And coming back to her apartment was depressing. It looked so sad and gray and faded now. She hadn’t realized how bad it looked when she left. It didn’t feel like home anymore. It reminded her of all the bad times and sad times of watching her mother deteriorate and her magazine go under slowly. She missed the pretty, happy apartment in Paris. It was fresh and new, and felt more like home now. She suddenly couldn’t imagine coming back to her dreary New York apartment after a year in Paris. Now she had the chateau to do, but she didn’t want to think about that either. She just wanted to go to bed and try to forget what had happened at the airport with Joachim.
She’d been gone for months, so there was nothing in the fridge, and she wasn’t hungry anyway. She didn’t even unpack. She went straight to bed in her clothes, and tossed and turned all night, and had nightmares about going to jail.
In the morning she met her realtor at her lawyer’s office and signed the papers to sell her mother’s apartment. It took them an hour to sign everything, and then she sat and talked to her lawyer, Eric Parks, for a few minutes. She had known him for many years and trusted his advice. She told him what had happened at the airport and said that she believed Joachim was an honest man. But this was not a small incident like Alphonsine stealing her mother’s jewelry, when she suspected him. He had a twin brother who was seriously involved in the Colombian drug trade. What if he showed up in Paris and tried to kill Joachim? Or her? Or took her hostage? Or if one of his dangerous cohorts mistook Joachim for Javier one day and killed him, or assassinated everyone around him, including her? These were highly dangerous people. And by blood, Joachim was at risk. His entire family was, and Olivia didn’t want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with him. The scene at the airport had been terrifying enough.
She explained the whole situation to her attorney, and he didn’t disagree with her. Hiring the identical twin of a dangerous Colombian drug lord didn’t sound like a good plan to him, even on a short-term basis. She told him that Joachim was only going to work for her for a few months.
“You need to run a criminal investigation on the twin who works for you. You know about the other one now, but you need to be sure that this one isn’t working underground for the same organization, or that he’s not a terrorist, or has a criminal history. The truth is you don’t know enough about him.” She realized that now too. She liked him, and he was a terrific employee, but she wanted to know more than that now, about his background. The Homeland Security agents at the airport had checked and said that Joachim had no criminal history, but she wanted confirmation of that.
Eric offered to contact a detective agency he had used before. They had international contacts, and he promised to get a report for her as soon as he could. She didn’t want to fire Joachim before that. Maybe he was totally clean. But she needed to know and then decide if she wanted to keep him or not. If there was anything smoky at all in his history, she was going to let him go. She couldn’t afford to do otherwise. She was a woman alone, his brother was a dangerous criminal, and she couldn’t take the risk. She had no one to protect her, and she didn’t want to be looking over her shoulder all the time, wondering if she was going to be killed.
She met Joachim at the storage company, after her meeting with the lawyer. They were both subdued. He looked like he’d had a bad night too, and he was mortified seeing Olivia again. They kept the conversation to the items she wanted to send to France for her apartment there. He had taken the measurements she’d asked for, and said they’d fit in the Paris apartment. They had a quick sandwich together afterward, and neither of them mentioned the incident at the airport. It was too painful for either of them to discuss. Joachim felt terrible for putting her at risk with the authorities. She felt guilty about the criminal investigation of him that she had just authorized, although it was the sensible thing to do, in the circumstances. They only talked about the furniture she was shipping, and then she let him go to explore New York on his own. She wanted to pack some more things at her apartment, but she told him she didn’t need his help. It wasn’t entirely true, but she wanted to be alone, and think about what to do.
She picked him up at his hotel on the way to the airport the next day. She had thought they might have some fun together in New York, or a meal at least. But she didn’t want to see him after the incident at the airport, except for work. She didn’t want to call any of her work contacts or friends either. She was still smarting from the blow of losing her business. So she kept to herself. And they said very little to each other on the way to the airport. She was worried now that they would have a problem when they checked in at Air France, but they didn’t.