Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

dressing looked like it was freshly applied, but a thin trickle of blood had escaped and was running down to his wrist.

“All right, I’ve had enough of this bullshit!” he said angrily. “Tell me where we are. Wicklow?”

The young woman shook her head. “Wicklow? Where’s that?”

“A national park in the south,” he said.

“South of what?” she asked.

“Are you kidding me? South of Dublin!”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You really think we’re in Ireland?”

He sighed. “Where else would we be?”

“Well, in France, I’d guess. Near Paris. In the forest of Rambouillet, or—”

“Oh, give me a break!” he interrupted. “And who are you exactly?”

“A girl with a gun. So I’m the one who asks the questions.”

He stared at her defiantly but, realizing that he was not in control of this situation, stopped talking.

“My name is Alice Schafer. I’m a police captain in the Paris Criminal Division. I spent the evening with friends on the Champs-Élysées. I don’t know where we are or how we got here, handcuffed together. And I don’t have the faintest idea who you are. Your turn.”

After a few seconds of hesitation, the stranger decided to reciprocate.

“I’m American. My name is Gabriel Keyne and I’m a jazz pianist. I live in Los Angeles, but I spend a lot of time on the road, playing gigs.”

“And what’s the last thing you remember?” she demanded.

Gabriel frowned and closed his eyes in concentration. “Let me see…last night, I played with my bassist and my saxophone player at Brown Sugar, a jazz club in Temple Bar—it’s a part of Dublin.”

Dublin? This guy is crazy!

“After the concert, I sat at the bar and maybe had a few too many rum and Cokes,” Gabriel went on, opening his eyes.

“And then?”

“And then…” His face tensed and he chewed his lip. Evidently, he was finding it as hard as she had to remember the end of his evening.

“Listen, I don’t know. I think I may have gotten into a fight with a guy who didn’t like my music, then I talked to a few girls, but I was too wasted to actually pick one up.”

“Wow, very classy. What a charming guy you are.”

He waved away her sarcasm with a casual hand and stood up, forcing Alice to do the same. With an abrupt movement of her forearm, she forced him to sit down again.

“I left the club around midnight,” he said. “I could barely stand up. I looked for a taxi in Aston Quay. After a few minutes, a car pulled up and…”

“And what?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I must have given the driver the address of my hotel and passed out in the back seat.”

“And what do you remember after that?”

“Nothing, I’m telling you!”

Alice lowered her weapon and was silent for a few seconds as she digested this bad news. Clearly, this guy was not going to help her get to the bottom of this situation.

“You do realize that everything you’ve just told me is a huge pile of crap?” she said with a smile.

“Oh yeah? And why’s that?”

“Because we’re in France—look!”

Gabriel’s gaze swept the woods that stretched all around them: the wild vegetation, the dense bushes, the rock walls covered with ivy, the golden dome formed by the autumn leaves. His eyes scaled the length of a giant elm tree and he glimpsed two squirrels racing, leaping from branch to branch in pursuit of a robin.

“I’ll bet you my shirt that we’re not in France,” he said, scratching his head.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Alice replied irritably, putting her gun in her jacket pocket and dragging Gabriel up from the bench.

They left the clearing and dove into the jungle of dense thickets and leafy shrubs. Cuffed together, they crossed through rolling undergrowth, followed a climbing path, then walked down the other side of the hill, holding on to rocks as they went. It took them a good ten minutes of stepping over little streams and striding along several winding trails to find a way out of this wooded labyrinth. Finally, they came out on a narrow asphalt path bordered by trees that created a leafy vault over their heads. The farther they walked along this paved track, the closer they drew to the sounds of civilization, to the familiar and ever louder buzz of a city.

Propelled by a strange intuition, Alice led Gabriel toward a sunny gap in the foliage. A path led from this clearing to what looked like the grassy bank of a lake.

That was when they saw it.

A cast-iron footbridge arching gracefully over the lake, long and cream-colored, subtly decorated with arabesques and flower urns.

A familiar sight, glimpsed in hundreds of movies.

Bow Bridge.

They weren’t in Paris. And they weren’t in Dublin either.

They were in New York.

They were in Central Park.

3Central Park West

JESUS CHRIST!” GABRIEL breathed, while Alice’s face was a picture of astonishment.

It might have been difficult to admit the reality, but there could no longer be any doubt. They were in the Ramble, the wildest area of Central Park—a genuine thirty-eight-acre forest stretching out north of the lake.

Their hearts pounded in unison. They approached the bank and arrived at a busy path, typical of the park’s early-morning energy. Joggers coexisted harmoniously with cyclists, tai chi enthusiasts, and people walking dogs. The sounds of a big city seemed to explode in their ears: rumbling traffic, honking horns, screaming fire-engine and police-car sirens.

“This is insane,” Alice muttered.

Disoriented, she tried to think. While she and Gabriel had both been very drunk the night before, to the point where they could not remember everything they’d done, it was inconceivable that they could have been put on an airplane against their will. She had often come to New York on vacation with Seymour, her colleague and best friend. She knew that a Paris–New York flight lasted just over eight hours, but given the time difference, one seemed to land only two hours after takeoff. Usually, when she and Seymour flew together, Seymour would book the 8:30 a.m. flight from Charles de Gaulle