Джонатан Келлерман - The Golem of Paris

The extra second she had taken to remove her shoes allowed him to perform myriad primal lizard-brain calculations: the distribution of his body weight on a slippery surface, the radius of danger produced by her outstretched arm plus three inches of honed steel, the probable arc of the blade as it aimed for a clean sever of the jugular vein.

By then he’d moved out of the way.

He backpedaled through the curtain, whipping heavy beaded strands at her.

Harmless, but it did the trick, entangling her as he broke for the exit.

He ran, tipping over tables, kicking over chairs. He couldn’t move quickly on the tiles. But neither could she. She was barefoot. Fingertips, palms, toes, soles — they were all covered in friction skin. It gave better traction. But not much. Man did not evolve in a spa. She might’ve been better off keeping her heels on. She was running on instinct, too.

He heaved a basket of birch branches at her, leaves twisting in the steam.

Reaching the door to the antechamber, he realized the mistake in going through. The room was far smaller than the spa. No space to maneuver, no obstacles between them.

The only escape an elevator that ran at a third normal speed. She’d be on him well before the car arrived. And the armed guard might’ve returned.

He was fucked. He’d been fucked since getting into her Peugeot.

But what choice did he have? He had relinquished all choice the moment he entered the embassy. Before that: when he’d spoken to Vallot. To Breton.

Before all that : he’d been fucked since arriving in Paris; since he started to ask questions about a dead woman and a dead child.

Pelletier could cut his throat and nobody would question her. She was the law.

She’d say that Jacob had attacked Tremsin. She’d tried to stop him. Reaching for the nearest weapon, disabling Jacob, but not before the poor bastard’s heart gave out.

Alas.

How the hell was he going to make it out of the building alive?

One thing at a time his lizard brain said.

In case of fire, do not use the elevator. Take the stairs.

There had to be stairs. Somewhere.

He hadn’t seen any in the antechamber.

In one of the alcoves?

So instead of going through the door, he hooked right, back around the swimming pool, passing alcove one, which housed a vast white marble whirlpool.

No door.

Pelletier came after him, tripping barefoot through the mess of branches, her decision to go shoeless looking more and more imprudent.

Eventually he would run out of furniture to tip and baskets to throw. He’d come full circle and run smack into his own messes.

But for right now he had open floor in front of him and she had junk in her way, and he chucked another basket at her.

She dodged. He was becoming predictable.

He came to the next alcove, a glassed-in sauna. No door.

Alcove three contained a second whirlpool, green onyx. How many fucking bubbles did one person need? No door.

As Jacob continued to run, he realized what distinguished the spa from the rest of the house: no cameras here. It was Tremsin’s private oasis. Too foggy, anyway.

Pelletier knew that. She knew this place. She wanted him here.

The next alcove, the fourth, was the barbershop.

Parting the curtain, he looked past Tremsin’s body, hoping against hope.

No door.

He stopped then, because Pelletier had stopped too, retreating to the antechamber door. Letting him wear himself out.

She said, “Let’s be dignified about this.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

She laughed.

He laughed, too. He felt woozy and flushed.

The only alcove he hadn’t checked was the fifth. Halfway between them.

Forty feet of leaf-strewn tile and fragrant mist and gauzy orange light.

If there was a stairwell, it had to be there.

If he got close enough to find out, she’d be on him in seconds.

Or maybe she wouldn’t bother. Maybe she’d bide her time till the cavalry arrived.

A ray of illumination washed over him. He peered up at the skylight.

Peaceful, abundant clouds.

Was Mai behind them?

Schott was in the building. Molchanov, too.

Waiting for her.

She knew. She wasn’t coming.

Nobody was coming.

Pelletier said, “Tremsin thought you were someone else.”

“Who?”

“We didn’t get that far,” she said. “You made him upset, though.”

“He went to that party, didn’t he?”

She said, “I’m not going to answer that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You don’t get to learn the truth before you die.”

“What makes you think I’m going to die?” he said.

“What makes you think you’re not?”

He ducked through the curtain into the barbershop, grabbed a razor with a knurled steel handle from the collection, swung it open, grabbed another blade, and reemerged.

Pelletier had closed the gap between them to ten feet.

She halted.

He opened the second razor, held both weapons out like a teppanyaki chef.

“Do you know how to use those?” she said.

Jacob hated knives. In a way they were worse than guns. Even from close range, ninety percent of shots missed. A knife didn’t have to be accurate to do real harm. It could cripple you with a glancing cut.

He said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

He kicked up a fan of leaves and sticks and slurry and rushed her.

She pivoted sideways to narrow her profile, her razor out, glinting, threatening, and he tried to slide off axis to hack at the inside of her elbow, hoping to disarm her right off the bat. But she was nimble and compact and she folded her limbs against her body and corkscrewed down and away from him.

Momentum carried him past her, and the edge of a blade whispered along the back of his leg, opening the denim several inches below his left rear pocket, close enough that he felt thankful for not buying into the skinny jeans fad.

He jerked around to slow himself, crouched, ready to fight her off.

She hung back, her posture relaxed, quick eyes conducting damage assessment.

They’d switched positions, relative to the antechamber door.

Warmth trickled along the back of his knee, over the swell of his calf.

No pain.

Which was either good or a disaster, the wound either so minor as to be irrelevant or so deep that his nervous system had flooded with override signals, enabling him to do the sensible thing: flee.

He didn’t want to look. If he looked, he’d know, and knowing could undo him, mentally. The crucial fact was that he was still standing, his left hamstring strong enough to bear weight.

He went at her again, driving her back over the tiles, swinging the razors in two planes, her belly, her neck. Instinct. Two blades were a bitch to control; he had to slow down to avoid cutting himself, and Pelletier exploited his treadling gait, drawing him away from where he needed to go, which was the alcove behind him, maybe the one with the stairs.

He did the sensible thing.

He stopped attacking her.

Turned and ran.

The next moment swelled monstrously, a blister in the soft tissue of time. He slipped. His injured left leg slewed loose in mud and dead vegetation and his foot lost contact with the ground and he pitched forward, landing on the beak of his elbow, bone on tile, a stunning wave of pain traveling up his humerus and into his shoulder socket. He rolled partway onto his flank, scrabbling with his heels, kicking at the floor, backstroking through debris as Pelletier charged toward him.

He saw her dark brown roots and her neat bared teeth, the diagonal creases of her shirt, her arm spring-loaded across her body, razor held high, front leg planting, torso unwinding to loose the backhand that would spill his innards.