The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

I put all my fingers in the hold and pulled as hard as I could.

It didn’t budge.

The shadows changed, and I glanced to the side to see dozens of little feet headed toward my hiding place. I pulled on the sliding door again.

Nothing.

Frantically, I ran my fingers around the edge. Was there a latch?

Yes. Here was something. I moved the bit of stone as far as it would go, then grabbed the little door again.

“Regardez!” a child’s voice said. “Que fait-elle?”

Jack said something in French and crouched in front of me, his hand on my ankle.

I yanked on the slider. This time, it flew open with a screech.

“My girlfriend’s hurt!” Jack said loudly, in English now, obviously trying to cover the noise. “She’s fallen!”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but notice he’d said girlfriend. He could easily have said I was his friend, or his sister.

A couple of little faces peered under the sarcophagus.

I stuck my hand inside the opening. Nothing to my right but cold, rough stone. I felt to the left.

Footsteps pounded the floor.

My fingers found something. I yanked a leather pouch out of the hole, along with quite a bit of dust. I stuffed the pouch into my bag and tried not to sneeze.

An adult face appeared, silhouetted against the light. “Mademoiselle! Miss. Are you okay?”

I edged out from under the sarcophagus, heart racing double time. Jack crouched beside me, helping me sit up, and I clung to him like I’d just passed out. He leaned in close. “Did you find anything?” he whispered, tucking my dusty hair out of my face like the perfect concerned boyfriend.

I nodded, and his whole face lit up, so much that I barely noticed the whole class of children and their teacher, all staring and whispering. And then the guard loomed over us, barking something in French.

Jack put an arm around me and replied, and I grabbed my head and winced as convincingly as I could.

“Like I said, my girlfriend has a heart condition,” Jack said, and I dropped the hand hastily to my chest.

“She’ll be fine, though,” Jack said. “Thank you for your help.”

The guard frowned, gesturing to the sarcophagus and looking me up and down. Even though I had a jacket wrapped around me, I was still in the tiny cocktail dress, with scratched-up legs and bloodied bandages.

“I don’t know how she fell underneath it,” Jack said in English. He helped me to my feet, a little roughly, considering I’d supposedly just fainted. “We’re sorry to inconvenience you. We’ll get her back to our hotel now. No! No, we don’t need a doctor.”

The guard frowned and raised his walkie-talkie—and a familiar accent came from the other side of the room.

Scarface, the redhead, and the others strolled into the Alexander exhibit, so raucous that the guard turned to look at them. Jack grabbed my hand, and we darted in the opposite direction.

“Arrêtez!” I didn’t have to turn to know the guard had seen us run.

“There they are!” So had the Order.

CHAPTER 28

Jack pulled me past a pair of tall, red-headed tourists in too-short shorts, and farther into the museum.

The shouts followed us.

I looked frantically for the green SORTIE sign that signaled an exit, but there were none this way. Only bathrooms.

“Too obvious,” Jack said, and made a sharp left turn through an open door into an office. He slammed it and locked it behind us.

A few moments later, the doorknob jiggled, then fists pounded an angry beat. “Open the bloody door!” Scarface yelled. I backed away, searching for another exit.

“They’ve got to have it or they wouldn’t’ve run,” Scarface’s muffled voice came from outside.

More pounding. A kick to the door that bowed the bottom inward. That was the only door, but there was a window.

More footsteps, running toward us. Mumbles, curses. “Security guards,” said one of the Order, and I thought I heard something about “the Commander” again. Finally, Scarface raised his voice enough to be heard.

“If you change your mind about letting the old man die, you have one day,” he said. “Call this phone number in the next twenty-four hours with the name of the One, or he’s dead. We won’t give you this chance again.” He rattled off a number, and I scribbled it on a scrap of paper I found in my bag.

A rush of pounding footsteps retreated. I stared at the phone number in my hand, but another set of steps reached us and the door handle rattled, much less violently. “Sécurité!”

Jack shook his head and gestured to the window. I stuffed the paper into my bag. Luckily, we were on the first floor, near some kind of employee exit. Jack helped me out, and vaulted out after me. He grabbed my hand, and we sprinted up a ramp.

“What was in the sarcophagus?” Jack asked, breathless, as he pulled open the wrought-iron gate leading off the Louvre grounds.

“Some kind of leather pouch. It felt like it might have a book—”

Down the block, an emergency exit flew open. The Order piled out. We skidded to a stop.

“Watch for them, you arse!” Scarface yelled, pointing away from us. “One of you go to the front, the other to the side. Girl’s in a white coat, that little git’s in a black one. They can’t be that hard to find.”

I dug my fingers into Jack’s arm. There was too much traffic to run across the road, and they’d see us anywhere else.

Scarface started to turn.

Jack propelled me back down the ramp we’d just run up. It curved back on itself, so we ended up just off the street but down one level, next to a bike rack. We shrank back into a recessed doorway. I jiggled the doorknob frantically, but it was locked.

Jack gestured for me to pull off my jacket, and tossed it under a helmet in one of the bike baskets. He put his own jacket around my shoulders, then plucked a straw fedora off the ground. It looked like a tourist had lost it over the fence. Jack made a face, but it wasn’t dirty, and he popped it on his head and pulled it low over his eyes. “Take your hair down,” he whispered. I pulled out my ponytail holder and let my hair fall over my shoulders so I’d look as little as possible like the girl they’d just seen.

Scarface and another man’s voices moved closer. If they looked down when they walked by, we were finished. We weren’t hidden very well. Jack backed me as far into the shadows as possible, trapping me between himself and the wall. “Don’t move,” he whispered. His eyes darted behind him. “They’ll think we’re . . .”