Death by Denim Read online

  That meant Lévêque had been alive when his killer threw him into the river. Bile rose in my throat and I had to swallow hard to keep it down.

  “You can see indications of struggle here,” she continued, pulling out a partial headshot of Lévêque, only you wouldn’t know it was him because the face was all puffy and ashen and the mouth was distorted, pulled into a perpetual grimace by a band of cloth stretched tight like a horse’s bit. “It appears he tried to bite through the cloth, but was unsuccessful. At first we assumed that the gag was simply that, a gag, but when we removed it, we found this.”

  She slid the third baggie forward. It contained another piece of cloth, this one white—perhaps a handkerchief. Someone had written on it with black marker. “We’re hoping you can tell us what it means.”

  My mom glanced up. “What is it?”

  “A note we found stuffed in his mouth,” Caraday said matter-of-factly.

  I could feel the blood drain from my face as my head went light.

  Ryan slid a worried look to Caraday. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this with her in the room.”

  His concern comforted and riled me at the same time. I wasn’t a baby. I had seen the effects of murder before. But this … I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that Lévêque had died solely because he had met with us that morning. Otherwise, why would Caraday be talking to us?

  Ryan gave me what I thought was an encouraging nod. “If you want to wait in the other room …”

  “No. I’m fine. Thanks.” I straightened in my seat, mimicking Caraday’s detachment. “What does the note say?” My voice shook only a little.

  Caraday smoothed the edges of the plastic bag and read aloud: “The fourth will find where they hide deliver the children lest he should ride 07060800.”

  I scrunched my brows in confusion. “What does it mean?”

  Ryan shifted on his chair and looked to my mom. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  I glanced at Mom. She was studying the note with a perplexed look on her face.

  “Clearly the note is a warning meant for you,” Caraday said impatiently. “You notice that Lévêque was not killed near his home or workplace, but near the park where you were supposed to meet.”

  “I don’t understand… .” Mom said.

  “Someone knew your plans! And they wanted us to know they knew. Every detail of the murder was planned to send a message. We even ran tests on the fabric. Vintage Italian denim. Cimosati selvedge. Used in the Parades collection last season.”

  “Where was it manufactured?” The strain in Mom’s voice caught my attention. I turned to stare at her. Though her face revealed nothing, her hands were clasped so tightly together in her lap that her knuckles were turning white.

  Caraday didn’t miss a beat. “Northern Italy. Lombardy region. Lakeside town by the name of Varese, just north of Milan. But the mill’s been closed for years.”

  Mom closed her eyes for a long moment and drew a deep breath before speaking. “I know what the note means.”

  CHAPTER 5

  We all sat silent; the only sound in the room was the steady drip, drip, drip of the leaky faucet. Mom stood up and broke away from the table, pacing across the room. She turned to face us. “The Mulo family have recently … relocated to Varese,” she said, her voice hollow.

  I blinked at her, not wanting to comprehend the significance of that statement. If every detail of Lévêque’s murder had been planned to send a message, then using fabric made in the very city where the Mulos were hiding meant only one thing. They, also, had been found.

  Caraday nodded slowly, turning the new information over in her head. She watched my mom with interest. “What do you make of the note?”

  “Nothing that you haven’t already thought of, I’m sure.”

  “Perhaps,” Caraday said, “but I’d like to hear your interpretation.”

  Mom folded her arms and shrugged. “‘The fourth’ refers to the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, as described in the Book of Revelation. ‘I looked and there before was a pale horse,’” she quoted. “‘Its rider was named Death.’”

  A shiver passed through me at those words, but Caraday only nodded. “And the numbers?”

  “The numbers indicate a date and time. July sixth at 0800 military time—eight o’clock in the morning. Our deadline, perhaps.”

  “Who are ‘the children’?”

  I didn’t want to hear the words, because I knew exactly who the children were, but it didn’t stop me from holding my breath as I waited for Mom’s answer.

  “My daughter,” Mom said miserably, “and the Mulos’ son, Seth.”

  “What does it mean, ‘deliver the children’?” Ryan asked. “Deliver them from death?”

  “I don’t think it means deliver in the biblical sense,” Mom said, her voice dead. “It means deliver them, as in give them up.”

  “So a threat is implied,” Caraday mused.

  I snorted. “Implied?”

  Her expression didn’t change. “He wants Aphra and Seth.”

  “He?” I asked. “You know who did this?”

  Caraday and Ryan exchanged a look. Sort of a how-much-do-we-tell-the-kid kind of thing that made my blood boil.

  “Tell me,” I demanded, although I was afraid I already knew the answer.

  “Aphra,” Mom said, shaking her head. I could see on her face that she knew the answer, too.

  “No. I want to hear it.”

  Caraday cleared her throat. “We had wondered if The Mole was involved, and now … Well, this has confirmed our fears. It makes perfect sense.”

  “No,” I shot back. “It makes no sense at all. If The Mole knew where my mom and I were, why did he have to kill Lévêque? Why not just come after us? And what’s with the note? If he knows where the Mulos are, what does he need us for?”

