“It would help if I knew your name,” I told her. “Your story.”
“You work for Fox,” she pointed out. “I don’t trust you. Not one bit.”
“He coerced me,” I corrected. “Not for the first time. Although, from the looks of it, you’ve known Fox longer than I have. How old is your son? Five?”
“Yup,” the boy said, holding up his fingers. “This many.”
I smiled at him. “What’s your name?”
“Valentin,” he announced, taking pride in the French pronunciation of it.
“Nice to meet you, Valentin,” I said, offering him my hand. “I’m Bridget.”
Valentin smiled shyly and shook his head. The woman kissed her son’s forehead. “Shh, honey. What did I tell you about talking to strangers?”
“She’s not your friend?” he asked.
The woman glared at me. “No.”
“I told you,” I said to her. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to warn you. Fox has this address.”
She squeezed Valentin closer to her side, smushing his face. “This house has been a safe space for nearly six years. Only one other person knows that we live here.”
“Yeah, that one other person passed your address on to me,” I told her. “Your mother, I’m guessing? The eyes match.”
The woman shut her eyes as if she could suddenly hide them from me. “I knew she’d cave one day.”
“It’s not hard when you have something that Fox wants,” I said. “What about you? What do you have that belongs to him?”
Her gaze flickered to Valentin, who munched happily on the cookie that his mother had given to me. A small shock pulsed through me, and I spilled tea over the lip of the mug.
“The boy?” I asked. “Why? He never cared for children, and I’m sure he has more than one.”
“It was different with us,” the woman said. “Fox wasn’t always like this. Ruthless and cold.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I scoffed. “He duped me too. I thought spending time with him would be a charming adventure. Who knows how many women he played that card with?”
“Did he ever marry any of the others?” she asked.
Immediately, my gaze dropped to her ring finger, but it was bare of adornment. “You’re married to Fox?”
“Eight years. It was the worst decision of my life.”
A breath whooshed out of my lungs. “That’s why he’s after you, isn’t it? You know him. You really know him. You’re sitting on every piece of information that could put him down for good, aren’t you?”
The woman lightly tapped Valentin on his shoulder. “Sweetheart, go upstairs and get your suitcase from the closet. It’s already packed. We’re going on an adventure.”
Valentin gave a little squeal of delight, shoved the rest of the cookie into his cheek like a chipmunk, and toddled up the stairs. I waited until he was out of sight to speak to his mother again, who had begun to fill a recyclable grocery bag with snacks and non-perishable food items.
“You can’t run from this,” I told her firmly, watching her pack. “He’s going to find you no matter where you end up.”
“I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you think,” she replied, stacking tuna cans in the bag. “We’ve had a few close calls, but we’ve always gotten away from him in the end.”
“And how long do you think that’s going to last, huh?” I demanded. “What kind of life is that for your son? Always running, always hiding. You can keep doing it, sure, or you can tell me what I need to know and maybe, just maybe, we could put a stop to all of this.”
She emptied a box of granola bars into the grocery bag then manically combed the kitchen for additional food items. When she passed me, I lightly took her hand.
“Please,” I said softly. “I’ve been running too, and I’m very, very tired.”
10
La Fin
Mathéo Renard.
Fox’s real name. It played over and over again in my head, carving itself into my brain. Fox had a name, a birthday, and personal details, just like everyone else in the world. He had done a good job burying them so deep that no one could unearth them, but Clemence Lavalier, his wife, remembered the man he was before he had adopted the single word moniker. She had pictures, old identification cards, and a copy of his birth certificate. She had stories of the bakery he ran for his father before a freak fire burned the place to the ground, taking his father with it. She had the home videos of Valentin’s birth, in which Mathéo Renard held his newborn son for all of ten seconds before he passed the baby off to a nurse and fled from the room. She had the memories of the start of his new business, the secrecy around it, the young girls who wandered in and out of their house in Paris. And finally, when she confronted Fox and he replied with a blow to her head, she had nothing but Valentin. She took the baby and flew back to her childhood home in Louisiana, where she thought she would be safe with her mother. Little did she know that Fox could get his claws in anyone.
