Текст книги "Spartan Gold"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER 30

CHÂTEAU D’IF

A drizzle had begun to fall shortly before they left the hotel and now, as midnight approached, it had given way to a steady rain that pattered through the trees and gurgled down the rain gutters. The streets glistened under the hazy yellow glow of the streetlights. Here and there late-night pedestrians hurried down the sidewalks under umbrellas or folded newspaper or waited in clusters beneath bus shelters.

In the alley across from their hotel, Sam and Remi stood in the shadows and watched the lobby doors.

Down the block a gray Citroën Xsara sat at the curb, a pair of figures just visible in the dimmed interior. Earlier from the window of their hotel room Remi had gotten a look at the driver’s face: he’d been with Kholkov at the Malmousque café. Whether there were more watchers around they couldn’t tell, but they knew it was best to assume so.

After parting company with Kholkov at the café earlier that afternoon, they’d roamed the Malmousque, shopping and taking in the sights for a few hours. They saw neither Kholkov nor his men until they started back to the hotel, when two men on motorcycles fell in behind their taxi.

Despite their nonplussed reaction to Kholkov’s threats, Sam and Remi had taken them seriously. Fearing their room was bugged, they found a quiet corner in the mostly deserted hotel bar and called Rube Haywood on the Iridium; he wasn’t at CIA headquarters in Langley, but they reached him at home.

Sam put him on speakerphone and quickly explained the situation and their worries.

Rube said, “I know a guy in Long Beach—used to work for the Diplomatic Security Service. He runs his own shop now. Want me to have him send a couple guys to the house?”

“We’d be grateful.”

“Give me ten minutes.” He called back in five: “Done. They’ll be there in two hours. Tell Selma they’ll have IDs—Kozal Security Group. They’ll ask for Mrs. French.”

“Got it.”

“Don’t you think it’s time to call it a day?” Rube asked. “You’ve seen how far these guys will go. Nothing’s worth this.”

“We don’t even know what it is,” Remi said.

“You get my point. I’m worried about you two.”

“We appreciate that, Rube, but we’re going to see this through.”

Haywood sighed. “At least let me help you.”

“What did you have in mind?” asked Sam.

“I’ve taken a second look at Kholkov. A few years ago he was in Chechnya; we think he was playing middleman for a black-market AK-47 dealer. Wouldn’t take much to get his name slipped onto the Terrorist Watch List. A couple calls and I could put him on the radar of the DCPJ,” he said, referring to the Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire, or Central Directorate Judicial Police, France’s version of the FBI. “There’s nothing they could arrest him on, but they might be able to detain him and his buddies for a while.”

“Do it. Any breathing room you can buy us will help.”

“The question is whether they’ll be able to find him. Given his background, he’s not going to make it easy for them.”

Three hours later Rube had called back: The DCPJ had put out a bulletin for Kholkov, but he wouldn’t know anything more for a few hours, if then. The French, Rube told them, were cagey about sharing information.

“I don’t suppose you know a French version of Guido the Shoe maker-slash-Arms Dealer?”

“Sam, the French are rabid about their gun laws; you don’t want to get caught with an unregistered one. But, I do know a guy named Maurice. . . .”

He gave Sam the phone number and they hung up.

Now Remi pulled up her jacket collar against the chill and huddled closer to Sam beneath the umbrella. “I don’t see anyone else.”

“Me neither. Shall we?”

With one last look around they stepped from the alley and started down the sidewalk.

Using the rudimentary tradecraft skills Sam had picked up at Camp Perry, they strolled the streets north of the harbor for an hour, doubling back on their path, stepping abruptly into cafés and then out the back door, and generally watching for any signs of pursuit. Satisfied they were alone, they hailed a cab and directed the driver to take them to Rue Loge on the Vieux Port.

As promised by the rental company’s manager, at a slip in the northwest corner of the harbor they found waiting for them a gray eighteen-foot Mistral. Though essentially a motor whaleboat with a glassed-in pilothouse barely bigger than a phone booth, it was wide-beamed and sported a reliable and quiet Lombardi engine. It would, they hoped, serve their purposes.

Using the key the manager had messengered over, Sam undid the padlocked hawser and the lines while Remi started the engine. He jumped aboard and she throttled up, pointing the bow toward the mouth of the harbor.

