by K Larsen
Lying in Wait
A Novel by K. Larsen
LYING IN WAIT
Copyright © 2015 by K. Larsen
A Novel by K. Larsen
Cover by: Cover Me Darling
Editing: E. Adams
Copyright © 2015 by K. Larsen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Acknowledgements
Other K. Larsen Books
About K. Larsen
Prologue
Open.
She struggled to force her eyes open.
Agony.
Please. Please.
She waited for the white-hot agony to pass.
She was exhausted. Tired. So tired.
Her eyes snapped open finally.
Unfocused.
Yes, that’s it.
The world was bleary. She blinked.
Still hazy. Unfocused.
Stay with me.
How?
Unconscious. For how long, she did not know.
Her eyelids felt as if cinder blocks sat atop them.
They dropped, closed. It was too hard to fight it.
She dreamed voices.
Rest. Just rest. You’re safe. You’re safe now fiore mio.
Matteo.
Safe.
Blackness.
Chapter 1
March 2014
~ Matteo ~
LYING IN WAIT- To constitute murder by lying in wait there must be an intentional infliction upon the person killed of bodily harm involving a high degree of probability that it will result in death and which shows a wanton disregard for human life.
As far as Matteo was concerned, Gabriel Fontaine had sealed his fate the day he pulled the proverbial trigger and left his wife for dead in Paris. Matteo had witnessed it and in doing so, had evolved. He’d been concealed a safe distance from her. He watched in terror as Gabriel pulled her into an embrace. In horror as he’d pulled a knife and plunged it into her back. What a coward he’d been. A cruel coward. In that one instant, he’d gone from doting best friend who dutifully stepped aside, who tucked his feelings for Celeste away because she’d been elated and he wanted nothing more than her happiness, to a man who would take what he wanted. And he’d wanted Celeste. He knew he should have run, gotten as far away from her as he could. Far away from the violence that surrounded her. But he couldn’t do it.
He knew it was selfish but if he lost her, it would destroy him. So he’d changed right alongside her. Let the shadows and memories consume him over the years.
He sat near the window in their rental wondering, worrying really, about his wife.
Wife. Such a boring word. It did nothing to describe their connection. The depth of it. The meaning of it. They were more . . . intricate. He lit a cigarette. Inhaled. Exhaled. Chuckled to himself. She secretly loved the odor but she would be nagging him if she were here. But she wasn’t. So he enjoyed his smoke earnestly.
Matteo wouldn’t be able to see her for another week. He worried she wouldn’t be able to go through with it in the end. That she would grow too fond of the girl. Celeste had a soft spot for people. She was never able to give in fully to the fury that fueled her. But now she wore her hatred like a neon sign. Easy to read. He watched the sky fade from pink to navy. They had come so far together.
As he did most evenings over the past week, he reached for her journal. The leather bound book was now scratched and supple from years of use. He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned back into the oversized chair, and flipped it open to the first page. It wasn’t an invasion of her privacy. She knew he read it. He simply liked to see her handwriting. To read her thoughts. To hear her voice in his mind. She’d left him the journal for safe keeping while she was away. Said to read it if he wanted. It was their story.
A love story.
He flipped to the beginning. Gabriel. The name still left a sour taste on his tongue and a burn in his chest. Soon enough the man would be decimated. His life a sad pile of rubble. He didn’t want to read the hopeless, empty words from the very beginning, so he skipped a couple entries in.
~***~
1994 - JUNE
My mother used to soak in a lavender, eucalyptus and salt bath every night with a too-full glass of chardonnay. She’d sag in the tub and let the aromatic bath salts whisk away her non-existent stress. The scent of lavender now burns my nostrils. The sachets Matteo put in my bureau drawer were meant to be a kind gesture. Soothing. He couldn’t have known that particular scent would irritate me and I hadn’t been able to tell him. It was a week before I could rightfully form a sentence out loud. Each time I spoke it came out a sob. A lump of heartbreak. It came out as agony.
I can’t do anything about it though. I’m dependent on Matteo for everything. I can’t get up. I’m trapped in this bed. Tubes vining around me—from me. I’m stifled. Restless. Hungry. The blinding pain is nothing compared to the scope of my heartbreak. Gabriel left me for dead. My own husband. It was all a farce—our marriage, our love. Well, for him anyways. For me, I was just the naive woman who didn’t know. The woman who blindly loved her husband. The one who didn’t suspect a damn thing until it was far too late. The television repeats the same sad stories with no updates on the missing woman.
Me.
They show a sorrowful looking Gabriel. My parents. ‘Esteemed Biochemist’s Wife Gone Without a Trace.’ ‘No leads in the Celeste Fontaine disappearance; family distraught.’ Yes. He’s a great actor. My parents must be terrified. They should be. They’re stuck grieving with a wolf. A wolf who stabbed me in the back, literally.
So I’ve taken to writing. Matteo brought me a beautiful leather-bound journal. Endless pages to fill. I sit here and write. In an attempt to make sense of it, to see it clearly, I’m getting it all down. The scratching of my pen on paper like someone murmuring to me from far away. From underwater. The old me, telling a tale. History shared. I’ve decided that it will be cathartic. That it will be my therapy.
