Rogue

by Blair Babylon

  The bad guy was on top and reached his hands around Augustine’s throat.

  He wasn’t watching Dree as she sprinted, so she planted one foot and landed a solid soccer kick to the side of the guy’s head. The force of her kick toppled him sideways. She wasn’t sure if she’d knocked him unconscious, or if Augustine’s hard jab to the other side of his head was the one that did it. Blood trickled out of his ear, running down his chalky skin and into his brown hair.

  The remaining guys ran for the van, giving up.

  Dree stood with her fists raised, watching for anybody else to come at them.

  Augustine vaulted to his feet and grabbed her hand, wheeling her around to throw her into the back seat of the hotel’s waiting car, and jumped in after her. He pulled the door closed.

  The driver was already in his seat.

  The tires squealed as he pulled away into traffic.

  Augustine was asking her, “Are you hurt? You were magnificent, but did they hurt you?”

  Dree was busy evaluating Augustine for head trauma or other impact damage from the fall. Her fingers traced along his scalp, feeling for mushy spots, but he seemed intact. She manipulated his shoulders, elbows, and other joints, looking for bone fractures, sprains, or strains. She asked him, “Did you sustain any blows to the head? Are you feeling dizzy?” She held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up? Track this.” She moved her fingers up and then to the side. “How many goddamn fingers, Auggie?”

  Augustine grabbed her around her shoulders, hugging her to his chest. “I’m fine, and if you are this efficient, then I assume you’re all right. We’re okay.” He called up to the driver, “Maximum security at the hotel when we arrive. Underground entrance.”

  The driver turned around, and his eyes were so wide with fear that his cream-colored sclera were visible all the way around his black irises. “Are you two okay? Should we go to the hotel or a hospital?”

  “The hotel,” Augustine said, his voice returning to its usual, low tones. “We’ll evaluate our condition at the hotel.”

  Dree clung to him as the adrenaline in her blood subsided, and the only thing left was fear. “Who were those guys?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll find out.”

  When they got back to the hotel room, Dree went into the bathroom and washed her face and hands with hot water and soap, scrubbing up to her elbows with thick suds. The soap might not have been institutional strength, but any soap that makes good, thick bubbles has enough surfactant to be antiseptic. She didn’t think she’d gotten any blood on her, but even an herbal-smelling bar of hotel soap will kill all bacteria and most viruses, including blood-borne infections like HIV.

  When she went back out to the living room, Augustine was sitting on the couch, his legs crossed easily and his arm resting on the sofa back, quietly speaking a language that she didn’t understand into his phone. He wasn’t raging, but his measured cadence sounded like he was explaining to whomever was on the other end of the line exactly how he was going to eviscerate them if they didn’t do what they were told. The anger was in the way his teeth bit each consonant of the words he spoke.

  Dree picked up Augustine’s hand that was lying on the back of the couch and tugged on it. Dark crusty spots and streaks peppered his skin.

  He shot her a dark glance and didn’t budge from the couch.

  She said, “You’ve got blood all over you. You need to get it off, now.”

  Augustine allowed himself to be led while he continued his quietly scathing explanation of whatever was going to happen to the guy. Dree could see his teeth far too often as he precisely enunciated certain words that probably related to pain and death.

  When they got to the bathroom, Augustine held his phone between his ear and his shoulder, rolled up his sleeves, and soaped up his arms.

  Dree told him, “Make sure you get your face, too. There’s a spray of blood over your cheek and nose.”

  With that, Dree went back to the bedroom and rifled through her gym bag. Apparently, the hotel staff had washed her gym clothes and scrubs and folded them into her small bag because everything in there was fluffy and smelled great. She threw on some sweatpants and a tank top, going braless because she’d been cooped up in underwires for days.

  Augustine emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and drying his hands and arms with a white towel. The blood on his face was also gone. The white towel wiped over the tattoo on his forearm, hiding and revealing the three shields and Celtic knot between them.

  The devastatingly quiet language he was speaking now was French. Dree could pick out a word here and there, although he was speaking it amazingly fast. He seemed to be speaking more softly, too.

  He sighed and hung up the phone.

  “Did you find out who it might have been?” she asked.

  “Our assailants were speaking French,” Augustine said, “so it makes sense that they were associated with a French organization, probably. Maybe.”

  As he was standing in the living room of the hotel, holding his phone and talking to her, his skin drained of color under his tan.

  “Augustine?” she asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

  He staggered to a chair two steps away and collapsed into it, holding his head in his hands.

  Dree sped across the room to him. “Are you dizzy? Chest pain, especially the left side? Headache, numbness, or tingling in your limbs?”

  “Dizzy,” he gasped and lowered his head farther, dropping it between his knees.

  Dree grabbed his arm and slapped two of her fingers on his radial pulse in his wrist. She could count his pulse over six seconds, timing it in her head, and carry on a conversation. “Are you spinning, or is the room spinning?”

  “Um.” He was blinking rapidly. “The room.”

  His heart rate was a hundred and seventy beats per minute and thundering in his veins. His blood pressure was probably sky-high. “Do you have problems with tachycardia or high blood pressure? Did you have a fever this morning?”

