She watched as if in slow-motion as the front of the car teetered precariously over the lip of the canyon before, with a final push from behind, it tipped head-down and fell.
The jolt as the car snagged on the sapling that stalled the car’s descent sent Maggie slamming into the windshield. Terrified that her weight would help send the car over the edge, she scrambled to the backseat, where she could see the top of the small tree sag from view as the weight of the car crushed it into submission. Maggie’s face was only a couple feet from Florrie’s—red with frustration and consuming intensity—as he labored in his final deadly assault to push the car over the edge.
As the pain of a contraction tore through her, leaving her legs and belly an amorphous ball of indefinable agony, Maggie’s hand hit the console between the two front seats and her fingers found the auto-lock. She wrenched the back door open just as the car launched from its temporary landing pad into the air on its final descent into the cavernous and rocky bottom below.
Maggie watched the ground rush by her and under her as she jumped from the moving car, the grass and gravel and dirt running by as she hit the ground shoulder first and then she rolled and rolled. When she finally stopped, she was on her back, halfway down the ditch and just before the sharpest drop off. She lay still for a moment, the air still full of the echo of the sound of the car as it crashed to earth, a mechanical cacophony of crushed metal and rock.
She lay and listened to the noises ebb away in the air, and in her mind. Her ankle hurt. Her shoulder was on fire. She lifted her hands to her face and looked at them. Her knuckles were bloody and raw. She touched a tentative finger to her forehead and winced. Blood trickled down her arm from her face where she had smacked into the windshield.
She was afraid to move. Afraid he would see. If she lay perfectly still, he would assume she had gone down with the car and he would leave.
Wouldn’t he?
She lay unmoving in the dirt, watching the light leach from the sky as darkness crept in and she was thankful for that. She held her breath to listen and that was when she heard the footsteps. Tentative, searching, furtive. Not a normal walking pace, but hesitant and disturbed. They were coming from just above where she lay and they were climbing down.
Toward her.
And then she felt the next one beginning to build. It started deep inside her core and quickly emanated out to touch every part of her with its grinding, relentless fury. She waited as it built and built inside her until the pain was her whole world and nothing—not cliffs or homicidal maniacs or giving birth alone in the dark—existed anywhere. Only the pain. She grabbed fistfuls of grass with both hands and let out a long and ragged groan of hopeless hurt.
As the contraction ebbed, she was showered with a spray of dirt and rock as he jumped down next to her, landing nearly on top of her. She felt him grab her by the shoulders and she knew she had gone as far as she could go.
She had let them all down. The little one who wouldn’t be born, Laurent who had begged her to stop, Grace and Julia who she had failed in every way a friend can. And, of course, herself. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to retreat back into that other world. The world of pain. The world of Only One Thing.
Harsh hands reached her, digging into her arms with hurtful urgency.
Roger sat on the edge of the bed listening to the voice mail. He was dressed and out the door before Dernier’s message had finished.
And it was a short message.
“Roger? Where are you going? What about the ball?” His girlfriend chased after him into the hallway, her dress half on, her shoes in her hand, her mouth open.
“Take a taxi,” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran down the stairwell to the parking garage. He punched in the phone number that showed on his phone as belonging to Danielle Alexandre. A woman answered on the first ring.
“Allo?”
“I’m looking for Laurent Dernier,” Roger said as he jumped in his car and slammed it into reverse, still holding his phone to his ear.
“He has my cell phone,” the woman said and quickly gave him the number. He hung up and punched it in. Should he head toward St-Buvard? The Aix Hospital?
“Bedard?” Dernier picked up immediately.
“Yes, it’s me. Where is she? Where are you?”
“I’ve just left Tatois’s bar outside Lignane. She’s not there. I’m on the D7 about thirty minutes from Aix. Where are you?”
“I’m just pulling onto the D7 out of the city. I’m thirty minutes from Lignane.”
“Merde.”
“How long has he had her?”
“Over two hours.”
“Merde.”
Later, Maggie would say it was like being roused from a waking nightmare by an archangel who descended upon her in glory with the muffled sounds of fireworks shooting off behind his bald head.
“Madame?”
She opened her eyes to see the darkened, hulking form of Sasquatch, his shiny head and tattoos gleaming in the dusk, leaning over her and peering into her face.
Mathieu.
“Can you stand?” Mathieu said, looking her over for any wounds. “Can you walk?”
“I need help,” she croaked. “Hospital. Get me to the hospital.”
“Are you out here alone? Did your car just go over the cliff?”
He pulled her to her feet. She cried out when she put weight on her ankle, so he held her up against him. As the next contraction took hold of her, Maggie didn’t care if he flung her out over the cliff after the car. Her body stiffened as it railed though her. She threw back her head and screamed until it was over and she was left sobbing in exhaustion. When she could—and before the next monster contraction could sneak up on her—she opened her eyes to look at her savior.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were the bad guy. I’m sorry.”
“I confessed!” Mathieu said, hoisting her arm over his as he fought to climb the steep incline with her at his side. “I went to the police and I told them that I killed the bastard. They sent me away. Said I was crazy.”
“The police know nothing about true love.”