The cab driver, bless his heart, had not left. As he drove me back to Fox’s mansion, I looked up at the inky dark sky. A loud hum filled my mind. I reached into it, separating a thread of clarity from the static.
Holly?
For a moment, there was no reply. Then: Bridget! I’ve been trying to get a hold of you this entire week. Are you okay?
Holly’s voice, even if it was only in my head, felt like a soothing bath after a cold day in the snow. Hanging in there.
I’ve been working with Mac, she said. We’ve been digging up a ton of stuff on Fox. Everything links together. Kidnappings, offshore bank accounts, girls being arrested for prostitution in the Raleigh area. The only problem is that, while we can prove that all of these things are connected, we can’t manage to connect them directly to Fox. Something’s missing, you know?
Like his real name?
Pshh. Yeah. That’d be great if we had that. I don’t think we’re that lucky—
It’s Mathéo Renard.
Silence fell. I thought I’d lost Holly in the brain waves between us. It had happened before, usually when one of us was hurt or distracted, but in this instance, I needed Holly to focus on our connection.
Holly?
Still here. Are you sure?
I’m positive. He has a wife and a son. Clemence and Valentin Lavalier. I met them. Clemence told me everything.
I have to go, Holly said abruptly.
Wait, Holly!
Do you trust me? she asked.
Of course.
Then I have to go. Stay alive, Bridget, and don’t close your mind.
What—?
But she was gone already, lost in the ether. I sighed and slumped against the smelly seat of the taxi cab. At least when I had been looking for Holly, I had tried to keep her up to date on my progress. Not knowing what Mac and Holly were doing back in Belle Dame was torture.
I had the cab driver drop me off a few blocks from the plantation house, just in case the engine woke up Fox. I crept into the yard the same way I’d gotten out, by scaling the ivy on the towering gates. The bigger problem was getting back into the house. The window to my bedroom was not accessible from the ground. There were no trees or ivy or even a drainage pipe. It was nothing but smooth white paint from the grass to the second floor. I had no choice but to try the doors. The front, as I expected, was locked, so I rounded the house to the backyard, crouching low beneath the windows of the first floor, and tried the back door. Miraculously, it swung open. I took off my shoes and carried them as I tiptoed inside, my slippered feet silent against the marble floors.
“Did you think I would not notice that you had left?”
I dropped the shoes in surprise, and they landed with a sharp clatter. Fox sat on the last step of the staircase, his hair shimmering silver in the moonlight. I should have known that it would not be so easy to get back inside. He’d left the back door open for me. A trap.
He rose from his seat, towering over me at his full height. He wore not
hing but a pair of black silk pants. The muscles of his chest flexed as he clenched his fists at his side. A vein protruded from his neck. He was scariest like this, silent and deadly.
“Did you think that I would not take precautions to prevent you from betraying me?” he went on, his voice quiet and smooth. As quick as a snake, he lashed out, grabbed a handful of my hair, and tilted my head back. His fingers caressed the skin behind my ear.
“Fox—”
“During your first night here, I injected you with a microchip,” he hissed, his hot breath washing across my neck. “So that I would know where you were at all times.”
“I am not a dog,” I growled.
“But you bite and bark like one,” he snapped back. “Admit it, Brigitte. You went to that address, didn’t you? Did you go inside? Did you find my secret?”
“Yeah, your wife says hi.”
His fingers tightened in my hair and he snapped my head back. “What did you tell her?”
My teeth clenched together as I felt several strands separate from my scalp. “That you were coming for her and Valentin.”
An inhuman roar ripped from Fox’s throat. He threw me across the foyer, and I landed with a smack against the polished marble. I groaned, clutching the new ache in my hip. Fox screamed in French, spit flying from his mouth, tendons taut, his eyes red with fury. A string of swear words poured from his mouth as he called me every name in the book. He shouted instructions too, but the translation got lost in his wrath. I backed away, sliding across the floor, until I was flush against the wall of the foyer, but Fox strode over to me. I flinched as he dragged me to stand.
