“To the police station, please,” I called to the driver as I rested my throbbing head against the window. I had no other choice but to bring the wedding photograph to Detective Duval. Show him the earrings in the picture and tell him about the note and how Antoine had bolted from his office the minute he’d seen it.
Besides, the police station was the only place I would be safe at this point.
A grunt sounded from the taxi driver as he sped through a stop sign and left the hospital in a rainy haze behind us. He weaved in and out of traffic, a wild runaway train with no brakes. Why was he going so fast?
My stomach lurched from the rapid stops and starts, the erratic turns and jerks we made through the narrow city streets.
I reached forward and wrapped my hands around the front seat so I could lean closer to the driver and ask him to slow down, but I stopped when a solid mass brushed against my fingertips.
It felt like clothing, and when I reached my hands around just a little bit farther, tilting my head to the side to see what exactly my hands were touching, I had to stifle my scream.
A thin woman sat slumped over in the passenger seat, her head and neck completely curled down over her chest, her body still warm but motionless.
It was when I noticed her icy profile and her high cheekbones that the whimper escaped my lips.
It was Véronique.
I yanked my trembling hands back as the car made a sharp turn into a tiny alley. The driver slammed on the brakes and flipped his face around to give me a full view.
When his wicked black gaze met mine, the full-blown panic set in and the air refused to move in and out of my constricted lungs.
Underneath the black top hat he was wearing, the man’s slick black hair protruded down toward his black shirt collar, and his jet-black eyes, void of kindness or humanity, bored into me. Then his top lip, adorned with a jagged scar, curled up into a snarl.
The man driving the car looked like the man who’d followed me to François’s apartment.
It was Thomas. Thomas Riley was driving this car.
And he’d already killed Véronique.
As this realization set in, my entire body began to shake from the inside out. But when I tried to move, to scream, to reach for the car handle, my body wouldn’t budge, my voice wouldn’t come out. It was exactly like the nightmares I’d had as a little girl, after I’d witnessed my father’s murder, when the man in the black mask had been chasing me, and every time I screamed, no sound would come out. Here, in the car, I was just like that little girl—glued to the seat and paralyzed with pure terror.
Thomas didn’t move or speak either as he fixed his gaze on me, his jaw locked, his silence more powerful than any words he could possibly say.
If I made one move to get out of this car, he would stop me.
He would kill me.
But as I thought of my future baby, I knew I couldn’t let that happen. I had to get out of here. I had to at least try.
Just as I reached for the handle, the car door flew open from the outside. I squinted as a blast of freezing rain blew into my eyes, but when I blinked them open to see who had opened the door, a cool, hard object smacked me upside the head. I winced as my body was shoved farther into the car, and then another blow came hard and fast, this time to the other side of my face.
I vaguely heard the slamming of a car door and felt us moving again as I fluttered my eyes open and closed, willing myself to stay conscious, to fight back.
“Thomas,” I managed to whisper. “Please, no. No, Thomas, no.”
But the pounding in my skull kept my eyes closed, and my body remained limp on the seat.
And just before I passed out completely, a woman’s voice laced through the air and into my consciousness.
Her tone was sinister, evil, making my blood curl.
“You stupid bitch,” she growled. “You’re even dumber than I thought.”
And with that, she dealt me one final blow to the head, and I was out cold.
THIRTY
The woman’s threatening voice woke me from my sleep, her broken words weaving in and out of my consciousness.
Antoine. The police. Dump her body.
What was going on?
My arms were twisted behind my back, my wrists bound together, my eyes plastered shut. A warm drop of liquid oozed down the side of my face and over a patch of raw skin. I was too dazed to let out a reaction to the burning I felt as the wound absorbed the wetness.
She kept talking. Barking orders.
How did I know that voice—that soulless, lifeless voice?
“Park behind the building and don’t leave until you see that we’ve gotten in without any problems.”
I struggled to drag my eyes open but a fierce pain shot through my jaw, making me wince. I tried to suck in a breath, but the throbbing intensified, ruthless and unrelenting, preventing all air from moving in or out, stopping my eyes from opening to see what in the hell was going on.
“Perfect timing,” the woman whispered in my ear as she slipped something onto the bridge of my nose and over my ears. Then I felt a cold, firm object press into the side of my stomach as the car jerked to the side.
“Claudia,” she sang into my ear. “Oh, Claudia. It’s time to wake up.”
I forced my eyelids open as her menacing tone rang in my ears, the pain in my head so strong I felt like I might throw up.
How did she know my name? How did she know I was Claudia?
When my eyes finally batted open, the scene before me was a blurry, dark haze.
Wondering why it seemed as if a black screen had been pulled over my eyes, I felt the rigid object push farther into my side.
“When the car stops, you’re going to come with me. And you won’t say a word to anyone. If you do, you’re dead. Understand?”
“Who…who are you?” I sputtered as my vision settled and I made out the figure of a woman through the dark shades.
She let out a deep, sinister laugh. “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other, but for now, you’ll keep your mouth shut and come with me.” She dug her fingernails into my arm and continued to press the cool, cylinder-shaped object into my side, and despite the dizziness, the nausea, and the throbbing, my understanding of what was going on finally began to kick in.
