I clutched my hands together, bloodied from wounding him, and shivered with cold. God help me, I had to fight the urge to hug him to me and tell him, “Just breathe. It will be okay. You’ll live.” Instead, I kept on slaying him with my cold stare.
Somehow, inside of me, I’d found the courage to take a stand. Why? Because while I may like life to be easy, I wasn’t willing to live a lie. I deserved more from him. And no, love isn’t something you can simply ask for from someone. That’s called self-delusion. Letting him take freely—and for free—from me as he did would have drained me dry. He was so fucking greedy.
I wanted more. Badly. And the only way he would ever know what was at stake was if I took it away from him.
He searched, of course, one last time, guns ablaze, for a new way to have me, to insist on having me, yet. I watched his eyes dart back and forth.
He would have to do better than forcing his way in. And after he recovered from this wound I had just delivered, I swallowed but my throat had a big fat lump in it, he would have to want to find another way.
The price of love was only love.
Surely he would pay it?
His mouth drew into a firm line.
I watched the lights turn out in his face, and with it the feeling in my limbs.
“Deal,” he said, coldly, and walked away.
Chapter 24
A shadow of my former self sailed back to Toulon. I floated into a waiting car and then back into the lobby of my apartment building. I was too weightless to fear—as strange men peered at their pale-faced, silent passenger—and imagined stray bullets passing right through me.
Marie was on the sofa, waiting, a bundle of anxiety. Upon disbelieving first glance, she gasped and launched herself at me, hugging me briefly, then searching me with her eyes, frantic, for what? A missing ear?
I wanted the first question out of her mouth to be, “Are you okay?”
“What does he want?” she heaved. My stomach dropped. There it was: she trusted no one. Not even her own daughter. She was terrified I would expose her to them.
Of course, I already had my story ready. Louis had only wanted a chance to convince me of his love, I said, shrugging.
Did she buy it? Well, she definitely wanted to make sure I didn’t believe him. So yes, she did, maybe because it was true—that had been one of his goals.
When I think back to that tipping point in Corsica, Louis had said he needed two things from me. He had stated the first: getting his brother freed. The second had never been said because I let him believe, through our sensual language, that he’d got it, that he would always have it—my love.
And in the end, I’d refused him his demand in the only way I knew he would accept, by wounding him. It helped that he could justify letting me go for his brother’s freedom.
The regret ate at me. Had I done the right thing telling him his love lacked? Had I sabotaged any hope for us? Was there another way . . . and I just didn’t see it? No. No, I couldn’t turn into that kind of person. I had to protect myself by fighting for more, not begging for it or accepting less.
So if I’d done the right thing, for myself, why did I feel so helpless, sleepless, still marooned on his island, hoping for rescue?
I tried to focus on what mattered the most: Marie’s salvation.
• • •
Three weeks had passed since Louis let me go; it was just two days before Georges Messette’s arraignment. I had every reason to believe Louis made up the stuff about Marie planting evidence. But here’s the thing: Louis hadn’t asked me to get her to drop the charges for his benefit, or even for his brother’s, not really. Sitting at that table, staring at me with sympathy in his eyes, he had asked for me.
Had Marie, grown tired of fighting a losing battle, stepped up the ante? Had she crossed a line because her own daughter, the one she’d given up to protect from a criminal, had gone and fallen in love with one? And if so, if she had dipped her toes into the inferno to support her cause, was it too late to save her?
The minute I got back from Corsica, I stuck close to Marie. I told Sylvie I was taking time off to free up my days. (She didn’t ask questions, perhaps grateful for me having kept the assault secret.) Marie was pleased as punch I was her new sidekick, because we loved each other, and it also meant I was at the station with her, safe. She gave me small jobs around her office, namely the ongoing organizing, and I worked on my French and my food blog the rest of the time.
