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As she ht of concrete stairs to the group of glass boxes housing the rental car agencies outside the Avignon TGV station, Veronica was glad that she had had the forethought to buy herself a wide-bri Paris had also tightened its relentless grip on the South of France, and the aching blue sky was adazzle, the teh the sun wasn’t yet at its height

There was a long queue for the rental car, but itback out into the blazing sun nervously clutching the key to her VW Golf Setting out for the car park, she glanced over towards the adjacent rental agencies and stopped dead, oblivious to the flow of people around her, as she saw a ainst one of the counters, laptop and suitcase at his feet, pana him a sheet of paper

It was Luc! The man in the olive shirt and jeans from the Gare de Lyon…Absolutely, unmistakably him!

Snapped out of her stunned trance by a cranky, sunburnt tourist trying to get his suitcase between a concrete bollard and her stalled luggage, Veronica hurried on her way, her thoughts whirling

Surely this was one spooky coincidence too ht as she quickly shovelled her possessions into the boot of her shiny blue coot behind the wheel

Had he followed her? She re h she hadn’t specified when or how she was leaving At the ti, and hilariously incomprehensible, rhapsody about the Côte d’Azur, and from the questions she had tried to ask about the faht that here she was headed

If he had been talking about his own imminent plans to travel down to the Mediterranean coast then perhaps this could just be shrugged off as another of life’s little strange twists At the tiht have amused him to think that they could conceivably run into each other on a beach in Nice or Cannes

Her pleasure in the thought curdled as her iination continued to flourish But what if he had soed to track her down for some sinister purpose of his own? What if he was a stalker? she fretted Or some kind of con off before he could achieve his evil aims?

She suddenly laughed at her wild speculations In reality, she and Lucien had been ships passing in the night, and all either of them had expected to carry away froood time!

There was a perfectly innocent explanation for the a laptop, so perhaps he had conon on business He was probably self-employed, like Veronica

, and could pick and choose his working hours

She was nervous enough about driving on the right-hand side of the road for the first ti the paranoic fear that she was being trailed by a psychotic serial killer!

CHAPTER THREE

VERONICA sighed with content plane tree in the tiny village square and sipped her cup of coffee, enjoying the faint breeze that feathered warmly around her bare neck and riffled the end of her pony-tail

Karen had said the Reeds wouldn’t expect her to arrive at their villa, Mas de Bonnard, on the outskirts of the little village of St Romain-de-Vaucluse, until mid-afternoon As a direct drive, it was only about forty non, so she had decided to take it slowly, avoiding the larger roads and towns and following thethe one they preferred as the prettiest She had even suggested this very café as worthy of a stop