‘Have you brought me on a wild goose chase?’ I ask as we sit in a small patisserie in Toulouse, drinking coffee with two pastries on a plate to share.
‘My source says Annalise is here. And if that’s the case, then Mia is more than likely with her,’ Neva says.
‘Where here? We don’t even have a proper location,’ I say.
I’m frustrated because we’ve been here two days now and know nothing more.
‘You don’t understand. The information I’m waiting for has to be found discreetly. It will be dangerous for my source to blatantly search for it. But she’s one of the best hackers I’ve ever worked with. And we’re here because she’s narrowing down the location using a lot of subtlety,’ Neva explains.
Despite spending every waking moment together for over sixty hours, we haven’t been intimate again. Neva hasn’t even broached the subject. I’m going through a range of emotions from confusion to relief. As if she’s afraid of how she feels about me, Neva has shut me out. I am teetering on the edge of my nerves all the time, torn as I am between my feelings for her and the need to find Mia as soon as possible. Part of me thinks this divorcing of her emotions is down to Neva’s conditioning: she’s in work mode and therefore wants to keep her mind on the job. If so, I applaud it, but I can’t help feeling insecure anyway. It’s too easy for her to lapse back into the cold calculator operative, though really I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m capable of doing the same thing myself. At least I was, until Neva came back into my life and changed me. Now, I wish I too could keep my mind solely on our search. Life is complicated enough without my seesawing emotions.
After breakfast we go back to the hotel and check Neva’s encrypted laptop for messages again. But nothing has come from Elbakitten and I’m beginning to wonder if this person is just stringing Neva along. Beyond telling her Annalise is in Toulouse, we have no other information, and this town has too many occupants to make it possible for us to come across her by accident.
Toulouse is a beautiful place though, and if we were here for romantic reasons there’d be much to do. As the capital of France’s southern Occitanie region, Toulouse is near the Spanish border. There is an impressive river – the Garonne – that passes through the centre of the town. Locally the town is known as La Ville Rose (The Pink City) and Neva points out to me that it’s because of the beautiful terra-cotta bricks that most of the buildings are made from.
From our hotel room I look out on the Garonne and appreciate the charm of this place, while Neva searches the dark web again for any further signs of Elbakitten or Annalise.
‘I think Elbakitten has had to go to ground,’ Neva says now. ‘It’s not like her to be offline this long. She must have been compromised.’
‘We may have to begin our own searches,’ I say. ‘Are you sure there was nothing else she could give you?’
‘It wasn’t her that told me to come here,’ Neva admits. ‘She’s merely been trying to narrow the search.’
‘Who was it then?’ I ask.
‘Eldon Fracks,’ she says. ‘I caught up with him in Belgium. He told me Annalise had a château attached to a vineyard. But I wanted to be sure before I go in, guns blazing.’
‘A château? Maybe that won’t be too difficult to find after all,’ I say, though I wish she’d told me this sooner and I’d have begun to do my own searches of the area. I wonder why she would want to delay and then it occurs to me that Annalise is Neva’s birth mother. Maybe that is why she is hesitant: she’s afraid to meet her for the first time. Annalise and revenge are so close, what must Neva be going through right now?
For the first time I begin to consider that Neva’s shutting down has nothing whatsoever to do with me after all. It’s a defence mechanism: she’s preparing for this meeting. She’s defending herself against the certainty that she must kill her own mother.
Down below our window I see a stretch limousine pull up at the patisserie we’d just eaten in. The driver gets out, goes inside. I frown. There’s something about the uniform he’s wearing that scratches at my brain with sickening familiarity.
‘Neva. Come here,’ I say.
Understanding the urgency in my voice, she comes to the window and looks down.
‘The limo,’ I say.
At that moment the chauffeur comes out of the patisserie holding a large bag of pastries. He gets back in the driving seat and pulls away.
‘The Network are here. And I’m sure that means so is Annalise.’
I’m shocked to realize that the suited appearance of the driver was the Network’s standard uniform. But I don’t know what it is about the black suit that makes him belong to them.
‘How do you know it’s definitely one of theirs?’ I ask. ‘Any driver might wear a black suit.’
‘The tie,’ Neva says. ‘They always wear a red tie.’
I remember then, something that Beech had once said to me about the uniform of his minions. He could always recognize his own at a distance.
‘You’re right,’ I say.
‘We’re too late to follow, but let’s see if this is a standard trip for that driver. Maybe Annalise has a sweet tooth,’ she says. ‘And that patisserie is the best one in the area.’