They paused for a second. If this was an ambush, Hugo knew, this was the last place it could be sprung. He nodded to Tom, who reached down and turned the door handle. Tom gestured for Hugo to move away from the doorway before they opened it, so he took a step back. Tom twisted the handle and shoved the door, moving quickly back himself.
Silence. The men met at the opening and Hugo noted that the door had only opened halfway, despite Tom's shove. He looked down at the floor and saw that it seemed to shimmer in the dark. He put out a foot and heard the carpet crinkle. He glanced at Tom, who shrugged. Hugo held up three fingers and counted them down to one. Together, they moved through the door into the room, guns sweeping through the air. Beneath their feet the floor crackled. Plastic sheeting.
It was even darker inside, and Hugo struggled to make out any furniture in the room. But dark for him was dark for whoever else was in here, so he felt confident there was no ambush. Crouching by the door, he ran a hand over the wall behind him. His fingers hovered over the switch. He whispered to Tom in English, “Lights on,” then shielded his eyes and flicked the switch. His eyes took two, three seconds to adjust, and he could see Tom blinking on the other side of the door.
He'd also been right about the lack of furniture in the room, with one exception.
In the middle of the room, in the center of the plastic sheeting that covered the floor, was a single, straight-backed chair. Bound to it with band after band of masking tape, was Jean Chabot.
At least, Hugo assumed it was Chabot. The man's face was unrecognizable. Both eyes were swollen shut and his nose was flattened. A river of blood stained his mouth and chin, completely soaking the front of his shirt, and his hair stood in clumps, soaked with yet more blood.
Hugo approached slowly, looking for signs of life. When he got close, he saw that the man's left ear was missing. He looked down and saw it lying on the floor beside the chair, nestled on a clump of bloody rags. It was white and waxy, like a fake ear sold on Halloween, except for the scraps of skin and blood that marked the cutting line. Hugo put his fingertips where Chabot's pulse should have been and shook his head at Tom. Nearby lay Chabot's cell phone and a scrap of paper. Hugo picked it up. His cell phone number.
“The idiot,” Tom whispered. “You told him to get rid of it.”
They looked around the room and Tom pointed to a trap door in one corner. A short rope hung down from the door, and Tom walked over and put a hand on it.
Hugo looked back at Chabot, but knew there was nothing to be done. He held up a hand, telling Tom to wait, then moved to the light switch and flicked it off. He walked back to Tom, his gun aimed at the trap door.
Tom pulled the rope and they both stepped back. A square of light opened up in the ceiling, broken by the silhouette of a man with a gun. Hugo dove one way, Tom the other, as the muzzle flashed and the sound of a gunshot echoed in the empty downstairs room. The man fired again, blindly, his targets having moved into the dark.
Hugo looked up and saw the man working his way around the hole in the ceiling. He gauged the shooter's progress then took careful aim at the plaster and fired. He heard a howl of pain as the man dropped through the opening, his right shoe, and much of his foot, blasted away by the bullet. As he hit the floor his left arm snapped and he cried out. Tom moved quickly to the man, leaned down, and swiped the butt of his gun across his head.
“Hush little man, go to sleep,” he snarled.
Hugo went back to the rope and pulled the trap door all the way open. A rickety wooden ladder unfurled from above.
“Light, quickly,” he said to Tom, and covered the opening with his gun. “I'll go up. Wait ’til I clear it.” Leading with his gun, Hugo started up the ladder. At the top, he peeked into the room. It was dim, but looked empty. A musty smell enveloped him as he stuck his head through the gap. Mothballs? He heaved himself into the room and felt thin, worn carpet under his hands and knees.
Behind him, a sound.
He swung around and leveled his gun as a dark figure flitted across the back of the room. He fired twice and the figure dropped. Hugo pivoted to check for other hidden assailants, but saw no one. He moved to the fallen man, eyes straining in case he moved, his finger on the trigger. The man lay on his front and Hugo took a leaf from Tom's book and delivered a hefty kick. No response. Hugo flipped him over with his foot and kicked the man's gun into the corner. A quick check for a pulse told him the man was dead.
The darkness in the room had softened, and Hugo could now see from the back of the apartment to the front. Empty.
“I'm clear,” he called, but Tom was already at the top of the ladder. Hugo looked around and noticed for the first time a windowless door not ten feet from the opening, set into the back wall of the house. A fire escape, and probably where the dead man was headed. There'd been no outside staircase on the plans Emma sent, so Gravois must have built one.
As Tom hauled himself into the room, Hugo turned his attention to the front of the house. If there had once been a wall dividing this space into two, it was now gone. It looked like an empty attic, devoid of furniture or decoration, just a stack of five or six boxes in the far corner.
Hugo started toward them, but froze when he heard the crackle of gunfire from behind the house. He turned and ran past the trap door to the fire escape. Tom was already there, wrenching the door open. Light flooded into the room and both men stood inside the doorway, waiting for their eyes to adjust.
“Let's go,” Tom said. He ducked through the door with his gun up, Hugo right behind him. An iron stairway spiraled down into the shared garden. Hugo scanned the area, a rectangle of grass and a few bushes, privacy maintained by a stone wall. No one in sight. At the back, an iron gate stood open.
“Where the fuck is Garcia?” Tom said.
“No idea,” Hugo replied. How many shots had they heard? Two? Three? They reached the foot of the fire escape without seeing any dead or wounded. “Let's go. Keep an eye on those bushes.”
“No shit,” Tom muttered.
They moved through the garden side-by-side. Once, Hugo saw movement in an upstairs apartment window a few houses down, the surprised face of an old man who quickly withdrew. As they reached the gate, they heard sirens. Hugo caught Tom's eye and knew they were thinking the same thing: Claudia. Hugo went through the gate first, dropping down to one knee, aiming left. Tom was a split second behind, covering the right side. The alleyway, the one Garcia had come down as they entered the house, was empty.
Almost.
“Look.” Tom pointed at four shell cases on the ground. They both knelt to look, but not touch. From two different guns, Hugo saw, one a .40 and the other from a smaller .22. Hugo didn't know which was from Garcia's gun, if either.
They stood and moved quickly down the alley, sirens wailing louder now. As they neared the entrance to the alleyway, two more shots rang out. Hugo pointed downward to a pool of blood, but the men barely slowed, Claudia their concern now because the shots sounded close to the car. They turned left onto Rue Audran and ran up to the corner, in front of the house.
As they reached Rue Véron, Hugo looked down the street to where they'd left Claudia. The car was still there, but a dark form lay on the sidewalk about twenty yards away, between them and the vehicle. Tom covered the body with his gun as they jogged forward, Hugo covering the road around them. There were only two other parked cars on the street, on their right, but plenty of other places a gunman could hide.
Thirty feet from the figure on the ground, Hugo knew it wasn't Garcia. He strained to see inside the car, but couldn't. If Claudia was in there, she was either hunkered down or shot. He ran faster, and as they got within feet of the person on the ground, a figure rose from behind the car. Hugo swung his gun toward it and was about to pull the trigger when he recognized Claudia.