"Okay," I said and ended the call. It took less than twenty minutes before a police car pulled up.
"Are you Lissa Huston?" The policeman got out of his car and came over to talk to me.
"Yes," I said. "Did Paul send you?"
"He did. I'm to take you to the airport; do you have your passport with you?"
"Yes," I pulled it from my purse and showed it to him.
"Good enough," he smiled. He had blond hair, green eyes and a nice smile, helping me into the car before climbing in and driving away. "This jet belongs to a business magnate who happens to be traveling to France this evening," the officer, who identified himself as Raymond Jeffries, informed me. He walked with me to the end of the jet's steps and I climbed up. There was an attendant waiting just inside the door, and she greeted me by name. "Mr. Harding is inside his office, conducting business," the woman said. "Please have a seat and buckle yourself in; we'll be leaving shortly."
"Thank you," I said. I figured my face still showed evidence of my tears so I pulled a small mirror from my purse and tried to set myself to rights as the attendant closed the door and let the pilot know that everything was ready. We took off fifteen minutes later.
The flight from London to Paris isn't a long one; little more than two hundred miles. It was no time before we were landing at Charles de Gaulle. Paul and another werewolf were there to meet me; I figured he had to be Tony's brother and that thought almost caused me to break down again. "Come on, let's get you to the hotel," Paul was holding me up as best he could as we walked toward their rental car. Deryn Alford, Tony's half-brother, put me in the front seat while Paul drove. Deryn sat in the back.
"We'll take you out tomorrow night and see if we can find anything," Paul promised as we drove to the hotel. "We have a meeting with some of the local authorities tomorrow," he added.
"All right," I nodded. "I want to warn you, what I have on is all I have at the moment." I hadn't bothered to take any of my clothing with me.
"We'll work on that, too. Mr. Winkler said he would reimburse us for all your expenses." I just nodded my head so I wouldn't start crying again.
They put me in a hotel room; it was right across the hall from theirs and I learned that night that somehow the translation skills that I'd gotten while on Refizan were still working. I understood everything that was said in French around me. I wasn't about to try my skill at speaking the language in case I tripped over my own tongue. The French weren't forgiving if you butchered their language.
* * *
"We had a little help," Paul handed over three bags of clothing to me; I was wrapped in a towel after my shower. At least I had a comb in my purse so my hair wasn't a tangled mess on my head.
"Thanks," I said. I'd gotten up and found a bag of blood in one of the hotel's ice buckets beside my bed. Paul had kept the extra key card to my room the night before and somehow he'd managed to get my dinner. The clothes were just a bonus.
"Who helped?" I asked, peeking inside the bags. Jeans and tops, along with a pair of athletic shoes were inside the first one, underwear and other necessities were inside the others.
"A female werewolf," Paul coughed a little.
"Tell her thanks," I said, and started laying clothing out on the bed. She'd even laundered it for me, which meant I owed her big time.
After I dressed, we went out. Deryn hadn't said much to me yet, allowing Paul to do most of the talking. Deryn had brown hair to Tony's black, and that plus his nose were the biggest differences. I didn't know what to do with the other information I had—Tony was supposed to be Deryn's half-brother but I couldn't make the scent connection. Maybe it was because I was upset; I didn't know. We drove first to the site of the bombing, but much of it had been combed through already. Nevertheless, I found the spot where Tony had been.
"He was here," I said, pulling a bit of debris aside. Very little had been cleaned up as yet and I'd had to place compulsion to get where we were. The scent of Tony's blood was all over this one little space, which puzzled me. If he'd been blown to bits, the scent of it shouldn't have been as strong as it was and it would have been scattered. It wasn't and I explained that to Deryn and Paul. There was also another scent but it wasn't nearly enough to sort out; the blood and death smell all around took care of that. I moved away a little, catching more of Tony's scent, but once again, it was localized, like drops of blood or something. Holy f**k.
"He was moved," I said. I kept going in the same direction, picking up more scent evidence as I went along until we were well away from the hotel property and into an alleyway behind. Actual drops of blood were there and they were Tony's, even if they were days old. His scent was there and I was picking it up. Deryn and Paul followed along behind, puzzled looks on their faces until they detected Tony's blood scent as well. The scent and the blood drops stopped abruptly at the back wall of a nearby building.
"Did they just go through the wall?" I muttered to myself. As far as I knew, I was the only one who could do that. Deryn and Paul were now sniffing around the last drops of blood that I'd pointed out to them. Both werewolves were now looking at me expectantly. I shrugged.
"I don't know," I said, shaking my head uncertainly. "He was carried away but it was right here that they just vanished or flew away or something." I walked around a little, making sure I hadn't missed anything; any turns or veering off to go in another direction. I went back and picked up the trail once more, following it again right to the edge of the building.
"Crap," I grumped. "It's as if they just jumped the building or something."
"Did they climb it?" Deryn came to stand beside me. That caused me to look up.
"Are you afraid of heights?" I asked.
"No. Why?"
"How about you, Paul?" I looked at him; he was walking over to us.
"Not afraid of heights, no," he said.
"Good," I said and turned all three of us to mist. We sailed right to the top of the six-story building and landed on the edge of it, corresponding to the spot where the blood spatters had ended. We found more drops there, and I also found something else.
"Oh, my God," I said. My legs wouldn't hold me up any longer and my butt hit the rooftop with a dusty little thump.
"What is it?" Paul asked.
"We need to stop looking for Tony right now and concentrate on Xenides and Rahim Alif," I said. I knew Tony had been on top of this building and that he'd bled on the roof, not far from where I was sitting. I also knew who else had been on that roof and it wasn't Rahim or Xenides. Tony might still be alive, at least in some sense of the word.