When Death Comes for You

by Marjorie Florestal

He nodded but looked puzzled. “So what?”

  “Your cologne, I realized I had smelled it before. In Gigi’s room on the day she told me she was engaged to Adam.”

  He reddened, and his eyes took on an unexpected sheen. “You’re wrong, you know.” She started to argue, but he shook his head. “Not about my love for Gigi. I fell hard the first time I saw her.” He let out a soft laugh. “Our first date was the night you came to town. I was scared you were gonna make me late—you took so damn long to eat that pizza.”

  It was not the way she remembered it, but she wasn’t about to argue. “Was that when you two got together?”

  “Not like you mean. That night, I told her I loved her, but we wouldn’t be intimate ’til I could come to her a free man.”

  “A noble gesture,” she said, though Gigi did not strike her as a woman willing to stave off her appetites for the sake of convention.

  “I thought so, but she wasn’t having it.” John shook his head in the way men do when they realize they will never understand a woman. “Said if I loved her, I would want to be with her no matter what. She kept pushing and pushing.”

  “But you resisted?”

  “Not for long,” he said with a gruff laugh. “She called me when Adam gave her the ring. Said she was going to marry him. I was insane with grief. I went to the hotel to reason with her, and there you were.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your fun.” She hadn’t meant to sound quite as bitter as the words came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You must have gone back after dropping me off at Adam’s office?”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t lose her. We ended up in bed.”

  “So I was right.” Something in her tightened in disappointment.

  “We didn’t seal the deal,” John said, the color on his cheeks deepening into a brick red.

  She mulled that over for a second. “Why not?”

  He briefly shut his eyes, then admitted: “She liked it rough.”

  Her stomach lurched. “She told you that?”

  “Showed me. She had all that stuff for me to ‘take care of her.’ Not like pink handcuffs and feather boas, but hard-core stuff. When she opened her robe, her body was covered in bruises.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “I just couldn’t . . .” John fell silent for a moment. “My Ma and Mrs. Saint-Ange, they raised me to respect women. No way I could treat the woman I love like that.”

  They drew up to the hotel. “You’re gonna see her, aren’t you?” John asked.

  She nodded, her gaze troubled.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  She didn’t think that was a good idea, but there was little she could to stop him. They walked into the Pearl of the Antilles in silence. The lobby buzzed with activity. The news of Adam’s death had spread, and guests milled around like flies on a dung heap feasting on bits of gossip.

  “Did you hear how he died?” a petite blonde asked with a dramatic shudder.

  “Some kind of Voodoo thing,” a lanky man replied.

  “What’s the world coming to when you’re not safe on a military base?”

  “Shoulda never let those illegals in here.”

  Renée ignored the whispers and sidelong glances as she pushed her way through the crowd. She made it to the stairwell with John hot at her heels. They took the stairs two and three at a time. She was gasping for air by the time they landed on the fourth floor, but John’s breathing was controlled and steady.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked, leaving the rest of her thoughts unspoken. She was here for answers—he might not like what they found.

  John didn’t reply but went ahead and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he turned to her, the relief in his voice palpable. “She’s not here.”

  Renée reached for the doorknob and turned. It was unlocked. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

  The place was ransacked.

  “What the hell?” John said, but Renée could only stare at the room in silence. Clothes lay in shredded heaps on the floor. Broken glass and smashed wine bottles crunched beneath their feet. Even the red curtains had been ripped off the rods and lay on the floor like twin puddles of blood. The destruction was eerily familiar.

  “Gigi!” John called out. He raced around the room, slamming doors and peeking under the bed in a bizarre imitation of hide-and-go-seek.

  Renée’s gaze swept the room as she tried to gather her spinning thoughts. Who had done this? Why? What were they looking for? What had happened to Gigi?

  A small heap on the bed caught her attention. She stepped forward to investigate.

  “What’s that?” John asked, coming up behind her.

