BLAKE CARTER WATCHED TRACY and Nicholas as they rode up the hill toward him. Tracy’s hair had grown out a little and was now almost at her shoulders. It sailed behind her like the tail of a kite as she galloped into the breeze, racing against her boy, her slender figure perfectly meshed with the horse’s rhythm and movements as if they were one creature, not two. Tracy was a natural horsewoman. You couldn’t teach that kind of skill, just as you couldn’t fake the natural beauty that shone out of her like light from the sun.
Blake thought, I’ve loved her for so long, I hardly even notice it anymore.
Then he thought, I don’t want her to go.
Out of nowhere Tracy had announced yesterday that she was flying to Europe tomorrow for a week. Supposedly she was attending some fancy cooking course in Italy. But Blake Carter wasn’t stupid. He could smell something fishy, and it wasn’t bouillabaisse.
Nick wasn’t happy about it either.
“I win!” he panted, pulling his pony up short beneath the oak tree where Blake was waiting for them and grinning at his mother. “That means I get to give you a forfeit. And I say you can’t go to Italy.”
“Sorry.” Tracy laughed. She was panting too. The fast ride in the June sun had exhausted both of them “Doesn’t work like that. Besides, it’s only for a week.”
Tracy smiled at Blake, but he looked back at her sternly.
Nick said, “They have cooking courses in Denver. Why can’t you take one of those?”
“Exactly,” Blake Carter muttered darkly.
“I could,” said Tracy. “But Denver’s hardly the culinary capital of the world. Besides, I want to go to Italy. All this fuss over a little vacation! You two are quite capable of taking care of yourselves for a week.”
Nick rode off toward the lower fields, where Blake had set up some jumps for him to practice on. Left alone with Blake, Tracy shifted uncomfortably beneath his disapproving gaze.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I’m not a fool. I don’t know what you’re playing at, Tracy, but I know this trip is dangerous.”
Tracy opened her mouth to speak but Blake waved her down angrily. “Don’t you dare repeat that cooking school nonsense to me one more time. Don’t you dare!”
Tracy looked at him openmouthed. She didn’t think she’d ever heard Blake raise his voice before, and certainly not to her. Ridiculously, she felt her eyes well up with tears.
“You’ve lied to me for a long time,” Blake went on. “About who you are. About your past. And I let it go because the bottom line is, I don’t care who you are, Tracy. I don’t. I only care that you are. I love you and I love Nick. And I don’t want you to go.”
Tracy leaned out of her saddle and touched his arm. It was as solid and unyielding as the branch of a tree. Like its owner, thought Tracy. I’ve spent my life bending and twisting and compromising. But Blake lives in a world of black and white, right and wrong. Nothing moves for him.
“I have to go,” she said quietly. “Someone once saved my life. Someone I loved dearly. Now I may have a chance to save theirs. I would tell you more if I could, but I can’t.”
“That Canadian Rizzo’s involved in this, isn’t he?” Blake spat out Jean’s name like a mouthful of rotten fruit.
“No. Jean knows nothing about it,” said Tracy, semitruthfully.
“What if something happens to you?” Now it was Blake who was holding back tears. “Is this person you’re flying across the world for more important to you than Nicholas?”
“Of course not. No one’s more important than Nick.”
“Then don’t go. Because if you die, Tracy, that boy has no one.”
“Nonsense. He has you,” Tracy said fiercely, turning her mare around to head back down to the ranch. “And I’m not going to die, Blake. I’ll be back in a week, just like I told you. If you stop being so horrible to me, I may even bring you back a piece of pie. Just as soon as I’ve learned how to make one.”
That was Blake’s cue to smile, to break the tension between them, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead he watched, stony-faced, as Tracy rode back down the hill and out of sight.
DANIEL COOPER PRESSED HIS hands to his temples.
He had a terrible headache.
Jeff Stevens’s screams were starting to get to him.
The path to righteousness is lined with suffering, he reminded himself as he turned up the voltage on the machine that was delivering electric shocks to Stevens’s wrists and ankles. Think of our Lord in Gethsemane. Even He felt abandoned.
