Page 124 of The Grey Wolf
“Not just know, but to go there.”
“Will you?”
“No. I’m sending Isabelle. It’s possible the other two monks are still there.”
The late afternoon was cooling off, but they had each other’s body heat to keep them comfortable.
“What about Dom Philippe? Where’s he?”
“I think he might’ve gone home.”
“To Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups? But you were just there.”
“Non.To Blanc-Sablon. I’m flying there tomorrow. Father David, his friend, said that when clerics retire, they often go home. Dom Philippe isn’t retired, but I think he might’ve gone there for help. We all have a homing instinct.”
Armand glanced over to their rambling white clapboard house, with its wide veranda, and double porch swing, and buttery lights in the windows. Daniel and Annie would be making dinner. The youngsters—he included Ruth in that category—would be tired out by now and sprawled in the living room, with the dogs, and duck, and Gracie, and fallen marshmallows all around them.
Home.
“Armand…” Reine-Marie hesitated before asking, “The drinking water? Have you told the mayors?”
When he shook his head, she stopped to look directly at him. “You have to tell someone. You have to warn people. Suppose it’s tonight? Tomorrow morning? It could happen any time.”
“You’re right. But I can’t say anything yet.”
“Why not? What’re you waiting for? I don’t understand. You’re gambling with thousands of lives. The lives of our friends. Your colleagues.”
He was gambling with more than that. Like General Whitehead, Armand knew that if the terrorists were even partially successful, it would have terrifying and lasting consequences. Ones he’d be, by that time, powerless to stop.
“We don’t know who’s behind this,” he said. “The terrorists have to have people on the inside. If I warn the mayors and those in charge of public works, there’s a good chance they’ll move up their attack.”
“Or call it off,” she said.
“Which would be as bad. They’d go to ground and wait. Or move it to another city and we’d lose track of them. I wish I could tell the Premier, the mayors, the head of the Sûreté. Then it would be their problem. I could come back here and have dinner with the family and go to bed. Sleep. But I can’t. Not yet.”
She picked up his hand and kneaded it. “I’m sorry.”
“Honestly, I don’t know if I’m making the right decision. I think I am, but…”
Reine-Marie unwrapped the handkerchief around his finger. “You’ve been dumpster diving again, haven’t you.”
“It’s where the best clues, and birthday gifts, are found.”
“Let’s go inside. It’s dinnertime. We can put antiseptic on that almost invisible nick.”
“Nick? It’s a slash, a terrible, terrible wound.” He looked at his finger.
“Wrong one, Inspector,” she said, with a laugh.
Home. That was home.
As they walked along the veranda, they could smell pasta and garlic bread through the screen door.
“If you received a message with everyBunderlined, what would you think?”
It had become the question du jour. A kind of party riddle without the punchline.
“The letterB?”
