Mike was like a shooting star in her life, a comet across her skies. His visits had been brief and very bright. But he couldn’t get away as often as she would have liked. He had only been in her life for a month, and it already felt as though he had been there forever, but in fact it was all very new, and they hadn’t figured out how to spend time together yet, with both their jobs. His was even harder to get away from than hers. He’d managed to come to Paris twice in the last month. He wanted her to come to New York, but she hadn’t been able to figure out when yet, and she was busier than ever at the office, since she had spent a week in the hospital. She hadn’t been able to work at full speed while she was there. The remnants of the poison in her system had made it hard to concentrate, which was one of its effects.

—

It was almost Thanksgiving when she got the first offer on the château. The Russian had dropped out when he learned that her price was firm, and she had no financial need to sell it. He had tried to get the realtor to cut his commission, and he refused, so the Russian never made an offer. One of the Americans thought it was too pricey too. It became a bidding war between the remaining American and the Chinese buyer. The American was from Houston and wanted to buy it as a gift for his wife. She had always wanted a château in France and he wanted to make her dream come true, while the Chinese man was single and wanted it for himself, for his visits to Paris.

Mike was coming to see her for four days over the holiday. She hadn’t seen him in three weeks. He checked in with Guy Thomas and Robert Richmond in London regularly, and there was no news. The rumors from Russia had gone dead again. And interestingly, Guy had told him that Pierre de Vaumont was still missing. There was no underground information on that either. No one seemed to know anything about his disappearance, and none of their usual informants had heard anything either. He had vanished without a trace. There was another brief mention of it in the paper, and he was listed as a missing person.