Tracy should have been here by now.
Where is she? Didn’t she get my message?
It was hard to keep faith. But Daniel Cooper trusted in the Lord.
BLAKE CARTER HAD JUST put Nick to bed and was about to make himself some supper when the phone rang. Tracy had left for Europe that morning and Blake was home alone.
“Schmidt residence.”
“Blake. How are you?” Jean Rizzo’s voice was the last sound on earth Blake wanted to hear. “It’s Jean Rizzo here. Tracy’s friend.”
“I know who you are.”
“I’m sorry to call so late but I need to speak to Tracy. I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.”
“Well, you can’t speak to her.”
“I’m sorry?”
The old cowboy’s anger crackled down the line. “Why don’t you just crawl on back to wherever it is you came from and leave Tracy the hell alone?”
“You don’t understand . . .”
“No, mister. YOU don’t understand. She’s not here. She flew to Europe this morning. Now, why don’t you tell me what business that lady has in Europe? With her son and her life back here? You put her up to this, Rizzo! If anything happens to that woman I swear to God—”
Jean interrupted him. “Where did she fly to, Blake?”
Carter didn’t answer.
With an effort, Jean controlled his temper. “It’s vitally important that you tell me what you know.”
Blake recognized the note of panic in Jean’s voice. He was doing his best to sound calm, but he was worried. So I was right. Tracy really is in danger. If she hasn’t even confided in Rizzo, it could be serious. “Italy. That’s what she told me. Rome. But I don’t know if she was telling the truth. She’s been lying a lot lately. All I know for sure is that she got in a cab to Denver Airport this morning.”
“Did she say anything else? Anything at all?”
“She said she was trying to help a friend. Someone who’d saved her life once. She said she’d be back in a week. That’s it. Now, are you going to tell me what’s happening?”
“I wish I could,” said Jean, and hung up.
Jean stood in his apartment with the phone in his hand, frozen, for almost a minute. Blake Carter’s words had hit him like a glass of acid in the face. He’d been afraid that Tracy might do this. That she might be crazy enough to try to confront Daniel Cooper on her own, if she believed Jeff Stevens’s life might depend on it. Had something in Cooper’s letter, in the riddle, convinced her that it did? Jean had hoped that some sense of self-preservation, and concern for her son, would kick in at the last minute and pull Tracy back from the brink.
No such luck. Tracy Whitney always had been impulsive. Apparently the leopard hadn’t changed its spots.
Jean had to find her before she found Cooper.
If anything happened to Tracy, Jean thought, Blake Carter wouldn’t need to kill me. Jean Rizzo would never be able to live with the guilt. He’d already failed his sister, and his wife, and his children and all those poor, dead, murdered women. If he lost Tracy too . . .
Think, Jean. Think! Where is she?
He picked up the phone and started to dial.
JEFF DRIFTED IN AND out of consciousness.
It couldn’t be long now. His body would shut down. The pain would end.
It had to. The alternative was unthinkable.
He felt something damp and soft being pressed against his lips.
A sponge?
He sucked weakly, desperate for water, but the liquid wasn’t water. It was bitter. Narcotic. He drank anyway, pushing the horrors of what he knew was to come from his mind.
The lamb.
Death on a cross.
The pain had stopped for now. Idly Jeff wondered whether anyone would come to his rescue. Was anybody even looking for him? The police? Interpol? The FBI? Cooper was obsessed with Tracy. But Tracy wouldn’t come. How could she? Tracy knew nothing about any of this.
Besides, Tracy didn’t love him anymore.
Tracy hadn’t loved him for a long time.
The bitter liquid worked its magic.
Jeff slept.
JEAN RIZZO WAS READY to cry with frustration.
“There must be something. Have we checked passenger lists for every airline?”
His colleague sighed. “Out of Denver yesterday? Yeah. We have. No Tracy Schmidt. No Tracy Whitney.”
“How about domestic flights? Maybe she had a stopover in another city.”
“If she did, she used a different ID. She’s a con artist, right?”
Retired, thought Jean.
“She probably has a lot of passports. You released her picture?”