Ten minutes later the breakwater appeared off the bow. Astern the lights of Marseille, hazy in the rain, reflected off the rippled surface of the water. Working to keep up with the droplets streaming down the pilothouse windscreen, the single windshield wiper thumped softly.

Beside Remi at the wheel, Sam said, “I’ve been thinking about what Kholkov said.” He saw her expression and quickly said, “Not about his offer—about what Bondaruk’s interest is in whatever-it-is. He said it was a legacy. We know he’s deadly serious about it, so maybe the answer’s in his family history.”

“Good point,” Remi said, taking a buoy down the Mistral’s port side. “We’ll turn Selma loose on it. You’re not, are you—having second thoughts, I mean?”

“Only as far as you’re concerned.”

Remi smiled in the darkness, her face dimly lit by the helm console’s green lighting. “We’ve been through worse.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters there was that time in Senegal when you insulted that shaman—”

“Forget I asked.”

Thirty minutes later Île d’If appeared, a white lump rising from the dark ocean a half mile off the bow. The château had closed at five thirty and aside from a lone navigation beacon pulsing red against the night sky, the island was completely dark.

“Doesn’t look as welcoming at night, does it?” Remi asked.

“Not even close.”

In preparation for their after-hours tour, they’d used Google Earth to scrutinize the island for hidden mooring spots that would shield them from not only Kholkov, should he and his men happen to follow, but also the Marseille harbor patrol. They’d found a promising spot on the island’s seaward side.

Now Remi eased the Mistral to port. They spent a half hour circumnavigating the island, looking for other boats or signs of life. Seeing nothing, they came about and proceeded along the northern shoreline. Ahead, the château’s westernmost turret, the largest of the three, came into view above the battlement. Remi steered into the cove below it, throttled down, and let the Mistral glide to a stop at the base of the wall. Aside from a rain-churned surface, the water was flat calm here. Sam dropped anchor and used the boat hook to pull the Mistral closer to the rocks. Remi jumped over and followed, stern line in hand. He jammed the line beneath a basketball-sized rock.

Hand in hand they picked their way along the wall, hopping from rain-slick boulder to rain-slick boulder until they reached a particularly tall one they’d spotted on the satellite shots. Sam climbed atop it, positioned himself below a notch in the battlements used by archers, then leaped up and grabbed the wall’s inner ledge. He chinned himself up and crawled atop the wall, then he helped Remi up and down the other side. He hopped down beside her.

“Thank God for bad architecture,” he said.

If not for the fort’s backward-facing fortifications, they would have needed an extension ladder to accomplish what they’d just done.

“Don’t see anyone,” Remi said. “You?”

Sam shook his head. In their research they’d found no mention of the island employing after-hours guards, but to be safe, they would proceed as if there were.

With Remi in the lead, they crept forward along the curved wall of the turret to where it met the straight western wall and followed this to the end. Beside them, the stone, having been warmed by the sun all day then soaked by the rain, smelled like chalk. Remi peeked around the corner.

“Clear,” she whispered.

In Sam’s pocket, the Iridium vibrated. He pulled it out and answered, keeping his voice a whisper. It was Rube: “Bad news, Sam. The DCPJ can’t find Kholkov or his buddies. They know he entered the country on his own passport, but none of the hotels or rental car agencies have any record of him.”

“Switched to a false passport,” Sam guessed.

“Probably so. Bottom line, he’s still out there. Be careful.”

“Thanks, Rube. We’ll be in touch.”

Sam hung up and gave Remi the news. “We’re not any worse off than we were before. Shall we?”

“Absolutely.”

They continued along the southern wall and around the next turret to the château’s side entrance, an arched breezeway that led into the courtyard.

“Freeze,” Sam whispered. “Very slowly, crouch down.” Together they dropped to their knees.

“What?” Remi whispered.

“Directly ahead of us.”

A hundred yards away across the plaza stood two red-roofed outbuildings. The left-hand one, shaped like a truncated J, abutted the wall along the island’s northern shoreline. Under the eaves they could see four windows, black rectangles in the gloom. They waited, staying perfectly still for a minute, and then two. After three minutes, Remi whispered, “You saw something?”

“I thought so. Guess I was wrong. Come on.”

“Stop,” she rasped. “You weren’t wrong. There, at the far corner.”