My stitches itch. The scar on my back won’t ever be pretty. Matteo did his best to stich me up—and thank God he did - but the collapsed lung made his rescue a little more intense. I can’t remember much. Just my face hitting the pavement. The sound of Gabriel’s shoes slapping the ground as he walked away and left me there. Knowing I wanted to scream. Knowing I was supposed to because somewhere Matteo was waiting for me. And knowing I couldn’t. I couldn’t get a damned sound out.
Matteo.
That man. He didn’t need me to scream. He was there, waiting. He came. He saved me from death. God those first few weeks were a nightmare. How he managed to move me to safety and save me I will never fully understand. He calls it adrenaline. I call it heroic. His veterinary training was invaluable given the state I was left in. Albeit animals are a different game, he managed to perform surgery on me, and save my life.
The day before Gabriel came to me under the Eiffel Tower Ma
tteo and I had set up a safe house. Just as a precaution really. We thought we were so clever. I don’t think either of us truly anticipated using it. We surely would have chosen better had we known.
~***~
Matteo thought back to those days. The days before the two of them evolved. He could scarcely believe the situation that had presented itself before them. He’d known Celeste for decades and it nearly brought him to his knees right alongside her when they’d discovered the truth. His relationship with Dr. B had taught him to be careful when it came to government agencies and his learned distrust had been their saving grace in the end.
~***~
1994 - JULY
Our studio flat is in the heart of Paris. Right under everyone’s noses—four weeks now. I exist. Sometimes it makes me laugh. I’m right here! I want to scream, shout it out. But I can’t. We are just three blocks from FogPharm. From Gabriel’s lab. From Monique. Obviously she hasn’t been in the news. Gabriel’s a smart man. He’s playing it smart right now . . . but everything has only just begun.
~***~
What torture those days had been. How hard it had been while she lay there unconscious. In serious condition, it had been hard to think past her in that room, to listen to anything more than the steady beep of her heart monitor. Matteo had burned both ends of the candle. Working still, playing the grief-stricken friend, keeping up appearances and listening diligently for any clues Gabriel might emit that would aid him in keeping Celeste safe. His heart had constricted with pain each time he and Celeste sat and watched the news. At her face, her horror, as she had listened and watched her insidious husband spew lies to reporters, to her parents. It had been the only way though. He couldn’t shelter her from the situation. If they were going to survive, and more importantly move on, she had to face it head on.
~***~
1994 - JULY
My heart is a lesion. A rotting organ. An open wound. I’m angry still. Furious really. That fury, it’s a seed, small and inconsequential but I can feel it has taken root. It’s growing. It makes me wonder what it will look like tomorrow, the day after. The knife in my heart seems to plunge deeper and deeper.
I have trouble sleeping, and it’s not just the pain now, it’s the nightmares. My nightmares are frequent. Most always the same. Pixelated at first. Gabriel coming for me. When he reaches me, I can’t scream. I try—I suck the air into my lungs and I propel it out—but there’s no sound, just a rasping. Sometimes, in my nightmares, I find myself smiling up at him. Pleading with my eyes for him to see the hurt that I harbor. To see what he caused. To see the state I’m in. To feel something about it. Something that will cause him anguish.
Matteo sits night after night in a ridiculous yellow armchair at the foot of my bed. The tubes prevent him from sleeping in the bed with me. I’ve told him to go home so many times it’s become a joke. Dressings need to be changed. Drainage bags emptied. He refuses to make me spend a night alone. He is the light in my darkness. My sanity. I feel like I’m going mad trying to make sense of my life. Trying to look back and decipher what were truths and what weren’t. There is no greater agony, nothing more tormenting than not knowing, which for me, will never stop. I will never know the extent of Gabriel’s betrayal. I will never know if any of our moments together were pure. They could have all been a lie, and it’s likely they were.
I’m so cold inside. Gabriel’s betrayal cut me down to the bone. I imagine him dancing all over my soul in my grainy dreams. Last night there was a thunder storm filled with cracks of thunder, a surge of lightning. I jackknifed upright. I gritted my teeth against the pain in my ribs. Matteo leapt from his seat. Rubbed my back. Whispered I’m safe. It was a dream. Something important had happened in my dream. I kept trying to hold on, but the more I tried, the further it disappeared. When I finally closed my eyes again, my head was filled with images of vicious deception. With the things I wanted, the things I thought I had and the lies they all turned out to be. What a joke.
I would never tell Teo, but I like the smell of his cigarette smoke. I used to have one with him, when we were young and out drinking now and again. It’s arousing to me, that smell; it reminds me of him only. He’s cut himself shaving today, there’s blood on his cheek covered with a tiny piece of toilet paper stuck to it. His hair is damp and he smells like soap and aftershave. It’s silly writing about him while he’s six feet from me but our bodies are so close here in this tiny studio, I can smell his scent, clean in this dingy room. Safe. Sound. Comforting.