  “Gigi’s first aid kit.” She sifted through the pile of Band-Aids and ointments, not sure what she was searching for. Then she found it.

  “You think she’s hurt?” John asked, his words anxiously bumping against each another. “That bastard Hartmann did something? Maybe tried to hurt her, and she defended herself? Shit.”

  But Renée wasn’t listening. She unfolded the paper she’d found crumpled on Gigi’s bed and began to read. A moment later, she glanced up at John. “We’ve got to find Rose. Now!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Do It

  John sped through the rain-soaked roads until the jeep came to a halt in front of the bungalow. “We’ve got to wait here,” he said.

  Renée’s hand was already on the door. “What?”

  “I called it in. Backup’s on it’s way. I got strict orders not to go in that house.”

  “I don’t,” she said, and scrambled of the jeep before he could stop her.

  She flew into Rose’s house only to stumble on the dead body sprawled out in the kitchen doorway. She leaned down to investigate, but she already knew what she would find.

  Seven stabs of the knife across the throat, chest, and stomach.

  Luis González was dead.

  She gently tugged the blood-stained baseball cap down on his head and stifled her tears. There was nothing more she could do for him. She had to find Rose.

  She raced through the house, searching. The bungalow stood empty. Where the hell was Rose? She stalked back to the kitchen, threw open a window and stuck her head out. What she saw made her gasp.

  “Come join the party, Renée!”

  The voice was at once familiar and that of a stranger. There was an unmistakable rasp of evil to it. How had she missed that?

  She raced out the back door and down the steps to the beach surrounding the bungalow. The woman she had once considered a friend stood there with eyes so cold, they rivaled the flinty-gray of the knife she held to Rose’s throat.

  “What are you doing, Gigi?” Renée scanned her surroundings. There was only a patch of shrubs and an endless expanse of ocean—not much help against Gigi and her knife.

  The wind churned the waves as Gigi backed into the water, holding tight to her human shield. “We’re going for a swim,” she said with a twisted smile. “I knew you would come. Didn’t I tell you she would come?” She trailed the knife down Rose’s neck with the gentleness of a kiss. The sharp blade left a thin red line in its wake.

  Rose flinched, the small gesture amused Gigi. “You’re just a tired old woman, aren’t you? In my mind, you were beautiful, strong, larger than life. I thought you would be a worthy opponent, but I was wrong.”

  “She must go.” Rose’s words came in a husky, shaken English. “We do not need her.”

  “Of course we need her. That’s why I left her the note. You love her, I can see it in your eyes. She needs to know who you really are.”

  “You must send her away,” Rose insisted. “This is for us.”

  “Us?” She flicked the knife and tore at Rose’s blouse. The older woman didn’t stir this time, which only angered Gigi. She pressed down until blood spurted from a wound on Rose’s chest. “There is no ‘us.’”

  Renée stepped into the churning water. It was ice cold. Despe
rate to draw Gigi’s attention, she said, “You think you can get away with this? In a minute, we’ll be surrounded by marines. They’ll shoot you dead.”

  Gigi looked up, her eyes glistening with something like need. “Good.”

  Renée trembled. This was a woman who longed for death. How do you reason with someone like that? She tried a different tack. “You killed Adam.” She wanted to catch Gigi off-guard but failed.

  Gigi merely shrugged. “That psychotic bastard loved to inflict pain, but when the tables were turned, he whined and sniveled at the slightest pinprick. It was boring. Death was too good for him.”

  “I thought you loved him.” Keep her talking, Renée thought as she inched her way through the water. Keep her occupied on something other than that sharp knife she’s got on Rose’s throat.

  “Love?” Gigi spoke the word like it was an unknown, exotic dish. “I loved what he was doing for me. He was going to get this cochon, this little pig, back to Haiti. I could take my time with her there. No one would notice another dead body in a country that had fallen apart. It would have been so easy.”

