Page 12 of The Blonde Identity

But when he pulled her toward a patisserie on the corner she almost wept with relief. The air outside was warm and smelled like butter, butMr.I Don’t Feel the ColdGuydidn’t even slow down. He just grabbed a long cashmere coat off a rack by the door and kept walking. He never even broke his stride.

“You just stole that!”

“Put it on.”

“That’s not mine.”

“It is now. Put it on.”

“But it’s stolen property. I can’t—”

“Look.” He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “There wasn’t a single customer in the place and employees would leave their coats in the back. So someone left it. I found it. Lost. Found. Put it on.”

Suddenly, she remembered motorcycles and guns and John theBaptist. Maybe stealing a coat wasn’t the worst offense in the world? So she slipped it on and they kept walking.

When they passed another door, he reached inside and snagged a beret in the same shade of caramel.

“That I did steal,” he said, but she put it on and didn’t say another word.

***

She didn’t know how long they walked down the narrow, winding streets of Paris, changing directions and dodging into alleys, doubling back and altering speeds. But they never, ever stopped.

“Should we get a taxi or something?” she tried after a while.

“Nope.”

“Am I slowing you down?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m sorry.” She was fully limping at that point. Her toes felt like bloody stumps.

So she wasn’t expecting him to say, “Oh, no. The limping’s fine. Limping’s good, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

“People notice gaits,” he went on, more patient than she would have expected. “Posture. Body language. They don’t know they’re noticing it, but they do. You really want to lose a tail? Put a pebble in your shoe and something heavy in one pocket. But, hey, we don’t have to because you’re limping!”

“Uh... yay?” she said.

“That’s the spirit!” He pulled her down another street.

“So if we’re not going to a hotel or the embassy, where are we—”

“To a safe house.”

“Oh, and we’ll be safe there?”

“Yes,” he said with exaggerated patience. “You can tell because the wordsafeis right there in the title.”

She wanted to snarl at him. Or shout. Or cry. Or curl up in the snow and wait for the plows to come and push her away, but the man had blood on his hands, so the least she could do was keep walking.

***

It wasn’t the nicest street or the shabbiest. Not the newest or the oldest. The apartment building was utterly nondescript in every way. But he was careful as he approached it, and she let herself have a small glimmer of hope that safe houses might come with soup and cocoa and tiny marshmallows. And also Band-Aids. She really, really needed a Band-Aid.

But as they neared the door, he shifted suddenly, steering her into an alley as if that had been their destination all along.

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