“Try that again,” she hissed in my ear, “and next time I’ll cut you.”
She held the big knife Will had been holding up in front of my eyes lest I doubt her sincerity. Okay, then.
“Don’t be stupid, Scarlett,” Will said. “There is no escape for you.”
I wanted to spit in his face, but I realized that might be considered stupid. I yanked my hair out of Colette’s hands. Ouch! The satisfaction of forcing her to let go was worth the pain that made my eyes water.
Colette looked like she was going to grab me again, but Will held her off.
“Stop. We don’t have time for this,” he said. “We have to leave for our meeting with St. James.”
“Fine,” she snapped.
Colette’s French accent was thicker with her temper. She narrowed her eyes at me in a look of utter loathing, then she tipped her head to the side and smiled. It was a vicious, cruel smile, the sort that said she knew something that I didn’t. It made me afraid, very, very afraid.
She turned her back to me and left the room. Meanwhile Will grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door. I dug in my heels. Every instinct inside me was screaming that if I went with them, I was dead. I grabbed the door frame with my free hand, and it stopped us, but Will yanked on my other arm, putting all of his weight behind it.
“Wait!” I cried. “Where are you taking me? If the two of you are leaving, why can’t you just let me go?”
“Sorry, Scarlett,” he said. He didn’t look sorry at all. “But we need you.”
“What for?” I hated that my voice came out wobbly and nervous. I coughed as if it was phlegm that made me sound weak and not terror.
“We need you to be found stealing the Renoir so that we can disappear,” he said. “At first, I thought I’d use Viv for this. I liked the idea of being a widower even if our marriage was bogus, but you’ll do just as well. It kind of fits since it’s your presence in Paris looking for Viv’s husband that has caused me so many problems as it is.”
Colette joined us in the foyer. She was holding the Renoir, the same one that Will had shown me at the insurance office.
“Just think, when they find your body clutching the Renoir to your dead chest, we’ll be free,” Colette cried. Then she kissed Will on the mouth.
Suddenly, I was dizzy and everything went gray. They were going to kill me. I knew my life was of little to no value to them but surely the painting mattered.
“But the Renoir is worth a fortune,” I protested. “You’re just going to let it go?”
“Please,” Will said. “It’s a forgery, a very good forgery by my beloved, but still worthless.”
“Merci, cher,” Colette said. She simpered and I was torn between passing out, throwing up and slapping her.
Will pried my hand off the door frame and pinned my arms behind my back. “Let’s go.”
As we exited the apartment, I opened my mouth to yell. Will was one step ahead of me and shoved a handkerchief into my mouth, gagging me.
“Should we shove her in front of a bus or a train?” Colette asked.
My skin felt cold, my teeth would have chattered, but they were blocked by the disgusting cloth in my mouth.
“I’m thinking a roundabout in the Eiffel area,” Will said. “All those tourists will make it a nice, splashy news tidbit. That should do nicely.”
We trudged down the stairs, well, they trudged and I was dragged, across the small courtyard, toward a waiting car. My eyes scanned the area, hoping against hope that Harrison had gotten my message. There was no one. For a city with over two million people in it, I’d have thought there’d be someone about, but no.
Colette opened the back door of the car and slid in with the forged painting. I noted she still held the knife right where I could see it. Will put a hand on my head and shoved me in after her. I half fell onto the backseat. With my hands free, I yanked the gag out of my mouth and spun around, planning to stop Will from shutting the door, to heck with Colette and her knife. If they were going to kill me anyway, I was going down fighting.
Thwack!
I never got the chance. As I watched, Will slumped to the ground as if someone had let the air out of him. I glanced past him and saw Viv, standing there with a broken bottle of wine in her hand.
“You!” Colette screeched. She dropped the painting, opened her door and dashed out of the car, right into Harrison’s arms. He slammed her wrist on the back of the car, forcing her to drop the knife. He quickly subdued her with the help of Nick and Andre, who had moved in right behind him.
Colette bucked and thrashed but she was no match for the three of them. I saw Nick take off his tie and they used it to bind her hands together. Excellent.
I climbed over Will’s body to get to Viv. Alistair took the broken bottle out of her hand and kneeled down to check on Will.
“He’s got a right knot on his head, but he’s breathing. Pity,” he said.
Viv opened her arms and I tripped into them. We hugged each other, crying tears of fright and relief, mostly relief.
“Oh, Scarlett,” she said. “I was bloody terrified when I realized that you were missing and then Harrison got your text—” She broke off to sob.
Alistair gave us both a quick hug and then took out his phone and said, “I’m calling the police. I’ll be right over there.”
“What a mangy git,” Andre said as he joined us. He nudged Will with the toe of his shoe.
“How did you figure it out?” I asked.
“Harrison got your text and we raced over here,” Nick said. “We arrived just in time to see William, the lying sack of sh—”
“We saw him force you down the stairs,” Viv interrupted. She cleared her throat as if the next words stuck a bit but she was going to force them out regardless. “And it was clear to see that he and Colette were working together.”
“Nick, Andre, a hand here?” Harrison asked.
