Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“I’ve no idea, and it doesn’t matter. The point is, he’d hidden the packet up on the roof, in one of a number of secure caches that our men in France had constructed for leaving messages to one another. That’s why he chose that particular building.”

Dexter raised his eyebrows. “Reginald? It was Reginald himself who left the documents you’re here to retrieve?”

“Yes. It was one of the reasons they assigned me. I’d worked with him, knew him, and might notice details others wouldn’t. If he’d changed any of the equipment or codes used to work the pressure locks on the cache, with my background I’d be more likely to work out what new code he’d used. Nobody ever thought to ask him while there was still time, you see.”

“I see.”

“I should have told you. It didn’t seem to matter.”

Dexter didn’t respond directly to that. “Did his foe see him stashing the documents?”

Charlotte shook her head. “Not as far as Reginald could tell, and that’s why Murcheson hopes they’re still there. Reginald’s main memory after he’d secured the package was of turning to jump off the roof and seeing the man right behind him, hand outstretched. The wind was blowing, a snowstorm had started minutes before. Reginald said the man’s hair had blown back from his face and he had nothing but some sort of metal device where one ear had been. And the hand that reached for him, that was metal too.”

“Dear God.”

“Reginald saw all this for a second, at the most, before he slipped down the cord and escaped, but the image was so stark it never left him. He never knew what kept the man from cutting the cord or prying the grappling hook from the abutment. His superiors identified the man from his report once he’d returned to England.”

Dexter took her hand in his, and Charlotte was grateful for the warmth and for the contact. “From your description of the man you saw at the Opéra, It certainly sounds like the same agent.”

“How many claw-handed agents with advanced auditory enhancements are there in French intelligence? I’d think it had to be the same man. The simplest explanation is almost always the right one, isn’t that what they say?”

“ They say a lot of things. And that’s hardly simple, a spy who’s half automaton, following the widow of an enemy agent he killed five years ago to the same building where he had a showdown against the man two years before that. But I’d hardly claim it was impossible either. So this man is still an active field operative?”

“No,” Charlotte admitted. “Not if it’s the same person. He hasn’t officially been an agent for the French for years. Not since the treaty. They said he went rogue, though I always had my doubts. In any case, a few weeks before we were married, Reginald’s superiors warned us that this former agent—Coeur de Fer they call him—appeared to be traveling to the Americas. Dubois was traveling there and Couer de Fer was posing as his bodyguard, but the Agency was concerned he might be tracking Reginald because of their history.”

“Did he . . . wait, Reginald knew this man was coming?”

“We thought we’d taken every precaution. We had security at the wedding, we employed doubles to go on the honeymoon we’d originally planned, while we took a boat to New Orleans with tickets purchased under another name at the last minute. It didn’t matter in the end. The man was obsessed, I think. He would have caught up with Reginald eventually, no matter what we’d done.”

“It’s been years, though,” Dexter argued. “It may not be the same man after all. You never saw him yourself, correct? Besides, you were still hardly more than a girl when the treaty was signed. Why would he suspect you of anything now?”

“I don’t know. But my showing up at the Palais Garnier can’t have looked like coincidence to him. I need to speak with Murcheson about it. If this man has already made the connection between me and Reginald, and cares enough to pursue me now, the only thing he could be after is the one thing Reginald took from him. I can only assume it would be best for our side to recover those documents now, before he takes it in mind to look around the Opéra roof for old times’ sake. I don’t think we can afford to wait for the new moon.”

For a moment Dexter said nothing at all but just sat, frowning thoughtfully. “But then again, perhaps it wasn’t Coeur de Fer after all. Would an agent of that caliber, even a former one, make a mistake like that? Letting his cover slip, letting himself be seen by his mark? It seems like a pretty basic thing to slip up on.”

“Oh, I don’t think it was an accident,” Charlotte said. “I think he wanted me to see. Wanted me to know that he was following me. To frighten me off, or see how I would react. He likes the cat and mouse game. He likes to taunt.”

The basis of her knowledge swirled in her head, making her ill as it always did when she allowed herself to think about it. If she had only awakened, if she had heard the door, or if she and Reginald had stayed up to make love a second time—

“What is it?”

Dexter’s arm was all the way around her waist now, Charlotte realized. It felt good and solid and safe. She couldn’t let herself relax into it.

“It’s difficult to talk about,” she understated.

That warm, strong arm tightened around her, pulling her closer. “Do you want to know what I think?”

She looked up at him, curious. “All right.”

“I think that man poisoned you too. Not like he did Reginald,” Dexter assured her, “but with this memory, whatever it is. I see how it haunts you, Charlotte, and it festers like any slow poison. You need to purge it. Cast it up, have it drawn. Choose your metaphor. Either way you can’t keep living with that foul rot inside your mind.”

“You make it sound like gangrene.”

After a long moment in which they stared at each other, Dexter chuckled and dropped his gaze. “Not the metaphor I intended.”

“Don’t they amputate for gangrene? This memory’s in my head, Dexter. Precisely what are you suggesting?”

“I certainly don’t advocate amputation of your pretty head. Forget the gangrene. Let’s stick to man-made poisons, and go with a purge.”

Charlotte was astonished to realize she was smiling, even in the face of this, the stuff of her nightmares. Dexter was like a wizard, waving a wand over her soul and making the impossible seem not only possible but essential.

Not easy, however. No magic could ever make it easy to let that story out. Charlotte had to steel her nerve and make a few false starts before she managed.

“I was asleep,” she finally said, as though this simple fact disgusted her. “I don’t remember hearing anyone enter our cabin, although the lock was forced. Later the doctor said I’d been given a light dose of chloroform, enough to keep me from waking while . . . to keep me from waking.

“Reginald had been given something before he was poisoned, something to paralyze him so he couldn’t struggle. But I’ve researched the substance since, and although the forensic doctor didn’t say so at the time, I know it wouldn’t have rendered him unconscious, only unable to move or speak. And why would the killer go to the trouble of procuring that particular drug, if not to wake his victim up once he was helpless? To have him know what was happening? Reginald knew, and was unable to defend himself as that fiend shot the poison into him. And I never woke up,” she whispered, because her throat was so tight the air could barely pass through it. “I was right next to him the whole time. I never saw him alive again. In the morning I found him next to me and tried . . . tried to wake him. Couldn’t wake him.”