Emmett’s smirk widened, distorting the face I’d once considered handsome. “You should have paid more attention to your best friend when you got home, Bee. That’s your thing though, isn’t it? Mistreating your friends. Autumn doesn’t deserve that.”
I shifted my legs around slowly, so that if Emmett decided to attack, I would be able to spring to my feet. “What does Autumn have to do with any of this?”
Emmett twirled the rifle, giving me a mini panic attack each time the barrel pointed toward my little sister. “You see, if you had been paying attention, you might’ve noticed the coincidence. Three years ago, you left Paris, thinking you could outrun what happened there—”
“You know about Paris?”
“Three years ago,” he continued as if I’d been silent, “someone new moved to Belle Dame. Three years ago, your precious best friend, Autumn, fell in love.”
My heart sank into my stomach. “Christian.”
As if on cue, the door at the top of the stairs burst open, and Christian himself appeared. But he wasn’t alone. He had one arm wrapped around Mac’s throat. With his free hand, he pressed Mac’s Glock to her temple. To her credit, Mac did not appear nervous or scared. In fact, she looked more annoyed than anything else.
“I warned you not to get the police involved,” Christian said to me. His voice was far too bright and cheery for the dire circumstance, but more than that, he now sported a French accent that hadn’t been there before. He kicked the back of Mac’s knee, which folded beneath her. “Down you go, sweetheart.”
Mac, her face twisted in a scowl, made her way down the stairs with Christian at her back. At the bottom, she and I exchanged exhausted looks.
“You got my call then?” I said.
“A little too late.” She jerked her head toward Christian. “This idiot was waiting outside the hospital for me.”
Christian yanked a handful of Mac’s auburn hair between his fingers and sniffed it. “Tell me, pretty girl. How did you manage to make it out of the academy? It was almost too easy to take you down.”
Mac didn’t flinch. If any of her hair separated from her scalp, she didn’t bother to give Christian the satisfaction of acknowledging the pain. “Maybe that’s what I wanted.”
“Can someone please just tell me what the hell is going on?” I almost stood up, but Emmett butted my shoulder with the end of the rifle, and I slumped to the ground again. I looked up at Christian. “I don’t understand any of this. Christian, since when are we ‘old friends?’ I just met you when I got back into town.”
Christian blew his sandy hair out of his eyes. “Oh, we never met in person before now, but I always knew exactly who you were, Bridget Dubois. Fox was my best friend. My brother almost.”
Goose bumps erupted across my skin. “I—who—how?”
“I worked in Marseilles,” Christian continued. Now that his secret was out, his accent became more pronounced. “Essentially, I was Fox’s number two. I was to Marseilles what he was to Paris. I brought him more business in my city that his other men combined.” He adjusted his grip on Mac, who kept her hands braced against the arm around her neck. “He talked about you nonstop. I think he was truly in love with you. God, it was Brigitte this and Brigitte that. It made me sick. I told him not to get distracted, but he brushed me off. It was the one thing he was ever wrong about.”
Christian dragged Mac to the center of the room so that both he and Emmett blocked any kind of escape through the other door. Mac’s eyes scanned the basement. If she saw a way out, it wasn’t one that was visible to me.
“When Fox died, everything went to shit,” Christian went on. “It all fell apart, no matter how much I tried to keep the rest of his business together. A great deal of Fox’s success was due to his reputation. Without it, we were nothing. The empire I had helped to build in Marseilles? Gone. That stunt you pulled ruined everything. Millions of dollars gone to waste.”
“Yeah, it must’ve been devastating to get a real job,” I snapped. “Instead of relying on the exploitation of the girls you kept as slaves.”
He jerked Mac’s head back and pinned the Glock to the underside of her jaw. “Careful, Brigitte. You have no leverage here.”
I glared at him, my teeth clenched tight. “How did you find Holly?”
“It was easy,” Christian replied. “I cleaned up in Paris, combed through the aftermath to make sure that the police wouldn’t find anything of consequence. And do you know what I found there? Your passport. God, what a gift. I took a plane out of Paris that night and arrived in this godforsaken town the following morning. At first, I wasn’t sure how to go about asking for you, but lucky for me, the people here were all too eager to fill me in on the tragic story of the Dubois family. Emmett and Autumn have been especially useful.”
