by Nancy Gideon
twenty
“Bree, help me!”
The cry gurgled from Silas as blood spilled from his nose and mouth. He swayed as Brigit’s palm pressed to the side of his blanched face. Her touch immediately cooled the fever searing his skin.
“Silas, pull back,” Nica urged.
“Not yet!” He was gasping, shaking. “Back me, Bree.”
“I’ve got you.” Or she was trying.
The chaos of Max Savoie’s mind was the whip arm of a hurricane. Violent flashes strobed a spasm of disconnected images. Emotions roiled and crashed in huge, stomach-twisting waves, one over the next. Brigit couldn’t find her balance or catch her breath as she was drawn into the dizzying vortex.
Finally, she found Silas’s energy and latched on to it, surrounding it with her own. Shielding it from the barrage of raw sensation that pounded like an acid rain. She gave Silas her strength, her focus, then simply hung on as best she could while his thoughts continued along that turbulent path.
She absorbed the crippling sense of panic and loss, drawing the anguish into her own soul until it wailed there for relief. She deflected the blows to her brother’s psyche, taking the punishment for him until her own was battered and reeling, while she fed all her failing energies into him.
And just when she could take no more, another force steadied her.
Nica.
Then the pressure was gone, and all she felt was the gentle stroke of Giles’s hand upon her cheek.
“What a mess,” she could hear Silas saying in a weak, shaky voice. “It’s like his mind is one big fun house of trick mirrors.”
“So you learned nothing?” That was Susanna’s calm, clinical voice.
“I got a name, hidden so deep I don’t think Max was even aware of it. Genevieve Savorie. She’s the one, the answer. If we find her, we can fix him. How’s Bree doing?”
Brigit felt her brother’s light touch on her hair but was too weak to respond. Even the effort of opening her eyes was too great.
“You did good, little sister. You did good.” The tender pride in Silas’s voice knotted about her heart. Then he was speaking to someone else. “Will she be all right?”
“I’d like to check her over. She needs to rest.” That was Susanna.
And then for a time, there was nothing but coolness and dark silence.
Then a quiet “How do you feel?”
Brigit opened her eyes to see Susanna’s gentle smile. “Like a soccer ball.” Her scope widened to include an unfamiliar room. A bolt of alarm had her struggling to sit up, but the doctor’s light touch was enough to hold her down. “Silas?”
“Silas is fine. You saw to that. And now we need to see to you.”
“Am I all right?”
“Dehydrated and a bit disoriented, but you’ll be fine, too. That was a brave thing you did.”
Brigit shook her head. What nonsense. There was nothing brave about protecting her brother. It was instinct. Her senses began to clear and focus. “How’s Max?”
“Sleeping.”
“Were we able to do him any good?”
“We may not know for a while.”
She sighed heavily, then murmured, “Giles?”
“He’s waiting to see you. Shall I let him come in?”
Brigit’s thoughts sharpened. “No. Not yet. There’s something I need to ask you first, Doctor.”
“It’s Susanna. What do you need to know?”
“I need to know if I’m pregnant.”
Something had happened.
Giles knew it the second Brigit entered the observation room, where he’d been waiting for news of any kind. Her face was parchment-pale. After a quick glance, she wouldn’t make eye contact with him as she crossed to her brother and was immediately swept into his arms. As he watched them together, an uneasy feeling moved through him.
Silas hugged her tight until her toes came up off the floor, and pressed a hard kiss to her brow. “Thanks for keeping me from getting fried. How are you feeling?”
She settled back, her arms wound about his waist. “Tired.”
“Let me take you back to the condo so you can put your feet up for a while.” He patted her hair solicitously.
“I promised Lou I’d go on her shopping trip with Nica. I could use the air and the exercise.”
“You won’t overdo it?”
She smiled. “When have you ever known me not to think of myself first?”
“Lately? Most of the time.”
Her fingers clutched at his cheap blue suit coat. “Silas, you’re going to talk to the Terriots, aren’t you?”