Sam looked where Remi had indicated. It took a moment for his eyes to pick it out, but there was no mistake. Barely visible in the darkness was the white oval of a man’s face.

CHAPTER 31

They watched the face for a full minute; the man was all but a statue, occasionally rotating his head to scan behind and to the sides, but otherwise still.

“A guard?” Remi ventured.

“Maybe. But would a lazy guard trying to stay out of the rain stand that still? He’d be shifting or smoking or fidgeting.” Moving with exaggerated slowness, Sam reached inside his rain jacket and pulled out a Nikon monocular. He aimed it toward the outbuilding and focused on the man’s face. “Doesn’t look like any of Kholkov’s men we’ve seen.”

“If it is them, how did they get here? We didn’t see any boats.”

“They’re trained commandos, Remi. Skulking is what they do.”

Sam scanned the grounds, taking his time, looking into shadows and darkened doorways, but seeing no one else. “Great Christmas present idea,” Sam said. “A night-vision monocular.”

“My pleasure.”

“I don’t see anyone else. Wait . . .”

The man under the eaves moved now, turning again to look over his shoulder. On the sleeve of his jacket was a patch, and on his belt a flashlight and key ring.

“I’m happy to report I’m wrong,” Sam murmured. “It’s a guard. Still, it would probably be best if we didn’t get caught sneaking about a French national monument in the dead of night.”

“True.”

“When I say go, slowly move into the tunnel and stop about halfway. Don’t go into the courtyard. And be ready to freeze.”

“Right.”

Sam watched the guard through the monocular until he looked away again. “Go.”

Hunched over, Remi hurried into the corner, then along the wall and into the arch. Sam kept watching. It took another two minutes, but finally the man moved again and Sam was able to join Remi.

“My heart’s pounding,” she admitted.

“The joy of adrenaline.”

They took a moment to catch their breath, then crept down the tunnel to the mouth of the courtyard, stopping just short of a two-inch-high step.

To the left of the door was a short wall and a wooden bench. To the right, a set of stone steps bordered by a wrought-iron handrail rose alongside the courtyard’s inner wall then turned left and ascended to a turret, where it branched off into a walkway that wrapped around the courtyard. Sam and Remi scanned the walkway, pausing on each rectangular door or window, looking for movement. They saw nothing.

They scooted forward, gave the courtyard and walkway one more look, and were preparing to move when Sam saw, set back in the shadows, another archway beneath the steps.

Nothing moved. Aside from the pattering rain, all was quiet.

Eyes scanning the courtyard, Sam leaned in and whispered in Remi’s ear, “When I say go, head straight up the steps and into the turret. I’ll be right—”

Behind them a beam of light filled the tunnel.

“Remi, go!”

Like a sprinter coming off the blocks, Remi dashed out and started up the steps, taking them two at a time. Sam dropped to his belly and went still. The flashlight panned through the tunnel, then back out again, then went dark. Sam crawled over the step into the courtyard, then rose to his feet and joined Remi in the turret.

“Did he see us?”

“We’ll know shortly.”

They waited for a minute, then two, half-expecting to see the guard walk through the arch, but he didn’t appear.

Sam looked around the darkened interior of the turret. “Are we in the right one?”

The brochure map had identified several entrances to the oubliette level, one of which was in this turret. “Yes, the next landing down, I think,” Remi said, nodding at the spiral steps; another set led upward to the battlements.

They started down the steps, Remi in the lead. On the next landing they found a wooden trapdoor in the floor, secured to the stone lip by a padlocked latch. From his waistband Sam pulled a miniature crowbar. Given the predominantly stone construction of the château and recalling Müller’s words about his brother finding the bottles “tucked away in a cranny,” they’d guessed the tool would come in handy.

While the padlock looked new, the latch itself was anything but, having turned black and flaky by years of exposure to the salt air. Remi pointed her LED microlight at the latch, but Sam stopped her from turning it on. “Let’s wait until we’re out of sight.”

It took thirty seconds of gentle work with the crowbar’s tip to wriggle the latch free of the wood. Sam lifted the hatch, revealing a wooden ladder dropping into a dark shaft.

“Better let me test it,” Remi said.