“Let’s go,” he said in English, calming himself long enough to make the words comprehensible. “Get in the car. We’re going back to that house. I will not let them escape through the cracks again. Move!”
The automated sedan pushed a hundred miles an hour as we flew across the interstate. I made myself small in the passenger seat, my body angled toward Fox in case he breached the space between us. He stared straight ahead through the windshield for the entire ride, muttering to himself in rapid-fire French. I had never seen him like this before, so unhinged and falling apart.
When we arrived at Clemence’s house, the place was dark. Fox kicked open his door and snarled, “Stay in the car.”
Not a chance. We were nearing the end of the game, and I already knew that Fox wouldn’t find what he was looking for at the house. His anger now was nothing to what it would be in a few minutes. As soon as he walked up to the front porch, I quietly opened the passenger door, slipped out, and sprinted across the neighbor’s lawn. At the worst possible moment, the sprinklers turned on, and Fox glanced over his shoulder at the sound of water falling.
I put on a burst of speed. My heart pounded, threatening to burst out of my chest. Fox stole the space between us. My leftover athletic ability was no match for his long legs. He tackled me four doors down from Clemence’s house, and I fell into the wet grass.
“Help!” I screamed, hoping to wake the neighbors.
Fox’s hands encircled my throat and squeezed, cutting off my airway. “They’ve already left, haven’t they? Where did they go? Where did they go?”
My eyes bulged and watered as his fingers tightened. I choked, coughing, and sprayed Fox with spit. He didn’t care.
“Listen closely,” he whispered. “I have only loved one woman in my entire life, and it wasn’t you, Brigitte Dubois. I will kill you, right here, right now, and I will not mourn your death. Now tell me, where is my wife?”
“The cabin,” I gasped. Fox lessened his hold on me and allowed me to take a rasping breath. “She said something about a cabin in the woods. Some campground north of here.”
Fox hauled me up from the grass, carried me back to the car, and threw me into the passenger seat. Then he got in on his side, pressed the button to turn on the engine, and reversed out of the driveway, all without saying a word. We sped through the suburbs and cleared the city within the hour. All the while, I watched Fox and kept the mental line to Holly open in my head. We plunged into the woods, traversing a two-lane road at dangerous speeds, but the car arrived at the entrance to the campgrounds without issue. Fox had been here before. It was another thirty minutes to the cabin. As the minutes inched by, my head ached as I tried to come up with a plan. Run. Hide. Survive. That was all I had.
When the car pulled up to the cabin, a cozy wooden structure with red and green plaid curtains on the windows, I made a break for the front door. The key, as Clemence had told me, was hidden in crevice near the doorbell, so I fished it out, unlocked the front door, and barreled inside. I threw the deadbolt into place, watching through the window as Fox calmly exited the car and approached the front door. The windows. He could easily break a window to get in. I dragged a chair into the bathroom with me, shut the door, and wedged the chair under the knob. As long as Fox didn’t break down the door, I was safe. The small window in the shower was nowhere near big enough for him to fit through.
Glass shattered in the main room as Fox let himself in. I heard the deadbolt slide out of place. He must’ve broken the window closest to the door and reached in to unlock it. The door squeaked open and Fox’s heavy footsteps fell across the wood floor.
“That was a dirty trick, Brigitte,” he said, his voice alarmingly quiet. “Did you plan it with Clemence? She was the only one who knew about this place. We had our honeymoon here. It was simple. Rustic. She thought it was romantic. I thought it was shit. A shack in the woods when we could have had a beautiful room in Paris.” His footsteps stopped outside the bathroom door. The handle jiggled. “You cannot hide in there forever. Eventually, you will need to eat.”
