I shoved the plastic baggies down the front of my shirt then tucked several bills into Phantom’s outstretched palms. “You know the drill. Don’t tell anyone you’re dealing with me. Especially not Fox.”
“Fox is a fox,” Phantom replied, his voice slow and tepid. “I am a hound. A stray dog. I get around.”
I snapped my fingers in front of Phantom’s glazed eyes before he could continue his impromptu poetry session. “How high are you? You promised to show me the other tunnels tonight. The ones that lead out to the train station, remember?”
“You are a rat,” he said, tapping my nose with the unlit end of the cigarette.
I plucked the cigarette from his fingers and dabbed the end against the carpet, extinguishing the cherry of fire there. “You know how this goes, ghost boy. Fox wouldn’t be pleased if he knew your drugs were making their way upstairs to his girls. If I go down, I’m taking you with me. Show me the damn tunnels.”
Phantom pouted as I tucked the cigarette into the pocket of his shirt. He shifted, crawling out from behind the desk on his hands and knees. “All right, my dear. After you. Tonight, we go to the empire of the dead.”
“I’ve already been there,” I grumbled. I grabbed Phantom by the back of his shirt. “Wait. How good of a thief are you?”
“The best.”
“I need a copy of the master key for the rooms upstairs,” I told him. “Fox keeps it in the front pocket of his suit jacket.”
“That will cost you.”
Phantom didn’t question why Fox’s favorite girl wanted the key to every room. He was stuck at L’hotel Douloureux as much as I was. The streets of Paris afforded him nothing but trouble, and he only needed Fox long enough to get back on his feet. Never once had he spent his hard-earned money for a few hours with one of girls upstairs.
“I can pay.”
The atmosphere at the assisted living facility was too calm for the way my heart was drumming in my chest. Apathetic elevator music tinkled through the lobby, a pair of elderly gentlemen discussed the best make of mandolins at a table in the corner, and the various employees did not appear to be the least bit concerned about the possibility of one of their residents suffering from a heart attack on the third floor. Then again, in a place like this, medical emergencies were a daily occurrence. To the employees, it was another mundane part of the job.
Over the phone, Daniel claimed that further information related to Aunt Ani’s condition would be available to me in person at the facility. When I arrived, there was no ambulance parked outside. Had Ani already been transported to the hospital? I rushed to the front desk and banged on the bell to get the attention of the woman behind it.
She pressed her lips together as she set aside a clipboard with a checklist of duties on the first page. “May I help you?”
I glanced at her shiny name tag. “Hi, Caty. I got a call—” I checked my phone for the time “—about fifteen minutes ago concerning my aunt. They said she suffered a heart attack.”
Her attitude shifted at once. She shook the mouse of the computer to disturb the screensaver. “We haven’t had any emergency services arrive today. Patient’s name?”
“Annette Louis.”
Caty clicked through a few information files. Her furrowed brow evened out. “Hmm, no. Annette’s fine. An aide filled out her afternoon report just a few minutes ago.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “An aide called me—”
“What was the name of the employee?”
“Daniel.”
“Last name?”
“He didn’t give me one,” I huffed, slumping against the counter.
Caty closed the windows on her desktop. “We have one Daniel that works for us, but I don’t understand why he would call you with that information. He doesn’t tend to Miss Louis’s floor. One moment, please.” She dialed a number on the desk phone and put it to her ear. “Hello, Daniel? Would you mind coming the front desk, please? Thanks.” She hung up and smiled at me. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
“Okay, but are you sure that my aunt is all right?” I asked. “I’d like to go up and see for myself.”
“We can absolutely visit Miss Louis,” she said. “Let’s just make sure we have the correct information first, shall we?”
“But—”
The elevator pinged and a tall, lean nurse’s aide with floppy blond hair emerged from its depths to meet us at the front desk. “Hey, Caty. What can I do for you?”
Daniel’s voice was soft and adenoidal, not at all like the deep, husky tone that I’d heard over the phone.
