The Enigma Challenge

Chapter Fifteen

Fifteen

Paris, France

People say that the best way to get to know someone better is by traveling with them. You can see their moods and the way they respond to stress. If that’s true, then Dane is getting an eyeful.

We’ve had an absolutely terrible day of delayed flights, missed trains, and a pissy customs agent who asked me an excessive number of questions about where we were staying and what we were doing, as though visiting the Louvre isn’t a perfectly normal thing for two Americans to do—while completely ignoring Dane.

On the positive side, no one shot, chased, or rolled explosive devices at us.

By the time we arrive at our hotel in Paris’s seventeenth arrondissement, I am feeling the day’s difficulties and my mood is decidedly foul.

I let Dane handle the check-in while I have a little talk with myself in the lobby, breathing deep and trying to remind myself that as far as this challenge goes, I’m alive and well. Those are the important things.

“There’s one more piece of bad news,” Dane says as we take the creaky elevator up to our rooms.

“What?”

“Araceli accidentally booked us one room. They’re full up, and I wasn’t able to get a second.”

I sigh.

We walk down a green-carpeted hall to our room.

He opens the door with the key card, and I step into a cramped room.

There’s a large bed and a small table with two chairs, and that’s it—apart from a gorgeous floor-to-ceiling window that looks out over the city, which makes the room.

I can feel the fumes of my mood evaporating as I look out over the classically Parisian Haussmann buildings with their balconies; tall, narrow windows; and ornate cornices.

It’s undeniably thrilling to be in this beautiful city.

The room has a slender balcony. I open the door to step out.

The hum of the city is muted up here, and the evening air is refreshing on my face.

Behind me, Dane comes to stand at the door. I keep my eyes on the view, on the lights that are just starting to twinkle in the lavender sky of early evening.

“Sorry for being grouchy,” I say. “The room thing is fine.”

“I don’t blame you. We’ve had a day.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, “It’s rough, but I think I can manage another night with you in here.”

I turn to face him. “What do you mean?”

“You snore like a big rig. You’ve kept me up the past two nights. It’s like being in the middle of a lumber mill. I’m surprised the hotel staff in Barcelona didn’t kick us out.”

My mouth falls open in outrage. “I do not—”

He laughs. It’s a full, proper laugh, and I elbow his middle for it. But his laugh disperses the vestiges of my sour mood. I turn to the door as he moves back to give me room.

“Since we don’t have to be at the Louvre until tomorrow, do you want to go out to dinner?” he asks. “Or if you’d prefer to stay in, I saw a cheese shop down the block. I can see if they’re open and get a few things there.”

“Cheese sounds nice,” I say, picturing us sitting on the balcony with it. “Thank you. I’m going to shower off the travel grime.”

He gives a nod in response, and then he’s gone.

I grab my bag and go into the bathroom, which, like the room, is minuscule.

The pedestal sink has no room for any toiletries and there’s no place to put my bag.

I toss my dirty clothes on the floor in the room.

After the shower, which was exactly the balm I needed, I get dressed and gather the dirty clothes, only to find that my underwear is missing.

With a jolt of panic, I look around my feet, worried they’ve hitched a ride on my clean clothes.

Nothing. I look under and around the bench.

Not there. I pull out the dirty clothes from my bag and feel inside the armholes and legholes.

Still nothing. My phone pings loudly with a text as I’m searching.

Dane: Unexpected guest coming back with me. Hide on balcony.

Is he fucking kidding me? I scramble to make sure I’m fully dressed and zip up my bag—still no underwear!

—and shove it into the closet. I hear voices outside in the hall.

Shit. I hurry over to the balcony door, pausing to pull a shade on one half of the glass so I won’t be seen at an angle, and slither out onto the small space. I leave the door cracked.

I am only barely behind the shade when the door to the room opens.

A woman is talking. There is a small gap in the shade that I can see through if I twist. She’s older, maybe the age my mother would be if she were alive, and beautiful.

Her hair is in an elegant twist, and she wears a long black sheath dress, but it’s the way she moves into the room—as though she owns it—that’s so magnetic.

