Page 70 of The Devil Wears Orange
“No. Why?”
Rashid turns his head slightly, tilts it toward her, and says, “A black sedan is behind us.”
Charlotte shifts her body to look. “What’s wrong?” She glances back at the next turn.
“It’s been following for some time. Driver, take a detour. Make a right, please.”
As their limo turns right, the car continues to follow.
“Left.”
Again, the car follows.
“Are they Banning’s men?” Charlotte asks nervously.
Rashid places a comforting arm around her. “No one is onto us,” he says, though he doesn’t believe his own lie. Could it be Banning? Certainly, but he would hope not. Levan also comes to mind. He can’t determine which of the two worries him the most, but the consequences could be devastating either way.
“I worry about having Jack in Banning’s lair. What if he suspects Jack is a plant?”
“Jack is safe,” he tells her. He feels a pang of jealousy. Catching them at his safe proved what he tried to deny all along – that Charlotte and Jack have been working together. But is there more to the relationship? He’s not sure… though he’s seen the way she looks at Jack sometimes. Separating them has put him at ease. It’ll give him a chance to connect with Charlotte without Jack in the way.
Rashid takes another look back. The car has now disappeared. “I’m sure I’m being paranoid. No one’s following us,” he says, but even he is not entirely convinced.
Chapter 39
“What are you doinghere?” barks a male voice in a German accent.
Jack’s first foray into snooping, and he’s already caught. He hadn’t gotten very far anyway, hitting a wall where, according to the blueprint, there should have been a set of stairs. Jack turns. His interrogator, the living embodiment of a villain from a 1960s spy novel, is tall and muscular. A scar extends above his eye and toward his cheek. If Jack wasn’t unnerved by him, he would laugh at the absurdity. But this man isn’t like the other staff members he’s met at the Banning’s castle in Switzerland, where he somehow talked himself into employment.
Earlier, when he sat in the kitchen observing the hustle and bustle of the kitchen staff, he thought it would be easy to slip away. They were too busy with their own work to fuss about the newest employee. He watched as someone accidentally let a dog in, but in the chaos, no one noticed until he was foundsniffing a bag of potatoes. Laila, the head housekeeper who had let Jack in, shooed the dog out. She admonished the man who let the dog in, but he uttered something incoherent, followed by a half-shrug. Another young man, barely twenty by the look of it, lugged firewood. Among them, Jack would be practically invisible, scurrying around the castle unnoticed, spying on the comings and goings of everyone while searching for the stolen art. But he wasn’t counting on this German to be alert.
“I’m afraid I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere and can’t exit the premises... old boy.” Internally, Jack winces at the put-upon manner that makes him feel like a caricature. Charlotte insisted he use that phrase, and when he pointed out his countrymen don’t speak this way, she guffawed. “Non-BritsthinkBrits speak this way, and that’s what matters,” she retorted.
The German looks him up, then down. “This way.”
It works—two points for Charlotte.
“Right-O. Thank you very kindly for rescuing me.”
The German signals for Jack to walk ahead. He slips past the man casually and turns a corner. Down the hall, Jack comes to a fork in the road. Literally a fork, no doubt dropped by accident. A servant hurriedly enters from a door to Jack’s right and looks about for the fallen utensil.
“Are you looking for this?” says Jack, picking it up.
“Yes, thank you, sir,” she says quietly. Jack peers through an open doorway to Mrs. Banning sitting down to breakfast. She taps the top of a hard-boiled egg with a silver knife and peels it.
“Melanie, do be quick with that spoon,” she shouts.
The young servant, with a harried expression, hustles past Jack.
“You there.”
Jack whips toward Mrs. Banning’s voice.
“Who are you?”
He points to himself like a buffoon. Of course, she’s talking to him. Jack takes timid steps into the room. “My name is Jack Blunt. I’m a new employee. Mrs. Banning.”
“You’re British,” she says in a South American accent. At fifty, she is every bit as beautiful as when she was a supermodel in Brazil. Her long, dark hair cascades around her facelift-free beauty, and she wears her trademark immaculate white shirt and pearls. “And where in England do you hail from?”
