Oh, right, she remembered. Gendarmes. That’s what they’re called in France. Ffodor had taught her stuff like that. Which was how she also knew the streetlights glittering through the beaded rain on the car windows were the lights of the storied Champs-Élysées.

He’d also tried to teach her that a smash-and-grab was the province of thugs and petty criminals. And therefore beneath her. But she was faster than any nat thief, and she hadn’t actually smashed anything. She, of all people, never had to do that. So it wasn’t her fault she got caught. She’d explain it to Ffodor: what lousy luck that a cop car happened past at the moment she was reaching through—

She shook her head, clearing away cobwebs and uncomfortable thoughts, before testing the handcuffs again. The clink of a chain pressed cold metal against the small of her back. She could open an interdimensional doorway and leave right now, but then she’d go skidding out the other side with the same relative speed as the cops’ car. Which, given her lack of a portal site conveniently located over a giant stack of pillows, would suck.

The car swung through a roundabout, leaning slightly on its suspension as it peeled away from the Champs-Élysées. The acceleration pushed Mollie away from the door. She toppled over like a sack of onions. Thanks to the Taser she had all the muscle tone of a jellyfish. The seat upholstery smelled like sweaty feet and stale cigarette smoke. Her wobbly stomach did a somersault. She tasted bile.

Given a pen or paperclip, she could pick the cuffs. She’d learned all sorts of things from Ffo—

Focus. Focus. Worst case, they’d stick her in a cell, and surely they’d have to take the cuffs off then. Worst case, she’d just have to be patient a little while. And then it’d be, Au revoir, Frogs.

They passed the Louvre, and then Mollie understood why the cops—gendarmes—were so trigger-happy with the Tasers. The glass pyramid, along with wide swaths of the surrounding buildings, was still under reconstruction years after some badass old-timey ace had practically leveled the place. Mollie didn’t know the whole story there; she’d been busy at the time pinching a metric fuck-ton of gold from the treasury of a Central African dictatorship. Which is how she met …

She shook her head again, this time in frustrated anger. It was also how she’d met prissy Noel Matthews. Noel Fucking Matthews. He’d found her after her stint on TV, where her troubles had really started. Not least because that shitmuncher Jake Butler had cheated her off the show, but also because it was via American Hero that she got tangled up with Michael Douchebag Berman. Michael Grabby-Hands Berman. Michael Needle-Dick Berman.

By now she should have been living on easy street, but it never worked out that way because every single person she met turned out to be a flaming asshole.

Well, except maybe one.

Yellow halogen light and the silvery glow of a full moon kaleidoscoped through the rain-stippled windows when the car swung through another roundabout. Mollie watched the floor in the vague hope that a pen, paper clip, or other useful implement might slide conveniently from beneath the seat. No dice. She sighed. The residual tremors from the tasing had temporarily ruined her fine motor skills anyway. She couldn’t pick the locks, nor could she break the chain.