“That headache again?” he asked in a low, worried tone.
“Yeah,” I muttered, rubbing my temples. “Would you excuse me? I’m going to run to the bathroom. Maybe splashing some cold water on my face will help.”
Emmett pulled my chair away from the table for me. “Sure.”
I left the table and weaved my way through the intimate restaurant. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from Mac.
Everything okay?
So she was watching. That was a relief. I peered around the restaurant for a glimpse of her auburn hair but came up short. Then I slipped into the restroom to text her back.
Fine. See anyone yet?
Nope. Hang in there.
I leaned over the sink, grateful that I was alone. Another surge pitched me against the bathroom counter. I squeezed my eyes shut, riding it out. When I opened them again, they were blue instead of brown.
“Holly,” I breathed, staring into the mirror.
The dizziness suddenly made sense. It belonged to Holly, not to me. This was different than the last few times Holly had contacted me. I couldn’t hear her voice or see her surroundings. It was more like she’d reached out subconsciously, a weak plea for help. She was growing weaker. Sick.
“Hold on, Holly,” I whispered, hoping that she could hear me. “Just hold on.”
“What are you doing?”
I whirled around at the coarse accusation. Autumn stood in the doorway of the bathroom, peering at me with narrowed eyes.
“Nothing,” I stammered.
“Uh-huh.” Her heels clicked against the tile floor as she joined me at the mirror, arms crossed. She studied my flushed face, damp scalp, and trembling fingers in the reflection. “God, you’re not on drugs, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “It’s just like old times. You and Emmett cozying up together. I thought you said you weren’t interested in him.”
I plucked a few paper towels from the nearby holder and blotted my face with them. “Things change.”
“So what? You’re dating now?”
“Seriously, Autumn? I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”
She pressed her lips together. “I’m not. Hurry up. I want to order the entrees so we can get out of here as soon as possible.”
I took her arm before she could leave. She frowned down at my clammy fingers. “Is this how it’s going to be from now on?” I asked her. “Cold and angry?”
“You tell me.”
As her gaze bore into mine, I considered dumping the real story on her. Lying to Autumn was my least favorite thing in the world. She deserved better. But she also deserved to live her life without having to worry about the threat hanging over my head. That hadn’t changed. The more Autumn knew, the more likely it was that the people behind Holly’s disappearance would use her to get to me.
“I guess it is,” I said to her.
She turned on her heel and stomped off, but not before I caught the flicker of hurt that broke through her angry mask of indifference.
The cab of Emmett’s truck was quiet—save for Dolly Parton’s soft croon on the radio—as he drove me back to the motel. My appetite had abandoned me at The Silver Pavilion. There were too many distractions. Holly’s waves of nausea continued throughout the course of the meal. Autumn scrutinized every glance that me and Emmett shared. Emmett and Christian were easy to entertain but difficult to keep up with when the conversation turned to trucks, weights, and sports. By the time we had finished dessert, I was exhausted and ready to put my fake happy face to bed.
Emmett held my hand as he walked me to the motel door. When we lingered outside, I took a deep breath, setting myself up for the anticipated conversation.
“I had a great time tonight,” he said. “Did you?”
“Yeah. The food was amazing.”
He smiled down at me. “You hardly touched your plate.”
“Well, what I ate was amazing,” I countered, pasting a grin across my face. “I guess I was too preoccupied with the conversation.”
Emmett linked his arms around my waist and drew me closer. “I think I might’ve flubbed that part of tonight. I didn’t mean for Christian and Autumn to gatecrash. I was trying to be polite.”
I slid my hands up his chest and around the back of his neck. “That was very nice of you.”
“You didn’t mind?”
“No, of course not.”
We swayed on the spot in a subdued version of a slow dance. Emmett dipped his head to lean in closer. “Next time, I’ll make sure it’s just the two of us. Sound good?”
In reply, I closed the gap between us to kiss him. He fumbled at first, taken aback, then settled into it, caressing my lips with his. I let him take what he wanted and even encouraged it, arching up against his chest as his fingers inched beneath the hem of my shirt to cinch around my waist. We broke apart, breathing hard into each other’s mouths.
“Should we—?” he started, piloting me toward the motel room.
“We shouldn’t,” I replied breathlessly. “I don’t want to move too fast.”
“It feels like it’s been forever.”
“Soon,” I whispered against his lips. I kissed him again, pressing him to the wall. He groaned, but when I pulled away with a grin, he respectfully disengaged.
“Okay,” he said. “I give. Good night, Bee.”
“Night, Emmett.”
He kissed my forehead, straightened out the collar of his shirt from where it had been clenched in my grasp, and left. I let myself into my room, listening to the growl of the truck engine as Emmett drove away. As soon as I was inside, my phone rang, displaying Mac’s number.
“That was convincing,” Mac said when I answered. “Hell, even I kind of bought it. Still no sign of your stalker though.”
I slid down the door and sat on the floor, completely spent. “He’s going to want more soon. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft. “I know this sort of thing must bring up some terrible memories for you. Just remember that you’re doing it for Holly.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m starving,” I admitted.
