Inez had been controlled again and her mind wiped.
“Thomas,” she said, grabbing his arm with a laugh. “Why did you want me to tell you that?”
Thomas opened his mouth to answer and then hesitated as he recalled how upset and vulnerable she’d appeared after realizing she’d been controlled in Amsterdam. He didn’t want to see her upset again. In fact, at that moment, he wanted to grab her up and rush her back to the townhouse and keep her safe from being controlled again.
Halting, he suddenly peered quickly around, taking note of the few people on the street. No one seemed to be paying them undo attention or following them, but he suspected someone was.
“Thomas?”
He glanced down to her again, noting that she was starting to look worried. Inez wasn’t a stupid woman. She would realize something was wrong. Forcing a smile, Thomas slid his arm around her shoulder and urged her to walk again as he lied, “I just like to hear the sound of your voice. You have an interesting accent; Portuguese with an overlay of British. It’s quite charming.”
Inez laughed and the relief in her voice made him glad he’d lied as she said, “I’m not the one with the accent. You are.”
“No. I have no accent at all,” he assured her, glancing—nonchalantly, he hoped—around the street again. Now that he was aware that someone must be following them, his back was creeping as if it could sense eyes on it, though he couldn’t really, he just knew they must be there. “You are the one with the accent.”
Inez just shook her head and said, “Maybe we both do. Now, we should really talk about Marguerite and try to sort out ways to find her.”
Thomas nodded solemnly, but his mind was on why she might have been controlled again. She hadn’t been controlled long enough on either occasion for anything untoward to have been done to her. She’d only been gone ten or fifteen minutes the first time and maybe a little more than five in the coffee shop.
Had she seen or heard something someone didn’t want her to? Perhaps she’d seen Marguerite, he thought and then suddenly recalled that this had been his first thought when he’d realized she’d been controlled in Amsterdam, but Marguerite hadn’t even been the one with the phone in the first place.
Frowning, Thomas recalled that Inez had suggested that perhaps someone hadn’t wanted her to realize that they were chasing the mugger with the phone, not Marguerite. Thomas reconsidered the idea now.#p#分页标题#e#
“You’ve gone suddenly silent and grim,” Inez murmured, bringing his attention away from his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”
Thomas hesitated, but finally admitted, “I was thinking about the first time you were controlled in Amsterdam.”
Inez stopped walking abruptly. “The first time?”
Thomas cursed himself for the slip of the tongue.
Light suddenly splashed over them and the street was filled with the sound of voices and laughter as a door opened behind them. Thomas glanced around to see they were standing outside a pub. It seemed fortuitous, he suddenly needed a drink and suspected Inez was going to need one too.
“Come on,” he said, taking her arm to urge her toward the door, “we’ll have a drink and I’ll explain everything.”
“So you think someone controlled me again,” Inez murmured, peering down into the glass of ale she’d barely sipped at since the waitress had set it before her. The pub was a small, crowded affair with people sitting around tables, or standing around in groups talking. It was the real deal, a true English pub, not one of the ones opened for tourists.
Thomas had just finished telling her his version of their stop at the café. It was quite similar to her own except for the part about her getting up in the middle to go find the ladies’ room. She believed him, but had no recall of that whatsoever.
Thomas reached out and squeezed her hand comfortingly. “Yes.”
She nodded a slow acknowledgment. “Okay. Well, either I saw someone or something I shouldn’t have when I went to the ladies’ room, or…” Or what? she wondered helplessly.
“Back in Amsterdam, you suggested you were controlled and your memory wiped because someone didn’t want us to realize that the mugger had the phone, not Aunt Marguerite,” he reminded her. “I think you might be right about that now. So long as we thought Aunt Marguerite was in Amsterdam, we would have stayed there searching for her. But finding out the mugger had the phone and not her made us immediately head back to England. And it turns out she was here in York the whole time.”