“Yes. As soon as I’m sure Max is okay.”
“And you’ll make sure Kendra is all right?”
“I will.”
There was something nonspecific in her tone that had the hairs on the back of Giles’s neck prickling. A sense of urgency or perhaps finality.
“Do you think they’ll trade their man for her?”
“I’ll talk to them,” Silas soothed. “That’s what I’m good at. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll make sure you’re both safe.”
The weary relief in her expression as she leaned against her brother’s chest excluded Giles completely. He suppressed the jealousy as unworthy. Silas was her family, her entire world. Of course she’d turn to him first.
His own place in her life was new and unproved. That was going to change, but slowly. Slowly on an as-yet shaky foundation of trust.
So he waited for her attention to return to him. Waited for an uncomfortably long time. But finally, her bright head lifted, and those huge dark eyes turned his way. There was frustratingly little he could learn from her features. They were lovely and composed. And closed off to him.
“I’m supposed to meet Lou and Boyd at the river side of the Square. Would you take me? They’re probably wondering what happened to me.”
“Sure.” Giles smiled. “Boyd’s probably anxious to get that hangover into a dark room somewhere.”
No smile in response. Maybe it was fatigue and he was reading too much into her strained silence.
To Silas, he said, “Keep me posted on Max. Call me if you need me. That was a helluva risk you took.”
Silas shrugged. “Just looking forward to being behind the scenes again. I want him back as much as you do.”
Giles nodded. He understood the yearning for anonymity. They were both second-string men, not figureheads. That was the mantle Max wore so well, if reluctantly.
Silas’s cool stare went from him to Brigit and back with a meaningful intensity. Take care of my sister.
Giles nodded that he understood that as well.
The morning was filled with a misty rain, not enough for an umbrella but uncomfortably clammy. Beneath the dome light in the sedan, the dampness dotted Brigit’s fiery hair and lashes like a sprinkling of glitter.
It was killing him to say nothing, to do nothing. She’d promised they’d talk that night about whatever had her so distant and distressed. He’d have to give her the chance to make her peace with those tormenting demons before she brought them to him. If he pushed, she’d pull away behind her wall of tremendous grit and attitude. So he stayed silent and readily available should she need him.
Which was sooner than he expected.
He’d started the car and was about to put it in gear when she said his name in a hoarse whisper. The instant he angled on the seat, she whipped her arms about his neck with a near-strangling ferocity and was kissing him. A full-out, openmouthed, tongue-to-the-tonsils kiss, so hot and hungry it had his head spinning. But not nearly as much as the breathy words she spoke against his lips.
“I love you, Giles. Please believe me.”
Then her cold cheek was pressed to his, tightening the strange clutching within his chest.
“You promised you wouldn’t leave me,” she said desperately.
He hugged her close, tenderness and certainty strengthening his reply. “I did, and I won’t. Not ever, not for any reason.”
“I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“You won’t be. I’m here for you. I will always be here for you.”
When she relaxed in his embrace, he covered her damp hair with a scattering of tiny kisses.
“We’ll talk tonight,” he told her. “And we’ll make our plans together.”
“I don’t deserve you, Giles.”
“I think you have that backward.”
She straightened so their gazes could meet, hers soft and expressing everything that ached within his heart. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t think so.” Brigit’s palm fitted to his face for a brief stroke, then she settled back in her seat to snap herself in.
Giles was smiling as he guided the big car into the bustling morning traffic entering the old district. Everything was going to be fine.
He was lucky to find a parking spot in the lot next to the Hard Rock Cafe and felt even luckier when Brigit tucked beneath the drape of his arm as they scanned the front of Jackson Square.
Undaunted by the weather, vendors along the iron picket fence surrounding the Square were busy setting up in their assigned spots under tarps of plastic to sell paintings, caricatures, and NOLA T-shirts to the increasing surge of tourists. A sax player wailed a ragtime medley from the corner opposite Café du Monde, his open case gleaming with the first scattering of coins and dollar bills.
