The crowd’s movement seemed as aimless as dust motes billowing in the breeze.
And then, a Black woman wearing a sparkling white dress ran across the salon like a dark sword blade stabbing through the room. Her bare, ebony arms stretched ahead of her as she ran, all the more visible as her long, white dress frothed around her legs.
People recoiled, getting out of her way, or turned to see why she was rushing. The meat of the room was pulled toward her and sliced away.
The woman darted into the alcove where the facial recognition software had pinpointed Maxence had been standing. Her long skirt, darker near the hemline, fluttered as she moved.
Arthur whispered under his breath, “Wait. Who was that woman?”
Luftwaffe said, “I’ll see if I can get an image of her face and run it through the database.”
Vlogger1 asked, “Isn’t that Simone Maina?”
Racehorse muttered, “Who?”
Arthur nodded to indicate that he also wanted to know who that was. He assumed they were all watching him sitting there on the floor either by hacking into the surveillance system for themselves or by slipping into his tablet and watching him through the webcam.
Vlogger1 said, “Simone was two years behind me at Le Rosey, which would have put her in your class, Blackjack.”
Arthur nodded. He vaguely remembered her, but they had run in different circles. By high school, Arthur had spent his time in the computer lab, out and about with Max and Caz, or at home in England.
“We were on a field trip to Laos together during one of the school breaks. I liked her. She’s from Mauritius. It’s an island nation off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Gorgeous island, from what she said. She said that the only reason she got into Le Rosey was because her parents put down that her first language was Tamil, which is from Southern India, because the spots reserved for Francophones were filled up with legacies like they always are. She didn’t speak a word of Tamil, though. I mean, like, I speak more Tamil than she does, and I’m Malayali. Or, you know, my parents are. She said her mom was part Tamil, part Chinese, and half Ethiopian, and her dad was from Trinidad and Tobago, I think. ‘Typical Mauritian, if there is such a thing,’ she said. Didn’t she marry some French guy?”
Luftwaffe asked, “Was she the girl who married Estebe Fournier?”
Vlogger1 said, “Oh God, I think she did.”
Arthur felt his brows lowering and strain between his eyes. Estebe had been a year ahead of them in school, but the whole campus had known he was a jerk. Arthur remembered Simone now. Everyone had been shocked that a guy like Estebe had gotten a woman like Simone, but Arthur had just assumed it was another example of the cliché that beautiful women liked assholes.
A few people—security men or bodyguards from their stiff movements and the officious way they were shoving people out of their way—followed Simone through the crowd but got hung up in the mass of people. They reached the alcove a few minutes later and walked into it.
Arthur rewound and ran it again.
No, those men had already been moving when Simone ran across the room.
Maybe.
They had either been moving to converge on Maxence’s location or to intercept the woman’s flight. It was hard to discern purposeful movement within the random flow of the room.
Arthur reran Simone’s mad dash through the crowd that swirled around her, and that time, he saw the men chasing her. “She had pursuers.”
Clicking in his ears.
Vlogger1 asked, “Five of them?”
“I saw four,” Arthur whispered.
“The four that entered behind her, but one guy was coming in from the right, see him? At the four o’clock.”
Arthur watched the footage of the room filled with people bumping into each other like water at a rolling boil.
This time, he saw the white man wearing a dark suit, as most of the casino’s guests were wearing, walking in from the right.
And then Simone ran in.
The man had his hand inside his suit jacket and sliding across his waist like he was readying himself to pull a gun from a cross-draw holster.
And then the man startled, looked back, saw Simone, and withdrew, fading back into the crowd and moving toward another exit.
Arthur whispered, “He was already moving, and then he saw Simone. Look.”
The others agreed with him, mumbling that he was, indeed, another jackal coming in.
Racehorse said, “We’ve got another one. Top-left corner.”
Arthur looked. Another man had begun purposefully walking toward the alcove where Maxence had ducked his head into view, and he kept following Simone on the video until she disappeared into the small doorway blocked in by Christmas trees. Only then, he ducked his head, pivoted, and walked the other way.
“Was there more than one party at play here?” Racehorse asked.
“I don’t know,” Arthur said, his heart falling. “I don’t know.”
He’d still been holding out hope that Maxence had decided to drop out of society for a few days and would be discovered in due time sitting under a banyan tree in India, futilely seeking enlightenment.
But if at least two parties were hunting him, and maybe at cross-purposes?
They had to find him.
“This is disconcerting,” Racehorse said, utilizing understatement. “Are we sure it’s Simone Maina?”
Luftwaffe said, “The facial app confirms it. Simone has been all over Paris during the last year. Lots of images to cross-check the identification. It’s her.”
“What’s she doing here?” Arthur asked, squinting at the screen. Simone had disappeared into the alcove where Maxence had been, and the crowd had resumed its aimless wandering.
Luftwaffe said, “Shit. I lost them. Damn Christmas trees. Here’s the room behind that doorway.”
Another view opened on Arthur’s tablet. It was from a different camera and of a different room. The carpet, upholstery, and decor in there were more muted, done in pale golds, blues, and white. Even the Christmas decor was white and pale gold, from the trees in the corners to the garland around the doors that led outside.
“Is that the White Room?” Arthur whispered.
“It looks like it,” Luftwaffe said. “I can see the terrace on the other side through the windows. I haven’t seen Simone or Maxence come out the other side of that doorway.”
Though the video footage playing on his tablet was grainy, Arthur watched for a man in a black tuxedo or a woman in a white dress to leave that alcove, but he saw neither.
The black-suited bodyguards did burst through from the alcove, look around wildly, and disperse into the crowd in all directions. They’d lost Simone’s trail, too. “Did you see the minders come through?”
“I saw five personal security or other actors. Unless Maxence and Simone stood in that doorway for over three hours, didn’t even stick a knee out, and are still there, they vanished.”
Vlogger1 added, “And those guys would have walked right past them, too.”
“Can’t be,” Arthur whispered. “You sure?”
And yet, in the White Room, people gambled and strode through as they searched for new and more interesting ways to lose their money. The woman in the white dress and the man in the dark tuxedo had not exited the alcove.