Motorcycle Girl: Book Three

Chapter 6: Hired

We didn't arrive in France until two in the afternoon and I was clinging to Odeletta like she's supposed to protect me. I think it's the other way around but I'm so afraid.

She was leading all of us. She got the car to the presidents mansion and now she's marching right up to the guards. We're following her. She heads straight for the gate but the guard stops her with his arm.

"I need to speak to the president. Tell him it's Odeletta Guillotin and it's about the case with her parents."

He doesn't look away from his spot at the gate as he pulls out the radio and speaks into it in French.

He says something about how Odeletta is here and how he was told only to talk to him directly if anybody with the last name Guillotin or Reed were to show up.

A few minutes later, a girl walks up to the gate and pulls it open from the inside, waving us forward. She looks around Odeletta and I and frowns, and then turns around and walks. We follow her and she leads us inside the mansion, to an elevator. We soar up in silence, and when the elevator stops, she punches in a code. The doors open and she walks off down the hall. She opens the door to a room and gestures for us to go in first. Odeletta marches right in and we follow her. The girl shuts the door behind herself.

We're in an office. There's a carpeted floor, a marble desk, real oak shelves, and the president sits at the desk. When we walk in, he looks up and smiles, followed by a frown.

"Where are the children?"

"You know English?" Odeletta asks slowly.

"Yes. Where are your children?"

"How do you know I have children?"

"I keep tabs on you. Make sure you are doing well after what my ex assistant did to you and your parents." He shrugs. "Tell your cousin and her husband congratulations on her marriage." And then he looks at me. "I assume you are Miss Reed's husband, yes?"

"That's me." I smile nervously. "Nathan Reed."

He shakes my hand and then looks at my wife.

"You seem happy in America, but you were in Belgium for a few hours before you booked the first flight to Chicago. What's going on?"

"I was bringing my children somewhere safe." She says. He nods slowly and then shakes hands with Adelaide and Josh.

"So you flew to France to talk to me. What is happening?"

Without an ounce of hesitation, she speaks up.

"My grandparents, my mothers parents, are filthy rich, and they hate my father and now my husband because they don't make a million dollars annually." He nods. "We were visiting them with our children and I found a check in a photo frame on the wall made out to Blanchard Moreau for ten million dollars."

His eyebrows shoot up and he slowly sits down at his desk.

"It was made out to him nineteen years ago, before my cousin and Uncle went missing. When I was a child my grandparents were rich, but not as rich as they are now. I think they are using the missing fraud money to live, and I also think they are going to do something and frame it against my husband and myself. That is why my children are somewhere safe. That way what happened to me will not happen to them."