The English Girl: A Novel

had pulled to the side. As he lowered himself into the seat, a Renault hatchback swept past and then turned into the boulevard de la République. The Mercedes did the same thing ten seconds later. Watching, Gabriel couldn’t help but smile at their good fortune. Sometimes, he thought, it was better to follow a man from in front rather than from behind. He twisted the throttle of the motorbike and eased into the traffic, his eyes fixed on the taillights of the Mercedes. One mistake, he was thinking. That’s all it would take. One mistake and the girl would die.
    T hey followed the boulevard de la République to the route d’Avignon and then headed north. For a mile or so it was all storefronts and stoplights; but gradually the shops turned to apartment blocks and houses, and before long they were moving at speed along a split four-lane road. After a mile a gas station appeared on their right. Keller slowed and switched on his turn signal, and the Mercedes immediately overtook him. Then, with little warning, the road shrank to two lanes again. Gabriel settled into position about fifty meters behind the Mercedes, with Keller on his tail.
    By then, the sun was gone and the autumn night was falling with the quickness of a curtain dropping onto a stage. The cypress pine lining the road turned from dark green to black; then the darkness devoured them. As the gloom settled over the countryside, Gabriel’s world shrank: white headlights, red taillights, the whine of the bike’s engine, the hum of Keller’s Renault a few meters behind. His eyes were focused on the back of René Brossard’s Mercedes, but in his mind he was gazing at a map of France. In this part of Provence the towns and villages were strung tightly together, like pearls on a necklace. But if they continued in this direction, they would cross into the Vaucluse. There, in the Lubéron, the villages would become more sparse and the terrain rugged. That would be the kind of place they would be keeping her, he thought. Somewhere isolated. Somewhere with only a single road in and out. That way they would know whether they were being watched. Or being followed.
    They flashed through the edges of a nothing town called Lignane. Just beyond it, the Mercedes pulled into the deserted gravel parking lot of a business that sold ceramic garden pottery, leaving Gabriel and Keller no choice but to continue past. About two hundred meters farther along was a traffic circle. In one direction was Saint-Cannat; in the other, reached by a smaller road, was Rognes. With a hand signal, Gabriel sent Keller toward Saint-Cannat. Then, after switching off his headlamp, he leaned the bike toward Rognes and quickly sought shelter in the shadow of a cinderblock wall. A moment later the Mercedes came purring past, though now Brossard was behind the wheel and the woman, whom Gabriel could see clearly for the first time, was peering intently into the passenger-side mirror. He quickly dialed Keller and told him the news. Then he forced himself to count slowly to ten and eased the bike back onto the road.
    O n the road to Rognes, time receded. The pavement narrowed, the night darkened, the air turned colder as they rose steadily in elevation toward the base of the Alps. A three-quarter moon was ducking in and out of the clouds, illuminating the landscape one minute, plunging it into darkness the next. On both sides of the road, vineyards marched neatly into the blackening hills like soldiers heading off to war, but otherwise the land seemed empty of human habitation. Scarcely a light burned anywhere, and the road was deserted except for the black E-Class Mercedes. Gabriel hovered in its wake, with Keller trailing far behind where he was invisible to Brossard. Whenever possible, Gabriel navigated without aid of his headlamp. Buffeted by the cold wind, and robbed partially of the ability to see, he had the sensation of traveling at the speed of sound.
    As they approached the outskirts of Rognes, a few cars and trucks finally appeared. In the center of the town, the Mercedes stopped a second time, outside a charcuterie and an adjoining boulangerie. Again Keller sped past, but Gabriel managed to conceal himself in the lee of an ancient church. There he watched as the woman climbed out of the car and entered the shops alone, emerging a few minutes later with several plastic sacks filled with food. It was enough to feed a house filled with people, thought Gabriel, with some left over for a