She sat down, slid her legs into the hole, and started downward. Ten seconds later she whispered up, “Okay. It’s about twelve feet. Go easy. It’s bolted into the stone, but the whole thing looks as old as the latch.”

Sam climbed in, ducked down on the second rung, and shut the hatch behind him, leaving a gap wide enough for his fingers, which he used to flip the latch back into place; with luck, a passing guard wouldn’t notice the tampering.

In complete darkness and working by feel alone, Sam started downward. The ladder creaked and shifted, the bolts rasping inside their stone holes. He froze. He held his breath for a ten count, then began moving again.

With a splintering crack, the rung parted beneath his lowermost foot. He lurched downward. He clamped his hands on the uprights, arresting his fall, but the sudden shift of his weight was too much for the ladder, which twisted sideways. With a shriek and a pop, the bolts gave way and Sam felt himself falling. He braced himself just before impact, slamming into the stone floor back first.

“Sam!” Remi whispered, rushing over and kneeling down.

Sam groaned, blinked rapidly, then pushed himself up onto his elbows.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I think so. Just bruised my pride a bit.”

“And your tailbone.”

She helped him to his feet.

Before them the ladder lay in a heap. The uprights were twisted away from one another, the rungs jutting at crazy angles.

“Well,” Remi said, “at least now we know how we’re not getting out of here.”

“Always a bright side,” Sam agreed.

Remi clicked on her LED and they looked around. Behind them was a stone wall; ahead, a passageway barely taller than Sam stretched into the darkness. Unlike the fort’s outer walls, the stones here were dark gray and rough-hewn, showing chisel marks that were four hundred-plus years old. This was the upper dungeon level; there was one more below them, and below that, the oubliettes—“the realm of the forgotten.”

Remi clicked off her LED. Hand in hand, they started down the passage.

When they’d gone twenty paces, Sam clicked on his LED, looked around, shut it off again. He’d seen no end to the passage. They kept going. After another twenty paces, he felt Remi’s hand squeeze on his.

“I heard an echo,” she whispered. “To the left.”

Sam clicked on the LED, revealing a tunnel containing a dozen cells, six to a wall. For safety purposes the barred steel doors had been removed. They stepped into the nearest cell and looked around.

While these tunnels were gloomy in their own right, Sam and Remi found the tiny coalpit-dark cells a nightmare. The château’s guides reportedly divided tour groups into threes and fours, then shut off the lights and had everyone stand in silence for thirty seconds. Though Sam and Remi had found themselves in similar situations before—most recently in Rum Cay—Château d’If’s cells evoked a unique sense of dread, as though they were sharing the space with still-imprisoned ghosts.

“Enough of this,” Sam said, and stepped back into the main passage.

They found the next tunnel farther down the passageway on their right. This one was slightly longer and contained twenty cells. Moving more quickly now, they repeated the process, passing cell tunnel after cell tunnel until they reached the end of the passageway, where they found a wooden door. It was closed but had neither latch nor lock. Beside the door a placard said in French, DO NOT ENTER. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Why no lock?” Remi wondered aloud.

“Probably removed so wayward tourists can’t accidentally lock themselves in places they shouldn’t be.”

He stuck his finger through the latch hole and gently pulled. The door swung open an inch. The hinges creaked. He stopped, took a breath, then pulled the door the rest of the way open.

Remi squeezed through the gap, then he followed, easing the door shut behind them. They stood still for a few moments, listening, then Remi cupped her hands around her LED and clicked it on. They were standing on a narrow, four-by-four-foot landing. To the right of the door was a ledge; at their backs, another cylindrical stairwell, this one leading only downward. Together they peeked over the ledge.

The LED’s beam didn’t penetrate any deeper than ten steps.

CHAPTER 32

Following the blue-white beams of their LEDs, they picked their way down the steps to the next landing. As above, they found a wooden door set into the wall, and beside it another Do Not Enter placard. Expecting the shriek of ancient hinges, Sam was surprised when the door swung noiselessly open. They stepped through.

Another tunnel, this one barely four feet wide and five feet tall, forcing Sam and Remi to duck. Spaced at four-foot intervals along each wall was a rectangular cell door, but unlike their counterparts on the upper level, these were equipped with what Sam and Remi assumed were the original vertically barred doors, each one standing open and tethered to an eyelet in the stone with a length of twine. Sam examined the nearest door under the glow of the LED and found the lock and latch were still present.

