He comes to a stop in the middle of the path and presses his palms to his forehead. “Stop saying things like that,” he says quietly. “You are going to make it. We are going to figure this out.”
It’s the least reassuring response he could give. It tells me that, much like Rose’s father, he cares so much about my outcome he can’t put anything else ahead of it, at least not right now.
We keep walking and exit the path at the Tuileries. Rodin’s The Kiss stands outside. My favorite sculpture of all time, out in the open as if it’s nothing special.
“I can’t believe it’s just sitting here, like any old thing,” I whisper, as if the shock of it has stolen the air from my throat. I close my eyes for a moment, overwhelmed. Paris is like a life-size jewel box, and I’m standing in the middle of it all with the only person in the whole world I want to be with. How can there be this many wonderful things in the world? Nick, Paris, children—it would be too much good fortune for anyone.
“You alright?” he asks, his breath against my neck.
I swallow and nod, feeling a little choked up and a little terrified. “It’s perfect,” I reply.
“It’s one of my favorites,” he says, assuming I meant the statue when I really meant this, all of it. It is the high point, the moment when so much good fortune falls upon you at once that you know nothing else can ever match it.
Which reminds me it’s all going to come to an end. Soon.
28
NICK
The call comes that afternoon, just after we’re back from the Louvre.
Cecelia gives me an address. “You should hurry,” she adds before she hangs up.
I lunge across the room for my shoes and Quinn jumps to her feet. “Was that her?”
“Yes. And you’re not coming,” I snap, shoving my wallet into my pocket.
She ignores me as she pulls her sneakers on. “You don’t make the rules. I’m here and we’re in this together.”
I groan. I should have realized this would be a fight. “Not this, we’re not. She tried to kill you, Quinn, and if you’re there I’m going to be so worried about protecting you I won’t be able to focus on anything else.”
“At least tell me where you’re going,” she demands.
“You know I’m not doing that. You’ll give me 15 minutes and then start to worry and come after me.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “You know I could just follow you right now.”
I gently push her to the bed and kneel in front of her. My lips graze her forehead and then her belly. “You have someone to protect. Maybe two someones. I need you to be safe, and this is going to be fine. It’s a conversation, nothing more.”
Her shoulders sag in unwilling agreement. In truth, I’m not sure it will just be a conversation. I press my lips to the top of Quinn’s head, and hold them there, just a moment longer than I should. I hope to God it’s not the last time I ever do it.
* * *
I give the driver the address and he heads back toward the Champs-Élysées. I have no idea if this is going to be a polite visit or an altercation. Cecelia’s words—killing her would solve everything—echo in my head. It’s funny how the oath I swore about doing no harm becomes meaningless when Quinn’s life is on the line.
We cross the Pont des Arts, heading toward the left bank. There’s some legend about the bridge—lovers putting a lock on the bridge and throwing the key into the Seine. Quinn and I didn’t do it. I’m wondering now if we’ll ever get a chance, if doing it would have brought us some extra hint of luck we now don’t have.
We arrive in a section of town that’s seen better days. While most of Paris is old and charming, the houses here are only old, minus the charm. Their brick facades are crumbling and several of them lean precipitously to the right, one good storm away from annihilation. We stop in front of a stone structure that is easily 300 years old if not more. Given how well Sarah lives in Georgetown, I’m hard pressed to imagine this is where she stays in Paris. Even the driver seems to wonder if we’re in the right place. “Ici?” he asks, with a single brow arched.
I nod and slide from the car, watching him speed off. With a single deep breath, I knock on the door. No one comes. I knock again, then try the handle. The door swings open into an entryway with a large kitchen just past it. The remains of breakfast sit on the counter—a pot of jam, a loaf of bread with the serrated knife still lodged inside it—almost as if whoever was here ran out in a panic, which doesn’t bode well.
I’m trying to decide if I should wait outside or explore the house for clues when I hear a door shut below me. Someone is in the basement. Someone who may be hiding from me. I pull the knife from the bread, because this is clearly not going to be a friendly conversation, and go to the basement stairs.