Mathieu looked at her with confusion. “Comment?”
“Never mind. Look, he’s around here someplace. Keep your eyes open. Before I forget or the next contraction drives me insane, I’ve got a message for you from Julia.”
“C’est vrai? What is it?” He stopped climbing and stared at her.
Maggie started to laugh and hoped very much she wasn’t getting hysterical. Mathieu must have been thinking the same thing because he was frowning now.
“She loves you…and she…oh, I can’t remember the rest. And it doesn’t matter. She’ll be able to tell you herself now.”
“Because she’ll be free, yes?”
Maggie screamed and clutched his arm, barely registering the wince on his face as she fought the contraction. “Holy shit! That hurts,” she said when it began to fade. “Yes,” she said, closing her eyes and falling into the bliss of the temporary relief from pain. “Yes, she’ll be free. And if you and I somehow live through this night, won’t that be a great day?”
“Why would we not live?” Mathieu frowned in confusion.
“I guess it’s just me that feels like I’m dying. Forget I said that.”
“You are simply having the baby, Madame. C’est tout.”
“Remind me to kill you when I’m feeling better,” Maggie said. “Dear God! Are we not there yet? Where in the blue blazes hell did you park your effing car? Are you some kind of outdoor freak? Where is the goddam car!?”
“I am sorry! I parked it at a distance to encourage more walking when I’m—”
“Stop talking! Shut up with the mindless, endless talking! Dear Lord, how does Julia put up with your constant, ceaseless yammering?”
“I haven’t said but two—”
Maggie screamed and clutched him and realized that he had stopped walking, frozen still until her pain subsided. She sagged again
st him, exhausted. Once they were on flat ground, he put his arm under her legs and hoisted her gently into his arms. She groaned.
“If you were the murderer,” she said, her eyes closed, “that would come in very handy right now because I really want to die. Please. Kill me now.”
At her words, Maggie felt Mathieu come to an abrupt stop. “Noooooo! Why are you stopping? For the love of God, what now?” When she opened her eyes, she saw the reason he had stopped.
Unless it was the best dream she had ever imagined, she saw the wondrous sight of Laurent coming straight at her at a dead run. She could see the car behind him, the driver’s side door still open to suggest that he had bolted from a car that was not completely stopped twenty yards in front of them. She could also see Roger coming from around the side of another car with his firearm pointed directly at Mathieu’s chest.
Oh, shit, Maggie thought with irritation, her thrill at seeing Laurent tempered by the possibility that she was going to get shot before she could deliver the baby. Laurent reached them, whereupon Mathieu promptly handed her off to him and put his hands behind his head. Laurent knelt with her in his arms.
“Laurent, thank God you’re here,” she gasped into his sweater, smelling the wonderfully familiar scent of lemons and anise and Laurent, himself. “It was Florrie, Laurent! Florrie killed Jacques—”
“Ensuite, mon amour,” Laurent said. His hands were even bigger than Mathieu’s and Maggie could feel them moving up and down her back, her legs, and her arms checking her for damage as he held her in his arms on one knee. “Est-ce que tu es bien?”
“No, I’m not all right, Laurent! I’ve never been more not all right in my—” While she didn’t scream, the picture of agony searing across her face must have delivered the message better than words ever could. Laurent was on his feet with her in his arms. She could tell they were moving, that Laurent was walking fast, his long strides covering the distance quickly, and she said a prayer of thanks he hadn’t decided to jog with her bouncing in his arms. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Roger and Mathieu trotting alongside them with nobody holding anybody at gunpoint.
Oh, good, she thought on the verge of hysteria. Everyone’s friends now.
“Laurent,” she said, panting in anticipation of the next contraction that she could feel coming.
“Oui, ma chère?”
“Promise me I’m not going to deliver this baby on the side of the road.”
“Jamais, Maggie. Je te le promets,” he said. Never. I promise.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ten fingers, ten toes. One adorable button nose, a set of already inquisitive blue eyes and a head full of dark hair. Jean-Michael Dernier lay nestled in his mother’s arms and Maggie could not stop looking at him.
“He really is the most amazingly gorgeous baby in the world,” Maggie murmured to Grace, who stood next to her hospital bed the morning after young Jean-Michael was born.
“That’s not typically the sort of thing you say to someone who also has children,” Grace said, tweaking the baby’s fat little cheek. “But in this case you may just be right. We need to get him straightaway into baby modeling.”
“Laurent would never allow it.”
“I know, darling. It’s a joke. You don’t want to share this little angel with the world just yet.”
After a hectic nick-of-time and very noisy entrance into the hospital yesterday evening featuring a full police escort and a frantic like-she’d-never-seen-him-before Frenchman rushing in with her in his arms, young Jean-Michael decided to slow his entrance into the world by some ten hours. Now, exhausted and filled with joy and wonderment, Maggie watched her precious bundle and found it hard to believe that the two of them had been joined together for nine months—and already a whole of adventure.
Laurent waited until Grace arrived before going off in search of a “proper lunch” for “ma femme.” Maggie couldn’t help but grin as she watched him kiss the baby for the hundredth time, then her, and then Grace before heading out the door. She could hear him greeting people—probably total strangers—outside the room as he made his way down the hall.