I watched Marie, when she didn’t know I was watching her. And I didn’t like what I finally saw. An unhappy workaholic. No matter what I’d suggest, be it us attending a meditation class or going to a new restaurant, she was never truly present. And she was nervous, too nervous. Maybe even paranoid. I mean, is it normal to change your cell phone out every three days for fear of it being bugged, when you’re a cop? She’d taken to biting her top lip when we watched TV. She jumped whenever her phone rang.
Of course, I could have simply told Marie what Louis had accused her of, and asked her if it were true. Marie, did you plant evidence to finally nail a Messette? Because Louis thinks you did. She would easily deny it, considering the source, and where would that leave me? A lot less free to investigate the truth, and a lot further away from her.
But, I sipped my tea, glancing at Marie in her office chair, typing, after days of organizing and developing electronic files of her 2009 cases, I knew I was never going to finish all the filing in time to get to this year’s cases before Georges Messette’s arraignment. I didn’t even know what I was looking for exactly, or at all, really.
Had Louis realized the difficulty of the task he’d put before me? I mean, some clues or a few Google search words would have been handy. “Ways to plant evidence.” “Policemom’s revenge measures.” “How to trust again.” He probably thought I could simply confront Marie. Convince her to not go through with it. But he didn’t know her.
Was I crazy to even be questioning her? To believe Louis might have spoken the truth? “I was with Georges,” he’d insisted. I couldn’t lie to myself. He had been dead-honest then. I felt it in my bones. In which case, someone had planted the evidence.
Marie was biting her fingernails, staring without blinking at her laptop.
I knew I needed to get to her Messette case file. It was now or never, and I had been doing my best to make sure it was never . . . avoidance was destined to be my middle name. After all, I’d managed to avoid doing this for weeks.
I needed to get serious.
Okay then.
Probably won’t lead to anything anyway.
Any time now.
I stood up, stretched, stepped over to her desk. She wasn’t paying attention. I deliberately knocked over a large stack of files I knew were recent. “Oh, merde!” I exclaimed. She barely noticed.
“Oh, ma belle, now you will have to work backward, I guess.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right,” I said, bent over, shuffling papers back into folders. I moved them over to the chair that had been dragged in a while back for me, and began the task of reading through her chicken scratch, various clippings she’d made from papers and oodles of photocopies of actual evidence. She did this so she wouldn’t have to schlep down to the evidence repository in the basement every time she wanted to consult a file—not protocol, but no one questions Marie.
I started with the top file.
Shoot. Not Messette. It was the recent port murder she’d solved, the one where her headshot made the front of the local newspaper. I scanned the photocopies of her notes, interviews with suspects, several suspect profiles she had outlined, and then one of her famous timelines. (She constructs impressive time lines that go back a lifetime or more in a case—it had helped her solve more than a few cold cases in the past.)
Nothing.
What was I even looking for?
I took a sip of the tepid tea I’d made myself. God, I missed a decent cup of tea.
Please, Louis, be wrong.
�
��Marie, how do I file the Casolaro case? I know it was a murder but he was a major drug dealer, so, what, narcotics?”
And—bam—there it was.
She glanced at me, oblivious, of course.
“Murder, please,” she said.
My hands shaking, I pretended to file it, but really held onto it so I could read it more closely back in my chair.
Drugs had been found at the scene, hadn’t they? I asked myself, pulse quickening. Yes, cocaine. Lots of it. Louis’s words, “I do not know where she got the drugs to plant,” came back to me. My heart pounded hard.
I stared at Marie and then back down at the photos of the evidence: bricks of cocaine, tagged, with bright red and black numbers.
Could it be that easy? Could an inspector take evidence from one case and plant it in another?
Only one way to find out.
I made some quick calculations about dates and times, my chest tense, adrenaline surging around.
It’s okay, I reassured myself, because I wasn’t going to find anything. Louis might believe his brother was being framed, but it wasn’t Marie. I just needed to prove that.
I stood up quickly. “Marie, I feel a headache coming on. Would you mind if I head home?”