  “He doesn’t know where the Mulos are,” Caraday said. “Our intelligence sources tell us that he is still searching. He has identified the city, but so far the Mulos have managed to stay hidden. Even our operatives haven’t been able to find them.”

  Mom bristled. “You have people looking for them?”

  “For protection only,” Caraday soothed. “Once we discovered that The Mole was gathering his forces, we knew he must be closing in.”

  “So he’s baiting us,” Mom murmured, sinking back onto the chair. “He wants us to lead him to the Mulos.”

  “No,” Caraday said, “He wants your daughter to lead him to the Mulos.”

  Mom flinched, but she didn’t deny it.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  Caraday shrugged. “The Mole has a psychopathic profile. No remorse. No conscience. Manipulative. Callous. Pathologically egocentric. You and the Mulo boy have vexed him ever since you captured his assassin on your island.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to blot out the memory. A Japanese assassin named Hisako had followed Seth’s family to our island. She was the one who had killed Bianca. She had nearly killed my dad. Seth and I were only doing what we had to do to protect our families. Besides, Hisako had come after us, not the other way around.

  “We … didn’t mean to ‘vex’ anyone,” I said weakly.

  “Add to that the insult of unmasking his two top men within the Agency,” Caraday continued, “and he wants more than just revenge. He wants satisfaction.”

  I felt like a giant hand had closed around my chest. I couldn’t breathe. The Mole wanted Seth and me dead. And then he would kill Seth’s family. And probably my mom. The hand squeezed. I’d seen what The Mole could do … or rather, what his minions could do. And although I had known since the showdown with his henchmen in the Cascades that I was on his hit list, it had never seemed completely real to me. Not even while Mom and I floated around France, as invisible as ghosts. But now I knew he knew where I was and suddenly it became very real. Undeniably so.

  But why give us a month’s warning?

  Then it struck me. “Wait! You got the date wrong.”

  �
�What?”

  “The dates. You said 0706, right? They write the day first here, not the month.”

  Caraday’s eyes widened. “Of course. He didn’t mean July sixth, he meant June seventh.”

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  “June sixth,” Ryan said.

  Cold fear snaked down my back. I turned to my mom. “Do the Mulos have a phone? Can we call them?”

  She shook her head. “No phones,” she said quietly. “Too dangerous.”

  “Then we have to go warn them!”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that”—Caraday leaned across the table and took my hand—“because we have a plan that will help us do just that.”

  My brows slid downward. “You already have a plan? But you just found out where—”

  She waved my question away. “As soon as we ran the tests on the fabric, we knew that Varese was significant. A signal. And now”—she nodded to my mom—“we understand why. Our suspicion has been confirmed. A special team has been gathering, ready for my word. With you on board—”

  Mom drew an indignant breath. “You’re not suggesting that Aphra go to Varese!”

  Caraday leaned back in her chair. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. The Mole won’t be able to resist. And as soon as he reveals himself—” She slammed her hand onto the table.

  “Oh, no. You will not use my daughter as bait.”

  “She’ll be safe.” She fixed my mom with a challenging look. “Just as safe as young Mulo was when you dangled him in front of The Mole’s men in Cardiff.”

  “What?” I looked from Caraday to my mom. “What is she talking about?”

  Mom shook her head. “Nothing. It doesn’t have anything to do with—”

  “Your mother,” Caraday interrupted, “instructed Seth Mulo to draw his father’s captors from the house when he delivered that ring so that the Agency could capture them. Sounds like bait to me.”

  I leaned away from my mom. “You what?”

  “I wasn’t in charge of the operation,” she protested.

  “But you are the one the boy trusted. You told him what to do,” Caraday insisted.

  I turned to my mom. “Tell me. What happened when Seth returned the ring?”

  She didn’t speak for a long moment.

  “I can tell you,” Caraday said.

  “No, I will.” Mom shifted in her seat. “When Joe found the ring,” she said, speaking of her dead partner in Seattle, “he had it scanned to retrieve the list of names etched into the stone. That’s how he was able to identify Stuart as a member of The Mole’s cell.” Stuart had been her other partner, a double agent. I could see the hurt of his betrayal still in her eyes. He had nearly killed us both. In that moment, I understood her reluctance to tell me what I wanted to know. She was trying to protect me. What she didn’t understand was that not knowing what had happened to Seth hurt worse than anything The Mole or any of his minions could do to me.

  “So what happened then?” I prodded.

  “We couldn’t let them know we had discovered the secret of the ring; it was the only reason they were keeping Victor Mulo alive—as a trade to get the ring back. But we knew, based on their track record, that they would probably kill him once they had the ring, so we had to take steps to prevent that.”

  “It would have been an awful death,” Caraday put in. “He had crossed his former comrades. They have a special hatred for traitors.”

  Mom shot her a withering look and Ryan coughed. “A little too much information,” he said.

  Caraday slid him a sideways glance. “She’s old enough to handle the truth, don’t you think? She’s seen enough of it already.”

  She was right. I folded my arms and looked back to Mom. “What did you do to prevent it?”

  “We knew that they would consider it a coup to kill two Mulos, so …” She ran her hand through her hair. “We did arrange for Seth to make the drop. But he was heavily covered. We knew they would come after him, and we were ready when they did. He wasn’t harmed at all.”

