Buch lesen: «Investigating Christmas»

Chapter One

France, North of Paris

Tuesday, December 15, 5:40 p.m.

Lucy Gaines swapped her heels for flats for the short walk home from her new job. Her employer’s butler watched patiently, opening the door when her heels were tucked into her tote.

“Have a lovely evening, Miss Gaines,” he said in precise, formal French.

“Merci,” she replied, crossing the threshold. Outside, she paused on the top step and breathed in the crisp evening air as the butler closed the magnificent oak door with a near-silent whoosh. Every day she marveled that she worked here, lived here.

December in France. It seemed her new reality might never sink in completely. Just over a month ago she’d been staring down the dark emotional tunnel of a melancholy holiday season in Chicago. Her life had once more taken a U-turn and this time she couldn’t be happier. Practically skipping down the steps, she tugged at the collar of her wool coat, keeping the dropping temperature at bay although the brisk winter air here was balmy compared to the bite of the Windy City this time of year.

She lived and worked in a dream world. Chantilly and Paris were only a short drive away from this sleepy, rural neighborhood that barely qualified as a town. Commune, she corrected herself with the French term. Growing up, she and her sister, Gwen, had dreamed of trekking through Europe after college, immersing themselves in history, culture and new discoveries with each day. They’d made it, though the timing and circuitous route of ups and downs had been grueling for both of them.

Technically, Lucy’s MBA from Stanford University made her overqualified for a position as a personal assistant. But Dieter Kathrein was no ordinary entrepreneur. A French billionaire known for his business acumen and reluctance to socialize, he’d promised her an experience and connections that would make even the interview worth her time.

Odd how she’d thought he was overselling it then, only to discover he’d left several perks off the original attractive list. Being able to walk to and from work was merely the start. Mr. Kathrein had shown an unexpected degree of generosity when he added a car and driver along with a rent-free cottage to her benefits package. With those worrisome personal details handled, the scales had tipped in favor of her accepting the position.

Obviously pleased to have her on board, his sharp gaze had turned misty under his bushy white eyebrows as he shared his family’s rich history in this pocket of France. Lucy had been sucked in immediately, thoroughly captivated by the sad and brave story of Dieter’s parents, killed while assisting the French Resistance against the Nazis. The sole survivor, barely out of his teens, he’d pledged his life to preserving the family legacy and ensuring the security of future Kathrein generations.

He’s certainly done that, Lucy thought, soaking up the views and serene environment. Day in and day out, everything she could see belonged to the Kathrein estate. He and his wife must have been delighted to raise their two daughters in such an idyllic area—the perfect balance between the past and present, vibrant cities and quiet countrysides, staggering history and a lovely, hope-filled future.

She marveled that the man whose extreme preference for privacy and solitude had so graciously shared a corner of this sublime region with her and her remaining family. At the time he’d said, in his cultured French accent, “Family is the only reason to do anything in this world.” She couldn’t agree with him more.

Following her interview, once she’d signed the contracts, Dieter had entrusted her to the estate manager, who’d given her a full tour, culminating with a walk-through of the cottage. Considering the regal elegance of Dieter’s sprawling residence she shouldn’t have been so stunned by his definition of cottage. The four-bedroom manor house had two parlors, a dining room, a renovated kitchen and a sunroom downstairs—all fully furnished. The modern updates throughout the house had been expertly crafted to blend seamlessly with the original, old-world charm. She’d fallen in love with the space immediately, knowing this would be the fresh start she needed.

When she rounded the bend of the lane, the front door of the house came into view and Lucy’s shoulders relaxed as the last of the day’s challenges fell away. At ninety-six, and firmly set in his ways, her elderly boss could be more than a little difficult at times. Those speed bumps would smooth out in the weeks ahead. This wasn’t her first experience with an eccentric boss who expected people and details to fall into place. For her part, she knew it was simply a matter of acclimating to his personality, communication style and priorities. The holiday season, with the influx of family and happy traditions, would help them both bridge that gap.

For now, work was behind her and she’d be home momentarily. Home in France! The lovely thought brought a smile to her lips. In a minute or two, she’d be able to see the progress Gwen had made with the Christmas tree today and then she’d tickle a smile out of her nephew, Jackson. Only eight months old and already the little guy was an incurable flirt. On a second wind infused with happiness, she picked up the pace and hurried along the lane.