“You’re Daniel?” I asked, my pointer finger extended like an accusation.
“Yes, ma’am. Do I know you?”
“It wasn’t him,” I told Caty. “He wasn’t the one who called me. I would’ve recognized his voice.”
Daniel leaned against the counter between me and Caty. “Pardon me. What happened?”
“Someone named Daniel called me from this facility to tell me that my aunt, Annette Louis, had a heart attack,” I filled him in. “Unless you have a talent for throwing your voice, I’m assuming it wasn’t you.”
Daniel squared his shoulders. “It certainly wasn’t. I haven’t had to make any calls of that sort today. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know if anyone would use your name or your credentials to do something like that?” I asked.
“Why would they?”
“Good question,” I muttered. I addressed Caty again. “Are you sure no one named Daniel works on my aunt’s floor?”
“I’m positive.”
A chill washed over me that had nothing to do with the air conditioning overhead. “I need to see my aunt now, please.”
“Of course.” She wrote my name on a visitor’s badge, peeled off the sticky backing, and handed it over the desk. “Daniel, would you mind escorting her up? I know it’s not your floor, but I need to look into this.”
“Sure thing.”
I pressed the visitor’s badge to my chest as Daniel escorted me to the elevator. He jabbed the button for the third floor, and as we rode up, made an attempt to reassure me with polite chitchat. “I think I’ve met your aunt a few times. What’s her name again?”
“Annette. Ani.”
The information clicked into place. It was always the same reaction. The lifted eyebrows, the parted lips, the stench of pity from every pore. Everyone knew the effect that my parents’ deaths had had on my aunt. Everyone knew my history in Belle Dame. Everyone knew that Holly had disappeared. I missed the strangers that occupied the far corners of the world, who were so blissfully ignorant of my past.
“Ani, of course,” Daniel said. “She’s so sweet.”
“It probably helps that she never speaks.”
The elevator shuddered to a stop, saving Daniel from having to formulate an awkward reply. I followed him down the hall, where he scanned his access badge at one of the doors and knocked politely before turning the handle.
Part of me expected to find Aunt Ani in a state of incapacitation. When I spotted her sitting in the armchair by the window, a whoosh of air left my lungs, my shoulders shrank in relief, and the balloon in my chest popped. Aunt Ani’s vacant expression and eerie stillness haunted the room, but at least she was alive.
Daniel retreated from the room. “I’ll leave you to it. Let us know if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Daniel.”
As soon as the door closed, Maisy Marks, Emmett’s grandmother, shuffled out from her side of the room. “Bridget! How are you?”
I sidestepped her incoming hug with a small pang of guilt. Maisy’s clinginess was most likely a product of loneliness. No matter how much the assisted living facility disguised itself to look like a spa, there was no mistaking its true purpose. People were left here when their families had forgotten about them or no longer had the time or ability to take care of them. When was the last time Maisy had had a visit from a member of her family?
“Hi, Maisy,” I sai
d. “Sorry to bother you. I need to speak with my aunt.”
I sidled past the older woman and joined Ani at the window. As always, she stared out at the backyard of the facility. A closed book lay on her lap. The sun shone down on the chair opposite hers. As I sat down, the heat settled on the thighs of my jeans. Her hands, resting atop the cover of her book, were soft and warm. I held them tightly, afraid to let go, and my head drooped to rest on Ani’s shoulder.
“Someone told me that you had a heart attack,” I said softly. “And all of a sudden, it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I can’t lose you too, Aunt Ani. You’re all that I have left.”
Maisy’s oxygen tank hissed at sporadic intervals. Ani slipped her fingers out from beneath mine, drew a postcard from between the pages of her book, and handed it to me. Shaking, I took it. The front was a glossy picture of the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where several celebrities were buried. Ani turned it over for me. On the reverse side, Holly’s new message read, Break her heart.
“Where did you find this?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
Ani opened her book, took out a pen, and began circling letters. I followed the train of thought over her shoulder.
