“I should stay too,” said Thérèse. “I’m not cold yet.”
“No,” said Gamache. “I think you should go.”
Thérèse felt a chill in her marrow.
“You have a job to do,” he said quietly. “And so do I.”
“And what job is that, Armand? Like Gilles, I’m wondering.”
“I’m simply doing my small part to make a crucial connection.”
And there it was.
Thérèse Brunel stared at Gamache, then over to Agent Nichol, who was untangling a twist in the frozen telecommunications cable and seemed oblivious. Seemed. Thérèse looked at the sullen, petulant, but clever young woman. Armand had sent her to the Sûreté basement to learn how to listen.
Perhaps it had worked better than they realized.
Superintendent Brunel made a decision. She turned her back on Armand and the young agent, and ushered her husband and the woodsman away.
Gamache waited until he no longer heard the crunch, crunch, crunch of snowshoes, until silence fell on the winter woods. Then he turned on Yvette Nichol.
“What were you doing in the B and B?”
“Bonjour to you too,” she said, not looking up. “Good job, Nichol. Well done, Nichol. Thank you for coming to this shithole, freezing your ass off to help us, Nichol.”
“What were you doing in the B and B?”
She looked up and felt what little warmth she still had evaporate.
“What were you doing there?” she demanded.
He tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. “Are you questioning me?” Nichol’s eyes widened and the cable slipped from her hands.
“Are you working for Francoeur?” The words came out of his mouth like icicles.
Nichol couldn’t speak, but managed to shake her head.
Gamache unzipped his parka and moved it behind his hip. His shirt was exposed. And so was his gun.
As she watched, he removed his warm gloves and held his right hand loose at his side.
“Are you working for Francoeur?” he repeated, his voice even quieter.
She shook her head vehemently and mouthed, “No.”
“What were you doing in the B and B?”
“I was looking for you,” she managed.
“Why?”
“I was at the schoolhouse getting the cable ready for here and saw you go into the B and B, so I followed you.”
“Why?”
It had taken him a while to put it together. At first he thought he owed Nichol an apology, for slamming the door in her face. But then he’d begun to wonder what she was doing in the B and B.
Was she there for the same reason he’d gone, to make a quiet call? If so, who was she calling? Gamache could guess.
“Why were you in the B and B, Yvette?”
“To speak to you.”
“You could’ve spoken to me at Emilie’s home. You could have spoken to me at the schoolhouse. Why were you in the B and B, Yvette?”
“To talk to you,” she repeated, her voice barely a squeak. “Privately.”
“What about?”
She hesitated. “To tell you that this won’t work.” She gestured up toward the hunting blind and the satellite dish. “Even if you get online, you can’t get into the Sûreté system.”
“Who says that’s our goal?”
“I’m not an idiot, Chief Inspector. You asked for untraceable satellite equipment. You’re not building a robot army. If you were going in through the front door you could do that from home or your office. This is something else. You brought me here to help you break in. But it won’t work.”
“Why not?” Despite himself, he was interested.
“Because while all this shit might get you connected, and even hide where you are for a while, you need a code to get into the deepest files. Your own Sûreté security code will give you away. So will Superintendent Brunel’s. You know that.”
“How much do you know about what we’re doing?”
“Not much. I knew nothing until yesterday, when you asked for my help.”
They stared at each other.
“You invited me here, sir. I didn’t ask. But when you asked for help, I agreed. And now you treat me like your enemy?”
Gamache was having none of her mind games. He knew there was a far more likely reason she’d agreed to come down. Not loyalty to him, but to another. She was in the B and B to report to Francoeur, and had he not been distracted by his concern for Jean-Guy, he’d have caught her at it.