“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more depressing,” Remi whispered.

Scanning the walls as they went, they started down the tunnel. After sixty or seventy feet they found a ten-foot-deep side tunnel set into the left-hand wall. At the end was a waist-high rectangular opening. They knelt down and Sam leaned into the opening. A few feet inside, a hatch was set into the floor; Sam shined his light into it. “Another ladder,” he whispered. “It goes down about six feet. I think we’ve found the place.”

“I’ll go first,” Remi said, then slipped feet first into the hatch and started down. “Okay,” she called. “The ladder seems sturdy.”

Sam climbed down and crouched beside her. This tunnel was narrower still: three feet wide and four feet tall. Stretching down the centerline was hatch after hatch after hatch, each one a steel-barred black square that seemed to swallow their flashlight beams.

“God almighty,” Sam whispered.

“How many, do you think?” Remi asked.

“If this tunnel is as long as the ones above . . . Forty or fifty.”

Remi was silent for a long ten seconds. “I wonder how long it took for someone to go insane down here.”

“Depends on the person, but after a day or two your mind would start feeding on itself. No sense of time, no points of reference, no outside stimulus. . . . Come on, let’s get this over with. What was the last line of the riddle . . . ?”

“ ‘From the third realm of the forgotten . . .’ ”

Careful of their footing, they walked down the wall to the third hatch. Under the beam of Remi’s LED, Sam examined the grate. The hinges and latch had been removed and the bars were scabrous with corrosion. He touched one; flakes sloughed off and floated down into the oubliette. He gripped the bars, lifted the grate free, and set it aside.

The oubliette lay at the bottom of a narrow six-foot long shaft, while the cell itself was four feet to a side and three feet deep—neither wide enough for a prisoner to lie fully prone, nor tall enough to stand without being bent at the waist. “I better go,” Remi said. “I’m smaller and I couldn’t pull you back up.”

Sam frowned, but nodded. “Okay.” From his waistband he pulled the miniature crowbar. She took off her coat and laid it aside, then tucked the crowbar into her belt and let Sam lower her into the shaft, dropping the last couple feet on her own. On hands and knees she clicked on her light, stuck it between her teeth, and began examining the stone walls and floor. After two minutes of crawling around she suddenly murmured, “There you are. . . .”

“Spittlebug?”

“Yep, in all its glory. It’s carved into the corner of this block. There’s a good-sized gap here. . . . Hang on.”

Remi worked the pry bar first into one gap, then the other, inching the block away from the wall. With a grunt, she pulled it free and shoved it aside, then dropped to her belly and shined the light into the hollow. “It goes back a couple feet. . . . Damn.”

“What?”

Remi got to her knees and looked up the shaft at him. “It’s bedrock. There are no other openings, no gaps. . . . There’s nothing here, Sam.”

Remi took another two minutes to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, then pushed the block back into place. Sam reached down and lifted her up. She pursed her lips and puffed a strand of hair from her eyebrow. “I was afraid of that. Karl Müller found three bottles here. Something told me we weren’t going to find the rest.”

Sam nodded. “Whatever Laurent was up to, it doesn’t seem likely he’d stash them all together.”

“Well, it was worth a try. We know one thing for sure: Laurent did in fact use his cicada stamp.”

“Come on, time to leave the party and find a way out.”

They replaced the grate and walked down the tunnel away from the door, Remi pressed against one wall, Sam the other. Ten feet from the end, Sam suddenly stumbled backward into an alcove and landed on his butt with an umph.

“Sam?” Remi called.

“Looks like I found something.”

He looked around. Only three feet deep, the rear half of the alcove’s floor was taken up by a hatch, this one unbarred.

Remi walked around the oubliette between them and ducked into the alcove with Sam, who shined his light into the hatch, then dropped through, followed by Remi. Sam clicked on his LED for a moment. Running perpendicular to the tunnel above, a crawl space stretched into the darkness.

On hands and knees they started crawling, Remi in the lead and Sam bringing up the rear. Not wanting to miss any side branches, every few feet they reached out and touched each wall.

After a full minute of crawling, Sam tapped Remi on the butt to call a halt, then clicked on the LED again. Ahead the tunnel stretched on.

“Did you notice the walls?” Remi whispered.

