Altar of Bones (35 page)

Zoe held on. Although if she’d known what he was going to do, she might have jumped off instead and taken her chances with the bad guys and the French cops, whose sirens she could now hear again, closing in behind them.

They bounded up onto the sidewalk and went flying up and out, through the air, out, out, out, and Zoe screamed, sailing over a skein of wires that looked hot enough to fry an elephant.

They hit the ground so hard she felt as if her teeth had been driven through the top of her head, and something fell off the back of the bike with a loud clang. But by some miracle the tires didn’t blow.

Ry poured power into the sputtering engine, and they bounced and lurched over the web of rails and crossties, tires grinding, spewing gravel. Zoe looked toward the platforms and saw a bright, white headlight burst out of one of the dark tunnels.

This time her scream was swallowed by the shriek of a train’s warning whistle. It bore down on them with a hammering roar that rent the air. The whole world seemed to be shaking.

They leaped over the last of the tracks, just as the train blew by them in a buffeting gust of wind and another earsplitting shriek of its horn.

R
Y TOOK THEM
on a twisted route through a warren of narrow one-way streets. Zoe had no idea whether he knew where he was going and she didn’t care. They were climbing now, the cobblestoned streets taking on
a bohemian charm, but she barely noticed. She kept twisting around to look for the silver Beamer.

She heard it before she saw it—the rev of its powerful engine. It came roaring around the corner behind them, and this time the hooded guy wasn’t being careful of innocent bystanders by trying to take aim. Bullets bit into the cobblestones, shattered glass, and ripped into a pile of garbage cans.

“How is she
doing
it?” Zoe cried. It seemed impossible—after the shopping arcade, the one-way streets, the railway tracks—that Yasmine Poole could have found them again already.

Ry opened the throttle as wide as it would go and they shot forward, putting some distance between them and the semiautomatic weapon. Even so, Zoe thought, it was a good thing it was harder than it looked to hit a moving target from another moving target.

They careened up a winding street, using the buildings as a shield. But the street ran out at a small square studded with leafless trees and the few straggling artists still packing up for the night. They ripped past colorful restaurants and galleries, and then Zoe saw before her the white dome and turrets of an enormous basilica lit up against the night sky.

The forecourt of the basilica’s great bronze doors was full of tourists and Arabs selling knockoff handbags spread out on blankets over the paving stones. The bike slashed through faux Gucci and Chanel, its headlight pointing right at a low stone balustrade. Beyond the balustrade the city’s rooftops and shimmering lights spread out for miles below them.

Far below them.

B
ULLETS SPRAYED THE
stone railing in front of them, kicking up a blizzard of stinging pellets.

For one terrifying instant, Zoe thought Ry was going to drive them over the balustrade to die, impaled on the point of a gray mansard roof. Then she saw the long flight of terraced steps, lit by a string of globe lampposts.

They dove down the stairs, hurtling, bouncing, and rattling, and more pieces of the pizza cycle fell off. They reached the end of one flight of stairs, cut hard right, under the framework of a funicular, and started down another, longer flight.

Ry yelled, “When I say
now
—jump. I won’t be slowing down, Zoe. You got it?”

Zoe nodded, unable to shout back she was so scared.

They bounded past a row of poplar trees, then Ry yelled, “Now!” and they jumped. The bike kept going without them, faster now, careening wildly out of control with no one to steer it.

Her momentum carried Zoe into some kind of holly bush, whose prickles scraped the side of her face. She landed hard on her left side, jamming an elbow into her chest and winding herself.

Ry was suddenly there, leaping out of the dark. He grabbed her hand, hauled her back onto her feet, and they ran down the steps, following the path the empty pizza cycle had taken. Zoe could still hear it, clattering and roaring, but far below them now. They didn’t run all the way after it, though, and thank God for that, because after the eternity on that thing with its rotten shock absorbers and padless seat, Zoe could barely feel her legs.

Ry pulled her down onto a stone bench and reached for her satchel. “Give me your bag.”

Zoe clutched it to her chest. “Why?”