Jean grunted. He had given the photograph of Tracy that Interpol had on file to the staff at Denver Airport and had it mass–e-mailed to law enforcement agencies across the United States and in a string of major European cities, along with Jeff Stevens’s image. The problem, in both cases, was that the pictures were about fifteen years old. Why the hell didn’t I take Tracy’s picture when we were together in New York? I had all that time. He could have asked Blake Carter for a more up-to-date image, but he knew such a request would only cause the old man to panic. The last thing Jean needed was for Tracy’s disappearance to go public.
“Call me as soon as you hear anything.”
While he waited in vain for the telephone to ring, Jean turned his attention back to Daniel Cooper’s riddle. He suspected strongly that Jeff Stevens was already dead. With the other victims, the women, Cooper had never hung around but had dispatched them swiftly and mercilessly. But Tracy was a different story. Wherever Tracy had gone, she’d been following the clues Cooper laid out for her. Jean Rizzo had no doubt that Tracy would be walking right into Cooper’s trap. But if she could decode Cooper’s message, so could he. And if Stevens was alive, the trail would lead to him too.
Jean’s first stop was at his friend Wiliam Barrow’s apartment. Barrow was a foreign transplant in Lyon, just like Jean. A Londoner by birth, Thomas Barrow taught international relations at the university. He and Jean Rizzo had become friends years ago, when Thomas consulted on a case Jean was working on. He’d done a lot of work with Interpol since and the two men remained close.
“I don’t see how I can help.” Thomas poured Jean a cup of coffee so thick it was technically a solid, and he turned down the Wagner that was playing on his sound system. Jean had given Thomas a brief history of the Bible killings and Daniel Cooper. He explained that Cooper was holding a man hostage and that the man’s life, among others, depended on his, Jean’s, deciphering Cooper’s letter to Tracy.
“You’re a crossword nut,” said Jean.
“This isn’t a crossword.”
“It’s a puzzle. Crosswords are puzzles.”
“Well, yesss . . .” Thomas answered hesitantly.
“Just read it as if it were a crossword and tell me if anything comes to mind. I need a time and a place.”
Jean watched as his friend read in silence. After about a minute Thomas announced cheerfully, “I’ve got a few ideas.”
“Great!”
“They’re just ideas. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know how your average mass murderer thinks.”
“Understood. Go on.”
“All right. So starting at the beginning. If this were a crossword—which let’s not forget, it isn’t—then ‘twenty knights’ might really mean ‘twenty nights.’ Puzzle writers use that sort of ‘homophonic’ wordplay a lot. ‘Three times three’ is nine. So your bloke might be waiting for somebody, the queen, for twenty nights, at nine o’clock.”
Jean’s eyes widened in astonishment. “That’s amazing!”
“It might be total bollocks, remember. It’s just a thought,” Thomas reminded him.
Jean calculated how long it had been since Cooper wrote the letter. Assuming the twenty nights had begun the day after he wrote it, that meant they had . . . eight days left.
A week in which to save Jeff Stevens’s life. If he was still alive.
“Moving on then, line by line.” Thomas was clearly warming to the task. “ ‘Beneath the stars’ probably means what it says: outside. The meeting place is outside. But references to altars and such suggest a place of worship. So it may also be a church with stars painted on the ceiling, for example? Lots of possibilities.”
Jean scribbled feverishly on a notepad.
“ ‘Thirteen lambs slain’ has to be your thirteen murder victims. I imagine ‘fourteen’ is the hostage.”
Of course! It sounded so obvious when Thomas said it.
“If he’s ‘suffering daily pain, soon to end . . .’ ” Thomas paused. “That sounds like a death threat to me. Torture and death. Especially followed by references to a shroud. Shrouds go with bodies, don’t they? You need a corpse to make a shroud.”
Jean shivered.
“The next two verses are the most important,” said Thomas. “The ‘dance in black and white’ has to be a reference to chess, especially with all your knights and queens.”
“I thought so too,” said Jean.