Mac’s answering laugh echoed over the line. “I might’ve been a little overzealous ordering takeout for tonight’s stakeout. You interested in brisket from Harry’s?”
“You’re my hero, Officer Hart.”
6
Hourglass
“Bridge.”
I mumbled something unintelligible, still dozing, and rolled over, but Mac was persistent. She poked my ribs through the coarse motel blanket. I groaned and shooed her away.
“Bridget, wake up. Someone dropped off another postcard while we were asleep.”
That broke through my hazy, brisket-induced stupor. Mac, in an old Belle Dame softball T-shirt and running shorts that she’d borrowed from me last night, handed me the postcard as I wiggled out from beneath the sheets and propped myself up against the headboard. The photo side showed a black and white lithograph depicting several women with various demented expressions in the stone courtyard of an old hospital.
“What the hell is that?” Mac asked, eyeing the photo with distaste.
“The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital,” I replied. “It used to be a dumping ground for prostitutes and other women that were declared hysterical. Back then, the place was more of a prison than a hospital.”
“I get the feeling that these postcards were hand-crafted with you in mind.” She gestured to the back. “The message is written in French. What’s it say?”
I flipped the card over, trying to ignore the way last night’s brisket churned in my stomach. “We got you a Christmas present. Remember Noemie?”
“Who’s Noemie?”
The lights in the Paris nightclub flashed pink and purple, casting an inhuman glow over the dancers as they pulsed along to the generic beat of
the electronic music. The dance floor was hot and lively, bodies packed right up against each other, generating a heat that steamed up toward the mezzanine overhead. Here, it didn’t matter who danced with who. Men and women gyrated against each other without concern of judgement. This was a place to dance, to drink, and to devolve into a darker representation of humanity. As the beat pounded in my head, I set my hips to the rhythm. Everyone was some kind of drunk, and though I had a few cocktails under my belt as well, I hadn’t forgotten why I’d ended up at the club. One of Fox’s boys supervised my exploits from a shadowy booth in a private corner. We had work to do.
I knew exactly the type of girl that Fox wanted. Thin, pretty, and delicate. Easy to push around. Unlikely to talk back or defend herself. Preferably foreign, so that her family wouldn’t notice her prolonged absence right away. There were a number of prospects on the tiny dance floor alone. I could’ve walked up to any one of them and started a conversation, but that night, work found me instead. A gorgeous girl slinked between the other dancers and laced her arms around my waist. She was young—seventeen or so, naive enough to believe that youth granted you invincibility—with olive skin, jet-black hair, dark eyebrows, and plump lips.
“Please,” she shouted over the music, her thick French accent weighing down the syllables as she looked up to me. “Can you play along? That man at the bar won’t leave me alone.”
I looked over the top of her head. A dark-haired individual with a rat nose and narrow eyes watched the girl with a predatory interest. He wasn’t one of ours. Fox’s lures were less conspicuous. It was why Fox considered me ideal to do this in the first place. Women were more likely to trust other women than strange men. I snaked around the girl and pulled her close, never abandoning the beat of the music as we settled into the sultry rhythm, then looked straight across the bar at the man and grinned. He rolled his eyes, pushed his drink away, and disappeared into the crowd near the exit.
“Dieu merci!” The girl’s deep brown eyes sparkled under the lights of the dance floor. “You are a miracle worker. How can I thank you?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I leaned in closer to be heard over the music. “What’s your name?”
“Noemie,” she shouted back.
“Enchanté. I’m Bridget.”
She twirled herself from our intertwined fingers and laughed. “Brigitte, you are a surprisingly good dancer for an American.”
“Merci.” I spun her again as the song changed, morphing into a faster beat. “I need some air though. Do you smoke?” I mimed putting a cigarette to my lips. In any part of France, it was the quickest way to get a girl alone. Noemie was no exception. We wound through the sweaty bodies hand in hand and escaped the humid club through a side door.
A single lamp illuminated a meager section of the dim alleyway outside, where the breeze chilled the sweat on my skin. Noemie shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as I drew an unopened pack of cigarettes from the pocket of my jeans. From the shadows near the street, a figure darted through the gloom, as quick and silent as a fox. Noemie remained oblivious.
“Noemie,” I said.
She reached for the cigarettes. “Yes?”
“I’m so sorry.”
Her confusion ended where Fox’s pitiless hands began. He wrapped one around her mouth to keep her quiet and the other around her neck, dragging her backward toward a dark utility van with blacked-out windows parked at the mouth of the alley. She fought against him, her screams muffled against his palm, and pleaded with me through wide, frightened eyes, but I turned my gaze down to the cobblestones and ignored her. One of Fox’s boys waited at the van. He opened the sliding side door as we approached. Fox lifted Noemie in and dragged her across the unforgiving aluminum flooring.
“Baby?” he asked, panting as Noemie kicked out. “A little help here?”
I climbed in after him, carefully avoiding Noemie’s designer heels, and took over restraining her. As I hugged her from behind, she bit down on my hand. The pain didn’t register as my skin split under her teeth. Fox slid out and slammed the door shut. I released Noemie, who automatically jabbed a finger toward my eye socket. In the lack of light, she missed, and her polished nail raked across my eyebrow instead.
