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“I told you two to hurry up!” Olivier yelled up the stairs to his children, annoyed that they hadn’t paid attention to the instructions he had issued upon his return home. He supposed he should be glad they had been home, and he hadn’t had to try and find them, which would have taken precious time. “There isn’t time to pack everything. Just grab the essentials and get your asses...shit!” he swore as the sound of sirens, distant but getting closer, reached him.
He had made it home fifteen minutes before, and had hoped to leave five minutes after that, having called his wife while he was racing home so she could have the kids ready to go the moment he arrived. Unfortunately, while his wife had accepted the urgency of the situation and responded to it, his children hadn’t.
Storming up the stairs to the sound of the approaching sirens, Olivier rushed into his daughter’s bedroom, where he found her sitting on the end of her bed, her mobile phone pressed to her ear. “You were told to pack one bag and get downstairs, not call all your bloody friends!” he shouted angrily. He snatched the phone from his daughter’s grasp and dropped it into the open bag he picked up from the bed. With the bag in one hand, he took his daughter’s arm and dragged her to her feet and out of the room. When he reached the head of the stairs, he tossed the bag down them, to the horror of his daughter.
“You’ll break all my stuff,” she wailed as she hurried down the stairs so she could check her things and make sure they were alright. “If you’ve broken anything, you’re replacing it.”
“I don’t care if it’s all broken,” Olivier told her. “Just get out to the car. If you’re not in the car in one minute, Louis, we’re leaving without you!” he shouted in the direction of his son’s bedroom before he hurried down the stairs.
A minute and a half later, Olivier shifted into gear and gunned the engine as he raced out of the drive. In the passenger seat was his wife, she was concerned but as calm as she could be under the circumstances, while from the back seat his children expressed their feelings on the situation, which ranged from confusion, to unhappiness, and was mixed with wishes for him to die so he couldn’t ruin their lives.
Olivier ignored the shouted comments from the back seat and focused on his driving. He was halfway through a turn to the left at the end of the road when he saw the flashing lights of an approaching police car. Hurriedly, he spun the wheel to turn the car the other way, mounting the curb as he pressed his foot down on the accelerator. For a few seconds the police car seemed to be almost on his rear bumper, and then the superior acceleration of his Mercedes pulled him ahead and he began to inch away.
All of Olivier’s focus was on the car behind him, and he wasn’t aware of the other police car, which pulled out of a side road ahead of him until his wife screamed for him to look out. Twisting the wheel sharply, he found himself in the headlights of an oncoming car. His eyes closed, and his hands braced on the steering wheel, he uttered a silent prayer as he pressed down on the brake so hard he thought it would break.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that he had stopped barely an inch from the other vehicle. That was good, but that fortune was offset by the six police officers who were rushing towards his car, all of them with handguns at the ready, and all of them wearing looks which suggested they were ready to use their weapons at the slightest provocation.
“Everybody out of the car!” an officer wearing the stripes of a sergeant yelled, while his men aimed their weapons at Olivier and his family.
Olivier was not a brave man. He had never been involved in the violent side of Noir’s business, except in the most remote of ways. Even if he had been, the knowledge that the guns were aimed at his family, as well as at him, would have stopped him doing anything stupid.
“What’s going on, daddy? Why are they pointing guns at us?” Angelique sobbed. Unlike her brother, who was trying to act as though there was nothing to worry about, she had no problem showing that she was scared. Tears of fear rolled down her cheeks.
“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll sort it out,” Olivier said reassuringly. “For now, let’s just do as they say.” Slowly, so as not to provoke a response from the officers, he released his seatbelt and swung open the door at his side.
The moment he was out of the car, Olivier was spun around, pushed roughly up against the side of his car, and ordered to place his hands on the roof and spread his legs. The same orders were given to his family when they got out, which prompted a scream from his daughter.
“Is this really necessary,” Olivier asked of the sergeant as hands were run quickly and roughly over his body to check for a weapon. “It’s okay, honey, everything will be alright,” he said when Angelique gave another scream, this time in reaction to the search that was being made of her. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded of the sergeant, who didn’t answer, but instead watched his men as they conducted their searches. “I insist you tell me why you are arresting me and my family,” he said when his hands were twisted behind his back and he felt the cold metal of cuffs on his wrists. “I’m a lawyer and I have well-connected friends. You can’t arrest us without cause.”
By that time several cars had been forced to stop because of the blocked road and there were numerous witnesses to his arrest. Olivier didn’t care about that, though; he didn’t even care that one of the onlookers was the mother of one of his daughter’s friends.
“I’m merely doing my job, Mr Boucher,” the sergeant said finally. “I was told to arrest you, and that’s what I’m doing. I believe the charge is to be conspiracy to commit murder, but I’m sure you’ll be given all the details when you get to the station. I know there are several people from Interpol who are keen to talk to you.”
Olivier wasn’t surprised to hear that, though it did make him worry, despite his best efforts to remain calm. “You have no reason to arrest my family,” he said. “They’ve got nothing to do with any of this.”
“I have orders to arrest you, and anyone with you, Mr Boucher,” the sergeant informed him, doing his best to ignore the sobs from Angelique Boucher, and the reproachful look being directed at him by Helene Boucher. “I’m sure you’ll be able to sort all of this out at the station and arrange for your family to be released. Load them into separate cars,” he ordered his men, though the fact that they only had three cars and four people to transport meant the two children had to be put in a car together.