Emmett clapped Christian on the back. “Christian helped me to see you for what you really are, Bridget. A selfish brat. It’s okay though. We can work on it together.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I snarled.
“I promised Emmett a gift if he helped me lure you back into town,” Christian explained.
“What kind of gift?”
“You,” Emmett answered. “After all of this is over, we’re going to elope. We’ll travel the world together this time, Bee.”
I laughed without humor. “You’re out of your mind.”
The grin dropped off of Emmett’s face, and the rifle nose shifted toward my head. “Don’t say that.”
Mac nervously eyed the gun at her throat as Christian nudged Emmett out of the way with his hip.
“Take it easy,” Christian said, as easily as if he were offering Emmett advice on how to better his deadlift form. “We’re not done with her yet.”
“What about Autumn?” I asked Christian. “All of that crap you said to me a few days ago about her and the baby— Oh God.” My stomach turned over. “The baby. You got her pregnant.”
Christian’s teeth gleamed in the dim light. “That I did. Clever, wasn’t it? When this is over, all of Belle Dame will have a brand new bundle of joy to remind them of your mistakes. It’s so easy to tell women what they want to hear.”
“You’re despicable,” I spat. “Let Mac and Holly go. You have me.”
Christian chuckled and shook Mac by the collar of her uniform polo. “So your little cop friend can run to her boss and rat us out? I don’t think so. No, we’ll have to dispose of her somehow.”
Mac rolled her eyes, a rather nonchalant reaction to Christian’s casual threat of death. Near the basement door, Holly moaned and rolled over, causing all four pairs of eyes to flash in her direction.
“And as for your precious little sister.” Christian aimed the Glock at Holly’s head, and my whole body tensed. “We aren’t done with her yet either. Don’t you see, Brigitte? The fun has just begun. Someone has to put things right. Somebody has to pay for the mistakes that you made in Paris. What better way to get revenge than to make you watch while I treat dear Holly here to a slow and painful death?”
Bile burned at the back of my throat. “I swear, if you touch her, I’ll kill you.”
“No, no,” Christian whispered. “I’m going to kill you, Bridget Dubois. Nice and slowly. Officer Hart can watch, and then I’ll kill her too.”
“Yeah, I’m not really into that,” Mac said.
And she flipped Christian over her hip.
10
Strikeout
Phantom came through. In the shadows of the lobby of L’hotel Douloureux, we swapped parting gifts. He gave me the master key to every room upstairs. I gave him enough cash from Fox’s stash to last him several years on his own.
“What are you doing to do with the key?” he asked.
I grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Start a revolution.”
Swift as the night breeze, he planted a kiss on my cheek. “Adieu, my dear. Good luck with your mysterious escapades, and thank you for my freedom.”
I wiped my cheek and lifted t
he master key. “Thank you for mine.”
Phantom winked and disappeared down the corridor that led to the ballrooms. It was the last time I ever saw him.
The plan was in place. I had memorized the map of the tunnels beneath the hotel that led to the closest train station. Fox was ensconced in a business meeting in the lounge, far from the north stairwell, which would serve as our escape route to the basement kitchen. It was well past four am, and the customers had left the hotel to return to their unwitting wives and girlfriends. The girls I’d recruited for my scheme had fulfilled the duties I’d asked of them, and now they waited for my signal. I checked my watch. Time to go.
I started on the top floor, tapping a coded knock on each door before scanning the master key to unlock it. Girls filtered out into the hallways, dressed and ready to go. I ushered them to the north stairwell, where their slippered feet shuffled downward toward the ground floor. It was a quiet processional. Stealth was essential, and the girls knew that, silent like church mice as they skittered away. I proceeded to the next floor and the next, the taste of freedom like chocolate on my tongue.
In the last room that I unlocked, Noemie Laurent stood her ground.
“Let’s go,” I said in French, gesturing to the rest of the girls. “Unless you prefer to stay?”
“Why are you doing this?”
The question caught me off guard. “Why wouldn’t I do this?”