They each gave me a quick hug and hurried over to Harry.
“Take her back upstairs and keep her there until the police come.” He turned Colette over to Nick and then paused beside Viv and me and simply looked at me.
“Yellow door. My clever girl,” he said.
Then he cupped my face and kissed me. It was the gentlest kiss, filled with such tenderness as if he was afraid to cause me any more trauma. I could feel a slight tremor in his fingers as he broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine.
“I am so very happy to see you, Ginger. You scared me half to death with that text, but thank goodness you did.”
“I knew you’d figure it out, my brave boy,” I said.
I hugged him really hard and he huffed out a breath and then laughed and hugged me back and gave me a proper kiss. I knew in that moment that everything had changed for us.
He let me go with much reluctance, but Will was rousing so Harrison and Andre hauled him upstairs to the apartment before he was fully awake and able to fight back.
“We should probably go join them,” Viv said. She sounded reluctant and I imagined she couldn’t be looking forward to facing her husband, who actually wasn’t. Probably, I needed to tell her that.
“Just give me a second,” I said.
I ducked back into the open car and searched the front for a latch for the trunk. Finally, I heard it pop. I hurried to the back of the car and lifted the trunk. An automatic light came on and I could see a small wooden crate swaddled in some old blankets.
“That’s the Renoir, the real one,” I said to Viv.
“You’re joking,” she said.
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Come on, let’s get this one and the forgery up to the apartment so the police can see exactly what those two had planned.”
* * *
It was one of the longest nights in the history of long nights. We didn’t get back to Suzette’s apartment b
uilding until the sun was rising. It almost felt as if we were in a race to beat the first rays of dawn. We lost.
Viv took a power nap and then went to teach her class while the rest of us slept in and woke up to a late breakfast, which we spent recounting the night’s events to Suzette. She was a wonderful audience full of outrage and anger on Viv’s behalf, distress and anxiety on mine, and then triumph that the police were going to charge Will and Colette with the murder of Jacques Reyer along with a whole lot of theft and fraud charges.
“What about the Renoir?” Nick asked. “Has anything been decided?”
“I heard Inspecteur Lavigne say that once it is no longer a piece of evidence, and the French move fairly quickly on these sorts of things, then the Musée de l’Or will have the opportunity to buy it back from O’Toole Insurance for the cost of the original payout.”
We all agreed that this seemed only fair. Marie Brouillard had been brought in for questioning because while it was William and Colette who had stolen the piece this time, it had been taken from the Brouillard estate, which meant that Marie had some things to disclose, such as what pieces her mother had stolen back from the museum, where they were and how much Marie had known about her mother’s scam. I suspected Marie knew more than she would admit to and I figured she’d have to sell her estate in order to hire an attorney to prove it. It was going to be interesting to watch the drama unfold.
Alistair had informed us that Colette and William had already turned on each other under questioning by the Paris police. Each said that the other had been the mastermind behind the art theft, while Colette claimed that she was an abused wife and William had forced her to kill Reyer and William pleaded ignorance of it all, saying that he had no idea his wife was a killer and an art thief. Needless to say, I had told the police all I knew and submitted a written statement and an offer to testify as well.
It never ceased to amaze me how far a criminal would go to avoid working a regular job. Truly, it boggled. But all was well that ended well, except for Jacques Reyer, in the case of the yellow door, or the missing husband, or perhaps we could call it a tale of two paintings. Either way, the mystery was solved and I, for one, was very relieved. Mostly, because I was still alive to tell the tale.
* * *
The Paris School of Art always held an exclusive art show at the session’s end. It was also a fund-raiser for the school, which made it well attended by those who wished to see and be seen at the high-society affair.
Viv’s class had decided to have a fashion show to showcase their work. There was a catwalk going down the middle of the school’s art gallery, and one of the ladies had loaded some serious strut music on her mobile phone so the students could walk down the runway to a beat.
“I’m not too late, am I? I didn’t miss it yet, yeah?”
I turned around to find Viv’s millinery intern, Fiona Felton, standing behind me.
“Fee,” I cried and jumped up and gave her a hug.
Tall and lithe with dark skin, dark eyes and a head full of corkscrew curls that presently had streaks of sunshine yellow in them, Fee was a stunner. She was also a heck of a milliner and had gamely minded the shop while we were in Paris for Viv’s class.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said.
“Given what almost happened to you, I have to say the same,” she said. She hugged me again, really hard. “You’re terrifying, you know that, right?”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Harrison said.
He and Fee exchanged hugs and then she moved on down the line to Nick, Andre, and then Alistair, who had not left Viv’s side since Will and Colette had been hauled off to jail. I had a feeling from the way they kept looking at each other that something wonderful was happening between Viv and Alistair, but of course, I didn’t press because Viv being Viv we’d find out about her and Alistair when she was good and ready and not a nanosecond before. Then Fee hugged Viv and took the empty seat beside her that Viv had saved for her.
We sat back down and I noticed that Harry had his arm along the back of my chair. It was a very “we’re a couple” sort of move. I wondered if I should call him on it, but then the show began and I forgot. Okay, I let myself forget. I just had a near death experience, so shoot me, or rather, don’t.
