Page 43 of Thorn

“Since you’re on crutches, I’ll carry your backpack for you. I don’t normally do that.” His tone seemed strange to Juliette. Did it put him out that badly? She hadn’t asked for help, but Juliette guessed that the taxi driver had made that a precedent, and he’d look like a cad for not offering. Juliette wished she could say, “No that’s okay. I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine. The picture of her crawling toward the planter at the airport came back to her. “Merci.I would appreciate that.”

He locked the front door and put up a sign that said, “Back at” and had a clock with moveable hands beneath. He checked his watch then set the clock for five minutes in the future and stuck it in the window.

Juliette was dismayed when she saw the steep narrow steps. This was all but impossible. “I think perhaps, if you’ll take my crutches as well, I’ll just crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees.”

He reached over, took them from her hands, and moved up the stairs.

Juliette did her best to follow him.

Her room was tiny. A slender bed was set against the wall, beyond that an armoire took up the rest of the space on the left. A narrow walkway allowed her to move through the room. On the right, the bidet was, disturbingly, directly across from the head of her bed. Beyond that was a sink and a narrow desk with a stool. The wall opposite the door had a long window that opened out to a balcony, just wide enough for a single person to stand.

The toilet was at the end of the hall. Next to that, the man explained, she’d find shower stalls. She’d need coins to access them. The hot water was purchased in five-minute increments. He had change downstairs if she needed it.

“Merci bien,” she said, waiting for him to leave the room. There wasn’t enough space to cross paths inside.

When she heard him on the staircase, she locked the door and slid the chain into place.

Juliette’s face swayed in the mirror as she dragged the headband from her hair. After pulling off her clothes, laying them across the open armoire door to air, she got the soap from her bag and gave herself a sink bath. Her hand brushed over the burn mark on her thigh. Unlike the silver ones on her feet that she’d gotten in the accident that killed her mother, this burn was pink. It looked like she’d painted herself with a brush. The larger beginning that tapered and feathered as it wrapped her thigh. This burn, her dad had said, was from the fire at the apartment in Toulouse. Her mother had saved her, he’d said, but everything they owned had been lost. She was their most precious treasure, so who cared about the rest?

But the concierge had said there hadn’t been a fire in the last hundred years, Juliette reminded herself as she used the rough hand towel to dry herself off.

She used the bidet to relieve herself and wash.

She was clean enough.

This was good enough, she cajoled herself as she pulled the newly purchased nightgown over her head, letting it fall over her body, the hem resting on the orange and green patterned carpeting. It was a cheap polyester material. But it felt silky, and it was a pretty shade of pink. Juliette felt like she needed a little pink − a little softness against her right then.

Her food was tasteless as she swallowed down a few bites. She put the rest of the food in the tiny dorm-sized fridge inside the armoire. After refilling her water bottle, Juliette dragged the desk stool over beside her bed to function as a table. She tipped two acetaminophens into her hand, setting the bottle next to her new cellphone and water. When she pressed the button on her light switch, the room became a dark background with dancing shadows cast from the street light through the curtains.

She lay down. And snuggled beneath the sheets. Her heated cheek rested on the cool cotton pillow.

Hopefully, sleep would bring her some relief. Hopefully, her brain would function better in the morning.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Thorn

Toulouse, France.

Saturday, Twenty-two Hundred Hours

Thorn climbed into the cab that had patiently waited for his return from interviewing the eye witness. “The airport,s’il vous plait.”

Without a word, the driver put the taxi in gear and started them down the road.

Opening his duffle, Thorn pulled out a brown paper envelope used for evidence collection. He slid the toddler’s shirt in, careful to keep his fingers away from the blood stain. He sealed it, labeled it, and tucked it away.

His comms in his ears, his microphone around his throat under the turtleneck of his compression shirt, Thorn dug a set of earbuds from his pocket and stuck them into his phone. He would use them as a cover. While he spoke with his team, it might look to the driver like he was mouthing along to a song. He then dialed through to Panther Force war room.

“Sitrep?” Nutsbe asked for Thorn’s situation report as they spoke over an encrypted system, allowing them to speak freely.

Thorn ran through the information about the boy being unharmed and merely a bystander in the event, and the fact that he’d been able to collect the shirt with the blood stain.

“What are your thoughts concerning the blood?” Nutsbe asked. “We can get it tested for DNA – see if there’s anything in the FBI CODIS system that would be a match. But that’ll take time, brother, and I think our leash is too short for that.”

“Granted, but I had another thought. When Zoe Kealoha was targeted for kidnapping, we learned that she had developed a means to check bio-markers in the blood. That system is almost instantaneous. But the device she described uses strips that uptake fresh blood. I’m not sure if it could work on dried blood.”

Nutsbe paused. “It would have to. Remember she said that one of the ways her system had made her feel proud was its use to help resolve the Paris terrorist attacks. The French authorities had blood samples from the terrorist at the scene of his suicide bombing. They put it through the BIOMIST collection, hoping to find his family. It brought up Salah and that lead to them naming Brahim Abdeslam. The CIA stayed off the radar, but it was dried blood they collected and put into BIOMIST that did the job. The problem I see is that Juliette is ostensibly French, and the database is made up almost uniquely of those from the Middle East and some asylum seekers from Africa.”

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