“What happened the second time he was in Beirut?”
“Russia has been in an on-again, off-again relationship with Lebanon over the years. Viktor’s team was assigned to guard an official who had come to make a public show of solidarity with someone from the Lebanese government—but a third party ended up assassinating the wife of the Russian diplomat. Viktor did everything right. He followed protocol. Someone from the Lebanese military screwed up and let the wrong person in.”
“Have you guys figured out how this is connected to the sniper?”
“Our team went back and found everyone connected to these two cases. And no one cares—all of this stuff is cold—but finally we figured something out. Or Viktor did.”
“About Beirut?”
He stood up and walked to the bar. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”
“Do I need one?”
He poured two drinks and brought one back to me. “Maybe.”
The suspense was almost killing me. “What did Viktor remember about Beirut?”
“He forgot to mention the third trip he made to that city.”
I took a fortifying sip of my drink. “Go on.”
“He spent one weekend in Beirut waiting for a woman who didn’t show up. That’s all I know.”
I could feel my heart beating faster. The thought of Viktor being stood up made me want to angrily pace the length of his office. “Why didn’t she show up?”
“I guess there was an old ex-boyfriend still kicking around.”
“Who was this woman?”
“Her name is Justine. She was a war journalist. When she didn’t show up, he assumed that she had chosen to be with the ex-boyfriend.”
My breath escaped me. “She was French.”
“She was from France.”
My hands were shaking so hard I had to put the glass down. “So he’s gone there to look for her?”
Andrusha corrected me. “He’s gone there looking for answers.”
“Oh.” I felt my heart squish with something dark and bad. He had left me and gone looking for another woman. This news couldn’t be worse.
He leaned forward. “Hang in there, Blaire. Give him time to get this all sorted out.”
I wanted to cry. “Is he safe?”
“He can handle himself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
VIKTOR
I sat in the back of the French café and waited. Eventually, a woman stepped inside, looked around. When she saw me, she made her way to my table.
I stood up. “Esme?”
“You must be Viktor.”
Once she got settled and ordered a coffee, she broke the ice. “I was very surprised to hear that you were looking for Justine. That is a name I haven’t heard in at least five years.”
“But you remember her.”
“Quite clearly. She and I used to be casual work acquaintances—you know, the odd dinner here and there and drinks after work.”
I cleared my throat. “Would you know where I can connect with her? Or would you be able to pass on a message to her for me?”
Her face fell. “Oh god, you don’t know.”
Something cold slid down my back. “Know what?”
“Justine was killed.”
I sat back as the shock rolled over me. “What happened?”
“She came in one day, and she was beyond excited. Apparently, she was going to Beirut to meet the love of her life. It was a new relationship, but he was talking about marriage. She was in the midst of packing up her life and preparing to start over. She was so happy.”
My stomach grew tight and sour. “Go on.”
“We didn’t think anything of it at first. This was exactly the kind of thing Justine did—she was fearless. No one was surprised when she quit her life without notice so she could start a new adventure with a soldier from another country. We were all a bit jealous, to be honest.”
I swallowed. “And then?”
“And then, three months later, it was on the news that they’d found a body. A female. She’d been dumped in a field not three miles from here after being beaten and strangled. And she was pregnant.”
She had been coming to meet me. My entire body felt cold. “Who did this to her?”
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “It was her ex-boyfriend. The DNA tests revealed that whoever had killed her was also the father of her child. They went to question him, but he’d fled the country. They matched the DNA to him, but they never found him.”
“Do you remember his name?”
She sighed. “I know he’s on the most-wanted list in France and now for far worse crimes than her murder. But I can’t remember his name. I do remember he used to be in the military.”
Two days later, back in Vancouver, I was staking out a restaurant with Andrusha. This was the first chance I’d had to talk to him since my return to town.
I handed him the file I had put together on Justine’s case and her suspected killer. For three hundred euros, I had gotten a copy of her autopsy report, and for another two hundred, I also got a copy of the police report.
“What is his name?”
I had read over this file so many times I knew it by heart. “His name is Marco Jardin. He’s thirty-three years old. Was raised in Paris by his mother only, but she died when he was a teenager. He joined the navy and, over the course of three years, rose through the ranks before he made it onto the special forces. He served three tours, mostly as a sniper, and then he was dishonorably discharged, right around the time Justine went missing.”
Andrusha looked at the one outdated photo we had of him. It had been taken over five years ago. “Tell me about Justine.”
“She was a war journalist I’d met in a bar. She was mouthy and fearless and hot in bed. She had just gotten out of a relationship that she described as dull, but she didn’t talk much about him. We spent a month in the same location, and we were inseparable. She went back to France for work and, a couple of weeks later, she calls me crying. She told me she was pregnant, but she was honest with me. She said she didn’t know whose baby it was—but she hoped it was mine.”
“What did you do?”
I remembered her infectious laughter. “I invited her to meet me in Beirut and talk about making a go of it. Marriage was on the table at that point.”
Andrusha gave me a disbelieving look. “Really?”
“I wasn’t unhappy, okay? She might not have been the love of my life, but we could have been happy, I knew that. Marriage would have been easy with her. I waited at that hotel and watched the news for train or flight delays—for anything that might cause a delay. By Sunday night, she hadn’t showed or called, and I figured she had decided against marrying me and perhaps had chosen to go back to her ex-boyfriend.”
“You didn’t go looking?”
“She made her choice, so I wasn’t going to pressure her to do anything else.”
“You weren’t worried she was pregnant with your kid and running off to be with some other guy?”
I thought about my answer. “I was almost one-hundred-percent certain that it wasn’t my kid.”