“I don’t see them.” Giles craned his neck to look down the shaded storefronts in the Pontalba Building.
“Maybe Louella’s already inside somewhere, spending his money.”
“Maybe.” An unsettling sensation began to curdle in Giles’s belly. He’d expected T-Boy to be on the lookout for their arrival, eager to shed responsibility for his sister. But he wasn’t where they’d arranged to meet. “Let’s get a better view.”
Brigit followed him up to the Riverwalk promenade. Visitors were already busy posing on the old cannon poised to protect the port of New Orleans. From that elevation, they could see the entire Square. But no sign of Boyd and Louella.
“Maybe they’re still having coffee and beignets,” Brigit suggested, beginning to frown as the two of them started down the steps toward the always busy café.
At the base of the stairs were an information booth and freestanding restrooms. Brigit drew up, and Giles followed her fixed stare to a shadowed spot behind the bathrooms, where a young woman crouched in front of a man slumped on a cement bench.
Uttering a low curse, Giles hurried toward them. A distraught Lou met him halfway, tangling her arms about him. At his question, she sobbed, “They just started beating down on Boyd while one of them held me back. The cowards!”
“How many were there? Who were they, Lou?”
“Four. They said they were Guedrys.”
Giles glanced at Brigit, and there it was before he could catch it. She read it in his eyes. This is because of you. You brought them here.
Brigit froze, her features stark and waxen as she registered the quick stab of blame.
He’d hurt her without meaning to. He couldn’t let her feel responsible for the actions of some terrorizing bullies. She didn’t deserve it. Especially not from him. He tried to convey that with a glance over the top of Louella’s head.
But she’d angled away, her profile stoic.
He’d make it up to her as soon as he was able.
Helplessly, he turned his attention back to the weeping teen. “Are you hurt, Lou? Did they hurt you?”
“They pissed me off,” she said, sniffling. “I’m fine. But they won’t be when we catch up to them.”
Giles crossed to Boyd, aware that Brigit followed at a distance. He set Lou away from him so he could kneel before his battered cousin.
Boyd’s face was a lumpy punching bag of abuse. He looked up at Giles through swollen eyes and offered a lopsided grin.“Sons-a-bitches got the drop on me, Rob-E.”
“Did they say what they wanted?”
Boyd’s attention lifted to his sister. “Darlin’, could you go inside and get me something other than toilet paper to clean up my face?”
While the girl ran toward the eatery to oblige him, Boyd met Giles’s furrowed stare with one filled with somber regret. “They wanted me to know who they were and who they work for. Told me straight out.” He nodded toward Brigit apologetically. “She already knows them.” His mood grew despairing as his focus returned to his cousin. “That’s not all they said, Rob.”
Giles tensed but kept his tone low and even. “What else did they say, T?”
“They told me to thank my daddy. That they knew they could count on him to come through with the information.” He paused, expression twisting. “Just like before, when it came to seeing to your daddy.”
Giles never moved a muscle as a slow seeping cold came over him. It started in his belly, forming a heavy brick of ice, then spread in a deadly freezing slick to harden about his heart. “What do you mean?”
“They said he called them,” Boyd continued in a tortured voice. “To give them the heads-up. This time and before. For money. I don’t believe it. Rob, they must be lying, don’t you think?”
Giles wasn’t aware of getting to his feet. Every breath he took burned and shredded. He spoke to Brigit without looking at her, his tone as brittle as frost.
“Take Louella to Cheveax du Chien. Ask Jacques to let you stay in the office. You’ll be safe there. T-Boy, go with them.”
“The hell I will.”
Giles was already striding away, his big frame rigid with purpose.
Boyd struggled to stand, hugging his ribs, barely able to draw a full breath. He looked to Brigit. “I gots to go with him. I can’t let him go alone.”
Brigit knew exactly what he was asking. Help him keep his cousin from killing his father. That was what they’d both seen in Giles’s expressionless face. Darkness. A deep, conscienceless darkness that was capable of anything.