She will have heard me creaking around up here so it’s not as if I can surprise her, but if she’s lurking near the bottom of the stairs in the dark she could sure as fuck surprise me. I flip on the light.
The floorboards creak underfoot as I descend into a basement straight out of every horror movie ever made: poorly lit, water dripping, crammed with dusty furniture strewn with cobwebs. “Hello?” I call. “Sarah? I don’t want to fight with you. I just have questions.”
I walk toward the back of the basement, to a second door. I brace myself as I reach for the knob, and the moment I do, feet skitter, flying up the stairs. There’s an almost childish giggle as the basement door slams shut. I run up the stairs after her, not at all surprised to find the door is locked from the outside. Even when I throw my shoulder against it, it does not give.
I will need to call the police for help since I refuse to drag Quinn into this mess, and if they don’t arrest me for breaking and entering…what then? How the fuck am I going to find Sarah if she doesn’t want to be found? If she can disappear on a whim?
I pick up my phone and dial. Silence greets me: I have no signal.
The trap Quinn warned me about—I see it now. This was never about me meeting Sarah. It was about Sarah getting Quinn alone.
29
QUINN
Nick was right. Only twenty minutes have passed and I’m going crazy. If he’d given me the address I’d already be there, banging on the door. I text him but there is no answer, so I pace the room, taking deep breaths that don’t help in any way, shape, or form.
I finish dressing, ready to leap into action. But what action can I even take? I should have forced him to give me the address. I should have followed him. I sink onto the edge of the bed and bury my head in my hands, tug my hair in frustration. What if he doesn’t return?
It’s at the 45-minute mark that I finally hear the chime of a text. I pounce at my phone, laying on the bed. It is from an unknown number.
Your boyfriend needs help.
And then there is a video. A doorway, and someone pounding on it from the other side. A stream of profanity from a voice that is unmistakably Nick’s.
I can almost hear the sound of Sarah’s trap slamming shut. She played us both like clockwork. She knew he’d be desperate enough to do anything to save me, and I’d be desperate enough to do anything to save him. And we walked right into it like fucking toddlers. The wise thing, of course, would be for me to not take the next step, not go wherever she directs me. I already know I won’t be doing the wise thing. I just can’t.
I ask where he is and after a single, labored minute, the reply finally comes: 25 Avenue Montaigne. If you call the police, I will have no reason not to kill him. And as you must realize by now, I’ll never be caught.
I scramble to my feet. I know he asked me to stay. I know he wanted me to protect our child. But if only one of us is going to survive this trip to France, it needs to be him.
I’m unnervingly calm as I climb into the back of the car, because it’s not Nick she wants, it’s me. I have no illusions about surviving the day, but right now it just doesn’t matter, and there’s something freeing in the fact that I care so much about his outcome t
hat I’ve stopped caring about my own.
We fly past the Seine, past all the wonders I gawked at yesterday, never dreaming my time here would be so fleeting. The phone rings—my mother again. Her timing couldn’t be worse, and yet…do I really think I’m making it out of this place alive? It’s me Sarah wants, not Nick. And my mother is back home in Pennsylvania, clueless. I’ll never have told her goodbye.
I pick the phone up. “Hi, Mom,” I say, swallowing down my sadness. We were very different people, and yes—maybe her fear of what I really am set me back—but she loved me the best way she knew. She deserves better than to be left alone in the world.
“I have to tell you something,” she says, her voice quavery. “It’s something I should have told you a long time ago.”
“Mom, I’m so sorry but this might not be the best time. Sarah’s causing trouble and it’s sort of an emergency.”
“She isn’t your aunt,” my mother says breathlessly, as if trying to expel the words before I can hang up the phone. “You were adopted.”
For a moment I don’t understand what she’s saying. “What?”
“You were adopted,” she weeps. “I-I wanted to tell you so many times but your father said no.”