It was at the door. Meant for you?
“Yes,” I breathed. Ani shook her head, pointing the pen over her shoulder at Maisy before offering it to me. I took it and circled a reply. I’m being blackmailed.
Ani’s brow scrunched as her pen moved across the page. This was the most animated I’d seen her since I’d come back to Belle Dame. She scribbled with a sense of intense purpose. By someone you’ve known for a while.
It wasn’t a question. How do you figure?
They’re targeting your friends and family, came the answer. They know things about your past that others wouldn’t.
You think someone from Belle Dame is doing this?
Who else?
It didn’t make sense. On one hand, Ani was right. No one from Fox’s circle could know so many intimate details about me. Once I left Belle Dame, I’d always made a point to give other travelers as little information about myself as possible. That held true in Paris. No one there had heard me speak about my hometown or my little sister. Or had they? According to Noemie, whoever wanted justice for the fall of Fox’s business had been gathering information on us during the three years since we left Paris. My last name alone would garner some interesting results from an Internet search. The local papers had covered every inch of our family tragedy, the details of which would’ve been housed in digital archives.
My pen hovered above the page, unsure of what to write, until Ani relieved me of the utensil to ask her own question.
The postcard. What do you have to do?
A swell of sadness washed over me. It means you.
Her reply surprised me. Do whatever you need to do. I’ll play along.
Are you sure?
Yes. We both want Holly back.
She set down the pen, leveling an insistent stare at me. Her eyes were the same stunning shade of blue as my mother’s and Holly’s. It had been so long since I’d actually seen them than I’d forgotten.
“We need to go somewhere more public,” I whispered to her. “They’re watching me. They need to be able to see us argue.”
“The back porch,” she whispered.
Another jolt of astonishment rocked through me. According to the facility’s reports, Aunt Ani had not uttered a word to anyone, not even Holly, since she was admitted ten years ago. Her voice was hardly a sound, hoarse from disuse, but it spurred me to move. Ani was on my team, and something about her sudden return to the world of the speaking awakened an energy within me. If Holly’s captors wanted a scene, then we would damn well give them a scene.
I rolled Ani’s wheelchair over and pulled the handbrakes. She took care of the transfer without issue, moving deftly from one chair to the other. Unlike the rest of the facility’s residents, Ani wasn’t disabled or elderly. She could move and speak, but since my mother’s death, she’d chosen not to.
“We’re going for a walk, Maisy,” I told Emmett’s grandmother as I wheeled Ani past the double beds and toward the door. “Don’t wait up.”
“Have fun, dears!”
In the elevator, my leg jiggled up and down, jostling Ani’s chair. She laid a hand on my knee to still the tremors. The doors chimed open.
“Here we go,” I muttered, squaring my shoulders to push Ani into the lobby.
Caty looked up from the front desk and flashed a smile. “Oh, good! Everything turned out okay.”
“Yup,” I agreed, trying not to picture what Caty’s face was going to look like after the heart-wrenching skit that Ani and I were about to put on. “Thanks, Caty. I really appreciate it. Do you mind if we sit out on the porch?”
“Of course not. I’ll have someone bring out drinks for you. I find that lemonade is always a great way to cool down on these hot spring days.”
“Lemonade sounds great.” I pushed Ani past the front desk, hoping to avoid further pointless conversation.
The double doors that led out to the back porch were propped open to let the hot breeze and bright sunshine filter through the stuffy lobby. I bumped Ani’s wheelchair over the threshold. A few other residents sat outside to enjoy the afternoon, playing checkers with each other or throwing leftover lettuce from the facility’s kitchen to a waiting family of ducks. Storm clouds gathered in the distance, waiting to roll in and wreak havoc on everyone’s enjoyment of the day. I trundled Ani out to an empty corner of the porch, which gave the illusion that we wanted privacy. However, I knew that our voices would carry out to the others and across the facility’s pretty backyard garden. Everyone within a reasonable distance would hear the conversation to come.
