by Anne Stuart
Peter stopped arguing. Bastien didn’t need to come with him, put his own life in danger after he’d walked away from all this, but he would do it, and nothing Peter said would stop him. He’d watch his back, as Peter had done for him, and between the two of them Genevieve Spenser would be safe.
If they could just get there in time.
23
It really was a beautiful old building, despite the years it had lain empty. Genevieve had more than enough chance to admire it—after Harry had bound and gagged her, he’d walked her what seemed like miles through the thick fog, past abandoned buildings and torn-up parking lots. “Watch out for the swimming pool,” Harry had said jovially as he’d marched her up a stone staircase. “Most of the water is long gone but there’s enough in there to drown you, if the stink doesn’t kill you.” He pushed open a heavy door and shoved her inside, out of the fog, flicking on dim lights that still managed to hurt her eyes. They were in the middle of a huge room, built like an old hunting lodge, with a massive fireplace, a row of built-in seats around it and balconies crisscrossing overhead. Dead animals were stuffed and mounted on the walls, and across the top of the fireplace was the sign The Truth Shall Set You Free. If she hadn’t been gagged Genevieve would have laughed.
“Great place, isn’t this?” Harry said with the enthusiasm of a young boy showing off his newest toy. “It used to belong to John Huston or someone like that, and then it was turned into a school for drugged-out rich kids. They shut it down years ago and I bought it up on a whim. Always liked the place, even if it’s seen a lot of hard use. Let me show you around a bit. You’ll like it.”
She had no choice, of course, trailing along after him, her hands bound behind her back with duct tape that was too tight, while Harry acted like a tour guide straight out of the Travel Channel, pointing out extraneous details like the dining room with its broken furniture, the wide row of decks overlooking the valley. “Too bad they let those little shits get their hands on this place,” Harry said briskly, tying her to a chair near the fireplace. “There’s nothing you can do with bad kids—hell, there’s nothing you can do with good kids either. Might as well get rid of the whole lot.”
He was using thick yellow nylon rope, tight around her already bound wrists and ankles, pulling it around her neck, and then flinging it over one of the thick logs that made up the exposed rafters. It took him a couple of tries to get it, but he laughed anyway, clearly in an excellent mood. “Wish you could appreciate those knots I tied, Ms. Spenser. I’m proud to say I was an Eagle Scout. You know how hard that is, what kind of commitment it takes? The years of hard work? I know what you’re thinking—” He looped the rope back under her arms, then tossed it back over the rafter. “You’re thinking the rich kid’s father bribed them. But you can’t bribe the Boy Scouts of America, Ms. Spenser. I know, because I tried. The only way I could get to Eagle Scout was to earn it the hard way, and I pretty much did. I think my old scoutmaster would be pleased as punch to see how good I still am with my knots. Of course, he might not be so happy to see how I’m using my expertise.” Harry chuckled to himself.
He was kneeling down behind her, and she could no longer see what he was doing, and she wasn’t certain she cared. The yellow nylon was scratchy against her throat, and when Harry tipped the chair back she could feel it tighten against her.
She tried to cry out, but the sound was forced down by the gag. Harry took a step back, surveying his handiwork with pride. “Now, that looks just fine,” he said, “if I do say so myself. You gotta be careful not to move, not to squirm. That chair is balanced very precariously, and if it slips then that rope is going to tighten around your neck and strangle you. I wish I could promise you that I’d done such a good job that it would be instant, that your neck would break and it would all be over, but I don’t think I’m that good anymore. I’ve done it in the past, but I’ve lost the touch over the years, and I’m afraid if that chair falls over you’ll choke to death, and it’s going to be slow and nasty. Just the way I like it,” he added with a happy smirk.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Peter will rush in here and cut you loose before you can choke to death, but I’m afraid that’s not the case. I did a real good job with those knots, and the more he tries to free you the tighter they’re gonna get. You’ll be dead, Ms. Spenser, and then he’ll get to play with me.” He let out a gusty sigh of deep satisfaction. “This is almost better than a paltry dam break in India or a few bombings. Nothing feels better than doing it hands on, doing it yourself, don’t you think? But then, you can’t answer, can you? Must be murder for a mouthy woman. That’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Murder? Though I tend to think of it as simple justice. You get in my way, I get in yours.”