  I stared at her, seeing her in a much different light. She looked like a complete stranger to me. “I can’t believe you’d allow that. I thought your job was to protect Seth and his family.”

  “He was protected.” She reached for my hand but I pulled it away. “An entire team of highly trained specialists were with him.”

  “Just like a team will be with Aphra when she goes to Varese,” Caraday said.

  “She’s not going to Varese,” my mom shot back.

  I pushed away from the table. “Stop. Just, stop!” I ran from the kitchen but the apartment was so small I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I paced in the tiny front room, ready to burst.

  I heard a chair scrape against the kitchen floor and then Caraday’s voice said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dropped this on you like that. I should apologize to your daughter.”

  I folded my arms and waited for her to appear in the doorway.

  She entered the living room tentatively. “This has been a lot for one day, hasn’t it?”

  I raised my chin. “You think?”

  She took a step toward me. “Look, Aphra. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  That was putting it mildly.

  “You have to understand, I—”

  “You were right.”

  She threw a quick glance over her shoulder to the kitchen and then lowered her voice so my mom wouldn’t hear. “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve got to bring him in,” I said. “As long as he’s out there …” I gestured vaguely out the French doors and past the balcony. Out to where I knew The Mole and his minions watched and waited. “Until The Mole is captured, this will never end.”

  Caraday quickly covered the remaining distance between us and took my hand. “We can talk about this later,” she whispered. She glanced over her shoulder again. “Your mother …”

  I nodded. Mom didn’t need to know.

  Agent Caraday returned to the kitchen to smooth things over with my mom. I edged closer to the door to eavesdrop. I’ll give Caraday this much, she was one hell of a smooth talker. She had my mom placated inside of ten minutes, without directly lying. She assured Mom that she understood her concerns and conceded that if she had a daughter, she would probably want to be as careful. Once Mom had calmed down, they moved on to more talk about the forensic evidence they had gathered from Lévêque’s body. That I didn’t want to hear.

  I wandered back to the window and stared out over the rooftops. Shadows stretched long in the late afternoon sunlight, softened by the haze of heat as if filtered through a lens.

  “You hungry?”

  I jumped and turned around to find Ryan standing behind me, offering a baguette sandwich. I shook my head. Despite my earlier hunger, all that talk about Lévêque’s death had ruined my appetite.

  “Take it.” Ryan pushed it toward me. “You should always eat when you can. You never know—”

  “Not you, too.”

  “What?”

  “The mantras. That’s all I ever hear from my mom. Eat when you can, sleep when you can, never jump into a conveniently waiting taxi …”

  “She’s teaching you well.” He took my hand and slapped the sandwich into it. “Eat.”

  I sighed and took a bite to appease him. Bread and cheese never tasted better. I didn’t stop until I had eaten the whole thing. “There,” I said. “Are you happy?”

  His mouth twisted into a smile. “Very.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  His smile faded. “Who, Lévêque? No, I worked with him only a few times.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “The same reason you are.”

  “Why is that?”

  “To end this thing.”

  “Ah.” I turned away from him and stared out the window again. I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell Ryan what Caraday and I had talked about. I hugged my arms. “You know what? I’m kind of t
ired. Can you tell my mom I’m going to lie down for a while?”

  “Sure.” He turned to leave the room.

  “And Ryan? Thanks for the sandwich.”

  His smile returned. “You got it. Sweet dreams.”

  I curled up on the end of the sofa and I really did try to sleep. Mom should have been pleased that I was following her advice. I’d take whatever sleep I could get because once Caraday told me what she had planned, I knew it probably would be my last sleep for a long, long time.

  The problem was, I was powerless to quiet the debate raging in my head. Past experience had taught me not to trust anyone and here I was considering going against my mom and putting my life in the hands of someone I didn’t know. Caraday did appear to be very much involved with the investigation of Lévêque’s murder, and it looked like my mom trusted her, but I’d learned long ago that appearances were not always what they seemed.

  The biggest factor pushing me toward Caraday’s plan was the fact that it was exactly what my mom would have done if I had been any other pawn, and not her daughter. By her own—albeit reluctant—admission, she had dangled Seth in front of The Mole’s minions when they freed Seth’s dad, and the operation had been a success. Apparently, this was a page right out of my mom’s playbook. And now that the opportunity had come to use it against The Mole, she was allowing her emotions to cloud her judgment.

  Well, I couldn’t do that. I wanted my life back. And I wanted Seth to have his. The Mole had to be stopped, and if it took me squirming on the hook to catch him, that’s what I would do.

  I screwed my eyes shut tight and counted backward. Not from one hundred. Oh, no. My mind was much too distracted for that. I started at five hundred. I think I got down to about twenty-three before I drifted off.

  When I awoke, the sky outside had turned a dusky purple. I scrubbed my hands over my eyes and tried to remember what I had dreamed. If I had dreamed. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I woke with a feeling of urgency. I had to help Seth, and I had to do it immediately. I stood and padded back toward the kitchen for a drink of water. A shadowed figure stepped out from the doorway.