  She glared at Renée. “My plan was working until you came along. You kept questioning and interfering. I tried to scare you away. I put the Voodoo doll in your briefcase and trashed your room, but you wouldn’t stop. You even got that stupid bellhop involved. He was digging into my business. I had to kill him.”

  Renée felt a stab of pain. She’d known, of course, that Gigi must have killed Eric, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it because that would mean she was to blame. If she hadn’t pulled Eric into her investigation, he would still be alive.

  She charged at Gigi with hate in her eyes, but the other woman tightened the point of the blade against Rose’s throat.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” she warned.

  Renée stopped in her tracks.

  “You must go,” Rose said. “I do not wish you to be hurt.”

  “How sweet,” Gigi sneered. “You’re always so worried about everyone else. It really touched me yesterday how you sobbed over the death of that baby girl.”

  “Those tears were for you,” Rose said.

  “Liar! You never gave a damn about me.” The words rose and fell on the crest of a wave. “You were supposed to love me, to protect me. You were my mother.”

  Renée watched Gigi’s face crumble and felt an unwanted echo of sympathy in her own gut. No matter what Gigi had done, it was hard to witness such intense pain.

  “I cried because I had failed you,” Rose said. “I wanted to save you, to save your soul, but when I saw you in that courtroom, I knew I had failed.”

  “My soul?” Gigi let out a derisive snort. “You wanted to save my soul by selling me to the first man who came along? You sold me for a goddamn certificate from Le Cordon Bleu.”

  “I did not sell you.”

  “Do you want to know what he did to me, Manman chérie?” Gigi asked, ignoring Rose’s intervention. “For as long as I could remember, he stared at me with hungry eyes. He would accidentally walk into the bathroom when I was getting out of the shower or sneak into my bedroom when I was sleeping. In the summers, he would take me to our beach house in Haiti and spend his days ogling me in my bathing suit. When I was eleven, the games really began.”

  “No.” Rose shook her head in horror. “He could not hurt you like that. I made sure he was no longer a man.”

  Gigi’s laughter was tinged with hysteria. “You think cutting his balls off made him harmless? It only made him love pain more.”

  Rose gagged and heaved.

  “Does that make you sick, Manman? You cannot bear to learn the truth about this man you sold me to?”

  “I did not sell you. Il était ton père.”

  For a moment, all sound ceased. Even the waves were silent. “No,” Gigi finally wailed. “I was adopted. He was not my father.”

  Rose shook her head. “He raped me, and when he learned I was pregnant, he promised that he and his wife would raise you as their own.”

  “You’re lying,” Gigi insisted. “I have a copy of my birth certificate, and it says my father is Philip Mason.”

  Rose’s eyes grew bright with tears. “I wrote the name of my love on the birth certificate, so the monster’s wife could pretend not to know what had happened to me.”

  Gigi grabbed Rose’s hair and forced the older woman’s head back as far as it would go. “You’re a goddamn liar.”

  “She’s not lying,” Renée inched through the water, moving ever closer to the two women locked in a macabre embrace. “I’ve spoken with Philip Mason’s son.”

  Gigi’s eyes widened in shock and a certain wistfulness. “I have a brother?”

  Renée shook her head. “He is not your brother. His father never went back to Haiti after 1955, and he died before you were born.”

  Gigi asked in the plaintive cry of a child, “Why did you give me up, Manman? Why didn’t you want me?”

  “For nine months, I carried you in my womb and prayed that I could forget the way you came into this world,” Rose said, her voice husky with tears. “But when you were born, I looked into your eyes, and all I could see was him. I knew I could never love you.”

  Gigi’s face contorted with rage. She pushed Rose with such force, the other woman slipped and fell in the water. Renée moved to launch herself at Gigi, but a voice shouted. “Stay where you are!” She turned to find John bearing down on them with a gun in hand.

  “Do it!” Gigi screamed brandishing her knife as she ran straight for Renée.

  John pulled the trigger. He was a moment too late.