When I didn’t reply, his footsteps faded from the door. The couch groaned as he sat down. The television clicked on, and Fox flipped aimlessly through the channels. I sat on the edge of the bathtub, wondering what he was up to. Just an hour ago, he had been ready to kill me for letting Clemence and Valentin get a head start. I had expected more of a fight from him when he realized that the cabin was empty too. Instead, he seemed to be rethinking his strategy.
The TV volume crescendoed. Fox had stopped to watch a news report.
“Today’s top story is still developing,” the invisible newscaster reported. “Local authorities have recently made a breakthrough in a case that involved a string of kidnappings and reports of an illegal human trafficking ring. An anonymous source informed police that the suspect, who has remained expertly aloof for a number of years, is actually Mathéo Renard from Paris, France. Renard is reportedly responsible for a number of crimes that occurred over the last ten years in several different countries. Until now—”
With a loud crash, the television cut off, and I highly suspected that Fox had put his foot through it. A thunderous bellow shook the walls of the cabin, rattling the window in the shower. I braced myself against the bathtub, but he did not attempt to break down the door as I expected. I listened closely to the silence on the other side of the wall and picked up the faint sound of a phone ringing through to another line.
“Come on,” Fox muttered. “Pick up, Martin.”
The ringing stopped and a pre-recorded message told Fox to leave a voicemail. He hung up and tried another number. No luck. He tried a third. Silence. Satisfaction flooded through me as his frustration mounted. He was calling all of the men he had forced into working for him, but they had already seen the news. They weren’t answering for a reason. They would not go down for Fox’s crimes. They would not follow him into oblivion a second time. The thought put a grin on my face.
I glanced up at the window. It was tiny, but there was a chance that I could get through it. All I needed was a head start. It was dark, and the woods were thick, and if I could just get far enough away from the cabin, I had a shot at losing Fox in the night. I didn’t hesitate. This was my only shot, while he was still distracted by the loss of loyalty. I stepped up onto the edge of the bathtub, unlocked the window, and pushed. I
t was rusted shut. With a grunt, I forced all of my weight against it. The hinges gave way noisily as it popped open. I held my breath, listening, but all was silent in the living room. Using the soap dish as a foothold, I hoisted myself up. My shoulders threatened to sabotage me, but I forced them through the window. The edges, rough with peeling paint and the remnants of the rusty hinges, tore through my t-shirt and scraped my skin. I ignored the dull ache, feeding my body through the escape route like a particularly wily piece of thread through a needle. I dropped headfirst to the ground on the other side, planting my hands to take the brunt of my weight. My wrists buckled but held, so I got to my feet and raced into the trees without looking back.
I was no stranger to traversing unknown areas. Years of venturing around the world prepared me for that. The difference was that then, I had carried a backpack with the bare essentials of living. Flashlight, multitool, dehydrated foods, and a water canteen. It was enough to keep me going for a couple of days, at least until I found civilization again. Now, I had nothing. No flashlight. No compass. The moonlight couldn’t penetrate the thick leaves of the trees, and I couldn’t see the stars above to check my direction. That alone should have frightened me. I was lost and alone in the middle of nowhere with no food, no water, and no idea how to get out of my predicament. But that wasn’t half as scary as knowing that Fox was still out there somewhere.
I jogged aimlessly along in a steady, straight line, thinking that I’d hit another cabin or a road eventually. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Twigs snapped under my shoes. Animals rustled in the darkness as I loped by, diving back into their homes. Grasshoppers chirped and lightning bugs glowed like fleeting golden orbs. The world was silent and deafening all at once. I leapt over a large boulder, rounded the enormous trunk of a towering poplar tree, and ran smack into someone’s chest.
“Did you miss me?” Fox snarled, shining a flashlight into my eyes.
I backed away, my fingers flying up to the space behind my ear. I felt a tiny lump there. “The microchip. Goddamn it.”
“It’s over, Brigitte,” he said. I matched his every move. When he stepped toward me, I stepped back until my heels met the poplar behind me. “Everything. It’s all over. You let my wife and son escape. You gave the police my real name. You ruined everything. Again.”
Little Girl Lost [Book 2] Page 15