This wasn’t how she’d pictured her life would be at twenty-six, but she thought the three of them were settling into a pleasant and hopeful routine as a family. Despite the headache of the overseas move—no one hated flying more than Lucy—Gwen seemed to smile more often, the grief fading from her eyes with each new day. Lucy celebrated every small, positive change in Gwen after the heartbreaking and unexpected loss of her husband only two months after Jackson’s arrival in the world.

Having her sister and nephew around gave Lucy a much-needed anchor as she learned her new job and let go of her own heartbreak. Her loss had been mild in light of Gwen’s tragedy, but moving from California to France, embracing a new career and direction in life, had helped them both.

“I’m home,” Lucy called out as she walked through the front door. She set down her briefcase and purse to shrug out of her coat, hanging it on the antique hall tree. The house was quiet and she didn’t hear any of the typical noises or catch any savory aromas from the kitchen. Maybe Gwen and Jackson were playing in the garden out back.

Lucy dropped off her purse and briefcase in the smaller parlor room at the front of the house they’d repurposed as her home office.

Kathrein had requested she keep flexible hours regardless of where she chose to live, since he had an unpredictable sleep pattern. Lucy had yet to seek out a social life, so it didn’t bother her to be available whenever her boss woke with a concern or fresh idea.

“Where’s my favorite little man?” Lucy singsonged as she walked down the dim hallway. Her shoe caught in something and she bent for a closer look. One of Jackson’s cotton blankets, she noticed, picking it up. How strange. Gwen, older by four years, had always been a bit compulsive about keeping things neat and tidy.

Lucy slid back the pocket door and stepped into the larger parlor they used as a family room. Her mind went blank. She couldn’t make any sense of what she was seeing.

It looked as if a tornado had ripped right through the room, overturning furniture and twisting everything in its path. The fresh Christmas tree Dieter had had delivered to the house just days before was toppled over. The pine scent rising from broken branches and crushed green needles weighted the air in the room, making her queasy. The antique glass ornaments they’d inherited from their grandmother were scattered and crushed, strewn along the floor like sparkling, hazardous confetti.

No. No. The word echoed through Lucy’s mind. This disaster didn’t make any sense. Gwen would never make this kind of mess or leave it for someone else to find. Where are they? Lucy’s heart stalled out in her chest.

“Gwen.” What she’d intended as a shout came out as a rasp. She cleared the terror from her throat and tried again. “Gwen!” She raced to the kitchen. The destruction wasn’t as bad here, though the chairs were out of place and Jackson’s stroller was missing.

Maybe they’d missed the terror. Gwen often took Jackson out for a walk before dinner. Lucy clung to that hope right up until she noticed the cracked wood frame around the back door latch. Fumbling with her phone, she dialed Gwen’s cell phone number. No answer. She ended the call before the voice mail greeting finished. Tears threatened to spill over as Lucy raced upstairs, hoping the baby would be in his crib, safe and oblivious to the destruction downstairs. Jackson wasn’t there.

Her legs weak and shaking, she returned to the kitchen and leaned against the countertop, struggling to breathe. The signs were all too clear. Something awful had happened to her sister and nephew. She couldn’t make her heart accept it. Picking her way through the house again, she searched for a note, missing valuables, anything to put this chaos into context.

She stood there, helpless and scolding herself. Calling 911 wouldn’t help, and she didn’t know the local equivalent to reach the police.

Who could possibly gain from targeting a widow and infant? Lucy didn’t have enemies and very few friends were aware of her overseas move. She and Gwen had decided to save the announcement for the annual Christmas letter, a cheerful high point to counter the sadness of the past year. She dialed Gwen’s number again and left a pitiful voice message this time, pleading for a reply.

Devastated, Lucy fell to her knees, the baby blanket she’d found in the hallway clutched to her chest. Her sobs tangled with fear and desperation. Who would do this? Crime in this area was practically nonexistent. Everyone they’d met in this quiet, isolated part of France had been friendly.

Too isolated to be random, a small voice in her head declared. Dieter Kathrein might be a recluse, but he was also a legend. The estate was well-known and he had enough staff to make it obvious when he was in residence. At his age, with his massive business success, he’d racked up a few enemies along the way. The attack could be retaliatory and Gwen and Jackson were taken by mistake.

Her boss could help. He would know who to call and he had nearly limitless resources. He’d help her navigate the system, help her through the next steps. His money and influence would make recovering Gwen and Jackson a priority for the authorities. On a surge of hope, Lucy went into her office, where she wouldn’t have to look at the wreckage while she spoke with him.

