His eyes narrowed; he heard the but in my voice and waited for it.

“But,” I said. “There’s some information I came upon through another source, not through CDMI, and I’ve reviewed the rules, and I think I can share this much with you. No, I know I can.” I rose up on tiptoe to kiss him again.

“What?” he breathed against my lips.

“Four women are being held in the ICE detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One is Thai, one is Cambodian, and the other two are Indonesian. You need to take translators and go there and get statements from each of them. And video it. And do it fast, before they’re deported.”

Deep puzzled creases carved his forehead. “Why? Who are they?”

“I’ll text you their names.”

“What do they have to do with CDMI?”

“I can’t say anything more. Just do it. Please.” I gave him a nudge into the cage and reached around him to push the fifth-floor button. “Good night,” I called as the door slid shut. “And thank you!”

When he was gone, I went into the bathroom and used the bidet and stood under the rainfall shower for a long time.

I had one happy thought as I fell asleep that night. I wouldn’t have to climb the stairs anymore. At least that much of the pretense could be over.

Chapter 30

Barrett had a car and driver at his disposal while he was in France, and he also had a body man to open doors and clear paths and generally serve as a factotum. But he dispensed with all of that for his mission today. He took a cab to the Montparnasse station and rode the TGV to Tours. The company had a small satellite office in Tours, but he didn’t stop by or alert Yves that he would be in the area. Instead he hired a car and drove himself deep into the château country of the Loire Valley.

Because it wasn’t his car, he didn’t care about lingering odors, and he allowed himself to smoke as he drove. The deep breathing helped him relax, even if only enough to offset the jitters he got from the nicotine.

His mission today was twofold. The short-term goal was to update Madame on recent developments and get cover for all that had happened and was yet to happen. They needed to circle their wagons. The long-term goal was to demonstrate Phil Duvall’s failure to meet the short-term goal and to plant the seeds for a changing of the guard. Or, rather, to fertilize the seedlings he’d already started. This campaign was a long and slow one.

As was this drive. Madame’s château was well off the beaten path, and he had to follow a circuitous route through small villages marked off with crumbling walls, past vineyards and forests and meadows of wildflowers dancing in the spring breeze. The rustique charm was lost on Barrett. He railed to himself that the chairman of a major international corporation should be resident at that corporation’s headquarters. The chairman of a major international corporation shouldn’t be living in seclusion under elaborate security measures and with a single gatekeeper. Although—he reconsidered—if the guard did indeed change, if he became that gatekeeper, he thought he could make it work.