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said. “The skills my father taught me have such a lot of applications. Some more lucrative than others.”
    “Like getting in and out of apartments,” Gabriel said.
    Her shoulders lifted and fell. “In her way, it is what your sister does, too, don’t fool yourself.”
    “So you’re not going to tell me how you got out of her apartment?”
    She stretched out an index finger, laid it across Gabriel’s lips. “Secret,” she said.
    The touch startled him. There was an electric quality to it, and a quality of sudden intimacy, as though they’dknown each other far longer than the length of a car ride.
    She drew her finger back.
    They watched each other for a bit.
    “Are you hungry?” he asked finally.
    “Ravenous.”
    “Thirsty?”
    “Parched.”
    “You know of somewhere we can go? Get something to eat and drink?”
    “You won’t get my secrets that way, Gabriel Hunt. For just a glass of wine.”
    Gabriel smiled. “I’ll take my chances.”
    She parked the Peugeot near the waterfront. There was no sign of the police. They walked to a sidewalk café that was open late. The crowd inside was young, mostly college-age, and loud; Gabriel and Sammi took an outside table where they could talk privately. She ordered them a plate of
socca
, a Niçois specialty consisting of a thin layer of chick-pea flour and olive oil batter fried on a griddle, as well as a dish of stuffed vegetables. Gabriel consented to the waiter’s offer to bring a bottle of the house’s red wine.
    The table was lit by a pair of candles in tiny glass holders. Gabriel couldn’t help but admire Sammi’s features in the flickering light, the play of shadow over her tanned skin (so much darker than most redheads he knew—and yet the red looked natural). Her eyes were an even brighter blue than he remembered from his first glimpse of her in the apartment. She wore a small medallion of some kind on a gold chain around her neck, and as she leaned toward him it dangled in the inviting darkness between her peach-shaped breasts.
    “What is that?” he asked, indicating the medallion.
    “This?” She lifted the chain with one finger, let the piece dangle in the light of the flame. “This is nothing, really. I wear it for sentimental reasons. It once belonged to my mother, who is no longer with us.”
    “It looks old.”
    “More than two hundred years,” she said. “It’s a French coin from around 1800. A franc. An old franc, from Napoleon’s time.”
    Gabriel thought about the print of Napoleon on the wall of Lucy’s apartment, defaced by blade and marker. The old boy seemed to be turning up everywhere. But that was what it meant to come to France, of course. Two centuries later, his influence was still palpable.
    “Speaking of Napoleon, do you know why my sister had that print up on her wall?” Gabriel asked. “Had she developed an interest in history?”
    “Cifer? No. History was my specialty, not hers. I gave her the print for her birthday. I told her once she reminded me of Napoleon. Small, but very, very brilliant.”
    “I’m surprised I never noticed the resemblance,” Gabriel said.
    “Well,” Sammi said, in a tone of consolation, “you are not French.”
    The wine arrived then, and Gabriel went through the performance of sniffing the cork and swirling the wine and satisfying the waiter by pronouncing it good enough. When the waiter left, Sammi took one swallow and burst out laughing. “It’s awful!”
    “It is,” Gabriel said. “Worst I’ve had in years.”
    “But, but—why didn’t you send it back?”
    “I’m not here for the wine,” he said.
    They found each other’s eyes, and neither looked away for some time.
    “Can you tell me,” Sammi said, “is Cifer in serious danger?”
    “I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I hope not. But she may be. A group calling themselves the Alliance of the Pharaohs claims to have kidnapped her. Have you ever heard of them?”
    “God in heaven,” she said. “I remember our