She stared up at him, trying to put all her contempt and hatred in her eyes, but he was past noticing. “I’m just going to go get myself a little drink. ’Fraid I can’t offer you one—your mouth is otherwise occupied. And then we can sit here and wait for Peter to show up. I don’t expect it’ll take too long—he’s smart, I’ll give him that. But don’t bother trying to escape while I’m out of sight. You’ll just wind up killing yourself before Peter even gets a chance to save you, and then how would you feel?” His laugh was getting creepier by the moment. “You just wait for me, y’hear? I’ll be right back.”
Leaving her alone in the cavernous room, hog-tied and ready for a lynching, staring at the sign over the fireplace: The Truth Shall Set You Free.
It wasn’t much of a noise overhead—it might have been the scurrying of mice left behind to clean up after the troubled teenagers, or maybe the faint flutter of bats outside. The wind in the trees, except there was no wind—the damp fog had closed down around everything.
She was afraid to move her head, to look up. Her balance was so precarious, the rope around her neck so tight, that she was afraid any movement at all might send her tumbling to a slow, agonizing death. But she heard the sound again, barely more than a breath of noise, as something moved in the balconies overhead.
It wasn’t Peter. She would know if Peter had come, she would feel it in her bones and she wouldn’t want to die. It was someone, something else. Maybe the ghost of one of those poor kids, maybe the old movie star haunting the place. No, anything human would have made more noise.
Harry breezed back into the room, a glass of what was doubtless bourbon in one hand, another hank of yellow rope in the other.
“Keeping busy?” he inquired cheerfully. “I bet you’re thinking of all the terrible things you’d like to do to me if you had the chance. I’m afraid you won’t, but I encourage you to fantasize. The giving and taking of pain is one of life’s most intimate acts, and I doubt you’ve had much time to explore them. I considered instructing you, but in the end, poor old Jackshit…oh, excuse me, I think you knew him as Takashi…had it right. I don’t want Peter Whatsisname’s leavings.”
He took the new section of rope and tied it around one leg of the chair he’d bound her to, then moved back to the built-in couches surrounding the fireplace. “Wish I could start a fire—make it right cozy. Wouldn’t want you to get a chill, but then, you’ve got that extra vest on underneath, don’t you? You didn’t think I wouldn’t notice, did you? I hate it when people underestimate me.”
He glanced at the huge, empty hearth. “No firewood though,” he said. “I could go get some of the broken furniture from the dining room but I still wouldn’t have any kindling. No, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to sit very still and freeze, Ms. Spenser. But I promise you, it won’t be long.” He took another sip of his bourbon and leaned back on the mouseeaten cushions, perfectly at ease.
She moved her head just a fraction of an inch, and her balance held. She didn’t know whether she imagined the shadow or not, flitting across the dusty pine floors. She didn’t look up, and Harry seemed unaware that things might not be quite as he hoped.
If it was a ghost she hoped it was a ghastly one who scared Harry to death in a p
articularly unpleasant manner. Anything that happened to appear out of the dark would be no problem for her—Harry was more terrifying than any supernatural creature could ever be.
But then, ghosts wouldn’t leave even the trace of a shadow. Or was she thinking of vampires?
One moment she was thinking of vampires, in the next everything changed. Someone had walked in the door behind her, with a slow, lazy stroll that could only be Peter’s, and she tried to call out, to warn him.
“Just in time,” Harry said gaily, yanking the yellow rope so that Genevieve fell backward, and the rope tightened, cutting off her breath. The last thing she saw was Harry taking off, and Peter following him, leaving her to die…
The pressure lifted, and the chair she was tied to went over backward. The ropes went slack, and she could see up into the rafters, into the face of a man she’d never seen before.