It was a gun.
This woman, whose voice I recognized but couldn’t quite place, was holding a gun to my side.
And it was then that I remembered what had happened before I’d passed out.
Thomas.
Thomas had been driving the car. He’d killed Véronique, and then he’d taken me. And just as I had tried to escape, this woman had jumped into the car and bludgeoned me over the head.
God only knew how much time had passed since I’d been out or where they were taking me.
Was Thomas still in the car? And who was this woman?
I lifted my chin off my chest and tried to look toward the front seat to see Thomas, but all I could make out were dim, shifting shadows. The rain still poured down outside, puddles spraying the side of the car.
“Alexandre, you’re clear on the plan?” she barked to the front.
Alexandre?
A grunt traveled back from the front seat. Then a voice. “You’re on your own after this. Don’t forget to clean up your mess, and don’t come crying to me when you get caught.” As his bitter tone traveled through my ears, chills of terror weaved down my spine.
That wasn’t the same voice I’d heard on the bridge or backstage before the show.
She let out a low, grumbling laugh. “I thought you knew me better than that, Alexandre. As long as you don’t fuck up, I won’t get caught. Pick up the pace, will you? We don’t have much time before Antoine will come looking for his latest slut.”
She spat the word slut into my face, her saliva landing right inside the slice on my cheek.
She knew Antoine.
Was she…could she be the woman from the photograph? Antoine’
s bride? The one with a crazy look in her eye and a pair of dangly diamond earrings?
And I’d been sure the man driving the car was Thomas. But his voice was different. And she’d clearly called him Alexandre.
Since I couldn’t see the driver’s face anymore, the front seat a blurry dark shadow blocking his true identity and mocking me in the process, I closed my eyes and called to memory the face that had glared at me earlier in the car, before Megabitch had taken over.
I easily recalled his coal-black eyes, his slick black hair underneath the black top hat, and his fixed, defined jawline. They were the exact same features of the man who’d followed me to François’s apartment only yesterday, the man who, at the time, I’d been sure was Thomas.
But when I remembered the way the driver had snarled at me in the car earlier, like a dog that would bite my head off if I so much as made a sound, something struck me. He had a scar—a crooked, long scar that jutted out above his lip.
And in the photo I’d found of me and Thomas—the photo I’d stared at for close to an hour before bed that night, memorizing every line, every crevice of his face—I hadn’t seen a scar. Despite the way his possessive gaze had chilled me to the bone, I remembered thinking that Thomas’s face was flawless, even strangely handsome in its iciness. But in that photo, Thomas definitely did not have a scar.
Which meant that while the man sitting in front of me held a striking resemblance to Thomas, he wasn’t Thomas after all. He was someone called Alexandre, and just like me, I sensed that he was at the mercy of this merciless woman.
My eyes shot open once more as the car came to an abrupt halt and the woman tightened her death grip on my arm. I tensed my muscles, refusing to move.
But with my head pounding so hard it was making me dizzy, my injured jaw screaming in pain, and my blurry vision threatening to suck me into a black tunnel, my body finally gave in to her violent pulls and tugs.
“Get out of the car,” she growled, “and come with me.”
Jabbing the gun into my ribs, she wrapped her other arm around my waist and hoisted me up and out of the car. I blinked my eyes as the rain showered down on us, making it even harder for me to see through what I now realized were a large pair of sunglasses.
“Where are you taking me?” I cried out in panic. “Are you…are you Antoine’s wife?”
I wriggled my hands behind my back, the rope that bound them together digging into the skin on my bony wrists.
“Don’t say another fucking word,” she hissed over the sound of the pouring rain as she yanked me forward.
I walked with her, my heels sliding on the wet sidewalk, my heart now pounding louder than the pain throbbing through my face and head.
This was out of control. Where was she taking me? Someone had to help me. Someone would see us. Someone would see her shoving a gun into my side, my hands tied behind my back. But as the wind whipped around us, blowing sheets of rain into the wounds on my face and completely obstructing my vision, I felt my long peacoat draped around me, which meant that even if anyone saw us through this wicked storm, they wouldn’t see my hands tied behind my back, nor the gun at my side.
I couldn’t count on anyone else to help me. I had to get out of this on my own. I had to escape.
But suddenly the rain stopped pelting me and what little light there’d been disappeared.
“I…I can’t see,” I started, but before I could finish my sentence, her arm tightened around my waist and she shoved the gun deeper into my side.
“That’s the point, you stupid bitch. Shut up and keep walking.”
I put one foot in front of the other, trying to keep up with her rapid pace as I tried to figure out why her threatening voice sounded so familiar. But after walking down some sort of long hallway, I stepped onto something soft and cushy and the scent of fresh flowers drifted past my nose, causing my thoughts to halt. Light returned to my vision, and as I peeked upward, I could see the outline of a chandelier. I blinked my eyes as it shimmered above me, and as my heels dug into the soft carpet, I felt that unmistakable jolt of déjà-vu.
The flowery scent, the chandeliers, the soft carpet, her hand digging into my waist.