“But…that’s not possible. I’ve seen my birth certificate.” Even as I say the words though, things are clicking into place…that I tan while my parents both burned. Their stick-straight hair versus my waves. The green eyes when theirs were both brown. I was different in so many ways. I just tried not to see it.
“We faked it,” my mother whispers. “Someone gave you to your father and he brought you home. We had no paperwork, nothing. We were scared the state would take you from us since we didn’t do it all the right way.”
“Who gave me to him?” I demand.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I asked him so many times and he wouldn’t say. He told me you were our miracle and that there were some things you don’t question. So I let it go.”
That dream I had, about a version of my mother who time traveled…was that person my birth mother? Did she raise me once? I felt, in that dream, as if she loved me. As if I was her entire world. Which makes me wonder: did she give me up when my timeline was reset, or did someone take me from her? Under normal circumstances I’d need an hour or a day or a decade to unpack this, but the driver is pulling over, and the truth is it hardly matters. Not when Nick’s life is in the balance. “I’m here, Mom. I really have to go. But thank you…for everything. I love you.”
I hang up before she can question me. I just hope my final words were enough.
I climb out of the car, shocked to find I’m surrounded by mansions. And the biggest one of all says 25 Avenue Montaigne on a brass plaque outside its open gates.
I swallow hard and move toward it. The building is intimidating, formidable, older than any building we have at home. It makes no sense that I’ve been led here, and it worries me that it feels…familiar. Is this where another of my lives ended too?
There’s a pounding at my temples I try hard to ignore as I walk through the wrought iron gates, half expecting to be tackled by security and somewhat surprised to make it to the front door unscathed. If Sarah is not a blood relative, then why the hell is she doing this? How would she even know I can, theoretically, time travel? Things make even less sense than ever, but there’s not a doubt in my mind she’s the one who took me from my birth parents.
My hand raises to knock, but I think better of it. I’m not stupid…I know I’m walking into a trap. And this bitch has Nick, so I have no intention of being polite. If there were time, I’d stop to laugh at how much in my life has changed. Obedient Quinn, who was marrying someone she didn’t love, who wasn’t willing to rock the boat no matter what it cost, is now someone ready to fight to the death. I’ve come a long way in eight weeks. It’s a shame it took me so long to get here.
I open the door and find a foyer that looks like it belongs in a museum. The heavy carvings, gold-leaf sun and rays, suggest the place was built in the 1600s, during the reign of the sun king, Louis XIV—although I’m not sure how I know that. The brass lamps on the walls would be a more recent addition, but even they would have been added in the late 1800s. I take a few careful steps inside, my mind racing. The video sent to me showed a buttressed door, gothic. This place was built several centuries later. Which means Sarah has sent me to the wrong location. I step backward. That’s when I hear the click of a gun, far too close to my ear.
“Quinn,” says a voice, so pleasant, so melodic, you’d never dream it could belong to something entirely evil. “I was wondering when you’d arrive.”
I allow my head to turn, just an inch, and watch as she moves around to my side of the column, the gun still pointed at my head. She is exactly as I remember—the long pale blond hair, the eyes a blue I’ve never seen on anyone else— an angel come to life. A terrifying angel who might, I now realize, kill Nick just because she can.
I swallow. “Where is he?”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun so I’ll be setting the agenda.” She nods at the door ahead of me. “Go downstairs.”
I’m no ninja. I can’t kick the gun from her hands as if this is a movie. Even if I were to disarm her, it’s not like I could hold her at gunpoint. All she’d need to do is disappear. My only option is to run, which might not succeed, and which might be a death sentence for Nick. I glance from that door to the one behind me anyway, wracking my brain for another solution. “If you run,” she adds, “Nick will be stuck in that basement forever. He’ll die thinking you didn’t care enough to come for him. I’ll make sure that’s what he believes.”
My eyes narrow. “How do I know you’re not going to leave him there anyway?”