  “No,” he said, gasping for air.

  “Panic attack,” she said. “Do you have a diagnosis of panic attacks?”

  “Some assholes just tried to kidnap us!” Augustine said. “Panic is a perfectly rational response to nearly getting thrown in a van and held for weeks on a rusty tanker ship!”

  Dree frowned. “That’s the second time—”

  Augustine lifted his head enough to grab ahold of her and clutch her to him. “I’m okay. We’re back here at the hotel. We didn’t get kidnapped. We’re fine. Blue curtains, ivory wall paint, bust of Victor Hugo in the niche. Traffic from the street outside, the sound of your voice, air conditioner hum. The smell of roses from the table, and the scent of the hotel’s herbal shampoo in your hair.”

  He’s grounding, she thought. Grounding is a technique taught to people who had panic attacks or anxiety. You pick out five things you can see, three things you can hear, and one thing you can smell or taste to ground you in the present, not wherever your terror is.

  She backed up and held his hands in hers. “The sunlight coming in the windows. The curtains blowing in the breeze. Me, holding your hands.”

  He nodded. His breathing was slower. “I’m okay.”

  “You did so well,” she told him. “You knocked out three guys and fought off two more. Did you take karate or something?”

  “Everything. I took years of Krav Maga, Tae Kwon Do, boxing, other things. I think I have black belts in three different disciplines, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “It was enough. We’re okay. You saved yourself and me.” She sneaked a finger onto his wrist. His pulse was down to under a hundred and slowing. “It was just a panic attack. It’s over. You’re okay.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “It only happens when someone tries to kidnap me.”

  “So, almost never,” she said.

  Augustine studied her for a second. “Right. Almost ne
ver.”

  She stroked his hard calluses on his palms, just touching him to ground him more. “You don’t seem the type to have farming calluses like this. I mean, I do. They’re left over from chores when I was growing up.” She showed him the thick skin on her palms and fingerpads. “Mostly from mucking out the pens, shoveling sheep shit.”

  He laughed. “I’ve had an interesting life. I’ve been blessed to do some things that were important to me.”

  “So, all those phone calls,” Dree said, curling her callused hands back up. “What did you find out?

  He exhaled a long breath. “I may have mentioned that an old friend of mine needed help leaving her husband?”

  Dree nodded. “It’s come up.”

  “Those goons seem to have been Estebe’s, the Mafia husband. Simone thinks they were because Estebe was seen to be strutting around this morning and hinting that something would happen. She said that she would call Estebe and threaten him with a brutal and public divorce if he didn’t call them off, which has perhaps a fifty percent chance of working.”

  “Wow, and I thought my break-up was bad.”

  Augustine shrugged. “I knew Estebe back in school, too. He holds a grudge. I’m surprised he did something so bold in broad daylight, though.” He looked at the ceiling, musing. “If this had gone badly, Estebe has no official contacts. He might have people on his payroll, but nothing official. Usually, an attempt at abduction in broad daylight takes a national intelligence service because their problems can be sorted out and hushed up. Just from the boldness of it, I suspected my brother or my uncle.”

  “Uncles are always the assholes when there are inheritance problems. Uncle Marny was a giant dickweed.”

  Augustine nodded. “My uncle Jules is, indeed, a giant dickweed. I like that. I think I’ll tell him he’s a giant dickweed next time I see him.”

  “If the weed fits,” Dree agreed.

  “My uncle Jules has always been bitter about being born the third son of my grandparents. Every time my parents or Alexandre’s parents had another child, thus knocking him further down the list, the rumor was that he raged for days and was photographed in casinos doing inadvisable things. My grandparents were distraught about what to do with him. He has a problem with zero-sum thinking. If someone else gets something, that means that he didn’t get it and so he gets angry about it.”

  “Wow,” Dree said. “He is a giant dickweed.”

  “Indeed,” Augustine said. “A giant, verdant dickweed, and he’s the type who would go after someone to remove them from an inheritance. I’m in his way. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jules was behind either that surveillance team when we went to the Eiffel Tower or these people who tried to kidnap one or both of us.”

  “They could have been after me,” Dree said. “I could have international assassins after me, too. You’re not the only one who’s important enough to have people trying to kill you.”

  “Could you?” Augustine asked, brightening, obviously thinking she was joking.

  “My ex is a drug dealer,” she reminded him. “And I think he roped me into it without my knowing. So, yeah. His head honchos might be after me.”

  “Oh.” Augustine seemed more concerned than before. “I don’t like the thought of people going after you at all.”

  She shrugged. “Guess we should have made better life choices, huh?”

  “And you’re going back to Phoenix where these drug dealer ‘head honchos’ are located?”

  When he tried to talk Western with that British accent, it was funny. “I don’t know if I am. I’m talking to people. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll go back to New Mexico or something. I could just lay low for a few years. They’ll forget about me. I’m nobody.”

  Augustine frowned and looked troubled. With those fathomless dark eyes and perfect bone structure, he was hot even when he was troubled. “Is there anywhere else you could go?”

