The Skeleton Key

He must have read the suspicion on her face and smiled sadly.

“Fear not. Your deaths will not serve me. In fact, I plan to pin Vennard’s loss upon your traitorous shoulders. With the Guild hunting you, no suspicions will be cast my way. And the faster you run, ma chere amie, the better it is for all of us. But, as an additional sign of good faith, I believe I promised you a reward.”

He swung the briefcase onto the trunk and ran a hand over the rich leather surface. “Vuitton’s finest. The President Classeur case. It is yours to keep.” He smiled over at her with amusement and French pride. “But I suspect what is inside is the true price for my son’s freedom. A clue to the shadowy leaders of the Guild.”

He snapped open the case to reveal a stack of files. On the top folder, imprinted onto the cover, was the image of an eagle with outstretched wings, holding an olive branch in one talon and a bundle of arrows in the other. It was the Great Seal of the United States.

But what does this have to do with the Guild?

He snapped the briefcase closed and slid it toward her.

“What you do with this information — where it will lead — will be very dangerous territory to tread,” he warned. “It might serve you better to simply walk away.”

Not a chance.

She took the case and the hotel key card. With the prizes in hand, she placed the sedan’s fob on the trunk and backed to the curb, well out of the reach of Claude’s guards.

The historian didn’t make a move to take the sedan’s key. Instead, he placed a palm tenderly on the trunk’s lid. His eyes closed in relief as the tension drained from his shoulders. He was no longer a Guild associate, merely a father relieved at the safe return of his prodigal son. Claude took a long breath, then motioned for one of his men to retrieve the key and take the wheel. As his guards climbed into the front seats, Claude ducked into the back, perhaps to be that much closer to his son.

Seichan waited for the sedan to pull away from the curb and head down the street.

As the car vanished out of the square, Renny crossed over to join her. “Did ye get what ye wanted?”

She nodded, picturing the relief Claude must be feeling. For the sake of his son, the historian couldn’t risk that she might have searched the papers first. They had to be authentic.

“Do ye think he can be trusted?” Renny asked, reaching to his scarf.

“That remains to be seen.”

As they both stared across the plaza, Renny took off his cashmere neckpiece and revealed a close-guarded secret, a secret that Seichan had kept from Claude.

Renny’s throat was bare.

He rubbed at the red burn from his earlier shock. “It was good to get that bloody thing off.”

Seichan agreed. She reached to her throat and unsnapped her own collar. She stared down at the green LED light. After Vennard’s death, she’d found herself with an extra hour before the noon deadline. Taking advantage of the additional time in the catacombs, Seichan had reached out to Renny’s network of resources. He’d claimed that his fellow cataphiles came from all around the world and from every walk of life.

Upon her instructions, Renny had sent out a clarion call for help. One of the cataphile brothers responded, an expert in electrical engineering and microdesign. He was able to get the collars off and removed the shocking mechanism from Seichan’s. This was all done underground, where Claude was unlikely to be able to receive any warning signals from the collars.

Once free, Seichan risked making a play for the briefcase.

As she stared at her collar now, Renny’s early question played in her head: Could Claude still be trusted?

The answer came a moment later.

The green light on her collar flashed to red as it received a transmitted signal, but with the shocking mechanism neutralized, there was no danger.

At least, not for her.

Distantly, a tremendous blast echoed across the city. She searched in the direction of the departed sedan and watched an oily tendril of smoke curl into the bright blue sky.

In the end, it seemed that Claude could not be trusted. Apparently, despite his claims otherwise, it was too dangerous to let her live, and he had transmitted the kill order to the collars.

A bad move.

She had given Claude the chance to do the right thing.

He hadn’t taken it.

She pictured the scarf securing Gabriel’s ball gag. Hidden beneath the cashmere and snapped snugly around the young man’s mouth and head was Renny’s missing electronic collar. The ball gag was formed out of a molded wad of C4, retrieved from one of the explosive charges in the catacombs. The collar had been wired into a detonator. If and when the electronic collar was jolted, it would set off the C4. She had calculated the quantity and shaped the explosive to take out the sedan and its occupants with little collateral damage.

She sighed, feeling a twinge of regret.

It was a nice car.

Renny gaped at the smoke signal in the sky, stunned, one hand clutching his throat. He finally tore his eyes away and faced her. “What now?”

She dumped the collar into a curbside trash bin and hefted up the briefcase. She remembered Claude Beaupre’s last words to her. What you do with this information — where it will lead — will be very dangerous territory to tread.

As she turned away, she answered Renny’s question.

What now?

“Now comes the hard part.”

What’s True, What’s Not

At the end of my full-length novels, I love to spell out what’s real and what’s fiction in my stories. I thought I’d do the same here.

• The Ritz Paris. I’ve never been there, but the details are as accurate as I could make them: from the Hemingway Bar (where the Bloody Mary was invented) to the gold-plated swan faucets in the bathroom.

• The Order of the Solar Temple. This is a real apocalyptic cult started in 1984 by Luc Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro. It was originally titled l’Ordre International Chevaleresque de Tradition Solaire and eventually simplified to l’Ordre du Temple Solaire. The group was notorious for its mass suicides and human sacrifice, including the murder of a founder’s infant son in Quebec.

• The Paris Catacombs. Every detail about the place is true. They spread for 180 miles in a network of tunnels and rooms beneath the City of Lights, mostly throughout the southern arrondissements (districts) that make up the Left Bank of the city. The history of collapses and instability is all real, as are the details of the cat-and-mouse game waged between the cataphiles and cataflics . And, yes, the catacombs are full of disarticulated skeletons that date back a thousand years. And lots of strange things happen down there: from mushroom growing to chambers full of elaborate wall art. New entrances, tunnels, and rooms to this subterranean world are continually being discovered by explorers. Even the story of the mysterious movie theater found underground is true.

• The Peugeot 508. Yes, that is how you open the trunk: by pressing the zero in the 508 emblem. I hated to blow it up.

So that ends this adventure, but a large one is looming ahead as this story continues in The Devil Colony (hitting bookshelves on June 21, 2011). The papers found in that hard-won briefcase will