Rogue

by Blair Babylon

  Dree had never stayed in a hotel until she’d met Francis. When she was a kid, her parents only took them to family baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and they’d slept on the floors of aunt’s and uncle’s living rooms. When she’d moved to Phoenix, she’d stayed in a convent with her high school principal’s friends for the night before she moved into her apartment.

  After she finished putting the clothes on hangers and placing the shoes neatly in the closet because she didn’t want to disrespect how expensive they were, she found Augustine asleep across the bed. His legs were hanging off the edge like he’d been sitting on the side when fatigue had overcome him and flopped forward on his face. One of his shoes was untied but still on his foot.

  Oh, the poor guy. She’d probably worn him out last night. Civilians weren’t used to working forty-eight-hour shifts like medical personnel.

  She eased his other shoe off of him. Because she was a nurse, she knew just how to leverage his enormous body to roll him farther onto the bed so his legs weren’t hanging off.

  When she finished, she flipped the satin comforter over him.

  Augustine snuggled deeper into the bed and resumed breathing easily.

  Well, it looked like she had a few hours to herself.

  She gently closed the door to the bedroom and sat on the couch in the living room. She could watch French TV, but she was kind of afraid of how rusty her college French was.

  Or, she could try to put her life back in order.

  The first thing she had to do was turn on her phone.

  If she turned it on, Francis would be able to call her through that TalkBook app.

  If he did, Dree decided she would just decline the call. There was a red dot there, and she could just push the red dot. Just because a phone rang didn’t mean she had to take the call.

  With that settled, Dree fished her charging cord out of her bag, plugged in her phone, and steeled herself while it powered up. The hotel’s Wi-Fi password was written on a little card on the desk, so she typed it in and gained access.

  Fifty-three missed calls.

  Fifty-three voicemails.

  She could scroll through her recent call notifications if she wanted to. Just because she saw the names didn’t mean she had to call them back.

  Predictably, most of the recent calls were from Francis Senft.

  A chill gathered on the nape of her neck, and she felt a little sick to her stomach.

  Her sister Mandi had called three times.

  Fifteen calls were from other friends. Some asked where she was and if she was okay. Ten of them said that Francis had called trying to find her and he’d told them that Dree had left money with them to give to him. He was demanding they give him the money, and the numbers were anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand dollars. Several of them asked if they should give him the money, and she could pay them back later? Four said that they already had given him the money and would she please Venmo or PayPal them the money ASAP.

  She texted them all that she had left town and was safe. She also told them all that Francis had stolen everything from her and was probably trying to get money out of them, but she had no idea why. She told the few that had already ponied up that she would pay them back as soon as she could.

  Okay, Dree probably needed to call Mandi and tell her where she was and what was going on. She also needed to explain why there was no money in Victor’s autism-therapy account.

  Dree wanted to crawl under the bed in shame, but instead, she used a direct-messenger app to call her sister. Her phone still wasn’t hooked up to the cellular networks in France.

  Mandi answered her call right away, even though it had to be mid-morning in Phoenix. “Hello? Dree? Holy Mary, Mother of God, are you all right?”

  Dree spoke softly so Augustine wouldn’t hear her, even though the door was closed and he was probably still asleep. “Hey, Mandi. I’m fine. Some really weird stuff happened the last couple of days, but I’m in Paris.”

  “Oh, my God. You did go to Paris.”

  “Yeah, I had to get away from Francis.”

  “Francis keeps calling me, looking for you.”

  Dree gasped. “What did you tell him?”

  “That I hadn’t heard from you, and I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Good. Keep telling him that.”

  Mandi said, “He said that you stole all his money. I had to lend him five hundred dollars because he didn’t have enough money to eat or pay a fine on his apartment lease because you did something to his apartment.”

  “He said what? That’s a lie. That’s a ridiculous lie. I did no such thing, and he stole everything from me. I wasn’t even going to tell you this, but he stole all my money and sold everything I owned, even my car.”

  “He said that you sold everything and stole a bunch of his stuff, stole all his money in his bank accounts, and ran off to Paris without him.”

  “No. That’s completely backward. I would never do that.” Dree’s hand holding the phone started to shake. “Mandi, you know I would never do something like that.”

  “It was just weird, you know? The account where we keep the money for Victor’s therapy is overdrawn. Francis said that you withdrew all the money from your joint accounts with him and took all the money out of that one, too. He even knew that you’d done it. He told me that the money was gone. I didn’t even know.”

  “That’s because he did it! You believe me, don’t you?” Dree begged.

  “I suppose.”

  “Mandi! I’ve been giving you money for Victor’s therapy for years! Who do you believe?”

  “Well, the fact that you’re pressuring me to believe you is sort of weird, and I don’t know what to think!”

  “You should believe your sister who’s supported you for years and totally stuck to your story that you ‘adopted’ Victor while you were staying with our aunt in Flagstaff because you had ‘asthma’ and needed high elevations!”

  “Francis said he was shocked at how good a liar you are.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?”

  “All I know is that I’m terrified because my kid’s therapy bill is due in three days, and I don’t know what to do. That therapy is the only thing keeping him calm enough to go to school. If he acts up at school again, they’re going to kick him out. If they kick him out, I don’t know how I can work. My whole life is falling apart here.”

