Fortune's Deadly Descent by Audrey Braun

Author:Audrey Braun [Braun, Audrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781935597667
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The sky finally releases its downpour, soaking me to the skin. I race to the pension with the man’s words roiling in my head. No idea what you’re up against. Before it’s too late. Just like before when he said, What’s the rundown on this guy?

I bang on Oliver’s door.

“Twenty-five minutes,” he says, angry at first, pulling me in, then shutting the door. “What happened? You’re drenched.” He grabs a towel from the bathroom and puts it around my shoulders. “God, you’re shaking.”

I peel off my jacket and make my way to the desk chair, and try to dry my hair, but I can’t stop shivering. I rub a corner of the towel around my eyes and the streaked mascara blackens it. There’s a pressure in my neck and throat as if what the man from the train crushed hasn’t sprung back open yet.

“The man who broke into the car…found me.”

“What?” Oliver snatches up a box of tissues from the bedside and hands them to me.

I blow my nose. “You won’t believe it. He was the man from the train. The Frenchman trying to help me find Benny.”

Oliver’s eyes widen. He backs onto the bed. “You could have gotten killed.”

“Listen, Oliver, he was American. Not French.”

“Really? You’re sure?”

“On the train he spoke what sounded like perfect French, but obviously I wouldn’t have picked up his accent. And, I mean, I was frantic about Benny. Then when he switched to English he had a heavy, very convincing French accent. Totally put on. The man’s Meryl Streep.”

Oliver touches my shoulder, looks at me like he might break down. “I’m fine,” I say.

“No, you’re not.”

He gets me on my feet again, and sends me into the bathroom to shed the wet clothes. “There’s a robe on the back of the door.”

Moments later, I’m down to my underwear in the wan light of an ancient skylight, goosefleshed. My bra is uncomfortably damp in back, so I take that off, too, and put on the terry robe, one of the pension’s few extras—that and, surprisingly, Wi-Fi.

“Better?” Oliver asks, when I’m seated again.

I nod.

“So…” he says.

“Moreau was telling us back in Zurich how the man on the train spoke in a way that reminded him of an English detective series he loves. I wasn’t putting much stock in Moreau’s tangents at that point, but what the man said in the alley just now makes me think the same thing, that it was coming out of a book, or a crappy movie. I got the feeling he was playacting, at least not a seasoned criminal.”

Oliver lowers himself onto the edge of the bed across from me. “Did he see where we’re staying? Do you think he followed you here?”

“He took off in the other direction, but who knows? Maybe he figured we’d go to Moreau’s and waited, then saw me set off on foot. He found me somehow. Could somebody have told him we’re here? Maybe he’d been planning on staking out the pension.”

“We have to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.