Isabelle Lacoste nodded. He was right. She wished she’d thought of that.

There were times when she felt completely up to the job of Chief Inspector. And times when she knew it should have gone to this man.

“Is there anything else I missed?” she asked him.

“You don’t miss much, Isabelle,” said Beauvoir. “And what you do, I pick up. And vice versa. It’s what makes us a strong team.”

“Do you miss Monsieur Gamache?” she asked.

“It’s no reflection on you, but I’ll always miss Chief Inspector Gamache.”

“So will I,” she said. They drove a few more miles before she got up the courage to ask a question that had been bothering her since her appointment.

“Should you have been made Chief Inspector?”

She immediately regretted asking. Suppose he said yes?

“I would’ve liked it,” he said at last. “But I wasn’t expecting it. Not after all that happened.”

“You mean the drinking?” she asked. “And the drugs? Or when you shot Chief Inspector Gamache?”

“When you say it like that it sounds pretty bad,” said Beauvoir, but he smiled as he said it. They both knew pulling the trigger was the one thing he did right. He’d saved Gamache’s life, by almost taking it.

Few, if any, would have had the courage to shoot. Lacoste wasn’t sure she would have.

“You could’ve stopped me, you know,” he said. “You had me in your sights, just as I had him. You had no idea why I was about to gun down the Chief. Why didn’t you stop me?”

“By shooting you?” she asked.

“Yes. Others would have. Anyone else would have.”

“I almost did. But you pleaded with me to trust you.”

“That’s it?”

“It wasn’t your words, it was your voice. You weren’t angry or deranged. You were desperate.”

“You trusted your instincts?”

She nodded, gripping her hands together to stop the trembling that always overcame her when she thought of that horrific day. Having Beauvoir in her sights, her finger on the trigger. And hesitating. And watching him not hesitate. Watching him gun down Chief Inspector Gamache.

It had felt as though she herself had been shot.

Then seeing Chief Inspector Gamache’s body leave the ground. Then hit the ground.

“You trust your instincts,” Jean-Guy said. “That’s why you’ll make one of the great leaders in the Sûreté, Isabelle. And why I will be your loyal right hand for as long as you need me.”

“And would you shoot me?”

“In an instant, patron.”

She laughed. Then realized it was the first time he’d called her patron.

The Fleming play sat in the backseat like a passenger. Listening to them. Absorbing the talk of murder.

Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

“Bonjour,” said Armand Gamache.