  Mandi always lived on the ragged edge, both financially and in how much she could handle. Being a mother of a severely autistic child can drive anyone over the edge. Dree didn’t blame her sister for freaking out because any little problem might be enough to collapse the house of cards she’d built around her disabled son.

  Dree said, “I’ll get the money back in the account before you have to pay the clinic.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I have to figure out if I can get that money some other way. Maybe I can pawn something. Maybe my couch?”

  “I’ll get the money back in there.” Dree looked at the bedroom door. “I’ve got kind of a job here in Paris.”

  “As a nurse?”

  Dree almost laughed, but she didn’t. “Yeah, sure. Anyway, maybe I can get an advance on my salary to get some money to you.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, and I don’t know who to believe. If you’re in trouble, why don’t you call Sister Annunciata from Saints Simon and Jude? She always talked you out of things when you were doing something you shouldn’t be.”

  All that was pretty sanctimonious, coming from a person who’d gotten pregnant in high school and caused their whole family to lie about it for over a decade now, but Dree wasn’t going to judge. Mandi had worked her ass off for her son ever since.

  And yet, Sister Ann had helped Dree get the scholarships to go to the nursing program at New Mexico State in Las Cruces, and then she’d helped Dree find the job in Phoenix, too. She’d even come to Dree’s graduation when her parents couldn’t make the trip because gas cost too
much and there was no one reliable to feed the sheep.

  She nodded. “That’s a pretty good idea. Sister Ann always knew what to do when I was freaking out.”

  Maybe she could tell Sister Ann what was going on.

  Dree opened the bedroom door a crack to check on Augustine. He was still lying on his stomach, snoring softly. His breathing seemed regular, and his airway appeared to be unobstructed.

  Good enough.

  And it was kind of a cute little snore. Francis honked like he had a deviated septum or something.

  She closed the bedroom door again, making sure it latched tightly. She padded over to the other side of the room and sat on the floor next to her phone that was plugged into the wall.

  Sister Ann’s contact listing in Dree’s phone had both her regular phone number and her favorite social media profile, MakeChat. Dree tried calling her with a video chat through the app.

  Sister Ann’s face appeared on Dree’s screen, her eyes wide and startled. “I didn’t know MakeChat did video calls!”

  Dree laughed at her softly. “Hey, Sister Ann. There’s some stuff going on. Do you have time to talk for just a second?”

  Sister Ann settled herself farther into her chair. She appeared to be holding her phone with both hands and squinting into it. “Of course, Andrea Catherine.”

  Sister Ann always called Dree by her first name and her confirmation name. Sister Ann had acted as an extraordinary deacon when Dree was confirmed, but the nun called everybody by their full first and confirmation names. Sister Ann continued, “I have twenty minutes before I need to teach remedial Latin to the Sunday School catechism kids. What can I do you for?”

  Dree wasn’t sure where to start. “A lot of stuff has happened to me in the last two days, and I think I don’t know a lot of what’s going on.”

  Sister Ann chuckled. “And you want to activate the Catholic Mafia.”

  “Could you make some inquiries for me? It would help a lot.”

  She adjusted the small gray handkerchief she wore pinned over her schoolmarm bun. She picked up a ballpoint pen, clicked it, and set it to paper, ready to take notes. “Give me information.”

  “So, I’ve been dating a guy for over a year. Then, over the last few days, I think he swindled me out of a lot of money. I think I didn’t really know him at all.”

  “Is he Catholic?”

  She would have asked that, regardless. “He went to Brophy,” a Jesuit high school in Phoenix, “and his parents are members of the Immaculate Conception diocese.”

  Sister Ann chuckled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Father Thomas over at Immaculate Conception is an old friend of mine from missionary work. What’s this boy’s name?”

  “Francis Senft.” Dree spelled it for her.

  “Where’s he work?”

  “Peaceful Transitions Hospice.”

  “Is that one of ours?”

  “It’s not Catholic. It’s private.”

  Her mouth creased a little. “No one’s perfect. Does he go to church?”

  “Not since I’ve known him.”

  Sister Ann fixed Dree through the phone with a steely stare. “Do you go to church?”

  “Twice in the last few months?” Dree guessed.

  Sister Ann rolled her eyes. “Do better. What else do you have on him?”

  Dree told Sister Ann everything she could remember about Francis, the sleek little sports car he drove, who his friends were, and a rapid summary of the stupid, sad story of her getting wiped out. She kept all the information as dry as she could because Sister Ann was a pragmatic woman who might have been a military aide-de-camp or police investigator in a previous life.

  If Dree had said that out loud, Sister Ann would have stared her down, asking, “And do we as Catholics believe in previous lives?”

  No. No, we do not, not unless we wanted detention and picking up dog poop on the Catholic high school’s athletic field for a month.

  Sister Ann raised an eyebrow and squinted through the screen at Dree. “What’s that on your wrist, child?”

  “Oh, a friend of mine told me to hold his watch. I didn’t want to lose it, so I put it on.”

  “And this friend’s name is?”