Maybe he was the ghost of the old movie actor; he leaped over the side of the balcony and landed on the floor, as light as a cat. “Hold still,” he said, his voice just faintly tinged with French. “I’m a friend of Peter’s. I cut the main rope but the others are still a little tricky.” He picked something up from the floor and began cutting through the ropes. He must have thrown it from the balcony, slicing through the main rope that held her. What if he’d missed?
She didn’t want to think about it, she wanted to get to Peter. Harry had a gun somewhere—she’d seen it, though he hadn’t brought it back into the main hall of the old lodge. The man was cutting swiftly, but he hadn’t touched the duct tape across her mouth, and she wondered if that goddamn Peter had told him too that she was yappy.
She kicked at him, to try to get his attention, only to have the rope around her neck tighten again.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “You’ll only make it worse. If you’re worried about Peter I promise you he can take care of himself.”
He finally cut the last rope, then yanked the duct tape from her mouth.
“He’s got a gun,” she tried to say, but her throat had closed up and she could barely manage a choked whisper. She tried to get to her feet, to go after them, but the man grabbed her, held her back.
“Leave them alone. You’ll only get in the way.”
She had no pencils or keys to stick in the man’s eyes, nor did she want to hit him across the throat and kill him, since in fact he’d saved her life. But there was one other lesson she’d learned.
She went for his face, and when he immediately responded, to fend her off, she went for her true target, using the sweep that Peter said wouldn’t work, knocking him flat on the floor before he knew what was happening.
Harry and Peter had gone through the deserted dining room, and she raced after them. There were two ways out—the kitchen and the deck, and she knew which one Harry would choose, with his sense of the melodramatic. She slammed out the door onto the deck at just the wrong moment, drawing Peter’s attention away from Harry, who chose that moment to fire the pistol he held, emptying it into Peter’s body as he fell to the deck and lay twitching in a pool of blood.
“No!” she screamed, rushing over to him and falling to her knees on the deck beside him.
“So touching,” Harry said, perching on the top of the railing, still holding the bourbon in his other hand. “And convenient. We were at a standstill when you distracted him.”
He was still breathing, but the blood was everywhere, and she buried her face against his chest, sobbing. Barely hearing the faint whisper that came from his white, unmoving lips.
“Gun,” he said. “Get it.”
She could feel it as she wept over his body—a hard, metallic presence just beneath his belt. She didn’t dare hesitate—she moved back and reached into his pants.
“Copping a feel on a dying man, Counselor? You surprise me,” Harry chuckled. His smile didn’t fade when she pulled out the gun.
“I’m afraid I used all my bullets on your dead boyfriend there. None left for you. But I’m not concerned—you won’t shoot me. You’re too decent a human being to kill an unarmed man, no matter how much he deserves it.”
“Maybe not,” she said in barely a rasp. “But Peter didn’t come alone.”
“Does your throat hurt?” he asked with feigned concern. “Oh, I am so sorry. And I’m afraid I didn’t quite hear what you had to say. Are you trying to convince me that someone else is here who can sneak up on me and end my wicked ways? I don’t believe you. I’m astonished that you managed to get free, but I must have been distracted, and you’ve proven to be annoyingly resourceful. But the only thing behind me is the hillside—I’ll be able to see anyone the moment they try to approach.”
There was no sound from the lodge behind her, and she wondered whether she’d made the incredibly stupid mistake of killing her rescuer. She wasn’t sure she cared—Peter was lying utterly still now, and she couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.
“You killed Peter,” she said. “I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Go ahead, try and pull the trigger. You haven’t got it in you.”
She knew how to aim the gun, how to cock it. She pointed it straight at him, but it was all over the place in her shaking hands.
“You won’t hit the broadside of a barn like that, Ms. Spenser,” Harry said.
