Instantly, Adele felt her cheeks warm. Stammering, she quickly said, “Er—what? Yes. No. We’re not—if you’re thinking—no, there’s nothing like—”
At the same time, John said, “We’re filthy, filthy lovers, sir. You’ve caught us dead to rights.”
Adele wanted to kick his chair over, but Foucault looked at John and seemed to determine the tall Frenchman was being factitious. His eyes narrowed even more. “Agent Renee, you’re not scuffing my desk, are you?”
John coughed and quickly dropped his extended legs, hastily pretending as if he’d just been stretching. “What?” he said. “Of course not.” Then, as any true partner would, he threw Adele under the bus. “Sir, what was it you were telling me about a call from earlier? Some angry factory worker?”
Foucault’s ire shifted, moving from John back to Adele. He pointed his cigarette at Adele, the curling smoke rising past his cheeks and casting a gray shadow over his already ominous expression. “That’s right,” he said. “I heard about your little excursion this morning. What do you think you were doing?”
Adele stammered, “Ex-excursion, sir?”
“What were you doing out there?” Foucault asked, his dark eyes narrowed beneath his hawklike brow. His overly bushy eyebrows seemed a tangle of dark hairs like the charred remains of the smoke curling past his face. “I checked; I’m not aware of any active cases involving that factory.”
Inwardly, Adele desperately wanted to wipe the smirk off John’s face, but out loud, she replied to her angered overseer, “It was nothing, sir. Just a small misunderstanding. I was following a lead in another case.”
“What case?”
She winced, then quickly lied, “Something for Interpol. I’ll have a file to you soon.”
Executive Foucault rubbed at the stubble on his chin. He lowered his cigarette and pushed it into the ashtray, grinding it out amidst the others. He waved a hand in front of his face, as if sifting the smoke back toward the window.
“See that you do,” he said. “The only way I can keep you as a correspondent is if I’m apprised of your actions. And,” he added, sternly, “if you’re going to invoke DGSI credentials, it has to be a DGSI case. Understand?”
Adele winced. She bobbed her head once.
Foucault sat down now, leaning back in his leather chair and staring across the desk. He looked at Agent Renee, and then crossed his own feet, placing them on top of the desk. It was very unusual for the normally professional Executive to take such a casual posture. It almost seemed like he was challenging John. Then he said, “We had a murder in Bordeaux.”
Adele breathed a sigh of relief, and then felt a sudden flash of guilt at the reaction. “And you want us on the case?” she said, hesitantly, grateful he’d stopped yelling at her.
“It’s not an isolated incident.”
John perked up at this. “A second murder?” he asked.
Foucault steepled his fingers beneath his chin and nodded, his dark eyebrows rising slightly on his weathered forehead. “Yes. A second murder—a near match in Germany. Both of them within the last two weeks.” He tilted his eyebrows significantly. “The killer is moving at a breakneck pace. He’s fast. And it seems like his appetite is only increasing.”
Adele crossed her arms over her sweater, trying to breathe shallowly in the smoke-infused room. “What do we have to go on?”
The Executive looked between the two of them. “Not much. You will be looking at the case with fresh eyes.” He hesitated, then his eyes narrowed until they were little more than prisms of shadow beneath his angled brow. Delicately, he added, pointing from Adele to John, “Perhaps you two had best read up on the agency’s policy for office romances, yes? I’m not accusing anyone of anything, of course,” he added, hurriedly, adding a smile as sincere as a politician’s oath. “But just in case… I find it to be pleasant reading—you might find some useful things in there… the sorts of things that can save careers… You never know.”
Adele stammered, “John was joking. There is nothing.”
John sighed. “That’s downright hurtful, my love.”
Again Foucault looked at John, as if trying to determine if he was joking—one often couldn’t tell with Renee. And again, Adele resisted the urge to slap her partner.
“Whatever,” Foucault said, waving a dismissive hand. “Get dressed, take a shower,” he added, giving Adele a meaningful look. “Your flight leaves in two hours. And remember, you’re on a clock. The killer is moving fast, and moving across borders—it’s proving a nightmare to keep up with the agencies involved. Each week wasted is another loved one lost and another potential international incident—so no cutting corners on this one unless you have to.” He tilted his bushy brow significantly in John’s direction, then made a small shooing motion toward the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
Adele sat next to John in first class, both of them sharing the same computer screen on Adele’s tray. The rising sense of urgency in Foucault’s voice filled her with a bit of unease. A fast-moving killer crossing international borders would be a headache for the higher-ups to coordinate, true, but—more importantly—people were dying. John’s eyes were narrowed as he scanned the document, frowning. Adele tried to scroll down, but he reached out and flicked her knuckles. “I’m not done, wait.”
“You’re illiterate,” she muttered.
John snorted. “Some of us have better things to do with our lives than reading screens all day.”
“John, I can do this in three languages.”
“Yes? And I slept with three woman last week—which of us is the real illiterate?”
“I’m starting to suspect you don’t even know what that word means.”
John smirked. Then he lifted his hand from where he’d flicked her and gestured at the computer. “At your leisure, American Princess.”
Adele rolled her eyes and scanned through the rest of the report. Sometimes it was hard for her to tell if John was flirting or just trying to annoy her. The tall, handsome agent had always looked like a James Bond villain. He had a burn mark that stretched down from the edge of his chin along his neck toward his muscled chest. His hair was often combed, and slicked with gel, with a few loose strands over his forehead.
“Victims don’t seem the same at all,” John said, some of the amusement fading from his tone. He tapped a finger to the screen. “Died the same way though.”
Adele read the indicated portion of the report and nodded. “I don’t see the connection,” she said. “The first one is a German farmer. He’s what, in his fifties? And then here, the French sommelier, mid-twenties. Different educational backgrounds, different languages, different countries. Different ethnicity. I don’t get it.”
John pointed a bit further down the screen. “Same MO, though. It’s the same killer. Too much of a coincidence otherwise.”
“I suppose.” Adele trailed off, reading the details for the third time in the same quick flight. The airplane around them trembled a bit with turbulence, and Adele heard rattling trays and the quiet gasp that always accompanied first class in mild weather. She ignored it. She’d flown enough in her life to not get alarmed by a little bit of wind. “Needle marks. Both of them, on their left arms.”