Chapter 341: Spy School Has No Retakes

"Then tell me," Aria said.

Jade’s eyes went to Damien.

She let out a breath. She came in two steps, and the door swung shut behind her. She stayed on her feet with her back against it.

"In the car, I told you they sent us to protect you," she said. "That’s what we were told to say if anyone ever asked. Nobody ever asked." Her mouth twisted. "With us, they said watch."

"Who’s they?"

"The family." Jade lifted one shoulder. "We never saw them. A man came to Lyon twice a year with a list. Later it was a phone number in Geneva. They paid for everything. Coats, shoes, school. Valmont. Back when they still had money, or that’s what they told us. When you’ve eaten their bread for ten years, you go where they send you."

Aria sat down on the edge of the bed. Damien stood by the window, where the street below was still dark.

"Leo got you," Jade said. "I got him." She tipped her chin toward Damien. "I had a deadline to get close. Your building, your house, your car, anywhere. So I applied to be your night assistant."

Damien frowned.

"You spent the whole interview texting someone," Jade said. "I found out later who."

"I don’t remember you."

"I know. That was the problem." She looked at Aria. "Then I applied to be his sister’s nurse. She yawned at me."

Aria pressed her lips together.

"After that I followed your cars. I took pictures of your parking garage. I even tried your wife’s bodyguard. He talked about the weather." Jade’s voice thinned. "Months of it. That’s what I had to show them. A parking garage."

"And Leo?"

"Leo was easy." For a second she almost smiled. "They put him in your movie, and you adopted him in a week. Every report he sent was good. They were very happy with Leo."

"So what happened?"

"My time ran out." Jade looked down at the strap of her bag. "When you fail, they call you home. You fly home, and they decide what you’re worth."

"And if they decide you’re not worth anything?"

Jade raised her eyes.

"Every year, a few of us went home early. That’s what they called it. Nobody who went home early ever wrote to anyone again." She said it like something she had practiced. "In their world, a useless dog gets put down."

"They called me home," Jade said. "Leo phoned them before I could pack. He told them your people had flagged me because of him. That he’d been careless with my name, and the failure was his." She swallowed. "They always believed Leo. So they called him home instead. The night of the premiere."

"That’s why he wasn’t there," Aria said.

"We were never going home. We had two tickets to Lisbon, not London, and then somewhere after Lisbon." Jade’s laugh came out cracked. "Madame told us to do it. Quit, disappear, live our lives. She’s the only one who ever said that to us."

"And the necklace?"

"I told you it was pretty." Jade’s fingers tightened on the strap. "It was worth money. Running costs money, and everything we had, they’d paid for. I saw it on a dresser in a Viper safe house on my last job, and I thought, that’s Lisbon. That’s six months." She shut her eyes. "I carried it home in my pocket, and they followed it to our door."

Aria stood up.

"Jade."

"I’m not done." Jade opened her eyes. They were wet and furious. "I lied to you for months. I sat in your car. I let you promise me tea. When this is over, if you want to hand me to the police, or the family, or to her—"

"Stop."

Jade stopped.

"You were kids," Aria said. "Somebody fed you, and then they sent you the bill. That’s on them." She crossed the room, lifted the bag off Jade’s shoulder, and set it on the floor. "You’re coming with us. And when we get Leo back, nobody calls either of you home again."

Jade looked past her to the window. "And you? I lied my way into your building."

Damien turned around.

"When this is over, you and Leo get new papers," he said. "Real ones. Passports, school records, any names you want. Nobody in that family will find them."

Jade stared at him. "Why would you do that?"

"Because nobody gets to own you."

Jade pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth. Aria pulled her in, and Jade hung on to her coat with both fists and cried into her shoulder.

***

The jet lifted off from Le Bourget at 7:50.

Jade took the seat farthest back. She was asleep against the window before the seatbelt sign went off.

Damien had his laptop open on the table between the front seats and his phone at his ear, speaking low, rapid French. Aria caught "Marseille" and a number.

When he hung up, she asked, "What was the number?"

"Forty. My men. They’ve been in Marseille since midnight."

"Forty."

"And Kai’s list." He turned the laptop toward her. A map of the port, scattered with red dots. "Every warehouse, dock and boatyard that changed hands in the last year. Whatever address she sends at six, I’ll have someone within a kilometer of it."

Aria looked up from the map. The skin under his eyes had gone grey. He’d slept less than she had, and she’d slept almost nothing.

She unbuckled, leaned across, and sat on the edge of the table between them, her knees on either side of his.

He looked up at her.

She set her thumbs just under his eyes, on the bone, and pressed. She moved them slowly outward toward his temples, then back. His hands came up and settled on her thighs.

"Ten minutes," she said. "Close your eyes."

"Come here first."

He hooked two fingers through the belt loops at her hips and drew her off the table and onto the divan along the cabin wall. He stretched out on it, fitted her against his side, and kept his fingers hooked in her belt loop.

"You’re not going anywhere," he murmured, and closed his eyes.

He was asleep before the pilot announced the descent. Aria stayed awake with her cheek on his chest, watching the clouds go by.

***

Marseille came up white and blue under the wing. Limestone hills, red roofs, and past them, the sea, flat as a plate.

Aria checked her phone as they taxied. 9:08 a.m. A little under ten hours.

The jet rolled past the terminal to a private hangar at the far end of the field. A second jet already stood inside, its stairs folded down. Six of Damien’s men waited around a folding table.

At the table, eating a croissant, sat Rémy.

His dark hair had grown out. A healing cut ran along one cheekbone. Somebody in New York had dressed him in a grey tracksuit, and he wore sunglasses, indoors, at a quarter past nine in the morning. His left wrist was cuffed to the table leg.

Jade stayed at the top of the stairs.

He spread his free hand as Damien came down the stairs.

"Monsieur Sinclair. The food on your plane is excellent."

Damien walked past him to the nearest of his men. "Has he said anything?"

"Only about the food, sir."

Rémy turned his sunglasses on Aria. "And Madame Sinclair. You came to watch me go home."

"I came to make sure you get there," Aria said. "Your mother seems attached."

He laughed, delighted.

Damien came back to the table, took the croissant out of Rémy’s hand, and set it down at the far end, out of reach.

"You’ll eat when Leo eats," he said.

Rémy’s smile slipped. He folded his free hand on the table and kept quiet.