~***~
Those days had been the worst for him. Bearing witness to her depression, her heartache, her desire for answers. Even still, Cece carried herself with grace. It hung from her shoulders always. Matteo pushed up from the chair and walked to the kitchen. He stretched. Filled a kettle and set it on the burner. After fixing himself a mug of tea he worked his way back into the living room, back to his chair. The house was quiet. Too quiet without his love there. He would have to be patient. This game was working its way to completion and once it was over they would be truly whole. Able to live in the light, no shadows in their hearts. He hadn’t known how to comfort her, how to ease her pain then. He’d never seen Celeste so conflicted. Her wounds had still been fresh, and then the anger that had been simmering in her blood finally began to seep out.
~***~
1994 - September
“Celeste Fontaine Still Missing”. I’ve been gone more than three months now, and the story has become sensational news. Light slips through the slats on the window blind. When the studio window is cracked open, I can smell the carbon monoxide rising from the street below. I hate this place.
Monique is showing. Really showing. She stood between Gabriel, wearing my parents’ company lab coat, and my parents in the latest press conference. The ache in my chest is almost unbearable. Maybe that was the moment when things started to go wrong for Gabriel and me, the moment he began to see us not as couple but as a potential family, complete with children. I couldn’t have them, and after that just the two of us would never be enough. I’m distracted. I don’t want to see her face, her protruding belly, her nearness to him. They called her a friend of the missing. She was not my friend.
Matteo visited my parents two days ago after visiting Dr. B’s lawyer to pick up the last of his signed estate documents. I was safe. Before I had gone to my house for the last time I had signed all the necessary paperwork for my inheritance from Dr. B. From my grandfather. Dr. B’s lawyer told Matteo about the fateful call he received from Dr. B. How his family had been with him in Spain and he didn’t know they’d gone out to eat. He didn’t know they were at the restaurant. Such a cruel fate. Free and clear now. I can be missing now and it’s okay because it’s all set up and waiting. I can be dead and I made it all mine. To disappear with. I made it Matteo’s. Everything.
My parents grumbled to Matteo that Gabriel was acting strange. Nervous. That he was talking of resigning from his position. Matteo played along and told them the pressure of my disappearance probably was too much for him. Lies. This studio I’m stuck in, we’re stuck in, is bare essentials. It’s got a layer of filth that no matter how hard Matteo scrubs doesn’t come off. It would take a grenade to clean this prison. There is one small window. He put the bed (and me) right near it, but it doesn’t help my feeling cooped up.
Some say that joy is greater than sorrow, and others say sorrow is greater; I say they are the same. When one is with you, the other is simply asleep within you. Sometimes I pity myself. Memories jolt me painfully. They hug me as I cry. I despise the power that lies in those wet drops that fall from my eyes. When that sadness surfaces in front of me, larger than any I have witnessed before, I realize that something is happening to me. That life has not forgotten me. That it holds me in its hand and will not let me fall. Learning to live is learning to let go. Unanswered questions are a part of life. Strange, that all that is, all that was, now isn’t. Perhaps gradually, someday far in the future, I will, without even noticing it, b
e content. Be open. Memories can tell me only what I once was. They cannot help me find what I must become.
I wonder what Matteo would do if I turned to face him and kissed his mouth. I watch him often. The way he looks at me. The way his lips move when he speaks. His gentleness with me. His devotion. There is a tension growing between us. Intensity. It’s sublime torture. The way he looks at me. The way he’s patient with me.
~***~
In hindsight, that had been the start of their union. Their friendship long established, those early days in hiding, in healing, had sparked something inside her. Something that wasn’t innocent or friendly. It was the start of furtive glances stolen, smiles that promised something more, innocent touches that burned brighter than the stars. The tension that kept rising, and the undeniable attraction grew more tender with each day that passed. He hadn’t known then of course, but reading her words took him back to a moment he’d long forgotten.
He’d cancelled his appointments for the day effectively calling in sick. Pushing through the studio door he surprised Celeste. Startled by the unexpected visit she let out a small puff of air that set Max on high alert at the end of her bed. The dog lay back down quickly.
“What are you doing here?” she asked wearing a grin. She lazily pet the dog. He sauntered to the kitchenette and set down a paper bag. He poked through the cabinet until he found a suitable cup for the flowers under his arm.
“I wanted to spend the day with you. I know you’re bored.” Setting the flowers into the water-filled cup he carried them to her nightstand and set them there.
“Did I do something to deserve your company?” she laughed before admiring the bouquet.
“No. A man can miss a woman can’t he?” He was nervous. His statement was more suggestive than friendly and he wasn’t sure how it would be received. He’d long been in love with Celeste. Since the class they’d met in so many years ago. She regarded him with a half-smile and nodded. Pulling a paperback from the paper bag he tossed it onto the bed. He watched as she reached toward her feet to retrieve the book. Picking up his own novel and a bunch of grapes he made his way back to where she lay. She scooted, as best she could to the left, allowing more room for him to sit comfortably next to her. Their shoulders had brushed together.