I sat down in a patio chair next to Ani. “I have no idea how to start this.”
Her lips tilted upward in a small smile, keeping her voice low as she replied. “Really? I recall a sixteen-year-old girl who was always keen to begin an argument.”
“You know, I think I preferred it when you weren’t talking to me,” I whispered back, but I couldn’t help the grin that snuck across my face. I’d missed the real Aunt Ani. But then I remembered all of the terrible things I’d said to her in the past. “I’m sorry,” I murmured to her, checking over my shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “I want you to know that before we do this. Everything I’m about to say to you is a lie. Please, remember that.”
She squeezed my hand in her own. “I believe you, Bee.”
I took a long, steadying breath. Then I yanked my hand out of Ani’s and stood up, kicking the patio chair out from beneath me. It scraped across the porch and rebounded off the railing, catching the attention of even the deafest residents. Every pair of eyes turned toward us.
“I can’t believe you!” I cried, weighing down my voice with false anger. “You know what you are? Selfish. From the very beginning. Let me ask you something, Ani. Did you feel any remorse at all when you dropped me and Holly off at Child Services after the funeral? Did you wonder what Mom would’ve said to you if she was still alive? You left us. You abandoned your nieces to the system.”
My throat closed up, and as tears spilled over my eyelashes, I realized that some of my anger was not so false after all. Part of me had not let go of a decade-long grudge. I partially blamed Ani for the way my teenaged life had fallen off the map. She was meant to have taken me and Holly in after my parents’ deaths. She was the only other family that we had. She had a house in Belle Dame for us all to live in. She had a job that could support two kids. And yet she had failed to step up to the challenge, even though my mother had specifically left instructions for her to do so should the circumstance arise. I wondered what would have happened if we hadn’t needed to go and live with the Millers. Would I have been a less angry teenager? Would Ani and I have worked through our grief and raised Holly together? Would I have dropped out of high school and left Belle Dame anyway? Or would I have graduated with a real
degree and gone to a nearby university to stay close to home? It didn’t sound so terrible now. After all, if I had stayed in Belle Dame, I never would’ve met Fox.
“All of this is your fault,” I went on. “If you hadn’t left us to get picked up by the Millers, then Holly wouldn’t be missing right now.”
Ani’s bright blue eyes shone with tears, but she remained mute, carrying on a performance that she’d perfected over the years. My voice got stuck. This part wasn’t true. I didn’t blame Ani for what happened to Holly. She didn’t deserve to hear this from me, even if it was all for the sake of trickery, but she beckoned with her index finger ever-so-slightly as if to say, Keep going. I had to drive this home.
I knelt down next to Ani’s chair. “I wish you had died instead of Mom.”
The lie burned like a shot of whiskey. Ani bowed her head to her chest, tears falling freely down her cheeks now. Some of the eavesdroppers around us let out audible gasps. A nurse’s aide stood up from where she was supervising some of the less able residents.
“Okay,” she said, heading toward me with her hands outstretched as if ready to break up a fistfight. “Let’s take it down a notch. It’s Miss Dubois, right? I think it’s best if you leave.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said.
An old woman a few rocking chairs down shook her finger at me. “Shame on you!” she cried. “Shame on you for saying something so terrible.”
Out of sight, Ani’s fingers clutched tightly to mine.
“Maybe,” I said to the older woman. “But at least she knows the truth now.”
“Bridget,” a low voice said.
I turned toward the double doors of the lobby. Emmett stood there, stunned and staring at me with a blank expression, as if he couldn’t believe what had just come out of my mouth. I quickly wiped tears from the corners of my eyes.
“Emmett, what are you doing here?” I asked.
It took him a second to answer, as if he was still trying to marry the impressions that he had of me in his head with the terrible one that appeared on the porch. “I was visiting my grandmother.”
Little Girl Lost: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery- Book 1 Page 12