“You have my word,” she says with a saccharine smile. “He’ll be freed the moment you’ve followed my instructions.”
I’ve hated people before, but never like this. Never enough to kill. I would tear her apart with my bare hands if I could. “Do you actually think your word means anything to me?”
“Ah. I see your point,” she says, tipping her head to the side. “However, you don’t have much of a choice, do you? Follow my instructions and you might save him. Don’t follow them and I assure you, you won’t.”
I take one last glance out the window. This time, not with any thought of running, but solely because I know I won’t be seeing all these things again—sunlight, grass, flowers, the flash of a car as it drives past.
“Down the stairs,” she barks, irritation straining her attempt at civility.
I glare at her as I begin to move. “Why are you doing this? Is this about my…spark, or whatever it is?”
Her eyes narrow. “Someone’s been talking to you, I see. Move.”
I climb down the stairs, rotting boards sagging beneath my feet. It is dimly lit, with only a dirty, cement floor—not a dungeon, but not far enough away from it to be all that comforting. “You see those shackles against the wall?” she asks. “Go lock yourself up.”
I hesitate once more. The moment those shackles lock around my wrists I’m out of options. But I’ve been out of real options from the moment I heard she had Nick. “Time’s running out, Quinn. If you try my patience I’ll just kill you both.”
That’s all she needs to say. I go to the wall, grab the first shackle, and attach it to my wrist. “This seems like a lot of effort to go to,” I say, glancing up at her. “Why not just shoot me?”
She gives me a bored look and nods at the other shackle. “It’s more complicated than that, obviously, or I’d have done it long ago.” Because she’s going to stab me in the heart. It’s really not how I thought I’d go, and the prospect would terrify me if I wasn’t so scared for Nick instead.
I’m barely able to get the second shackle onto my wrist, one-handed, but it finally pops into place. “Okay, I did what you wanted. Now let him go.”
She smiles, unhurried, untroubled. “He’ll break the door down soon enough. He�
��s very clever, your Nick, isn’t he?”
I hang my head. He’ll get back to the hotel soon and when he arrives I’ll be gone, and he’ll have no idea why. “Is he ever going to know what happened to me?” I ask quietly. “Or am I just going to disappear?”
“He’ll know,” she says. She raises her phone and takes a photo of me.
“Do not send him that,” I bark.
“Why?” she asks, with the sweetest smile. “You look just as cute as ever. He’s going to love it.”
I press my forehead to my knees and take short, panicked breaths. He could get over this. He could return to his old apartment, his pretty ex-girlfriend, his old life and I want him to—but a photo like that will haunt him forever. “Please,” I beg, my voice cracking. “I don’t want that to be the last memory he has of me. He’s going to blame himself and just…please. I’ll do whatever you want.”
She looks up from her phone, all blue-eyed and guileless. “But the photo has already been sent. Besides…how is he going to know he needs to save you if I don’t show him?”
I strain against the shackles. “You lying bitch. You said he’d be free.”
She takes a seat on the floor a few feet from me and sets the gun behind her. “As he will be. If he chooses to come here after you, that’s up to him.”
If I’d just listened to him, if I’d just stayed at the hotel, would none of this have happened? Probably not. Sarah was never going to free Nick. Even if he broke out of the basement, she’d find a way to catch him.
“Why? Why involve him at all?” I plead. “You’ve got me. Stab me in the heart or whatever it is you’re going to do and leave him out of it.”
“This is all your own fault,” she says with a shrug. “It could have been avoided if you’d just done what you should have. Or if you just stayed away from him in the first place. Do you know how often I’ve had to go back in time to try to reset things? Countless. I’m tired of being nice about it.” She stares at her nails, delicately flicking at dirt there. “It’s such a shame too. I’ve seen your twins, you know. Beautiful girls. Their power, together, could be staggering. Which is a bad thing, to be honest.” She smirks at me. “So this is kind of three for the price of one, isn’t it?”
Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2 Page 18