She jumped a little when her cell phone rang in her hand. Gwen’s number showed on the screen and Lucy’s body sagged with relief. “Gwen! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Lucy, we aren’t hurt but you need to listen very carefully.”

Gwen’s voice, normally calm and strong, trembled with fear. The sound dragged Lucy back to that terrible day when her sister had called to say her husband had died. Gwen’s sorrowful tears and inconsolable shock on that day still haunted Lucy. “Where are you?” she asked again.

“In—” Her sister’s reply ended on a startled gasp.

“Lucille.” Dieter Kathrein’s curt tone confused and startled her all over again. “This call shall suffice as proof of life.”

“Mr. Kathrein?” She’d left his offices less than an hour ago. Had the kidnappers grabbed Gwen and the baby and then attacked his house, as well? Whoever planned this knew how to cull the weak, seizing the elderly, a young mother and a helpless baby. “Are you injured?”

“I am well.” He didn’t sound the least bit rattled by the circumstances. In fact, this was the tone he used in his business conversations. “We are negotiating new terms.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

His English was flawless, though gently rounded by a French accent when he was stressed or tired. Then the accent grew heavier and something else seeped in, drenching the words with a harsh elegance that was tougher to understand.

“Negotiating.” He enunciated each syllable and added something at the end that sounded closer to German, which only confounded Lucy. “Your sister and her son are with me. They are safe. They will remain safe as long as you do as I say, young lady.”

“You have Gwen and Jackson?” She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to wrap her mind around it but couldn’t. Behind her closed eyelids she saw the mangled parlor, the broken bits of the few treasures they’d brought to France. “Why?” How, when and where all needed answering, as well, but she limited herself to one question at a time.

“They are leverage to ensure your cooperation,” he stated, as if it should have been obvious. “You love your family, correct?”

“More than anything,” she whispered. He knew how much those two people meant to her. Gwen and Jackson were all she had left. She and Gwen had lost their parents in a plane crash during Lucy’s second year of undergrad. Gwen had been the steady, reassuring voice of reason when grief would have derailed Lucy’s goals. She swore. “How could you do this?”

“As I thought. Look in your desk drawer. The top one. There is an envelope.”

Thoroughly devastated, she did as he directed, withdrawing a plain white envelope. Only the weight of the paper gave away the means and quality of the man behind this treacherous attack.

“Did you find it?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she replied, lowering her voice. Countering belligerence with a calm and composed response was a trick she’d learned in her MBA program. In her early days with Kathrein it had been surprisingly effective at defusing him when he grew agitated over something.

“Everything you need is in the envelope. A man seeking to ruin my grandson’s political plans went digging through my background. My past is irrelevant! Nosy reporters,” Kathrein ranted. “It is no more than slanted, ancient history and vicious rumors. My Daniel is a good boy. He will not pay for the mistakes of my youth. Family is everything, yes?”

“Yes,” she agreed. Apparently one member of his family—his only grandson and heir—was worth her entire remaining family combined. The envelope crinkled as her hands fisted, wishing she could wring his leathery, wrinkled neck. Her pulse hammered behind her temples. She had to think, to find a way around this. What kind of threat, what ancient secrets from his past had pushed the wealthy recluse to these drastic measures?

“The man stored electronic copies of these damaging rumors in a Gray Box,” Kathrein said.

Gray Box. Memories that Lucy would rather have continued to forget emerged, vying for precedence in her troubled thoughts.

“As outlined in your instructions,” he went on, “you will retrieve every document and then destroy everything in the cloud, removing all traces of the electronic records.”

Break into a secure Gray Box? Kathrein had no idea what he was asking. Rush Grayson, the brilliant creator of that particular secure cloud storage service, had contracts with the United States military and intelligence agencies. His proprietary Gray Box encryption was that reliable and impossible to hack. To date, there had never been a successful breach. “What you’re asking is impossible, Mr. Kathrein.”

“You’d best hope not, Lucille. Since the man I contracted was not successful with the password and such, I presume it will require a more feminine ingenuity,” he suggested.

Her mind caught on his words and suddenly his determination to bring her to France, to give her anything and everything she needed to make the transition became clear. She was as much a pawn as her sister and nephew, caught in a life and death game of speed chess. Dieter Kathrein didn’t need a personal assistant as much as he’d anticipated a need for her to pry open software. He’d selected Lucy based on her past.