“Hm, oh no, just make sure your detail escorts you when you leave the building.”
“D’accord,” I said, kissing her goodbye. Are you kidding? I couldn’t shake them. It was a great source of hush-hush shame in the department that Marie’s daughter had been taken out from under their noses. However, as long as I was in the building, I was deemed safe and free to roam about, which left me free to accomplish “Mission: Daughter Forsakes Mother.” Not funny.
I scurried down the stairs.
Please be there. Please be there. I had two days left. Two days.
I strode down the hall, nodding at a few officers. Most everyone knows who I am now. I stopped at a clerk’s desk.
“Pardon, where is Bastien Vauclin’s desk?”
She rolled her eyes, and pointed to the corner. Good. Good. I tugged down my scoop neck T-shirt and fluffed my hair. Too bad I wasn’t wearing a skirt, but pencil pants would have to do. As I walked over he spun casually in his chair, and the smile he had for whoever was on the other end of the cell phone vanished. I stood in front of him, in the sea of desks, and smiled prettily, making a motion that conveyed Should I come back? His eyebrows rose, and I walked over to the closest stairwell to let him know I would wait for him there.
Less than a minute later, he walked in. I knew the camera was on us. I was counting on it. His eyebrows were lowered, instead of raised, and he crossed his arms. I didn’t like his stare.
I cleared my throat.
“Hi, Bastien.”
“What do you want?” he murmured.
Okay, so we were going to play it that way.
My eyebrows fell low, like his.
“Is there a camera on the evidence room downstairs?”
He stared at me and I could almost see his brain whizzing.
“Fuck off,” he barked, turning to leave.
My eyes popped open. Didn’t expect that. Probably should have.
He’d almost opened the door before I stopped him, grabbing his arm. “Bastien, please, it’s important. I need your help.”
He spun around, and yanked out of my grip.
“You think I’m going to let you set me up, you salope?” He used the French word for the English nasty one. Oh, he’s totally got this wrong. “No, that’s not what I am doing!” I protested. “I really do need your help, and I can’t go to Marie.”
He looked up at the camera, straightened up and stepped back. I had learned that the cameras don’t pick up sound. Knowing they were on was the only reason I was standing alone with Bastien.
“A favor for your sack of shit,” he muttered, tugging down his cuffs. Oh. He’s still got it wrong. But maybe . . .
“He’s your sack of shit, too,” I whispered, sticking my chin out.
There. He knew I knew he was on the take for the Messettes.
Instead of crumbling, he drew closer, smiling.
“Are you his messenger now? Is this for them?”
I shook my head, feeling in that moment oceans away from Louis.
Bastien laughed—seeing my heartbreak, I suppose. “He tire of you? I warn you,” he added, stepping right into my space.
I stepped back, bumping against the wall. He placed a hand by my head, and leaned close to my face.
“Yes, there is a camera feed in the evidence room. Now, tell me why you ask this, and smile when you do it. The boys like a good show when I bring the whores here.”
My stomach dropped. Oh my God. He brings prostitutes in here? I gawked at the camera. Those poor girls.
I wanted to slap him, but I was never going to hit another human being as long as I lived.
And anyway, I needed his help. It was for Marie. Maybe. Oh God. What was I doing? No no. It was a simple thing that would clear up matters.
I cleared my throat, and managed to bring a smile to my face. “I need to review the camera feeds from May twenty-fifth to May twenty-seventh. And I need it today. Tomorrow at the latest.” I gave myself a decent buffer of time. For if Marie had manufactured evidence, she would have done it the day of Georges’s arrest; the day she found out the Messettes had been fucking with her daughter.
Bastien stared at me so long I worried he might do something deranged. He’d never in a million years figure out what I was up to, I told myself.
I shuddered as he ran a finger along my décolleté. “Suck my cock.” The way he’d said it, in French and abrupt, I thought he meant it as an expletive. But he licked the side of my face. I quickly rubbed it, staring at him aghast. He meant, suck his cock in return for the favor.