  “Maybe,” Dree said. “I’m still working on it. Besides, they’re probably after you. I don’t think my Phoenix drug dealers speak French all purty like those guys who jumped us outside the Louvre were, and I don’t think they could have gotten anybody here so soon when we went to the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Ah,” he sighed. The tension left his face, and Augustine’s next glance at her was full of relief and a hint of sparkle. “Good. All right, those dirkwads—”

  “Dickweeds.”

  “—dickweeds were surely after me. I’m leaving Paris in two days, anyway. I’ll be beyond their reach after that. We can dodge them for two days.”

  “Then let’s just stay here. We can just hole up in the hotel. I’m cool with that.”

  Augustine shook his head. “We can figure out security. This is the point of what I want to say: things may be a little dangerous for me over the next few days. We’ve got forty-eight hours left before we each get on separate planes and go to very different places, I’m sure. If you don’t want to put yourself in danger, I’ll transfer the full amount we agreed on right now to whatever bank you want me to, and you can go somewhere you’ll feel safer.”

  Dree attempted to keep her jaw from falling into her lap but didn’t succeed. “That’s generous of you. That’s far too generous of you. I don’t want to leave you here alone, though. I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

  “I think we should do the first part, anyway. As I said, I’m not sure what’s going to happen over the next two days. Let’s get this done now. I’d recommend setting up a new account because it seems as if that ex of yours is into all of your banking matters.”

  She winced inside and plastered a smile on her face because of shame. “I still feel astonishingly stupid for letting Francis have access to all my accounts. I’ll never make that mistake again.”

  Augustine said, “Pick a bank. Set up a new account and tell me where to transfer the funds.”

  “Do you mind if I use your computer? The mobile versions of the websites are hard to navigate sometimes. I’m always scrolling back and forth and back and forth on them, and sometimes I miss things, or it seems harder than it should be.”

  Augustine gestured toward the living room and told her the password to his computer, RuckusEatsHisPoop*3.

  Dree hoped Ruckus was a dog.

  Augustine added, “I’m going to go take a shower. Those guys were all over me, and there was a lot of spraying blood. I wonder if the hotel has a vat of rubbing alcohol I can swim in.”

  Dree toddled off into the living room and found Augustine’s computer lying on the desk. Dree opened the laptop and started it up, entering the password when the window appeared.

  Still gross.

  Dree found one of her usual bank websites and started with a whole new login and a different email to open a new account, flipping back and forth between her email inbox and the bank to set it up. Luckily, she had her identification numbers memorized, and she wrote down the routing and account numbers for Augustine.

  Then she logged in with her previous credentials and closed her old checking and savings accounts. Screw Francis. She was not letting that jackass get any more of her money. Not one goddamn penny.

  While she was on the bank’s website, Dree logged on with yet another login and password to check the account that she shared with her sister Mandi that they had set up for Victor’s therapy.

  The balance was a red twenty with a negative sign in front of it.

  The account was overdrawn.

  Horror struck her, and she scolded herself for stupidly believing that Augustine would actually transfer money into the account or that he even had money to move into the account. He was probably just another swindler, just like Francis, who was stealing everything he could from everybody. She was stupid to believe any man about anything.

  When she went into the deposits and withdrawals, however, forty thousand dollars had been deposited into Mandi’s account from a Swiss bank.

  She mentally apologized to Augustine for the thing that she had not said.

  —
and then the money had been transferred out just two hours before she logged in.

  No, no, no.

  Dree found the help number on the bank’s website and used her nifty app to call them. “Money has been stolen out of my account.”

  The woman asked, “Do you have the transaction number?”

  Dree read it off the website to her.

  “It appears that it was a legal transaction by an authorized user of the account. I’m sorry, but we can’t undo it.”

  Dree tried a few more things, asking whether they could put a hold on the money or whether they could unauthorize that user, but the woman insisted that Andrea Clark had been the one to move the money from a pre-authorized browser located at an authorized IP address in Phoenix, Arizona.

  Which meant Francis had Dree’s computer and was using it to continue to steal any money that she put in the bank.

  Well, that old computer wasn’t authorized on this new account of Dree’s, ending that problem as far as she was concerned.

  Rage vibrated through her that Francis had stolen yet more money. Forty thousand dollars was a huge amount in her life, and it had been earmarked for Victor’s therapy again.

  There was no low that snake would not stoop to. He was a nasty spider that needed to be crushed. How the Hell could she put her life back together and get money to Mandi if he kept taking all of it?

  Dree texted Mandi, I can’t believe it, but Francis stole the money that was put in Victor’s therapy account. I’m going to be paid for this job here in France soon, and I’ll give you more money then. In the meantime, you need to open up a new account, maybe in a different bank, that no one else has any access to, and I’ll put the money in that.

  Dree hated Francis. She hated his guts. Who the hell steals from a disabled kid? She wished that the guy she beat up outside the Louvre was Francis and that she’d kicked him in the nuts, too. She was going to call the police and the FBI, and sue him, and take him out back and rough him up.

  Tapping Francis’s name on her phone’s contact list wasn’t even a voluntary action. She was just so mad at him, and she was used to being able to express whatever emotion she was feeling to Francis.