Oh, dear God.

“If you contact the police or anyone else I will terminate your family,” he said. “If you fail I will terminate your family.”

Renewed fear tightened her chest. “Mr.—”

“You have one week.”

Her heart stumbled. Seven days to break into a Gray Box? He might give her a year and she wouldn’t be able to deliver. No matter what she’d learned during her time with the company founder, she didn’t have any confidence she could accomplish the task in the next decade. “Sir, I’m begging you to reconsider.”

“Begging does not an ounce of good. Results matter to me. You know this. Retrieve the information or you will never see your family alive again.”

If someone on Kathrein’s extensive staff had already tried and failed to crack the secure storage site, she couldn’t possibly hope to succeed long distance. The inevitable scenarios played like a house of horrors tour in her mind. “Wait! Please, I need more than a week.” Lucy floundered for a believable excuse. “I’ll have to return to the States.” For the first time in years, the plane trip would be the least of her challenges.

“One week, Lucille. Not a single hour more.”

“Don’t hurt them,” she pleaded. Silence was the reply. He’d ended the call. She reflexively redialed Gwen’s number. No answer. Tears rolled down her cheeks. How could he threaten Jackson? Just last week, he’d stooped over the stroller and smiled warmly at the baby during one of Gwen’s walks around the estate. Kathrein must have lost his mind. Clearly a crazy man held the lives of her sister and nephew in his arthritic hand. Damn it. No matter what her insane boss believed, cracking a Gray Box was not possible.

She upended the envelope and poked through the contents. Along with a substantial amount of cash, presumably to assist with her travel expenses, Kathrein had provided detailed background on investigative journalist Mathieu Garmeaux. How had this one man gathered secrets damaging enough to push Kathrein to such an extreme and irrational response?

Kathrein probably assumed Lucy could magically derive the man’s username and password from the background. Not likely. She dashed away her tears with the back of her hand, forcing herself to concentrate on solutions rather than the cold dread sinking into her bones. If Garmeaux would be reasonable, if she could convince him to help her, maybe she could avoid a pointless attack on a secure Gray Box and she could get her family back by morning.

Nothing lost by asking, she decided. She booted up her laptop and did a preliminary search for the man based on the background provided. First she’d send an email and follow that with a phone call. Or not. Her stomach sank at the first search result.

Mathieu Garmeaux, based in Paris, had died two weeks ago, the victim of a traffic accident just a few blocks from his apartment.

Dear God. Lucy dropped her head into her hands and flexed her fingertips hard into her scalp, tugging on her hair as the dates lined up in her mind. She’d been with Mr. Kathrein in Paris at the time. In light of the kidnapping it seemed far more likely that the journalist’s motorcycle had lost the fight with a panel truck on purpose. If Kathrein had had Garmeaux killed, what wouldn’t he do to gain control of the documents?

A shudder racked her shoulders as she brought up an airline website and booked the next available flight to San Francisco. Gwen and Jackson were counting on her and, like Mr. Kathrein, she would do anything to save her family. Oh, she hated having even that much in common with the wretched old man. Air travel and returning to Rush Grayson’s territory were small costs compared to the priceless value of the people who mattered most to her.

Her ticket booked, she tried not to think of anything but the next step and failed miserably. Knowing she’d be facing the man who’d broken her heart last year had her agonizing over every item of clothing as she packed. Circumstances aside, deceiving Rush went against her nature. Though he’d hurt her, she’d never wanted to hurt him. Saving Gwen and Jackson meant damaging the Gray Box reputation, and that left a sour taste in her mouth.

“Can’t be helped,” she said aloud. Zipping her luggage closed, she called for the car and driver to take her to the airport. As the estate faded into the distance behind the car, Lucy’s thoughts bounced from past to present and leapfrogged into the near and distant future.

Starting with a business introduction and a surprising mutual respect, she and Rush had developed a friendship that had become so much more. Chills raced along her skin at the memories she couldn’t suppress. She’d been foolish enough to fall in love and he’d been smart enough to adhere to his personal boundaries.

Despite the knowledge that their business interests and efforts had served them both well, she didn’t entertain any illusion that he’d be particularly happy to see her on a personal level. What Kathrein required of her would push the mutual professional respect across a bed of hot coals.

If by some miracle she succeeded in her task, her foolish heart’s persistent, feathery hope to someday reconcile with Rush would be blown out of reach forever.