“We never said that.”
“It was understood, Noelle.”
She tipped her head, conceding the point. “It was. Yes. But now?”
He pushed off the armoire, pacing toward the wall. “Now what?” he asked when he’d turned back to where she sat.
“Why honor that understanding? We kept secrets then out of self-preservation. But now . . . don’t you think it will help to talk about some of what happened in that second-floor room? Maybe not all of it but . . . we don’t have anything to be ashamed of, Evan. We were victims, you know that.”
He didn’t say anything. She saw the churning emotion in his expression, and she wanted to go to him, but she didn’t. She sensed by his stance that he’d push her away. “One stands out,” she said. “One man stands out. And I think there’s a possibility that he’s the one who sent the items we needed. He’s the one who requested that I write him a note or draw him a picture with the pencil that I broke to extract the graphite. He led me toward that conclusion even before I was given the tool.” Break . . . You’re so hot. “I picked up on his clues because he used a form of the language we’d been speaking, very subtly murmuring some words and emphasizing others. The blindfold helped because it made my sense of hearing that much more sensitive, but mostly I was primed to listen in a specific way because of our secret language.”
“Do you think he knew what we’d been doing?”
“Maybe. But if he did, he didn’t use it to expose us. He used it to help us.” She took in a deep breath. “But it wasn’t only that. It’s like . . . he knew me. He played me like a fiddle. And thank God, but how?” Her eyes were cast to the side now, and she stared behind Evan, unseeing, thinking aloud as much for herself as for him. “I think he sent the rose petals and the fingernail trimmers and probably the mallet too.”
He stared at her, his expression so troubled. She saw the light of curiosity, and she knew he thought she might be onto something. It made the pain of the recollection worth it. She was pulling forth these awful memories for a reason. He took the few steps to her, and he reached out his hand. Without thinking at all, she grasped it, and he pulled her to her feet and led her to the small sofa near the window.
They both sat down, facing each other. “What else do you remember about this man?” he asked gently.
She pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He didn’t wear a mask, or at least he said he didn’t. But he had me blindfolded, so I never saw him. But his voice . . . he sounded older, maybe late fifties or early sixties. He called me little rabbit,” she murmured. She closed her eyes, bringing him forth, not able to help the grimace that took over her features. She didn’t hide it. She didn’t need to, not from Evan. “He was . . . cultured. I could tell that. He had a slight accent, very slight. It was odd, though, because it seemed to almost . . . move between different ones and only linger in certain words.”
“Different accents?”
“Yes. I don’t know how to explain it. But in any case, it’d been a long time since he’d spoken exclusively in whatever language, or languages, he’d once used.”
“Like that man who owned the antique shop that we spoke with.”
“Yes . . . but Mr. Baudelaire’s accent was very obviously French, and only French. I recognized it. I’d heard that language before. It was easy to identify his accent.”
“Do you think you might recognize the other man’s accent if we played some recordings of people speaking in different languages?”
She opened her eyes and gave her head a slight shake. “I don’t know. Probably not. I can’t even bring it forth now. The FBI had me describe what I could of the men from that room, other than their faces, which were masked, and I couldn’t describe that man’s accent then either. Just that he had a very slight one. But I didn’t listen to recordings.”
“Maybe we should try that. When we get back to Reno,” he said.
“Maybe.” Although she didn’t know how that would help. What if she listened to hundreds of recordings and thought she recognized his accent as Turkish or Swedish or somewhere else she’d never been? What did they do with that?
“What else?” he prodded gently. Their knees were touching, and his nearness made her feel slightly nervous but mostly comforted.
“He talked about jewels.” She squinted her eyes, trying to cast her vision back, turning on lights in the place she’d tried so hard to black out. “He told a story about a man who collected women and draped them in jewels.”