Night Watch

EIGHT

Luc must have seen the accident in his rearview mirrors. His whole body, which had stiffened with tension somewhere early along the route, relaxed against me. He took his place in the line of cars-as though it was an ordinary ride-until we reached the next exit, on the far side of Mougins.

“Stop now,” I said, practically screaming into his helmet as we turned onto the tranquil road a mile north of the village. There were brasseries and small shops and endless places with parking lots in which Luc could have pulled over to explain to me what set him off.

“Home” was the only word I understood when Luc responded.

I was sitting upright behind him, distancing myself as far from his body as one could on a motorcycle. It was another five minutes before we finished the circular climb up to the center of town, and Luc nosed the bike down into the alleyway to park it beside the door to his property, right where I had found the stack of bones.

I ripped the helmet from my head and was off the bike before he had it positioned. “That was insane. That ride was terrifying and unnecessary and totally insane, Luc. Do you see how I’m trembling? Can you make any sense of this to me?”

I turned away from him and pushed open the heavy door. By the time he’d locked the Ducati and followed me inside, I was sitting on the old stone wall that overlooked the valley. Gaspard, the sloppy basset hound, was cuddled beside me offering solace.

“Are you all right, Alex?” Luc came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I apologize for alarming you.”

“Alarming me? Alarming me would have been telling me you had a hair-raising ride home this afternoon. I wasn’t alarmed, Luc. I thought we were going to die-at your hands or theirs, whoever they were. What have I walked into here? What is it you aren’t telling me about your life?”

He sat down beside me, much to the dog’s obvious delight, and pulled the band out of my hair, combing his fingers through it, pulling at the blond wisps that had curled up under the heavy helmet.

I reached for his wire-rimmed glasses and took them off, folding them and putting them in his shirt pocket.

“I have no explanation for what’s going on, Alex. Only that you’ll have to trust me. You arrived Friday and everything was as calm as the sea was today. It all started in the middle of last night. I don’t know why that is, and I certainly don’t know how to make it stop.”

“Could it be personal?”

He took my chin in his hands and made me look at him. “You’re my personal life, Alexandra. You and only you. Do you understand that?”

“I’m trying to. Does Brigitte?”

“I don’t think of you as the jealous type.”

“I’m not.”

“She was my wife. She’s the mother of my children.”

“She’s also the reason you fired Lisette Honfleur,” I said. “And Lisette’s dead.”

“Then let’s try business. I know you don’t think of my work as having the gravitas of yours, darling, but this is serious business in France. Chefs have killed themselves over losing a Michelin star. No reason others wouldn’t kill to get one.”

“You’ll have to help me with all this,” I said, scratching one of Gaspard’s long ears to avoid making eye contact with Luc. “I know we can’t talk about it at dinner because we’ll have guests.”

“And right now I’d really like to go see my kids.”

“Sure. That means tomorrow. I want to understand everything that’s going on with the restaurant here, and what the status is of the plan in New York. Don’t worry,” I said, switching to the other ear. “I’ll feed the dog while you’re gone. But you really do need to tell me about the guys on the motorcycles.”

Luc stood up, reached for his glasses, and cleaned the lenses with the sleeve of his shirt. “I don’t know who they are.”

“Why do you think they were chasing you?”

“Didn’t you notice them?”

“Before the highway? No, I didn’t.”

“They were parked directly across the street from the staircase down to L’Ondine. On their bikes, faced out, like they were waiting for someone to appear just as we were leaving. I mean, I didn’t think they were waiting for us, until I pulled out of my space and turned onto La Croisette.”

“And they came after us?”

“Immediately. I zigzagged through a couple of the back streets that I don’t usually take-a very indirect route to get back here-and they were along for the ride. I reached the boulevard and they were still behind me. I put on some speed and so did they.”

“So instead of stopping, instead of pulling over into a gas station where there would be people around, you could have gotten us both killed by driving through the traffic like a maniac.”

What was unspoken between us was the story that I had told Luc about my first love, Adam Nyman. He had been killed in an accident on the highway driving from the hospital at which he was doing his residency to Martha’s Vineyard, the night before we were to be married at the home we’d just bought. I’d never known whether it was speed or exhaustion or being forced off the road by another car that sent Adam to his death, but I had a lingering fear of losing control on the road.

“I had a split second to make the decision to accelerate, Alex. I saw something in the man’s hand when the one on the lead bike tried to get on our tail.”

“Something?” I asked. “Do you know what you saw?”

“I was looking in the rearview mirror. He pulled a pistol from his jacket so I could see it, then shoved it right back in and charged the bike.”

“A pistol? You actually saw a gun in his hand?” It was my turn to stiffen and sit upright.

“Yes, I did,” Luc said. “No mistake about it. And the only thing between the gun and me, Alexandra, was your back.”