the sooner I made it back to Sardinia, the better. And that annoyed me even more. I didn’t like being responsible for anybody, even somebody I was sleeping with.
Especiallysomeone I was sleeping with. It felt too much like commitment, something I’d always run away from. I suppose I could have gone to therapy, but what was the point? I knew exactly where I’d picked up my issues. Unknown father, abandoned by my mother at age twelve, the rest of my youth spent in an unlicensed foster home. You might think the last part sounds the worst, but at least in that place I hadsomeone making sure I ate my vegetables and did my homework. I left town the day after my high school graduation and never looked back. Add all of that to the steamer trunk of the job I’d chosen, and I had enough baggage to sink a battleship.
But regardless of why I was feeling irritable, we were under pressure. We needed results from this trip so we could figure out who was still targeting us, finish the business, and get back to our lives.
I leaned down a little, giving the old fellow a glimpse at my cleavage. If he was going to die, he’d do it with a smile on his face. “Kennen Sie Evgenia Dashkova?”