Page 96 of The Librarian Spy

That someone like Nicole could be so easily forgotten, that the organization could so readily move on...it was more than Elaine could stand. “I am going now.”

Before Marcel could reach for her again, she was gone, sprinting toward the warehouse door with Jean close behind her. The world whirred by as she ran out into the heat of the June day.

Jean joined her, matching her pace and saying nothing, slowing only when they reached the Rhône. The shade from the plane trees lining the river helped cool the sweat gathered on her brow and dampening the lower back of her dress. But the rustle of the pointed leaves overhead drew her awareness, its sound ominous, tugging her onward with the same press of determination she’d felt earlier.

“What are they looking at?” Jean nodded toward a crowd leaning over the stone wall to the river below.

An icy premonition cascaded over Elaine as she walked on legs she could not feel. A man turned to the side and retched, creating a break in the crowd, a place to slide into and peer toward the glittering river below.

A nude woman floated in the water, bobbing facedown in the gentle waves. The stiffness of her body was guided toward the stone walkway by a police officer with a long metal pole. Blond hair floated around her like a pale mist and her skin was white as a marble statue, marred with patches of black bruises covering her legs and back. Hideous strips of meaty pink showed where skin was missing entirely, as if peeled away.

Bile burned up Elaine’s throat.

“Don’t go down there,” Jean cautioned at her side.

But she was already making her way to the stairs, guided by the same macabre unseen hand that had led her on this path.

She had to know.

Rather, she already knew, but had to confirm.

The police officers yelled at her, but they were too busy with pulling the body from the water to physically stop her. So it was that she was there when they pulled the corpse from the lapping waves and rolled the woman face up onto the stone walkway.

Milky blue eyes stared up at nothing in a face so misshapen, the woman’s features were indistinguishable. If the signs of torture were monstrous upon her back, they were nothing compared to what had been done to her front.

Elaine’s stomach rolled with nausea. This woman could not be Nicole. Her light was too bright to be snuffed out, her guile too smooth to be snagged, her beauty too breathtaking to be made hideous, even with torture.

Yet even as Elaine tried to convince herself, she could not stop her gaze from creeping toward the woman’s right arm, to the spot just above the crook of her elbow where a small heart-shaped mole showed black against her pale skin.

Nicole had been found.

TWENTY-THREE

Ava

At exactly noon every day, Mr. Smith—one of the vice-consuls from the legation office on the first floor of the embassy—came upstairs for a cup of coffee. And at exactly noon every day, Ava met him there.

First, she brought some pastéis de nata from the best bakery in the Belém district. Next, she offered him a few sausages and a tin of quality sardines as a quick lunch when she knew the staff downstairs seldom had time to eat. The day after, she presented him with a bottle of green wine.

He knew she was building up toward something with her sweet smiles and interest in his day-to-day life. Yet when she asked the first time if he’d received the meticulously written and rewritten six copies of Form B, he had the audacity to tell her she was a copy short.

It was now 11:58 a.m., and she was done being nice.

She stood up from her desk, slipped into her heels, and straightened her skirt. Peggy met her gaze from across the office and offered a nod of encouragement, her eyes narrowed with assertiveness.

At 11:59, Ava left her desk and slowly made her way to the break room. Sure enough, Mr. Smith was standing there in his ill-fitting gray suit with a skin tone to match. His dark mustache reminded Ava of the long brooms used by the cleaning crew, and his brow remained in a perpetually glossy state. He wore the same exhausted, defeated expression as his fellow vice-consuls, all of them worked to the point they were bereft of patience and on the teetering edge of losing their humanity.

He eyed her warily.

She gave him her most charming smile, exactly as Peggy had directed. “Did you receive my updated copies of Form B?”

“Miss Harper.” He gave an exaggerated shift from one foot to the other, as if the weight of the world rested between his shoulders. “Was it entirely necessary to send over eight copies of the application for a visa?”

“Absolutely.” Ava crossed her arms over her chest. “Considering I left you ten.”

That had been Peggy’s idea too. Their hands were cramping by the tenth form, but the flattening of Mr. Smith’s lips beneath his mustache made it all worthwhile. The system was complicated and layered in bureaucratic tape, but she was learning to balance the twisted ropes, one grueling slip at a time.

And she would win.