Chapter Thirty-three
Maggie sat with Darla in the back of the police cruiser, each with a blanket around their shoulders. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They were safe now and there were no more monsters in the night.
Burton and Kazmaroff were too engaged with the clean up of the aftermath of the night to do much beyond take basic statements from them, but she knew they felt as if they had redeemed themselves.
Who knows? Maybe they had.
When Burton handed her his cellphone to call someone to come get her, she didn’t have the energy or the emotional strength to think very hard. She knew she needed to be home and protected and loved and cared for.
She’d called Laurent.
She closed her eyes and felt the exhaustion of two long, sleepless days of anxiety and terror.
“When did you know it was her?” Darla whispered to her.
Maggie shook her head. “Way too late,” was all she said.
Darla took her hand and squeezed it. “We’re alive, Maggie. It was just in time.”
Gary arrived in a whirl of tears and hugs, having made the trip from Savannah in under three hours—the last forty minutes with a police escort. Maggie watched him and Darla cling to each other for dear life. She closed her eyes again and imagined she was back on the airplane, or maybe back in Paris. When she opened them again, Laurent was there. He knelt by her where she sat in the police car and took her hand.
He knew she knew. His eyes said as much. And it was all too much tonight.
Without a word, he picked her up and carried her back to their car and to their apartment in Buckhead.
Maggie slept for the entire weekend.
She was vaguely aware that Laurent was bringing her food, tucking her in, watching her. But for the most part, she just let the week she had endured fall over her and through her, and when she awoke on Sunday she knew she had come out on the other side.
That morning, she sat in the living room of her apartment and waited for Laurent to bring in their coffees. While he hadn’t made an overture to her beyond that of a friend, neither had he moved to the couch at night.
She took her first lucid look at the world around her since she had emerged from her sleep, and her nightmare. For the first time in six months, she realized she didn’t care if Burton and Kazmaroff ever called her again. She registered that she didn’t need to know one thing more than she already did about Elise or Deirdre’s last hours.
Ever.
It was over and done. Except for Laurent. She watched him as he moved into the living room. It always amazed her to see the way he moved, so graceful and silent for someone of his size. She dropped the afghan that had been on her lap and stood. She moved, with her hands on her hips, to put the couch between them.
She had things to say to him.
Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries Page 57