“Yes.”

The crawl space’s walls were not constructed of stone block but had rather been carved from the bedrock. Crawling as they were in a dark and cramped space, inches of travel felt like many feet.

After thirty more seconds of moving, Remi stopped. “Wall,” she whispered. “Branch to the right.”

They made the turn, then crawled another twenty feet to another turn, this one to the left. After another short straightaway and another two right and left turns, they found themselves at a ceiling hatch tall enough for Remi to stand in. She ducked back down and said, “There’s a ledge, then a drop-off into some kind of room.”

“Can you make it?”

“I think so.” She boosted herself up and disappeared. Ten seconds later she called, “Okay.”

Sam stood up, crawled over the ledge, and dropped down beside Remi, who was already surveying the room, which measured ten by ten feet. Like the crawl space, the walls and floor and ceiling were bedrock. Mounted on three walls were what looked like wooden gun cases, each one divided into vertical slots meant for, they assumed, either muskets or swords. In the wall to their left was a truncated arch.

“This must be original to the fort,” Sam whispered. “Probably a last-ditch bolt-hole and armory for defenders.”

“Which means there has to be another way out or in.”

“Unless it got closed up when the château was converted to a prison.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“One way to find out.”

They ducked through the arch and into the tunnel beyond.

It was labyrinth. For the next hour they picked their way along the tunnel, into dead ends, through horseshoe hallways, and up and down stairs until Sam finally called a halt. Ahead the tunnel split yet again into three branches like spokes on a wagon wheel.

“What is this place?” Remi panted.

“I don’t know that it has a name,” Sam replied, “but I’m guessing it’s still part of the last-ditch defense theory—attackers come down here, get trapped, then are ambushed by the defenders.” He licked his finger and held it up. “There’s air movement.” He turned in a circle, trying to localize it, then shook his head. “Can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

Remi wasn’t listening. Eyes closed, she turned first this way, then that, her hands at her waist, fingers alternately left and right. “Retracing our steps,” she finally whispered. “That way’s the courtyard.” She pointed down the left tunnel. “I think. If there’s a hidden entrance, it’s got to be there.”

“Good enough for me,” Sam said.

He took her hand and they set off again.

Time and again the tunnel branched off and each time Remi would stop, repeat her slow-motion, eyes-closed spin, then point.

After another hour their tunnel came to an abrupt dead end—or near dead end. Leaning against the wall was a wooden ladder; roughly hewn from what looked like red oak, the uprights and rungs were slightly crooked. They shined their lights upward. The ladder, well over thirty feet tall, ended at a wooden hatch.

“Smell that?” Remi said. “It’s rain, Sam. We’re close.”

He nodded absently, eyes poring over the ladder. “This is ancient,” he murmured. “It could be original. This could be hundreds of years old.”

“That’s wonderful, Sam, but right now all I care about is whether it’ll take our weight.”

He gave the ladder a twist, then put his weight on the bottom rung. It creaked, but held. “Give me the pry bar, will you?”

He tucked it into his belt and climbed up to the hatch. “It’s locked,” he called down.

He wriggled the pry bar under the edge and wrenched once, then again, then once more and the latch popped open. Sam threw open the hatch. Fresh air rushed through the opening and down the ladder.

“We’re in one of the turrets,” Sam whispered down.

He boosted himself up and out, then Remi followed. As her head cleared the opening, outside the door they heard the scuff of a shoe on stone. Sam helped Remi the rest of the way out and together they crept to the door.

Over the railing they could see a guard—the one from before, they assumed—strolling across the courtyard, flashlight panning left and right. The man turned around, shined his flashlight briefly over the walkways, then disappeared through the arch.

They gave him thirty seconds to move off a safe distance, then trotted down the walkway, left down the steps, then through the courtyard and into the tunnel they’d first entered.

Outside it was still raining and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. The cold washed over them. They looked around to get their bearings; they were back where they’d started. Ahead, across the plaza, lay the red-roofed outbuildings. His progress marked by his flashlight, the guard was a hundred yards away and heading toward the reception area.

“Had enough prowling for one night?” Sam asked Remi.

“And then some,” Remi replied. “Besides, knowing you as I do, I’m sure there’s plenty of skulking left in our future.”

“Safe bet.”

Together they stepped out into the rain.