He shrugged one shoulder. Oh, he was rotten. To the core.
“I’ll tell her you are on the take,” I said, shakily.
“With what proof? I’ll tell her what you ask for just now.”
Shit. My eyes popped open. I’d already told him I couldn’t involve her and now I just showed him, with my fear, how much.
He laughed, so sure, pleased. It hit me then, just how much danger I was in inside a police station. He grabbed his crotch, and I whispered “screw you,” pushing him away, quickly exiting, relieved he’d let me go, hearing his laughter long after I left the building.
An ache, bone-deep, accompanied me home. At first, I thought it was just homesickness. But I forced myself to dig deep, and realized the feeling wasn’t rooted in actual longing to see my mom or my friends: it was a safety mechanism my mind had created to give me a way to escape.
I shoved it aside. I wasn’t going to be the kind of person who gave up on those she loved—no matter how bad things got.
• • •
Georges Messette’s arraignment was in less than thirty hours. I’d hardly slept a wink last night.
My options were extremely limited. I was sure Louis had given up on me following through with the deal. If I found that Marie had planted evidence, and I couldn’t convince her to fix things, would he renege on his end and come for me? I knew then what I was really made of, because I didn’t want that either. Only one ending would make me happy. One where he gave, instead of took.
I heard the shower turn on, and I opened the blinds. I powered up my notebook and reread Chloé Bijou’s email, sent to my Hotmail account one week after her brother let me go from Corsica. It was addressed under what was no doubt a new alias: Monique Richeau.
July 7, 2014
From: Monique Richeau
To: Fleur Smithers
Re: Dinner the other night
Dear Fleur:
I am contacting you regardless of what I have been instructed.
I wanted to explain his actions to you. (I said you would be mad if he went through with it, but he does not listen to anyone but his own stupid ass.) I want you to know I did not want to befriend you. But you are a kind of medicine. Bad
taste but works. I did not like to hide the truth from you.
Now I change my mind. I write to tell you personally, stay away from him.
You are no good for him, and a heartless bitch.
Sincerely,
Monique Richeau
Marie knew Chloé was integral to the kidnapping and, enraged, failed to trace her in the days that followed. There was, in fact, no record of the Messettes having daughters. If the whole family was as protective as Louis, it made sense to me that they would be secretive about things like sisters. There were constant battles for turf in the port. Family could be used as leverage. I know that now. That’s why Louis had me followed after we started up—I remembered that creepy guy tailing me up the stairs to my tutor session. It was as he said, protection, just not for the reasons I assumed. I also think that’s why there was never mention of Messette wives, children, or girlfriends in the press.
I read Chloé’s email again. I gathered that Louis was upset I’d rejected him. I couldn’t assume that meant there was hope. Our deal had been that he would let me go if I got Georges freed, because he hadn’t given me his heart. There was nothing stopping him from convincing me letting go was not the answer in the meantime . . . though he may be biding his time to see if I could get Georges free, and I did have a much more vigilant protective detail.
I never intended to reply to Chloé’s email. But now I had no choice.
July 22
To: Monique Richeau
From: Fleur Smithers
Re: this is pretty friggin’ important
Dear Two-Faced Conniving Witch:
I forgive you.
Please tell him I need help. It is urgent. Tell him it is in regards to the deal.
Fleur ‘Maalox’ LaSalle Smithers
P.S. He can’t call. My phone is being monitored.
P.P.S. What is your real first name?
“Fleur, ma belle.” My heart dropped as Marie poked her head in the doorway. “Are you coming with me today?”
“Uh, maybe later. I’m going to hang out here for a while. Work out today. Write a new post on my food blog.”
“Oh yes, I want to say how funny your recent article was. I loved to hear about how a steady diet of the same thing dulls your taste buds.”
The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) Page 24