  “Augustine,” Dree said, mostly because she didn’t know his real name.

  “Humph,” Sister Ann said. “At least he has a good name.”

  After she finished talking to Sister Ann, Dree considered how she would get an advance from Augustine.

  Mandi needed that money to pay for Victor’s therapy soon, and Dree didn’t know how long the banks would take to transfer the money from France or wherever Augustine had his bank account to Mandi in Arizona.

  All the options she could think of seemed manipulative and vile.

  Blow him before asking?

  Promise to blow him right afterward?

  Dree really wasn’t a prostitute. Any self-respecting businesswoman would be way better at asking for what she was due. It was a good thing Dree had gone to nursing school instead of trying for an MBA.

  But Dree had to get that money, and she had to get it tonight.

  Chapter Eight

  Eiffel Tower

  Maxence

  Maxence woke up face-down in the thick duvet with something tiny patting his hand and whispering, “Augustine? Sir? Hey, Auggie. Supper’s here. I tried to sign for it, but the guy won’t let me.”

  The bedroom was darker than it should have been, and for just a second, the little blonde fuzzed and turned into a beautiful black woman with luscious lips, and then a green-eyed goddess who faded away when Maxence reached for her.

  The pale girl with the heart-shaped face and pointed chin swam through the veils of dreams and patted his hand again. “Augustine? He said ‘Lord Severn’ had to sign for it. Are you a noble-dude?”

  “Nope. Not a nobleman,” Max grunted. He pushed himself up on his arms and staggered out to the living room to sign for the supper. If room service had delivered the supper, he’d overslept.

  When the waiter had closed the door behind himself, Max told Dree, “Arthur Finch-Hatten, Lord Severn, is one of my best friends from the boarding school where we grew up. He’s a nobleman, not me.”

  Her pretty little eyes widened. “Wow, you know a real lord?”

  When Dree’s eyes expanded like that, she looked like a bunny, and he kind of wanted to tickle her to watch her squirm. He liked the way her body jiggled in all the right ways when she squirmed. “Eh, he’s kind of an asshole. He reserved this suite. I’ll put it on my credit card when we leave, but it’s in his name for now. I’m wearing his clothes.”

  “What? You bought me all those clothes, and you don’t have any? Why don’t you have any clothes?”

  “I’m supposed to lie to you, right?” Max asked, shaking his head to wake up. He was still groggy from his nap.

  “Uh, sure?” she said with a question in her voice.

  He grinned. “I pissed off a mafia boss by helping his wife leave him. I put her on a plane from Italy back to her family in Mauritius. Her mafioso husband threatened to cut off my head and feed it to the sharks. So, my buddies Arthur and Casimir borrowed a rock star’s yacht and saved me from them. We sailed up the coast and then flew Casimir’s plane from Nice to Paris, so I didn’t have time to stop at home to pick up clothes at home. It turned out that Arthur had to go back to London and couldn’t stay, so he left some clothes here for me because we wear the same size.”

  Dree cracked up. “Oh, my God! That’s hysterical. Good one! Okay, fine. I’ll stop asking.”

  That was easy enough.

  This lying game of hers might be fun.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s eat. I’d planned to shower before supper, but we don’t want it to get cold.”

  “What did you get?” she asked, fidgeting as she looked at the covered plates.

  Maxence uncovered the plates. “Sole with white sauce for me. Penne with lobster for you, thus crossing eat lobster off your bucket list. I
say, wasn’t shopping for designer clothes on your list, too?”

  “Yeah, it was. That’s lobster?” She was turning her head back and forth as she examined the dish. Maxence half-expected her to bat tentatively at it like a wary cat.

  “Certainly. Shall we eat? I thought we’d have a walk after this.”

  “Oh, Paris at night! That sounds lovely.” She stabbed a piece of lobster with her fork and stuck it in her mouth. Her expression was startled at first, then relaxed into dreamy bliss. “Oh my word, this is so good.”

  Max watched her savor her supper so much that he barely tasted his own, though he suspected it must have been excellent, as usual.

  Dree ate the whole dish.

  After supper, Maxence retired for a quick shower and decided which of Arthur’s incredibly conservative, English-cut suits he wanted to wear, silently shaking his head the whole time at Arthur’s safe taste. Maxence’s taste ran toward Italian-cut suits and more daring fabrics.

  But, since he was foraging in Arthur’s closet, black and boxy, it was.

  And a belt.

  Max cinched it tightly around his waist and scowled at the little gathers in the fabric. Maybe he should have ordered two meals for himself.

  Or he could introduce Dree to Au Merveilleux de Fred which, as its name implied, was the most marvelous thing in Paris. A few of those should fill him right out.

  Maxence found a long, formal coat that Arthur had left in the closet and commandeered it. Paris was a bit chilly that night.

  When he emerged, Dree was fiddling with her phone on the couch. She held it up. “I connected to the Wi-Fi.”

  Maxence said, “Good girl. Put your shoes on. We’re going out.”

  “Cool. Where?”

  “Is that what you call me?”

  “Cool, Sir. Where are we going, Sir?”

  Max suspected sarcasm but let it pass. “Plan to walk for about an hour.”