“In which case ‘where masters meet’ is a place reference. Somewhere where chess masters play. Perhaps outside? I know in Russia they play in the parks, don’t they? Or a chess championship of some kind. ‘Six hills, one was lost’ is another place reference, his most specific. But don’t ask me what it means because I haven’t a clue. I suspect ‘on the stage of history’ is place specific too. All your geographical information is in that stanza. You just need to untangle it.”
“Okay,” said Jean. “Is that everything?”
“That’s it.”
Jean finished writing. And stood up to leave. “Thank you.”
“It’s not much, I’m afraid,” Thomas Barrow said, handing Jean his jacket. “But if I were you, I’d look into six hills, and chess games in outdoor venues. Or weirdos hanging around the same spot at nine o’clock at night for three weeks in a row.”
JEAN RACED INTO HIS office, made himself another coffee from the machine in the lobby and had just sat down at his desk to start following up on Thomas Barrow’s ideas when his colleague burst in.
“Progress. Tracy Whitney took the two fifteen P.M. Delta flight from Denver to London Heathrow. Someone at a fast-food restaurant in the airport recognized her picture!”
Antoine Cléry was young and ambitious, with a wiry frame, pale, pockmarked skin and a permanently eager expression. He delivered this news to his boss like an enthusiastic puppy dropping a ball at its master’s feet. If he had a tail, Jean thought, he’d be wagging it. On this occasion, however, Jean shared Cléry’s excitement.
“Did she take a connecting flight out of London?”
“No. Not that day. She cleared customs.”
“Under what name?”
Antoine looked at the paper in his hand. “Sarah Grainger. She used a British passport.”
“Terrific work,” said Jean. “I want the British police on high alert.”
“I’ve already spoken to our office in London.”
“Not just at Heathrow. I want her picture at all the airports, and the Eurostar and the ferry ports. Dover, Folkestone, all of them. I don’t believe Cooper’s in London. Chances are she’s already left England and I want to know where she went next and when.”
“Sir.”
Antoine Cléry left the room. Jean Rizzo felt elated. It was the first piece of good news he’d had in days.
I’m going to find you, Tracy.
I’m going to find you, and Jeff Stevens and Daniel Cooper.
And then I’m going to end this thing, once and for all.
THREE DAYS PASSED.
Nothing happened.
Elation gave way to anxiety and finally to despair. Tracy had come to London and evaporated. No trace of her had surfaced, as Sarah Grainger or any of her other alter egos.
The staff members at Interpol’s London office defended themselves to Jean Rizzo.
“Do you know how many passengers pass through Heathrow every day? Almost two hundred thousand. And you expect people to remember one woman’s face? She could be flying under any number of identities. Eighty-two airlines use Heathrow, Jean, flying to a hundred and eighty destinations. And that’s assuming she flew out of Heathrow. Forget needle in a haystack. She’s a speck of dust in the Royal Albert Hall.”
While he waited, increasingly desperately, for a positive sighting of Tracy, Jean redoubled his efforts to solve Daniel Cooper’s riddle. Tracy had done it by herself, after all. Then again, maybe Tracy knew something he didn’t. Some secret that only she and Cooper, and possibly Jeff Stevens, shared?
The chess angle was taking him nowhere fast. He spoke to players and chess clubs and to the editor of New In Chess magazine, the most widely read and respected publication in the game.
“There are as many outdoor venues for chess matches as there are stars in the sky, or grains of sand on a beach,” the editor told him. “All you need is a board. As for official championships, those always take place in indoor venues. The WCC—World Chess Championship—is the most prestigious, of course. But ‘where masters meet’ could be a reference to any number of matches or competitions.”
Jean refocused his attention on the “six hills” clue. He contacted the local police in Hertfordshire, England, and had staff at the long barrows site shown Daniel Cooper’s picture as well as Tracy’s. No one had seen them, or reported anything suspicious. Nor had any significant chess matches been held in the area in the past ten years.
The police in Six Hills, Georgia, clearly considered the whole thing a joke. “A riddle? Sounds like somethin’ out of Batman. We don’t get too many hostage situations down here, but if we see your fella, we’ll be sure and let you now. You want us to look out for the Penguin too?”