“He’ll kill you,” Noemie replied, trembling. “He’ll kill all of us.”
“If you stay here, you’ll die for certain.”
“How do you know?”
I raised a small remote control in my right hand. “Because L’hotel Douloureux is wired to explode. Phantom wasn’t just buying drugs on the black market.”
Noemie’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe you.”
“Do you disagree? Do they not deserve it?”
She draped her coat over her arm and hurried past me. “Let them burn.”
We joined hands and sprinted to the end of the hallway. She was the last girl on the floor. Everyone else had already found their way down to the kitchen. The hotel was deadly quiet as Noemie and I reached level ground. I gestured for her to stay put, cracked the door to the hallway, and peered out. It was a straight shot across to the kitchen. All clear.
“Let’s go,” I whispered.
But as soon as we stepped into the corridor, all hell broke loose.
The kitchen door blew open, expelling a group of girls as they savagely attacked one of Fox’s men. It was Leo, the man with a golden mane like a lion’s, which the girls now took full advantage of.
“Whores!” he screamed at the top of his lungs as the girls wrenched handfuls of hair from his scalp. “They’re escaping! Fox! Fox!”
A thunderous stampede echoed from the other end of the hall as Fox and the rest of his men exploded from the lounge and surged toward the kitchen. At the sight of Fox’s flared nostrils and manic expression, the girls, screaming, let go of Leo and retreated to the kitchen. Fox sprinted down the hall, closing the gap between us and our only escape route.
“Go!” I yelled, pushing Noemie into the hallway. We hurdled Leo as he curled up on the luscious patterned carpet, cradling his head, and slammed through the kitchen door moments before Fox reached us. As we dashed through the food prep area, following the other girls toward the industrial dumbwaiter, I swept pots and pans from the counters, laying out a field of obstacles for Fox and his men. Almost immediately, I heard the snap of an ankle, followed by an anguished cry, as someone fell prey to a dutch oven.
We reached the dumbwaiter. The gears were broken, and the machine had to be lifted by hand, but on the other side lay the secret entrance to the underground tunnels. One of the other girls held the hidden door ajar for the others, but as we careened toward her, her mouth dropped open to frame her horror at the sight of our pursuers, and she released the lever that kept the dumbwaiter airborne and scampered off.
“No!” I yelped as the dumbwaiter slammed back into position. With a grunt, I lifted it up from the bottom, shoving against the old gears. “Noemie, go!”
The younger girl slipped through the gap to the other side then threw her weight against the lever. The dumbwaiter lifted several feet in the air. I slid under it and into the damp tunnel.
“Close it, close it!”
Noemie wasn’t quick enough. She let go of the lever, but not before Fox stole through the chink, using his shoulders to prop up the weight of the dumbwaiter. The opening banged shut, plunging the three of us into the darkness of the secret tunnel.
“Run!” I ordered Noemie.
We sprinted blindly in the opposite direction of the hotel. I kept my hand on the wall of the passageway as my eyes begged for a source of light. Fox’s quick footsteps kept time with my racing heartbeat. He wasn’t far behind.
“The remote!” Noemie hissed. “Do it now!”
“We’re not far enough away,” I whispered back. “And I have no intention of burying us underneath this damned hotel.”
“Brigitte,” he called into the darkness. “What have you done?”
His calm, lusty voice echoed off the stone walls of the underground corridor as though it was coming from all directions. I picked up my pace, slipped on an invisible puddle, and hit the ground, dragging Noemie down with me. The plastic remote that would detonate the bombs planted in L’hotel Douloureux skittered away from my grasp. We scrambled to regain our footing, but Fox was closer than anticipated. Noemie got up and ran, but as I groped for the remote, Fox’s long fingers wrapped around my ankle and yanked me toward him. I yelped as my shirt rode up, exposing the bare skin of my back to rough, wet stone as he hauled me across it. He sat down on my hips and pinned my hands beneath his knees. A light flickered on. The blinding LED of Fox’s phone. He shined it directly into my watering eyes and leaned over me, his nose an inch from mine.
