“I’m on Middleton’s daughter,” he said. “In Paris. I’ll stay with her.” He hung up without waiting for a response.

Ian Barrett-Bone had gotten over the shock of nearly being gunned to death on a road outside of Paris. He and his employer were used to wielding money and threats of violence—and violence itself—to force people to do the most despicable things. Many of them sputtered and swore and promised to get even. But few did.

Jana was different, of course.

Barrett-Bone himself was motivated by money and thrill. He considered a desk job the purest of tortures.

But Jana? What drove her?

Idealism, he supposed. How childish a motive. How meddlesome.

Yet her appearance on that road outside Paris was a sharp reminder of the danger everyone was facing.

How many other deaths would occur—all because of the copper bracelet?

He watched as Charley rose from the bench. She took a long, final swig of the sparkling water and tossed its green plastic bottle in the trash, along with the heel of the bread. Then she thought better of it, retrieved the bread, crumpled it and offered the crumbs to pecking pigeons.

“She couldn’t be more American if she tried,” Barrett-Bone muttered to himself as he regarded the attractive woman with a measure of disgust.

He glanced at his Patek Phillippe wristwatch as he resumed following Middleton’s daughter from a discrete distance. He imagined she would continue to wander aimlessly, her guard down, defenses non-existent.

Felicia Kaminski, now conscious, and Pierre Crane sat side by side in the back row of the Mercedes van, their wrists cuffed together with plastic, their ankles tied to each other’s. The driver had managed to shackle them in seconds while Jana trained her gun at the two captives.

A double beep of a cell phone sounded. Jana answered. She spoke in a language Crane took to be Hindi. Then she spun to face the prisoners. “I have just learned,” she said in thickly accented English, “that you are not Charlotte Middleton.”

Felicia said nothing.

Jana barked at Crane. “Who is she?”

“I have no idea. I can ask her, but it will have to be in English. But I don’t think she speaks French.”

“You,” Jana said in halting English. “What your name is?”

“Felicia.”

Jana looked at Crane. “Is French,” she said in English.

“Is Polish,” he replied in French. He was going to mention her accent, but knew Jana couldn’t detect it, no more than he could distinguish between an Algerian or a Moroccan when they spoken French. “She may be his maid.”

“A maid who can fight.”

“I think she was defending herself. A lucky blow with the instrument. You have the wrong girl.”

Crane knew they were heading southeast.

“I think she’s a little off,” he added. “Incompetent. You know . . . ”

Felicia seemed to will herself not to stare at him, not to stomp his foot.