Jean was irritated, but didn’t dwell on it. Cooper was almost certainly still in Europe. Although it was technically possible to enter the United States with a hostage in tow, there was no need for him to make his life that difficult.
Sylvie called him. “It’s Clémence’s birthday tomorrow. She’ll be seven.”
Jean winced. “I’m sorry. I totally forgot.”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling you. I bought a present from you and wrapped it. It’s a camera.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry.”
“You’re taking her and Luc to the movies tomorrow afternoon at four.”
Jean balked. He had less than four days to find Daniel Cooper and the trail was almost cold. “Sylvie, I can’t. I have to work. I—”
“I booked the tickets already. It’s her birthday, Jean. She wants to see you. Be there.”
CLÉMENCE AND LUC WERE in a state of high excitement.
“Can we have ICEEs?”
“Can we have Pick ’n’ Mix?”
“As it’s Clem’s birthday, can we have popcorn and Pick ’n’ Mix?”
“Can we see it in 3-D?”
Jean experienced a familiar feeling of happiness combined with the guilt that he always felt in his children’s company. They’re so sweet. I should see them more.
Against their mother’s express wishes, he bought both of them an enormous bag of candy and settled down between them in the dark theater. The movie was formulaic, a lazily written cartoon complete with a wisecracking sidekick and an improbably proportioned if feisty heroine.
Tracy would make a great heroine, he thought. Bullheaded and brave. Intelligent but impulsive.
His mind drifted back to the case. He’d spent the morning watching CCTV footage provided by London’s Transport Police, showing Tracy clearing customs and emerging into the arrivals terminal at Heathrow four days ago. She was wearing a head scarf and glasses, which did a good job of concealing most of her face. Her demeanor was casual and relaxed. She neither hurried nor dawdled and she never looked over her shoulder or behind her as she walked toward the tube.
Jean had played and replayed the clip for hours, searching for a clue, for anything that might jog his memory or stir up a new lead.
Was Cooper in London? In England, at any rate?
Some instinct told Jean he wasn’t, but he told himself that perhaps his instincts were wrong. Just before he drove to pick up the kids, he’d learned that there was a painting in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square entitled Six Hills. He’d dropped a quick e-mail to Interpol’s London field office to contact the authorities at the gallery, but he was itching to get on the phone to them himself.
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he switched it on, ignoring the disapproving glances of the other parents. He set it to vibrate. Immediately it began to jump and buzz in his lap, like an angry bee.
Nine missed calls.
Nine! Something must have happened.
He opened his text messages and began to read.
SYLVIE RIZZO WAS CURLED up on the couch at home, reading a novel and enjoying some well-earned peace, when the front door opened and two crying children burst in. Their father trailed behind them, looking stressed.
“I’m sorry,” Jean mumbled. “I have to go. I have to catch a plane.”
“What, right now?”
“The film wasn’t even halfway through!” Clémence moaned.
“Dad wouldn’t let us stay. I didn’t even get to finish my ICEE!” Luc sobbed.
“You bought them ICEEs?” Sylvie’s frown deepened. “I told you they make Luc sick.”
“I have to go.”
“For God’s sake, Jean!” Sylvie snapped. “I’ll have to go to court if this goes on. You can’t keep letting them down like this. It’s Clémence’s birthday!”
At that moment Luc vomited violently, spraying blue sugary puke all over the living room carpet.
Jean ran to his car and didn’t look back.
Tracy had been spotted at Heathrow. The footage was two days old, but it was clear. With a new alias, and dark brown hair extensions, she had boarded a Britannia flight to Sofia, Bulgaria.
This year’s World Chess Championships were being held in Bulgaria.
Jean had Antoine Cléry look up the date and venue.
“The competition began yesterday. It’s in Plovdiv, a provincial city, in a conference center attached to a hotel.”
Jean Googled “Plovdiv” as he left Sylvie’s house.
“Plovdiv is often referred to in Bulgaria as ‘the City of the Seven Hills . . . Inside the city proper are six syenite hills, called tepeta . . .”
Jean Rizzo slammed his foot on the accelerator.
