Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

The Renault followed them. The woman shifted gears and sped faster down the street. As she reached the end, another vehicle started to turn into the lane, facing them. She leaned on the horn. The other driver panicked and drove off the road onto the sidewalk. The car hit a tree as the Peugeot zoomed past and out. She turned right and slipped into traffic with the police still hot on their tail.

They quickly came to a roundabout full of cars. The Peugeot spilled into the maelstrom, eliciting a cacophony of honking horns.

A taxi swerved in front of her, forcing the woman to pull the wheel sharply to the left, where a BMW in their way was moving much too slowly.

Gabriel braced himself with one hand against the dashboard.

But there was no collision.

He couldn’t have described what she’d done if his life had depended on it—and he supposed it had. Somehow she had maneuvered through the circling traffic and was now exiting the roundabout. The police car was stuck in an inner lane, forced to make another trip around.

He looked over at her. She hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Nice driving,” he said. He only knew one other woman—one other person, period—who could have pulled off a maneuver like that. “You’re not Brazilian by any chance?”

“What? No,” the woman said, and he could hear the dismay in her tone. “You cannot tell that I am French?”

“Just wondering,” Gabriel said, and sat back. Wherever she was taking him, he at least felt confident they wouldn’t crash getting there.

The woman headed down a side street and doused the headlights. Gabriel looked back to make sure they weren’t being followed. He saw nothing behind them but darkness. The woman made a sharp left into an alley, slowed down, and finally came to a stop.

“So,” she said. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a cigarette and a matchbook from an interior pocket.

Gabriel reached into his and pulled out his Colt .45. He pointed it at her.

“Now tell me who you are,” he said. “And this better be good.”

Chapter 4

“Put that away,” she said, lighting her cigarette. “I am not your enemy. I just saved you from at least one night in jail. Maybe more.”

Gabriel squinted at her. “That’s swell. Who are you, and what were you doing in that apartment?”

“My name is Samantha Ficatier. I’m a friend of your sister’s.”

“You know who I am?”

“Of course. Cifer talked about you all the time. Gabriel Hunt, the famous explorer and adventurer, blah blah blah. Besides, you have her eyes.” She nodded in the direction of the gun. “Now put that away.” She smiled, took a long drag on her cigarette, held it before exhaling. “My friends,” she said, “call me Sammi.”

Gabriel lowered the Colt but didn’t put it away. “How do you know Lucy?”

“Lucy!” she said. “She would be furious if I called her that. You want to know where we met? We met in a history class at the university. We became good friends, took another course together. Then she dropped out.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Gabriel shook his head. “Lucy went to a university? What university?”

“The University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know. When was this?”

“Two years ago.”

He was flabbergasted. Lucy had never shown an interest in school before she’d run away. In learning, sure—she’d read constantly, tinkered with electronics. It certainly wasn’t that she wasn’t smart. In terms of raw intelligence she may have been the smartest of the three of them. But she’d had no interest in classes.

“What was she studying?”

“She didn’t declare a focus of study, is that what you call it? She just wanted to take some classes in the Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences departments. She thought it would help her with her work.”

“As a computer hacker?”

Sammi’s smile broadened. “You know about that?”

“I do. She’s pretty good at it, as I understand.”

“Typical American understatement,” Sammi said. “She is not ‘pretty good.’ She has no peer. She can enter any system, break passwords, you name it.”

“They teach all that in the university here?”

“No,” Sammi said. “That they do not teach. That you cannot learn. You are born with it, or you are not.”

Gabriel sincerely doubted anyone was born with computer skills; if people were born that way now, wouldn’t that mean they always had been? And god help the poor son of a bitch born with computer skills in 1706. Best he could do is grow up to be Ben Franklin.

“Look . . . Sammi, what do you know about what’s happened to Lucy?”

The young woman raised her eyebrows. “What has happened?”

“You don’t know?”

For the first time he saw a look of concern in her eyes. “No. Do you?”

Gabriel sat back in his seat. He watched to see how she would react.

“She’s been kidnapped.”

Sammi’s eyes grew wide and she put her hand to her mouth. “My god! Please, no. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“Who did this?”

“First you tell me what you were doing in her apartment.”

“I was . . . I was seeing if I could find out where she might be. Lucy and I were supposed to get together, the day before yesterday. She didn’t show up, and that’s not like her. She didn’t answer her phone, and that’s really not like her. Didn’t return my messages. So I became worried. I finally came over . . . and well, I found it the way you did. The lock on the door was broken. The place was a shambles.”

“It looked to me like you might have been the one who did all that.”

She shook her head. “Not me. I was there only maybe ten minutes before you arrived.”

“And you certainly didn’t stay long after I got there. How did you get away?”

She shook her head and a mischievous grin played across her lips. “A good magician never reveals her secrets.”

“And you’re a good magician?”

“A very good magician.”

“Is that like computer skills,” Gabriel said, “something you’re born with?”

Sammi shook her head again. “My father,” she said. “He was a good magician first, and he taught me. All his tricks.”

It took a moment for Gabriel to realize she meant it literally.

“Your father . . . ?”

“Was a street performer, here in Nice. He specialized in escapes—like Houdini. I assisted him for many years when I was a girl. I would lock him in boxes, in crates, in cans, and he would get out. Eventually he taught me how to do them all. We even went to a tailor to have a miniature straitjacket made, of burlap, with silver buckles. I loved to wear it! He taught me how to escape from anything. Everything.” She inhaled again and Gabriel watched the coal of her cigarette glow in the darkness of the car. “Until they put him in his very last box. From this box, he did not escape.” She didn’t say anything more for a little while. “I went on with it for a year or so by myself,” she continued, “working the streets, doing tricks. I made some money; not a lot. People don’t give money to street performers like they used to.”

“So what did you do?” Gabriel said. “To make money.”

“What I had to,” Sammi said. “The skills my father taught me have such a lot of applications. Some more lucrative than others.”

“Like getting in and out of apartments,” Gabriel said.

Her shoulders lifted and fell. “In her way, it is what your sister does, too, don’t fool yourself.”

“So you’re not going to tell me how you got out of her apartment?”

She stretched out an index finger, laid it across Gabriel’s lips. “Secret,” she said.