  Rose flung herself in front of Gigi. The bullet ripped through her back, sending both women tumbling into the waves.

  Renée dove in after them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Death Comes for the Already Dying

  Do you know what it feels like to die? To feel that last gurgling breath wiggle its way through your windpipe?

  I do.

  It feels like a release. It feels like joy.

  I stood outside myself in the Guantanamo sky and watched the water rush out to cover me. The waves crashed over my body and filled my lungs like an overstuffed balloon. I was going home.

  The worst thing about the day my five-year-old self met her end was not the drowning. The worst thing was that I had refused the hand of Lady Death. She came for me, She of the pink light and the three gold rings, and I had turned Her away.

  What did I know? I was only a silly child.

  On that day, I had received what I thought was a gift. It was a curse. Why cling to life when healing was possible for only moments of time? Why struggle against the inevitable when loss and decay thrived all around you? What was there to live for when the child of your womb could never be the child of your heart?

  What was there to live for?

  My lungs clawed frantically at a tiny bubble of air. It was reflex. My body did not know what laid beyond the pink light, so it struggled and clung and fought a battle it could not win. It would not win.

  I wanted to go home. I had been waiting a long time.

  A shroud descended, and for an instant there was only darkness. Then a whisper of sound fluttered in my ear. “Do you speak English?”

  I turned, and there was my beloved, radiant in the pink light. “No English,” I said, flashing him a coquettish smile.

  “Do you want to learn?”

  It was as though no time had passed between us. I stepped into his arms, and I was once more that young girl who met the love of her life on a sunny day in Port-au-Prince.

  “Philip.” I said his name as softly as a prayer and with just as much longing.

  He held me tightly. I was surrounded by the heavenly scent of sugar cane and jasmine. We looked down on the world turning without us. I saw Renée, frantic and grim, pushing against my chest and exhaling into my lungs.

  “Breathe, Rose. Damn it, breathe!”

  Her eyes were wild with fright, and I wanted to
reach out to her, to tell her that things were better on this side. There was no fear and no regret. But more than my need to comfort her, I wanted to go home. With Philip.

  I reached for his hand and turned toward the pink light. He bent until his lips grazed my ear. “You still have work to do.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Winning Guantanamo

  October 12, 1992

  Renée clicked on the television and plopped herself on the couch. She was late. It was hard to wrangle a strong-willed little girl into pajamas, and of course Marie-Thérèse wasn’t happy with a single bedtime story. She wanted three. It was fortunate that her body was no match for her will. In the middle of the third reading, she dropped off to sleep, leaving her mother free to tiptoe into the living room to witness history.

  With a sigh of pleasure, Renée reached for the glass of wine on the end table. Her hand grazed a picture frame, knocking it off balance. She grabbed the frame before it could topple to the ground. A grinning Sheila stared back at her, resplendent in a white wedding gown. She was flanked on one side by her bridegroom, and on the other stood her maid of honor—her sister, Monica.

  Renée smiled at the photograph. It was a relief to see both women move on with their lives. Monica walked out of jail within hours of Gigi’s confession. The sisters left Guantanamo a week later, the island held too many bad memories. After a few months spent grieving, Monica returned to the University of the West Indies. She was even talking about going to law school. With her help, Renée had set up a scholarship fund at the UWI medical school in Eric’s memory.

  “Welcome to this episode of Lost Treasures.”

  Renée quickly replaced the picture frame, took a sip of her wine, and turned her attention to the television. An attractive man with windswept hair and a deep tan stared earnestly into the camera. Behind him, the blue-green waters of the Caribbean Sea danced across the screen.

  “We’re here in the bay of Cap-Haïtien in northern Haiti to investigate a five-hundred-year-old mystery. As our viewers know, today marks the five hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s great discovery. His 1492 voyage changed the world, but most people don’t know how close Columbus and his men came to certain death.” The host paused to slick back his hair—and build tension. He was a showman teasing his audience.