Her husband was a happy man.
“You doing okay?” Grace asked her as she gently picked up the baby in her arms. “Oh, my God, he is so tiny!” she said without waiting for an answer. “I’m not used to babies not weighing a ton. Oh, I love this stage! He smells so heavenly. Well done, darling. Laurent is over the moon.”
Maggie watched her friend holding her son in her arms and swaying and rocking with him and she said, “Grace, can you forgive me for not supporting you during this whole separation thing? I know I acted like I was the first woman on earth to give birth.”
Grace snorted. “Forget it, darling. You had a horse in the race. I understand perfectly. I would’ve felt the same way.” She hesitated for a moment. “Believe me I wanted to make it work.”
“I know you did,” Maggie said, gazing at her baby’s sleeping face as Grace settled him back in her arms. “But now what? What will you do?”
“I have no idea. Windsor is up for the idea of possibly trying again, but I don’t think we need to put the kids through that. He says that Leeza is an absolute horse-whisperer with Taylor. Of course, he would say that. But maybe he’s right. God knows anyone would be a better mother to her than me.”
“That’s not true, Grace.”
“Well, true or not, I’m happy to have someone else come into her life who might help her. Even if it is my husband’s girlfriend.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing those words come out of your mouth.”
“You and me both.”
“I hope you know you’re welcome to stay at Domaine St-Buvard as long as you want. We have plenty of room.”
“Thank you, darling. Laurent’s already offered and we’ll probably take you up on it. At least for a little bit. Then we’ll need to start over, just the two of us.”
“Taylor will stay with Windsor?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. For now anyway.”
“I’m just so sorry not to have been there for you, Grace.”
“Darling, you were, though! In your own Maggie-like way, you helped me to clarify my feelings. What good is hearing poor Grace when what I really needed was perspective? Which you gave me.”
“How in the world?”
“When I first got here I was hurt over Win having a girlfriend—and that wasn’t the real problem at all! If you’d mollycoddled me, I would’ve let myself see Win as the villain instead of stepping up. You made me see how truly awful it all was, letting down the girls and everything. And that helped me see, eventually, that in spite of how bad it was, leaving was still the right thing to do.”
An hour later, Laurent still hadn’t returned and Maggie had dozed off. Grace sat next to the bassinet in the room with her hand touching the little fellow’s blanket. Maggie woke up and smiled at the two of them. Before she could speak, there was a tentative tap at the door, and when it pushed open Julia and Mathieu stood in the opening.
“Julia!” she cried. “You’re here!”
Julia entered, looking first to Maggie and then to Grace and then back at Maggie. She was wearing jeans and a cashmere pullover. Her hair looked wet, as if she’d just stepped from the shower. Her damp grey and brown curls wobbled against her forehead as she nodded and smiled shyly. “They released me last night,” she said. “On my own reconnaissance or whatever it is. It’s not official yet but it will be. I’m free.”
“Good Lord, who is this fine piece of work?” Grace said to the hulking Mathieu, who looked to Maggie as if he’d also had a shower since she saw him last. His piercings and tats were even more noticeable in the glaring hospital light.
“Oh, Jules, this is Grace,” Maggie said, “my best friend. You’ve heard me talk of her? Grace, this is Julia and her Mathieu, my guardian angel.”
“I’ve heard so much about you,” Grace said, extending her hand to Julia and then Mathieu. “But I believe the
person you really came here to see is now receiving.” She stepped out of the way to reveal the bassinet with its just-waking contents.
“Oh, Maggie, he’s gorgeous!” Julia said going over to the baby bed. “He looks just like Laurent!”
“Good thing,” Grace said, sotto voce.
“Shut up, Grace.”
“I cannot believe how you did all this and had a baby too.”
“It was nothing.” Maggie scooted up to a sitting position in her bed, wincing slightly. “Roger released you?”
“In person, last night. Sorry I didn’t come over straightaway.” She looked adoringly up at Mathieu who was returning the gaze. “I heard you were otherwise engaged and I was, too.”
“I’m just glad it’s all over,” Maggie said. She laughed and nodded toward the bassinet. “All of it. Can you bring him to me, Grace?”
Grace bundled up the baby, unable to take her eyes off his face. “He is going to keep you and Laurent hopping. I can tell.”
“Laurent’s already thinking of what duties he can assign him in the vineyard,” Maggie said, holding her arms out for him. When Grace placed the baby in her arms, she turned back to Julia and Mathieu. “I wanted to tell you, Mathieu, that I’m so sorry I yelled at you yesterday.”
“Pas du tout.”
“No, you were a total prince and I was awful to you. If it weren’t for you…what were you doing out there, anyway?”
He shrugged. “Looking for mushrooms.”
“God, Julia, you guys really are two peas in a pod, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, we are. Maggie, thank you.” Julia approached the bed and reached out to touch Maggie’s hand. “You didn’t give up on me. And I’m sorry I made it so difficult.”
“I don’t think I really did anything,” Maggie said. “Just made everyone’s lives miserable.”
Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) Page 26