She looks like she could have stepped off the red carpet in Cannes.

“The thing I don’t understand, Dane, is why you didn’t let me know you were coming to Paris,” she’s saying.

Her voice confidently projects, and her French accent is light enough to suggest that she speaks English regularly.

She strides into the room and comes to stand near the balcony window.

Heart pounding, I whip my head away from the gap.

“It’s almost like you had no plans to contact me while you’re here. I’m hurt.”

She doesn’t sound hurt. She sounds pleased, if anything.

“As you know, the Enigma Challenge doesn’t leave much time for socializing,” Dane says from somewhere in the middle of the room.

“Mmm.” She taps her fingernail on the back of a chair. “That’s a mismanagement of time on your part, then. I always make room for parties.” I sense that she’s stepped away from the balcony and has moved farther back into the room.

“What do you want, Sophie?” Dane asks.

“I heard you left Madrid with the American literature cryptologist, Dr. Wilder.”

I bite my lip. Dane doesn’t answer.

“Dane,” Sophie chides with a tinkling little laugh. “Don’t be shy. Obviously I know! I’m glad you did. Tell me about her.”

“Nothing to tell.” Dane’s voice is decidedly nonchalant. “We left Madrid on the same train.”

“By all accounts, the two of you were quite close in Barcelona. Has your work with her turned…personal, Dane?”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business one way or another.”

Every hackle on my neck is up. I can’t guess the motive behind her questioning.

I chance another look through the gap. Dane has shoved his hands in his pants pockets as though he couldn’t care less about this interrogation.

I’m still learning about him, but I’m pretty sure I read tension in the way he holds himself.

For her part, Sophie watches him with a knowing little smile that reminds me of a serpent.

“Where is she?” Sophie asks.

Dane shrugs. “Not here.”

She tsks. “You can’t lie to me, mon chéri.

” I see a flurry of movement through the gap as she bends over and plucks something off the floor behind the bench outside the bathroom.

“If she is not here, then whose are these?” She holds up my missing worn underwear.

My eyes widen. “These don’t look like your size. ”

Dane grabs them from her and tucks them in his pocket. I have died. I am dead.

“It’s perfect that I ran into you, of course,” Sophie says. “I am having a little drinks party tonight. I’d like you to be there. Bring Dr. Wilder.”

Dane is silent, and I wonder if he’s inwardly freaking out like I am. “I don’t know if it’ll fit with our plans.” With the word our he’s given up any pretense of my not being here.

“Make it fit. The party starts soon.” Sophie’s tone is dismissive and authoritative. “I am sure Dr. Wilder would enjoy meeting my other guests.”

“Sophie,” Dane says. “We don’t need to do this.”

Sophie makes a hm sound that suggests she disagrees. I don’t know her or how she knows Dane, but I don’t have to be an idiot standing on a balcony to understand that her invitation isn’t intended to be optional. It’s a command.

“See you tonight,” she says. “You know the address.”

Dane says nothing, but there’s the sound of the door opening and closing. After a long stretch of silence, the balcony door opens and Dane looks at me. “Come inside.”

I step back into the room. Tendrils of a perfume hang in Sophie’s wake, and I recognize the confident and uncompromising musk of Chanel No. 5. “Who is she? And how does she know who I am?”

He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it.

He doesn’t answer immediately, and I gather he’s trying to decide what to say.

“She’s…she’s a player. The one I told you about in Barcelona.

She runs a team in every Enigma Challenge, stacked with people she hires to solve the puzzles for her and, if needed, take out other teams. She has two cryptologists working for her and various people as her muscle.

She makes it her business to know who’s playing, so I’m not surprised she knows about you. ”

I picture a gang of elite villains all as sleek as Sophie, sitting around smoking. “Did you work for her? In prior challenges?”

He exhales slowly, like he’s trying to calm himself. “I played both challenges on my own.”

I sag into one of the small chairs. “Can we simply not go to her party?”

“Crossing her is never a good idea, and she knows who you are. If we don’t go, she may send someone after us.”

“People have already been after us,” I point out. “She can get in line. Is there anything we could gain from attending her little soiree?”

