Apparently, Markay had assumed I was back in Siron’s good graces. And there was still a live tracked drive? I thought they were all dead. “I’ll tell everyone, Markay.” It wasn’t really a lie. I did plan to tell the team—after I had the drive back. “Siron wants to know if you could tell us which direction from the hospital we should send the advanced team.”
“Ah, yes. Direction. Versaille, perhaps rue de la Convention. That is smack dab in the middle of the pulse area. It would be a great place to set up an advance team. Yes.” Kamal had me heading in that very direction. Maybe he was on to something.
“Thank you, Markay, and when you get the information in ten, just call me. I’ll be directing everyone.” It calmed me to know that Markay was on the tracker problem.
“I will. And I should have that information in eight now.”
“Excellent.”
A soft coolness fell over me thinking about seeing Jeremy after I had completed the mission. I wanted that. What I didn’t want was to get fired. I had to complete this mission and make it impossible for Division to fire me. Which they easily could do for insubordination.
I turned onto rue Lecourbe, the anticipation growing as Kamal told me to turn onto Convention. He pointed the apartment out to me as we passed it, and I got a call from Markay.
“Christy?”
“Yes, Markay,” I said, trying to keep my calm.
“I narrowed it down to a half km stretch when the signal went dead.”
“What are you saying, Markay?”
“Whoever has that drive finally discovered Ace’s plastic tech for real this time. There’s no longer a glitch in the programming. It is dead now.”
So, they discovered the tracking program wasn’t executing the search for the tracker earlier. That’s why Siron thought they were dead. “Wow! They are too good. Have you seen Halluis? Or is he still at the hospital?”
“Yes. I see him at his computer. He got here a few minutes ago. Would you like me to tell him to call you?”
“No. No,” I sputtered out, not wanting to alert Siron if she was anywhere near, that I was talking to anyone at Division. “It’s fine. I just wanted to know if he was okay.”
“All right. And one more thing. The way the signal disappeared leaves me to believe it was being worked on right that moment.”
A car sped out of the drive of the apartment we were about to enter. Kamal jerked.
“That’s him. That’s Marco.”
“Thanks, Markay.” I hung up.
My stomach got all fluttery, and adrenaline coursed through me. I followed the car, figuring he must have the drive with him. He drove across town to the Eiffel Tower area and threw something in a restaurant dumpster as we passed. We stopped, and I jumped into the dumpster with my flashlight to add extra light. I shoved big bags to the side and shuffled papers and miscellaneous trash around the bin in an organized fashion until I finally uncovered two drives—the ones Ace had made. I searched further. There was no sign of any other drives being tossed. Our tracking link to Marco was gone.
A hard rock seemed to take up residence in my gut. I hopped out of the bin, discarding the drives, ignoring the grime I was now coated with, and jumped into the car with Kamal.
“Which way did he go?” He pointed, and I sped off in that direction. I checked the clock on the car console. It had taken me seven minutes to search the trash bin. He had a seven minute head start on us. He’d been driving pretty fast. He could have gone seven kilometers in any direction. He probably wanted distance between himself and the tracked drives. The most logical route would be to drive on the straightest path, so I stayed on rue Saint-Dominique, curving around the Army Museum. I’d miscalculated. He wasn’t just trying to put distance between himself and the drives, because we caught up to him right before he turned onto rue de Bourgogne, a mere three kilometers from the tower. Perhaps he had a second apartment where he also checked the drives out. However, when he turned on Varenne, my heart almost stopped.
It couldn’t be. He must have lost his mind. That or he must have no clue that we were following him. Perhaps he wasn’t headed where I’d thought. He could have a home near the Hôtel Matignon, which was nothing like a hotel, but instead was the residence of none other than the Prime Minister of France. He could, but the chill running over my bones told me differently.
And when he pulled up to the huge black doors that opened to allow cars inside the compound, he had to wait because the bulletproof glass guard shack was empty. I pulled the car over to the side of the road about a half a block from the residence to watch. There was no one to radio to security to let him in. He honked and then honked again.
“If nothing else, he’s persistent.” I chuckled.
Finally, a guard in full regalia came out to greet him. I had no idea what was said, but Marco slammed his hands on the steering wheel and peeled out of the short driveway.
Marco cruised around the corner. I started the car and followed him, but was forced to drive past the road he’d turned on because he had pulled to the curb just around the corner. Light from a cell phone lit up his face. So far he had obviously been driven by anger and was not even considering the idea that he was being followed. Now I couldn’t risk that he would start paying attention and realize a suspicious car had been following him. We drove a few blocks and swapped the Peugeot for a