“This afternoon, back at the café, Yasmine Poole must have dropped in a tracking device when you weren’t looking. That’s the only way they could be keeping up with us the way they have.”

Zoe was already dumping out the satchel onto the bench between them. The sealskin bag with its priceless icon first, then the film, which without its can was unspooling into a wiry mess. Then lipstick and compact, hairbrush, eyeliner, a couple of pens, wallet, passport, keys, a petrified PowerBar, sunglasses and sunscreen, a small box of tampons, a handful of old credit-card receipts, cell phone and PDA—both probably dead now … an expired coupon for a free cup of Peet’s coffee, a can of Mace and a whistle …

“Jesus, the things you women—”

“Don’t say it.”

Red lacy bikini panties and matching bra … “Nice,” Ry said.

Zoe quickly tucked the underwear inside the half-open zipper of her leather jacket. “Down, dog,” she said, and Ry laughed.

She got to the bottom and turned the satchel upside down. Crumbs and lint and dust fell out, but no tracking device.

“Oh, God, maybe it’s stuck on me somewhere….” She jumped up and ran her hands through her hair, over her jacket and jeans, searched her pockets.

Then Ry spotted it, caught among the bristles of her hairbrush. He held it up—it had the size and shape and creepy look of a wolf spider, and a tiny red light that was blinking like an evil red eye.

“This is the very latest technology,” he said. “I’ve never even seen it before, just read about it. I wasn’t really buying her tale before, but maybe Yasmine Poole really is CIA. In which case we are seriously …”

“Screwed,” Zoe said. “I’d use another word, but I don’t speak French.”

She expected Ry to throw the tracker into the bushes or squash it to smithereens beneath his bootheel, but instead he wrapped it up in his big fist and jumped to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said, and started at a jog back down the steps.

Zoe shoveled her stuff back into her satchel and ran after him.

A
T THE BOTTOM
of the steps, they passed a garbage truck idling at the stoplight. Ry tossed the tracking device onto the mound of trash.

Zoe watched the truck disappear around the corner. “We didn’t just put that garbage man’s life in danger, did we?”

Ry shook his head. “Soon as they catch up with the truck, they’ll know they’ve been had.”

They caught a cab going in the opposite direction. Zoe leaned back against the cracked black leather seat and shut her eyes. A moment ago she’d felt as if she had a half dozen double espressos shooting through her bloodstream; now, suddenly, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to
move again. Ry would have to pry her out of the cab with a crowbar when they got to where they were going.

And where
were
they going? She’d heard Ry say something in French to the driver, giving him an address presumably, although it had sounded like gibberish to her. If she’d known one day she would be running for her life over and over again through the streets of Paris, she would have studied more French in school instead of Spanish. She would have …

T
HE CRACK OF
a gunshot startled her awake.

She jerked upright and looked around wildly for the silver Beamer, but except for a ratty old Citroën idling at the red light in front of them, the street was deserted.

She felt a hand on her knee, and Ry said, “It was only a car backfiring.”

She tried to laugh, but it broke coming out. Her heart was still pumping hard. “Sorry. I guess I get kind of jumpy when people are trying to kill me.”

She thought she caught the flash of a smile, but it was dark in the back of the cab. “You’re doing great, Zoe. Better than great, you’re kicking ass and taking names.”

She knew he was just being a good leader, rallying the troops, but his words were still nice to hear. His hand on her knee also felt nice.

She was trying to think what to make of that when he said, “We’re almost there.”

Zoe looked out the window. The streetlights were few and far between, but she could make out a quaint, old-fashioned tobacco shop complete with a wooden Indian in front, a tailor shop with a nude mannequin in the window, and a ramshackle garage. This was a poorer neighborhood than any she’d yet seen, the buildings lopsided and grimed with the soot of centuries.

“So where is ‘there’?” she asked, just as they turned the corner onto an even narrower side street and rolled to a stop.

Ry leaned into her, and this time she was sure he smiled. “Come with me,” he said in a really bad Pepé Le Pew imitation, “to the casbah.”