James Patterson - Swimsuit

“Henri sent me a video,” I told her. “Looks like he killed Gina Prazzi. Maybe he's doing cleanup. Getting rid of people who know him and what he's done. So we have to ask ourselves, Mandy, when the book is finished, what's he going to do to us?”

I told her my plan, and she argued with me, but I got the last word. “I can't just sit here. I have to do something.”

I called a cab, and once we were rolling I ripped the adhesive tape from my rib cage and stuck the tracking device underneath the cab's backseat.

I caught a direct flight to Paris – midcabin coach, next to the window. As soon as I put the seatback down, my eyes slammed shut. I missed the movie, the precooked meals, and the cheap champagne, but I got about nine hours of sleep, waking only as the plane started its descent.

My bag shot down the luggage chute like it had missed me, and within twenty minutes of landing I was sitting in the backseat of a taxi.

I spoke to the driver in my broken French, told him where to take me: the Hôtel Singe-Vert, French for “Green Monkey.” I'd stayed there before and knew it to be a clean two-and-a-half-star lodging popular with journalists on location in the City of Lights.

I walked through the unmanned lobby door, passed the entrance to the bar called Jacques' Américain on my left, then crossed into the dark inner lobby with its worn green couches, racks of folded newspapers in all languages, and a large, faded watercolor of African green monkeys behind the front desk.

The concierge's nametag read “Georges.” He was flabby, fiftyish, and pissed that he had to break off his phone conversation to deal with me. After Georges ran my credit card and locked my passport in the safe, I took the stairs, found my room on the third floor at the end of a frayed runner at the back of the hotel.

The room was papered with cabbage roses and crowded with century-old furniture, jammed in wall to wall. But the bedding was fresh, and there was a TV and a high-speed Internet connection on the desk. Good enough for me.

I dropped my bag down on the duvet and found a phone book. I'd been in Paris for an hour, and before I did another thing I had to get a gun.

The French take handguns seriously. Permits are restricted to police and the military and a few security professionals, who have to lug their guns in cases, carry them in plain sight.

Still, in Paris, as in any big city, you can get a gun if you really want one. I spent the day prowling the Golden Drop, the drug-dealing sinkhole around the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur.

I paid two hundred euros for an old snub-nosed.38, a ladies' pistol with a two-inch barrel and six rounds in the chamber.

Back at the Green Monkey, Georges took my key off the board and pointed with his chin to a small heap on one of the sofas. “You have a guest.”

It took me a long moment to take in what I was seeing. I walked over, shook her shoulder, and called her name.

Amanda opened her eyes and stretched as I sat down beside her. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me, but I couldn't even kiss her back. She was supposed to be home, safe in L.A.

“Gee. Pretend you're glad to see me, okay? Paris is for lovers,” she said, smiling cautiously.

“Mandy, what in God's name are you thinking?”

“It's a little rash, I know. Look, I have something to tell you, Ben, and it could affect everything.”

“Cut to the chase, Mandy. What are you talking about?”

“I wanted to tell you face-to-face -”

“So you just got on a plane? Is it about Henri?”

“ No -”

“Then, Mandy, I'm sorry, but you have to go back. No, don't shake your head. You're a liability. Understand?”

“Well, thank you.”

Mandy was pouting now, which was rare for her, but I knew that the further I pushed her, the more obstinate she'd get. I could already smell the carpet burning as she dug in her heels.

“Have you eaten?” she asked me.

“I'm not hungry,” I said.

“I am. I'm a French chef. And we're in Paris.”

“This is not a vacation,” I said.

A half hour later, Mandy and I were seated at an outdoor café on the Rue des Pyramides. Night had blotted up the sunlight, the air was warm, and we had a clear view of a gilded statue of Saint Joan on her horse where our side street intersected with the Rue de Rivoli.

Mandy's mood had taken an upturn. In fact, she seemed almost high. She ordered in French, put away course after course, describing the preparation and rating the salad, the pâté, and the fruits de mer.

I made do with crackers and cheese and I drank strong coffee, my mind working on what I had to do, feeling the time rushing by.

“Just try this,” Mandy said, holding out a spoonful of crcme brulée.

“Honestly, Amanda,” I said with frank exasperation. “You shouldn't be here. I don't know what else to say to you.”

“Just say you love me, Benjy. I'm going to be the mother of your child.”

I stared at Amanda; thirty-four years old, looking twenty-five, wearing a baby blue cardigan with ruffled collar and cuffs and a perfect Mona Lisa smile. She was astonishingly beautiful, never more so than at this very moment.

“Please say that you're happy,” she said.

I took the spoon out of her hand and put it down on her plate. I got out of my chair, placed one hand on each of her cheeks, and kissed her. Then I kissed her again. “You are the craziest girl I ever knew, trcs étonnante.”

“You're very amazing, too,” she said, beaming.

“Boy, do I love you,” I said.

“ Moi aussi. Je t'aime you to pieces. But are you, Benjy? Are you happy?”

I turned to the waitress, said to her, “This lovely lady and I are going to have a baby.”

“It is your first baby?”

“Yes. And I love this woman so much, and I'm so happy about the baby I could fly circles around the moon.”

The waitress smiled broadly, kissed both my cheeks and Mandy's, then made a general announcement that I didn't quite understand. But she made wing motions with her arms, and people at the next table started laughing and clapping and then others joined in, calling out congratulations and bravos.

I smiled at strangers, bowed to a beatific Amanda, and felt the flush of an unexpected and full-blown joy. Not long ago I was thanking God that I have no children. Now I was lit up brighter than I. M. Pei's glass pyramid at the Louvre.

I could hardly believe it.

Mandy was going to have our child.

As quickly as my expanding love for Mandy sent my heart to the moon, my happiness was eclipsed by an even greater fear for her safety.

As we trekked back to our little hotel, I told Amanda why she had to leave Paris in the morning.

“We'll never be safe as long as Henri is calling the shots. I have to be smarter than he is, and that's saying something, Amanda. Our only hope is for me to get out in front of him. Please trust me about this.”

I told Mandy that Henri had described walking with Gina around the Place Vendôme.

I said, “It's like looking for one needle in a hundred haystacks, but my gut is telling me that he's here.”

“And if he is, what are you going to do about it, Benjy? Are you really going to kill him?”

“You've got a better idea?”

“About a hundred of them.”

We took the stairs to our room, and I made Amanda stand back as I drew my dainty Smith and Wesson and opened the door. I checked the closets and the bath, pushed aside the curtains, and looked out into the alley, seeing popup monsters everywhere.

When I was sure the room was clear, I said, “I'll be back in an hour. Two hours at most. Sit tight, okay? Watch the tube. Swear to me you won't leave the room.”