Private Paris (Private 10)

“Shortly after midnight she snuck out of her room while one of my men was using the john. We didn’t pick up on it until twenty minutes ago, when we checked our security tapes.”

“How was she dressed when she left?” Louis asked.

“For a club,” Peaks said sourly. “Stiletto heels. Black leather pants. White top. Too much skin between the two.”

“She went out alone to a club?” I asked.

Peaks cocked his jaw. “She has a history of this sort of behavior.”

“So she’ll come back eventually?”

“I can’t afford ‘eventually,’” the security chief insisted. “If she’s not at Millie Fleurs’s for a fitting at nine with her mother, I’ll be terminated.”

“Then we start now,” Louis said. “Ten thousand dollars and I’ll send investigators to every club in the city still open.”

It sounded like highway robbery to me, but Peaks said, “Done.”

Louis said, “Bon. Most of the late-night clubs are in the 11th and 17th, but the two closest are Showcase and Le Baron. I will go there myself.”

“I’ll go with him,” I promised.

“You’ll text me the moment you find her?” Peaks asked.

“Immediately,” Louis promised. “And in the meantime, if her mother and sisters ask after her, say that she’s got the terrible twenty-four-hour stomach virus that’s been going around Paris.”

Peaks brightened. “Is there one going around Paris?”

“Not that I know of. But it should buy you some time.”

Peaks texted us the photograph of the princess and a picture of her passport. We promised to be in touch.

Though the air exiting the elevator spoke of croissants baking and espresso brewing, the area outside the breakfast room and the lobby were dead.

Even Elodie was struggling to remain awake until she saw me approaching. She stiffened enough to complain quietly, “S’il vous plaît, Monsieur Morgan, can it wait? I’m off duty in just five minutes, and—”

I showed her the photograph. “Did she come through here after midnight?”

The concierge studied the picture and then said, “She looked much older than in the picture. Who is she?”

“You don’t want to know. Leave it for the shift change.”

Elodie tried to hide her worry with a professional smile. “When will you be leaving us, Mr. Morgan?”

“Believe me, Elodie,” I said, “as soon as I can.”

I found Louis out front, trying to hail a cab. But the Avenue Montaigne was as quiet as the lobby of the Plaza.

Louis gestured up the street two blocks toward the Rue François 1er, where a taxi crossed, and then another. “We have better luck there.”

He began to jog, with me following. We were crossing the Rue Clément Marot when a woman’s bloodcurdling screaming stopped us in our tracks. Louis ran toward the screams, which had turned into hysterical crying.

Racing after him, I realized that she wasn’t on the street. Her weeping was coming from overhead, through an open, lit window on the floor above the haute couture shop of Millie Fleurs.

Louis tried the front door. Locked.

He hesitated, but only for a moment, before he drew the suppressed Glock, stepped back, and put three rounds through the glass, which turned to spiderwebs above the door handle. He flipped the gun over and used the butt of the pistol like a hammer to break out enough glass to reach inside.

“Gonna have an alarm,” I said.