Dane glances at me, his expression morphing into one of thought.

“She’ll almost certainly have the people on her team there.

That’s what this is: a party for the Enigma Challenge.

We might be able to find out if there were multiple versions of the egg at the cathedral in Barcelona, and therefore where we stand in this. ”

“Why does she want us there so badly?”

Dane hesitates. “I think she wants information on how we’re solving puzzles. Especially if her team hasn’t solved any.”

I scoff. “That’s not happening.”

“No,” he agrees.

I chew my bottom lip. Knowing whether there were more cathedral eggs would be incredibly useful for competitive reasons. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“You need to be careful around Sophie,” he warns. “She’s as slippery as an eel, and her motives are not always clear.” He runs his hands through his hair and exhales sharply. “I think they know we got the egg.”

“Right,” I say. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll pretend like we genuinely want to talk to other people playing the challenge because we’re stumped on the solutions.”

“That won’t work. Sophie will have guessed we’re in Paris for the next puzzle.”

“Then we’ll say that we heard from someone Paris was the next stop, but we don’t really know what it is we’re looking for here.”

“In a city this big?” He looks doubtful. “How about if we say we heard the next puzzle is in the Montparnasse Cemetery. It might be similar enough to the Poblenou Cemetery in Barcelona to fool her into thinking it’s a theme.”

“Perfect. I can do this,” I say, because I want to be the type of person who can.

“Do you have anything to wear?” he asks, his tone soft. Like he wants me to feel comfortable at a dinner party in a lion’s den.

“Actually, yes.” I bought that blue sheath dress in Barcelona, and I have the sandals I purchased in the Boqueria market before we were chased. They’re strappy and flat, but they’ll do. I can put my long hair up into a twist with the clip I always keep in my bag.

Dane turns away to look through his own suitcase. “I picked up a jacket in Barcelona, at least.” He pulls it out of his bag. It’s black, as usual, but I notice that he grabs a dark red shirt to go underneath.

“I’ll just get changed, then.” Now’s the moment.

I open my mouth to ask for my underwear back, and I can’t do it.

I cannot. The words will not come. So I grab my dress out of my bag and go into the bathroom.

I can only pray that he removes the underwear from his pocket while I’m in here, ensuring that neither of us need ever speak of them again.

Moments later, I open the bathroom door and emerge in my dress.

His back is toward me and his shirt is off and holy shit.

My mouth actually goes dry. If I could feel those muscles before when I was up against him, seeing them is another thing.

It’s a religious experience. I wonder how it’s possible for a real human man to look that good.

He pulls on the red button-down shirt and turns, giving me a glance. His eyes drop down my body. For a moment, I don’t breathe. Then he nods. “Good. You have your documents on you? We leave nothing important here.”

“Well, my clothes,” I say.

“Expect every hotel room we stay in to be ransacked if we’re out. Or we may have to run and leave it all behind.”

I’m deeply attached to my rabbit sweatshirt, the one I wore on the plane to Madrid.

It was a gift from my dad for my birthday right before he died, but it’s only a sweatshirt.

I have other things from him. I brought no jewelry to Spain, apart from the small diamond earrings that were my mother’s, which I never remove.

I nod and take a deep breath as he pulls open the door and gestures for me to go first. I step out into the hall.

“It’ll be fine,” he says in the elevator, perhaps more to himself than me.

“This is such a bad idea,” I mutter.

“Oh, no question about that.”

We exit the hotel onto the busy street. Dane offers me his arm, and without a word, I take it.

It feels as though we’re marching into battle.

We’re both stiff and quiet. It isn’t until we’re in the neighboring eighteenth arrondissement and he’s pulling open the door to a gorgeous apartment building with heavy ornate stone balustrades that he lets go of my arm.

I feel cold without him. Noticeably missing his body heat is becoming a pattern.

Dane provides heat, and I enjoy it. But there is no time to unpack that because we are climbing the grand stairs to Sophie’s fourth-floor apartment.

“Remember the plan,” Dane murmurs as he rings her doorbell, as though he needs to remind himself. “Montparnasse Cemetery.”

I nod and fix a smile to my face as the door opens.