“They warned me, you know,” he said, serene. His sweaty blond hair, usually flawless in style, flopped over his forehead. Specks of mud decorated his pale, pretty face. “‘You give her too much freedom. She will take advantage.’ I should’ve listened, but you blinded me.”
I spat, and the wad of phlegm landed on his nose, near the corner of his eye. He flinched then patiently cleared my DNA from his face.
“Mon amour,” he said, fiddling with something in the waist of his tailored suit pants. “I cannot wait to watch the light go out of your eyes.”
And then a small, silver handgun pointed directly at my forehead. I closed my eyes. If this was the end, then at least the other girls were on their way to safety. I’d done my part. My conscience was as clear as it was going to get regarding my list of sins.
“No!”
From out of the surrounding darkness, Noemie leapt over my head and tackled Fox. She was petite but plucky. The gun went flying as she knocked him off balance, as did his phone. The light bounced haphazardly off of the stone walls until the phone settled a few feet along. Fox struggled to throw Noemie off his back, but she held tight, her fingers dangerously close to his eye sockets.
“Get off of me, you bitch!”
He slammed Noemie against the wall, where she fell to the floor and backed away from Fox’s crazed antics. Behind him, the swell of voices reverberated through the corridor. Fox’s men had found their way into the passageway, and they were rapidly gaining on us. I scooted backward, and my hand met something smooth and metallic. Fox’s gun.
An explosive boom rocked the underground passageway, showering us with debris. Screams echoed from the dumbwaiter entrance, where Fox’s men would have been caught in a cave-in. Noemie had found the detonator. Another systematic blast followed the first, and a giant crack split the stone above us with a groan.
Fox’s head snapped up toward the ceiling then back at me. “What have you done?”
He lurched forward, his lips curled back in a snarl. The second between aiming the firearm and pulling the trigger lost itself in my adrenaline rush. Two
shots ripped through Fox’s midsection before my brain registered firing the gun. Stunned, he looked down at his stomach, where blood seeped through the expensive fabric of his pearly white designer shirt. Then he dropped to the ground.
The echo of the gunshots rang against my eardrums. I stared at Fox, who lay sprawled at my feet, until Noemie heaved me upward by my armpits with a remarkable amount of strength for such a elfin woman.
“Leave him,” she told me. “Let’s go.”
And together we fled into the beckoning darkness as L’hotel Douloureux crumbled to ash behind us.
Christian dropped Mac’s Glock as she chucked him to the ground. He landed with a dull thud against the concrete. Mac didn’t stop there. She rotated toward Emmett and punched him in the throat. He gagged, keeling over. Mac wrenched the rifle out of his grip, emptied the chamber, and tossed the ammunition across the room, but when she leaned down to pick up her Glock from the floor, Christian swept his legs toward her feet. She deftly leapt over them, but just as quickly, he swung back in the opposite direction, catching Mac at a tricky angle. She tripped over Christian’s shin, stumbled, but managed to remain upright. Unfortunately, Christian’s stunt had given Emmett the time to recover. He lunged toward the officer. His first punch went without purchase as Mac ducked under his oncoming fist. Then, Christian tackled Mac around the waist, bringing her and Emmett both down to the ground.
The trio rolled by me, and Emmett’s head knocked against my leg as he struggled to separate Mac’s new grip from Christian. I surged forward and caught Emmett around the neck with my zip-tied hands. He bucked in surprise, releasing Mac to scrabble against my arm. I hung on and squeezed my elbow tight against his throat. Emmett’s forehead reddened as he stumbled to his feet, taking me with him. He turned and slammed me against the railing of the stairs. I tucked my head forward just in time. My back took the full brunt of the hit, knocking the wind out of me.
On the floor, Mac and Christian grappled with one another over possession of the Glock. Mac locked her legs around Christian’s midsection and yanked his arm straight across her torso. With a loud snap, his elbow broke. His earsplitting yell bounced off the basement walls, but the dislocation of his arm allowed him to slip easily out of Mac’s startled hold. He flung himself across the floor and grabbed ahold of the Glock with his uninjured arm. The other dangled uselessly at his side as he aimed at Holly.
Little Girl Lost: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery- Book 1 Page 14