The Geneva Decision Read Free

“You were an MP for, what, ten years?”
    “Twelve.”
    “And how many murders did you investigate?”
    No one spoke as the bus boy cleared the plates. The waiter stepped in, scraping the crumbs from the linen with a silver scraper. Pia caught his eye and signaled for the check.
    “Too many,” Jonelle said. “You put ten thousand eighteen-year-old boys in the desert for months on end, something bad’s going to happen. No worse crime rate than anywhere else per capita.”
    “And they had at least twenty lethal weapons each,” Marty said. “Identical weapons. Worst conditions for finding evidence.”
    Jonelle shot a glance his way. “You’re not helping.”
    “I looked up Chamonix while I was changing,” Pia said. “It’s a ski village in the mountains an hour from here. Guess how many murders they’ve had in the last ten years.”
    Jonelle sighed. “OK, so she pulls drunks out of gutters and cars out of snowbanks. She’s still a trained peace officer—you’re a rich kid who was lucky enough to tackle a killer without getting hurt. You gave them the bad guy, and they blew it. Big problem, but not our problem. Our client— potential client—is dead. We have no legal standing here. No ethical reason to get involved.”
    “Moral reason.”
    Agent Marty said, “She’s right.”
    Jonelle glared at him. He put his hands up and leaned back.
    “Your father made significant financial promises to me if you remain in the job and are successful over the next five years.” Jonelle stabbed a finger toward Pia. “I don’t have stacks of money stashed in my Gulfstream’s cargo hold. That means I want to do what’s right for Sabel Security, what’s right for the business. At the moment, we’re looking at good press: Pia Sabel Captures Killer . That’s a win. Leave it alone.”
    “He murdered my client.”
    “Your client is a banker. A Swiss banker. Who caters to the ultra-rich. Not a sympathetic person.”
    “I should have stopped him.”
    “Not true,” Marty said. “You might have prevented it, or you might have been killed trying. You might have scared him into a rampage killing and ended up with a lot more dead bodies. You could have made it worse, not better.”
    “Look,” Jonelle said, “we meet with Madame Marot in the morning, give her our condolences, and head home. Either she hires us or she doesn’t hire—”
    “We’re here, and the locals aren’t equipped,” Pia said. “They’re nice enough, but they lack the experience you and Marty bring.”
    “They didn’t ask for our help. We can’t help them.”
    “That’s not how we make decisions at Sabel anymore. We don’t help people based on whether we can or can’t, should or shouldn’t, or if it’s convenient. We help people who need help.”
    Pia’s gaze wandered outside the restaurant windows where spotlights clicked off in the park. Police were clearing out. A reporter lingered with a cameraman, trying to dig one last word out of an officer who kept his head down and his mouth shut. Just as her gaze was moving on, Pia spotted the woman in the off-white dress running across the park. The woman approached the officer. Her hands outstretched, her knees and waist bent, she was still frantic an hour later.
    Pia glanced at Marty. He followed her gaze outside and shrugged.
    She said, “The boy in the lobby?”
    “Want me to get the mom?” he said.
    Pia nodded and stood.
    Jonelle looked up at her. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”
    “There’s someone who needs help,” Pia said with a nod out the window. She ran to the lobby while Marty ran outside.
    Two chairs faced each other over a small table in a secluded corner. In one chair sat a boy of six or seven playing with two toy cars. If his mother had come through looking for him, she could have easily missed him. Pia and Marty had seen him because they looked in secluded corners out of habit and training. Pia dropped to her knees six feet away and observed him. He