She started to pull the trigger, trying to keep it aimed at Harry’s face. She could see Hans, Renaud, the man in the garage, the neat little holes of death in their heads. She could do this, she could blow his fucking head off, she could kill him…
She released the trigger, letting the gun drop in her lap. There was blood on her hands, blood on her jeans, draining out of Peter’s body by the second.
“You see, you can’t do it,” Harry said smugly, standing up on the seat, preparing to get down off the railing.
She picked up the gun and threw it at him, and it smacked him in the face, full force. A second later he was gone, tumbling over the side of the railing into the darkness below, and his scream echoed eerily in the fog, accompanied by the sound of crashing trees and then a merciful silence.
She couldn’t move—she just knelt in the blood at Peter’s side, disbelieving. He couldn’t have just disappeared like that—it was too easy.
And then Peter’s friend was pushing her out of the way, hovering over Peter’s body. “Hang in there, old friend. Ambulance on the way…just hang in there.” He looked up at Genevieve, who had risen to her feet, standing in shock.
“Remind me not to tangle with you again,” he said. “You’re as bad as Peter said you were,” he muttered.
“Harry…” Her voice barely made a sound, but he could hear her a moment before the sound of an ambulance cut through the night.
“Over the side. If he survived we’ll catch him. At least you did that right,” he said uncharitably.
She moved to the railing. With infuriating timing the fog was just beginning to lift, and she could see partway down the steep hillside the black skeletons of burned trees spiking into the sky.
And then she saw Harry, lying against a stand of crushed tree trunks. But he hadn’t crushed them all— one thick pine tree had gone straight through the center of his chest, and it was poking up into the sky, black and red with blood.
She took a step back. She could see the flashing lights of the ambulance, and she wondered if she should go and lead the way, but she didn’t know where she was going, so she simply sat down on the deck and stared at Peter’s unmoving body and the blood that soaked into her jeans.
She heard one word…“dead” in the man’s voice, and she let out a sob. “He can’t be,” she said.
“Peter’s hanging in there. I’m talking about Harry. Is he dead?”
She thought back to the body impaled on the burned tree. “Oh, yes,” she whispered in her ruined voice. “Most definitely.”
“Well, that’s something,” the man said. “Your first kill.”
He looked calm, controlled, and not the slightest bit concerned that his
friend lay dying at his side. Genevieve didn’t know whether to scream, to laugh or to cry.
She settled for drawing her knees up, putting her head down on her bloody knees and praying.
24
Genevieve couldn’t quite decide whether she liked Bastien Toussaint or not. He reminded her of Peter in all the worst ways, combined with a certain French “fuck you” attitude that was particularly annoying. But he’d saved Peter’s life, so she could forgive just about anything, do just about anything she had to.
If she hadn’t gone charging out onto the deck, desperate to save Peter, she wouldn’t have distracted him long enough to get shot. She knew it, Bastien knew it, and she’d have to live with that knowledge for the rest of her life. At least Peter would, too.
The last time she’d seen him he’d been on a gurney, unconscious, taken out of her life. She only had Bastien’s word for it that he survived, that he was recovering, slowly, but recovering. Madame Lambert was gone as well, a good thing, Genevieve thought. She didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone from the goddamn “Committee,” if she could help it. At least Bastien had walked away from it.
She did like Bastien’s hugely pregnant wife, Chloe. She was never quite sure how she ended up in North Carolina, staying with them—probably some highhanded decision by Madame Lambert, but at that time she was too rattled to argue. And it was very peaceful up there in the woods in the house that Bastien was in the midst of building for his wife, far enough away from his in-laws to keep his sanity, Chloe had told her.
His wife had not been pleased with her husband’s disappearance, and in retaliation had refused to speak to him for the first three days after his return with Genevieve in tow. And then she went into labor, screaming imprecations in languages Genevieve couldn’t even begin to recognize, and hadn’t stopped until little Sylvia arrived, small and perfect and taking over in the screaming department where Chloe had left off.