I’d smelled, seen, felt all of this before.
Her hand left my waist while the gun remained firmly pointed into my side, and as I heard a key turning in a lock, another flash of déjà-vu rattled me.
“Move,” the woman barked in my ear as she shoved the sunglasses back up my face and pushed me forward into the apartment, snapping me from the memory dying to break through.
She slammed me against the wall and held me there as she let out a disturbing cackle and bolted the door behind her.
Her gun traced my body and finally landed on my temple.
The dizziness I’d felt from the blows she’d dealt me earlier vanished. The haze lifted. Blood coursed through my veins at warp speed as my senses jolted into overdrive.
Madame Bouchard had said I would know when the moment had arrived…the moment where I would have the opportunity to change my entire ill-fated life course.
It was here. My moment.
But as the woman who held a gun to my head ripped the sunglasses from my face and finally graced me with the chance to gaze into her silvery-black eyes, I realized that the one thing I did not know was how I would stop Antoine’s wife from killing me.
THIRTY-ONE
“Claudia,” she sang in a low, eerie tone as her cool breath grazed over my face, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “You’re much more appealing to the eye as Ruby. It’s a shame you won’t get to enjoy this body much longer…or any body, for that matter.” She laughed again, her throaty, deranged cackle making the knot in my stomach spread upward and lodge firmly in my chest.
That wild, unhinged look in her eyes made me remember her, but it wasn’t just from the wedding photograph. It was from my life as Claudia. But just as I felt the memory flittering through my brain, she flipped me around, pushed me into the living room, and shoved me onto the floor, where my head banged up against the wall.
Pain seared through my face, my wrists, my arms, and my head. A pair of black leather boots paced back and forth in front of me, their thin heels piercing the hardwood floor with each purposeful step, the sound like a hammer to my already throbbing temples.
The evil woman’s tangled, jet-black hair shot all the way down her back while heavy raindrops rolled off the uneven ends, dripping down her slick, black trench coat. Adorning her pale, bony neck was a bloodred scarf that had been matched to perfection with the color of her lipstick, and that contrasted with her snow-white complexion. As she flashed her silvery-black eyes at me once more, she looked like a vampire, hungry and ready to strike.
“Tell me your name.” My weak, hoarse voice struggled its way out, and I immediately wished I’d sounded stronger, more daring and more confident.
She ignored my question and continued pacing, her steps becoming heavier, angrier as she carelessly waved the gun around like a child would a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
But as I took in that head of Medusa hair, those compassionless eyes, those crimson lips, and those long, stringy legs, the memory I had of her came soaring into my brain.
Those features belonged to someone I’d definitely seen before in my life as Claudia.
It was uncanny. They looked almost identical.
And as I blinked my eyes to make sure I wasn’t imagining the similarities, Madame Bouchard’s words rushed back to me.
When an impure soul is reincarnated, they do not change much. There is little to no growth; usually, there is negative growth. Their appearance may be similar, and they will repeat the same ill-motivated actions in each subsequent life, thereby interfering with and ruining the pure intentions and actions of a good soul, like you.
I combed my eyes up and down her body once more, noticing her wispy, thin figure and her ice-cold features—the same chilly features she’d flaunted on the cover of People magazine, with her fiancé,
Édouard.
It was Solange. Solange Raspail.
She paced before me in an even more hauntingly beautiful body than the one she would inhabit in the future, but her demeanor was colder now, more threatening.
Every time I’d looked at the cover of the People magazine that had traveled back in time with me, I’d known in my gut that something was off about that woman. And now, as I looked her dead in the eye, I knew I’d been right all along. I should’ve listened to my instincts. It was just that at the time, I’d had no idea how accurate they could be.
“Solange,” I called out, my voice steady and firm, holding no trace of the fear and weakness I’d demonstrated earlier.
A disturbing grin spread across her thin, red lips as she stopped pacing and turned to face me. She positioned one manicured hand on her hip, the other still waving the gun around like a toy.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said, a hint of hysteria peeking out behind her cool façade.
She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow as she bore down on me with her menacing glare. “You,” she spat. “I knew you were in love with him the minute I saw you gazing up at him with those big, pathetic puppy-dog eyes at the dance studio.” She took a step closer to me, pointing the barrel of the gun right at my face, her eyes suddenly wide and frantic.
“But who are you? You’re nobody. I told myself I was crazy to think Édouard would have eyes for you. To think that my attractive, accomplished fiancé would ever find someone as pathetic as you beautiful. You were just his dance partner, Claudia, and you’ll never be anything more.”
I suppressed the panic that coursed through my body, forced myself to forget about the pain surging through my head, and looked her straight in the eye. “Solange, there was never anything going on between me and Édouard. You’re his fiancée. You are the one he loves.” But as the words exited my mouth, I thought of the way Édouard had looked at me in the dance studio, just a few nights ago. I remembered the way his hand had rested on my waist, so comfortable, like it belonged there. And every time we’d danced together, something magical happened. And Édouard had felt it too, I was sure of it.
Dancing with Paris (A Paris Time Travel Romance) Page 24