“How could you?” she demanded.
I stayed silent. My eyes adjusted to the muted streetlights that penetrated the blackout paint on the windows. Doors slammed shut, and the van lurched forward, sending Noemie toward the rear of the van. She braced herself and kicked at the sliding door, hoping to dislodge it. I knew it wouldn’t budge. Noemie wasn’t the first girl to try her hand at escape.
“Where are they taking us?” she demanded.
I didn’t reply and began to wipe the blood from her bite marks off of my fingers with the hem of my skirt.
Noemie shimmied over to me and shook me by the collar. “Hello? Are you empty inside? Where are they taking us?” Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. She let go, letting me slump against the wall of the van in an anguished heap. “No. You don’t get to cry. You made me trust you. You owe me. Why are you crying?”
I looked up into her determined face, all too aware of how quickly Fox’s girls lost their fortitude once they arrived at L’hotel Douloureux.
“Because you’re hardly older than my sister.”
“She called me,” I recalled after giving Mac the general basics of Noemie’s role in my life. “Friday night while we were at The Pit. She said something about how they were back, and that they knew what we did in Paris.”
Mac raised an eyebrow. “And you’re just telling me this now? When was the last time you saw this girl?”
“Three years ago when I left Paris. Mac, she also told me to run.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll consider that as an option,” she said. I gave her a look. “No, I thought not. So what does it all mean then? The phone call and the postcard?”
I lifted the postcard to show it to her again. Beneath Holly’s shaky handwriting, there was an address. “That’s my old house number.”
“Here in Belle Dame?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, so what are you supposed to do?” Mac asked. “Doesn’t someone else live there now?”
“Yup.”
“You’re going to break in, aren’t you?”
I patted her on the shoulder. “It’s probably best if I don’t answer that one, Officer Hart.”
She groaned and flopped backward onto the bed. “I’m on duty today, Dubois. I swear to God, if I get a call about breaking and entering—”
I hopped off the bed and started getting dressed. “You won’t. And if you do, I’ll be long gone by the time you get there. Hey, on your way out, can you ask the nerd at the front desk if they’ve gotten the security cameras fixed? Feel free to put the fear of God in him.”
The house that I’d grown up in was located on the main road that carved a path through the quaint neighborhood at the top of the hill. I had passed by it once or twice on my way to Bill and Emily’s, each time letting my gaze linger on the familiarities of the front porch, swinging bench, and wide side yard. It was as if the memories that I’d made in that house belonged to a different version of myself, one that lived in a separate timeline. This time, instead of walking past it, I hid in the rose bushes that divided my old house’s yard from the one next door. As the thorns dug into my skin, I settled in to watch the front door.
It was early, not yet eight o’clock. The sun wasn’t unbearably hot, and a breeze rustled through the rose petals, wafting their scent toward me. Before long, the front door of the house opened, spilling out two elementary school boys, a mother with a diaper bag over her shoulder, and a matching dad with a baby on his hip. Together, the young couple loaded their kids into a waiting minivan. Then the man opened the driver’s side door for his wife, kissed her goodbye, and waved as she pulled out of the driveway before getting into his own truck and driving off. I waited for a few minutes, just to be sure, then escaped from my thorny hiding place a
nd darted around to the side yard.
There was no point in trying the front door. I’d watched the family lock up, and I was useless with a bobby pin, so I circled around to the back side of the house and jumped down to the walkout of the basement door. I jiggled the handle and grinned. The new residents hadn’t bothered to replace the faulty lock, so with a satisfied smirk, I propped my shoulder against the door, lifted up, and shoved it out of place.
Ten years ago, the basement of the Dubois house had been an entertainment haven of sorts. It was fully furnished with soft carpeting, comfy sofas, and a widescreen TV for when the neighbors wanted to come over to watch the latest football game. All of that was gone now, except for the carpeting, which now bore curious stains and tears. The new family had no use for the basement other than storage. Boxes for cribs, baby monitors, and toys were piled high against one wall. By the looks of the half-folded laundry loads near the washing machine, someone had been interrupted halfway through their chores. Cleaning supplies cluttered the utility closet near the stairs that led up into the main area of the house.
“What am I doing here?” I muttered, picking my way through a Costco-sized box of diapers that had fallen over and spilled across the floor. What did Noemie have to do with my old house? Clearly she wasn’t being kept here. The family overhead would’ve noticed if a terrified French girl had been tied up in their basement like Holly was in someone else’s. But if that was the case, why had the postcard included my old address?
So far, Holly’s messages had not led me astray. I crept up the stairs to ground level, listened to make sure that no one else had stayed behind in the house, and snuck into the kitchen. My heart thudded against my rib cage as I recognized the familiar layout of the house. The last time I’d been here, it was to pack up the rest of my things after my mother and father’s joint funeral. Aunt Ani—who had been mentally deteriorating by the minute back then—hadn’t provided a whole lot of help, so I had to be the one to take Holly around the house and ask her what she didn’t want to leave behind.
Little Girl Lost: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery- Book 1 Page 8