And it was her fault.
She was weak and shaky from the energies she’d expended that morning. Brigit knew what she was doing was dangerous. But suffering those consequences couldn’t compare to keeping Giles from doing something that would destroy him.
So she placed her hands on Boyd and channeled her strength into him, to those areas that needed repair. She let him drain her energies from her until her head swam, until her awareness began to ebb and flow in soft, surreal pulses. Until she felt every one of the bruises and aches and splintered bones as if she’d been the one brutally beaten. Finally, she broke the connection, wobbling until Boyd’s palms fitted beneath her elbows to guide her onto the bench where he’d been sitting.
Brigit couldn’t hear what he said to her over the buzzing in her ears. She tried to focus on Giles through the prismed brightness that cloaked his retreating figure. She tried to call after him, to say she was sorry, to beg him to stop, to think, but he was too far away, with Boyd racing after him.
But then it wouldn’t really matter what she said. Not now.
There would be no talk, no plans, no future where Giles St. Clair was concerned.
He’d spelled all that out without a word in his brief condemning stare.
They traveled fast, Giles’s powerboat skimming along the river, rhythmically slapping the water’s surface. Boyd stayed wisely silent as Giles made a quick call.
“Those things I asked you to find out, what did you come up with?”
Charlotte told him what he already knew about Vantour putting the squeeze on his father to gain control of drug-trafficking channels, about Boyd’s minor scrapes with the law. But he didn’t know that the Guedry clan was the muscle for Vantour back then and that Emmett St. Clair was in deep to the viciously clever mobster.
“Vantour funded some of his expensive failed schemes,” the detective told him. “Around the time Clovis Robichaux died, large sums of money found their way into St. Clairs’ bank account. I’m sorry, Giles. Robichaux was your father, wasn’t he?”
Funny that this would be the first personal t
hing she’d ever learned about him. “What else did you find?”
“There were identical withdrawals taken from his account regularly for almost four years. Do you want me to find out where it was going?”
“No. That’s okay. I think I know.”
“If you need anything else . . .”
After thanking her and ending the call, Giles emptied his mind of thought, just as Jimmy had taught him. He focused on the destination, not upon purpose or the sawed-off shotgun he always kept in the car as a backup, resting on the console beside the wheel. He let himself sink back into the soul-encasing numbness that he’d moved through from the time he’d thrown pieces of his first man he’d killed into the trunk of a car until the moment he’d seen a spark of possible redemption in Max Savoie. It was an empty place, without hope, without dreams, without a future, and he knew it well. Just as he knew without dwelling upon it that at the conclusion of this day, he’d never leave that place again.
Boyd was clearly considering making a grab for the shotgun. That indecision practically vibrated through him. And if his cousin made the move, Giles wasn’t sure he’d try to stop him. It didn’t really matter. No one was going to come out of this a winner.
Anger drained away. The hurtful surprise dulled and finally disappeared. There was just action now, and it drove him with relentless determination. Had him striding up to the house where he was born, to the family he adored, to do the unthinkable.
His mother met him on the porch. Her disapproval at his presence faded into panic when she looked into his face.
“Giles, no!” Her palms pressed to his chest as her cane clattered to the floor.
She knew. She knew!
Giles set aside that mind-rocking realization the same careful dismissive way he did his mother, moving her from his path with the sweep of his arm into Boyd’s care. He continued down the hall toward the sound of Jeopardy!. A distant part of him appreciated the irony of that choice of final program.
The bloody handprint had been scrubbed from the molding, erasing its presence but not its impact.
Emmett was tucked into his La-Z-Boy, TV remote on his knee and pistol on the end table next to a can of beer. Prepared for more trouble from the Terriots, he was nowhere near ready to face it from a source closer to the heart. He took one look at the boy he’d helped raise and saw his own death. And he resigned to it with a heavy sigh. “Irene,” he called in a faint yet firm voice. “Let Boyd take you outside while your son and I make some talk.”