Viv’s students took turns strutting down the makeshift catwalk. My favorites were the two elderly sisters from Massachusetts. They didn’t strike me as the types who liked to leave their zip code so I got a real charge out of Ella and Marie Porter, especially when they struck a pose for Andre, who had volunteered to photograph the event for the school.
One of the sisters had created a huge yellow bucket hat with a waterfall of yellow feathers cascading down the back while the other’s was a shade of kelly green that made my eyes water up, but she carried it off magnificently—in other words, with a lot of attitude.
Lucas Martin was standing off to one side with Suzette. They were both applauding the students, and Suzette actually put her thumb and index fingers in her mouth and let loose an earsplitting wolf whistle, which made Lucas laugh out loud.
“This is pretty great,” I said to Harry.
He nodded. Then he looked at me with his bright eyes and said, “I’m really glad you’re here for it.”
“Me, too,” I said.
We hadn’t spoken much about Colette and Will’s plan to shove me in front of a bus—wow, that expression had a new meaning for me—but it was there.
The possibility of me not being here anymore, of not having a chance to be with Harry, ever, had shifted my priorities dramatically. Suddenly, promises to myself and my mother, vows of celibacy, proving myself capable of being alone, didn’t really mean as much as the possibility that I might have lost the chance to tell Harry how I feel about him.
What was the point of being good at being alone if it meant I was constantly pushing away the one person I wanted to be with? In fact, it seemed rather stupid at the moment, actually. And I was tougher than I looked. I could handle my mother’s teasing, especially if it meant I got to be with Harry sooner rather than later.
“Harry, I need to tell you something,” I said.
He looked at me with a small smile and said, “Really? Because I need to tell you something, too. Something that became very clear to me when I thought I might lose you. Well, that’s not true. It’s something I’ve always known but now it seems fairly urgent that I tell you.”
“Oh?” I asked. Oh, man, was he in the same place as me? Was he going to tell me he loved me? No, no, I wanted to go first! I felt like he deserved that, given that I had been holding him off for months. I took his hand in mine and said, “Okay, but me first.”
“All right, then,” he said.
He was looking at me with an intensity that made my heart hammer triple time in my chest. Oh, man, I really needed to get this right.
“The thing is, Harry, that I’m in l—”
“Scarlett? Scarlett Parker? Is that you?”
That voice. It was like a bucket of ice water being dumped on my head. The last time I had heard it, I was throwing fistfuls of chocolate cake at the face hole it came out of. I whipped around in my seat and froze.
There he was, the lying, cheating rat bastard who had caused me to flee the state of Florida and the United States of America in an epic walk of shame, and he was walking straight at me. Looking as gorgeous as ever with his wavy dark hair and deep, soulful eyes, his square jaw and broad shoulders, was my former boss and boyfriend, Carlos Santiago.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “It’s the rat bastard here in Paris! What are the odds?”
Harrison jumped to his feet. He looked furious and he growled, “That’s the spoon who lied to you about being married? The one who humiliated you?”
“Spoon?” I said with a startled laugh. “Did you just call him a spoon?”
“Yes, it’s a person too stupid
to be trusted with a knife or fork,” he said. “And if he didn’t treasure you then he is most definitely the dullest of spoons.”
That seemed about right. I smiled and nodded as I rose to my feet. Misinterpreting my amusement with Harry as a warm greeting for him, Carlos beamed at me as if delighted to see me. Seriously, if the man had a brain in his head, he would have run for his life. Last time I threw cake at him, this time I wanted to run him through with a hat pin. Apparently, I was still a tad bitter.
“You are as beautiful as ever, Scarlett,” Carlos said as he reached me. He winked at me as if we shared some secret special connection. I gagged.
Fury had me bristling as I stood beside Harry. Before it was a complete thought, I was moving out of my row of seats and cruising toward Carlos. The only thought in my head was to slap that smarmy look right off of his face. I was just within striking distance when Harry overtook me. Before I had a chance to register his action, he punched Carlos right in the nose with a loud crunch.
Carlos’s head snapped back, people shouted, and blood gushed out of Carlos’s nose. The gorgeous woman who had been standing next to Carlos, not his wife, shrieked and waved her hands in the air, because that’s helpful. Alistair, Andre and Nick appeared beside us. Nick handed Carlos his handkerchief, which Carlos held to his nose as he glared at Harrison.
“Pinch it off and tip your head back,” Nick said. “There you go.”
“Nice punch,” Alistair said out of the side of his mouth to Harry.
“What the hell?” Carlos shouted but it sounded nasal and a bit muffled because of the blood and all. “All I did was say hello, you didn’t have to hit me.”
“That’s for my girlfriend, you rat bastard,” Harry snapped. He shook out his fist. “If you ever come near her again, I’ll hit you even harder. Am I clear?”
Carlos gave him a wary look and scuttled away with his arm candy hobbling after him in her tight dress and ridiculously high heels.
“Girlfriend?” Nick asked. He turned back to us and his eyes lit up as he savored the word.
Assault and Beret Page 20
