Everyone was on edge the next morning. Roux sat at the kitchen, picking all the chocolate pieces out of her pain au chocolat, while Ames stirred his coffee again and again until it resembled more of a dirty whirlpool than a beverage.
Élodie and Ryo were packing up their things, getting ready to move out. “Where are you going?” I asked them. It was clear we couldn’t come back to the apartment, even if our plan went according to, well, plan.
“Sydney, maybe?” Élodie shrugged. “Ryo hasn’t been home in quite a while. Or perhaps London. Or maybe even—”
“Élodie, love.” Angelo poked his head out of the office, where he had been working all morning. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
Ryo picked up the conversation after she left. “Élodie hates Australia,” he said with a laugh. “I doubt we’re going there. Maybe we’ll just stay in Paris.”
“So jealous.” Roux sighed at the table. “I want to stay here, too.”
Ames hid a smile. “Careful what you wish for, darlin’,” he said.
“Seriously,” I added, remembering when I told Angelo that I just wanted something to happen, right before too many things started to happen. “Let’s just make it through the day, okay? Then we’ll discuss jetting off to nowhere.”
“Not to be negative,” Jesse began.
“Oh, here we go,” Roux muttered. “Mr. Positive.”
“But do we have a plan if things go wrong?”
Ryo and I looked at each other. “It’s not going to go wrong,” we both said at the same time, even though I wondered if he fully believed that statement. I knew I didn’t. I had been through enough over the past week to know that things could definitely go wrong.
I also knew that even if things went wrong, they could still work out.
“All we have to do is stick to the plan,” I told Jesse, sitting down in his lap. He reached up to play with the necklace he had given me, the tiny knifepoint sharp against the pad of his thumb.
“This looks really nice on you,” he murmured. “Very cool.”
“This one guy gave it to me,” I said. “I might keep him around for a while. Use him for his body, you know.”
Roux pretended to make barfing sounds next to us.
“He sounds like a keeper,” Jesse agreed, winding his arms around my waist. “Probably good with the alphabet, too. He could put U and I together.”
There was a pause, and then—
“That was terrible!” Roux cried as I started to laugh.
“So terrible, Jess, oh my God! Pass me some crackers for that cheeseball!”
“Really awful, mate.” Ames sighed, even though he was chuckling. “Mine aren’t even as bad as that.”
Jesse just smiled and kissed the secret spot on my neck. “Tension diffused,” he whispered against my skin, and I hugged him.
“Yeah, I think I’ll keep him for a while,” I murmured.
A few minutes later, I went to get a sweater (the Paris apartment was beautiful and drafty) and heard Élodie and Angelo talking. The office door had popped open just a crack and I stopped, even though I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop.
But hey, I’m a spy. Eavesdropping is pretty much the first item in the job description.
Élodie and Angelo were whispering together in front of a huge computer screen, clicking through passport photos one by one. I saw Markus, Mathieu, Zelda, my parents, Ryo and Élodie and Ames. Then Angelo clicked something again and the screen filled with dozens more photos, all of them people I didn’t recognize.
“Not for your eyes, my love,” Angelo said suddenly, then turned around and smiled.
“But—”
“And shut the door behind you, please.”
I did as I was told, but all I could think about were my parents’ pictures, and why Roux and Jesse hadn’t been included at all.
***
A few minutes before three, the cars arrived for us. All the tension that Jesse had managed to crack was back now, plus more. I couldn’t see the drivers’ faces as we piled in, and I wondered if Mathieu was one of them. The windows were all tinted, though, and I noticed Angelo breathe a tiny sigh of relief once the cars pulled away from the curb.
“Bulletproof?” I asked, pointing to the window, and he nodded.
“Of course. We’re currently in the safest place in Paris,” he replied, then glanced out at the street. Ames, Élodie, and Ryo were in the car behind us, gliding as smoothly as we were, and Roux kept looking over her shoulder, keeping an eye on Ames.
“He’s fine,” I whispered to her, taking her hand. “Ames could probably survive a nuclear fallout.”
“Oddly not comforting, but thank you, Maggie.”
I patted her hand in response.
Behind closed doors, I had argued with Angelo about using Jesse and Roux as part of the plan. “We can’t involve them anymore!” I protested, my voice low enough so that they wouldn’t hear me. “They’ve done more than enough! They’re just civilians!”
“They’re not civilians anymore,” Angelo replied, which stopped me in my tracks. “Dominic knows who they are. The Collective knows who they are and, more importantly, what they know about us. Do you honestly think they’re safer alone than without our protection today?”
I paused, thinking about his words and realizing he was right. “I hate that I brought them into this,” I said. “I really do.”
“Sometimes, my love, we don’t get to choose our team,” Angelo said. “And Roux and Jesse are becoming seasoned professionals at this point. Jesse, especially, would do anything to protect you.”
“That’s the problem,” I admitted. “I don’t want him to do anything.”
“Like I said, love,” Angelo repeated, then bent down to kiss the top of my head, “sometimes we don’t get to choose.”
Now that we were in the car, I could see his point.
Still, I didn’t feel any better.
We had arranged to meet at the Louvre at three, mostly to avoid the first rush of morning tourists and the last rush of evening crowds. It was still packed, of course, with the end-of-summer tourists crowding through the doors and into the halls, and most were Americans.
The six of us all had badges that designated us as a tour group from a local school. Angelo had a docent badge, which let him lead us past the heavy lines at security and into the museum.
Ryo just shook his head after we made our way inside. “Do you see?” he whispered to me. “Security is so lax. They didn’t even check the badge.”
On my other side, Roux had more pressing concerns. “If anyone asks,” she whispered to me as she and Ames walked hand in hand, “I’m French.”
“Got it,” I whispered back. “I’m not sure anyone will be asking, but I got it.”
Their voices rang up to the high ceilings and through the corridors, and my heart started to race. This wasn’t my area of expertise. I needed something to open, to crack, to unlock, in order to feel better. All I had instead, though, were five friends and ten gold coins in my pocket.
We all had ten gold coins in our pocket, actually. It’s just that mine were the real ones. Angelo had produced some amazing-looking fakes and distributed them to everyone else that morning. “We’ll have about five minutes before the police arrive to keep Dominic at bay,” he said.
“Assuming they don’t decide to go on strike,” Élodie grumbled. I could tell she had been in Paris for too long.
“We just need to keep Dominic in the museum,” Angelo said. “As soon as you hear the police arrive, get out. Go, take the car, take the tunnels, I do not care. But go.”
Ames looked around the room. “I’ll just say it,” he announced. “We’re going to play keep-away with a criminal mastermind in the Louvre? That’s our plan?”
“Yes,” Angelo said.
“Deadly,” Ames replied with a smile. “I love this game.”
As Angelo led the six of us up the stairs toward the Samothrace, I hurried to catch up to him. “Angelo,” I whispered, “this doesn’t feel right. I think this is a bad idea.”
“Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “This plan has many facets. And faces, actually.” He smiled down at me. “Are you ready for a new adventure?”
I looked up at him, trying to read behind the secrecy. There was something big happening behind his eyes, bigger than a stupid plan of keep-away with Dominic and a bunch of fake gold coins.
“Third rule of being a spy?” Angelo asked me as we continued to climb.
“Don’t look back,” I answered.
“Good girl,” he said, then looked past me at someone in the distance.
“Let the games begin,” he said, and I turned to see Dominic Arment making his way into the museum.