She couldn’t live on Augustine’s generosity forever. It wasn’t enough to retire on.
Maybe it was just all a mistake.
Maybe she could just call HR up tomorrow from the airport or even when she got up in the hotel and explain there must have been a mistake because she had put in for leave and thought it had been granted. She even rechecked her work schedule from her phone. The black bars through those days by her name meant that they had approved her leave. She had not been scheduled, and she should not have gotten in trouble for not going to work on those days.
Later, Dree was lying in a treatment room on a hard platform with English cucumbers over her eyes and Nigerian gold-flecked mud on her face.
Her phone, which was over on the counter and out of reach, buzzed again.
Dree was supposed to be relaxing. The masseuse had told her not to check her phone.
She gathered up the sheet that the lady had draped over her and wrapped it around her naked body like a toga to get over to it.
Another text from Caridad Santos read, I think they just brought Francis Senft into the emergency room. You broke up with him? Right?
Dree texted Caridad back, Yes, we are definitely broken up. Why is he in the ER?
Caridad: He’s in pretty bad shape. I’ll join that team so I can tell you what’s going on. I’m so sorry, Dree.
Dree waited, dreading what the next text would be.
She didn’t want Francis to be dead. She wanted to tell him to go to hell again, but she didn’t want him to die.
She prayed. She prayed to God with all the force her soul could muster for him not to die and to be okay.
Maybe stitches.
Maybe he just needed a bunch of stitches and an ice pack.
The last thing she ever said to him should not have been Drop dead.
Please, God. Please, nothing worse than stitches.
Caridad video-called Dree over her phone app two hours later. Her mascara had settled under her eyes from sweating behind a face shield, and her black hair had curled into tight ringlets from sweat and humidity inside the trauma PPE. She said, “I’m so sorry. We tried everything, but he didn’t make it.”
Dree took it like a bowling ball to the gut.
She’d never wanted him to die.
Her prayers felt empty, like the universe had shouted back a resounding no.
Her hand clamped over her mouth, and her gut heaved.
She couldn’t breathe and her lungs had no air. What right did she have to air when Francis was dead? His mother would be devastated and would probably stay in bed under the covers for months. His father might have another stroke at the news. If Dree, young and strong, felt like she’d been crushed into the ground like this, what would happen to them?
Caridad said, “It was a gunshot wound to the back of his head, execution-style.”
His last moments had been terror and pain.
Her stomach cramped. Her body and soul hurt.
She asked, “Dree, what was he mixed up in? Are you mixed up in it, too?”
Dree sucked a tiny bit of air, enough to wheeze, “I’m not, or I never wanted to be. I think he was stealing narcotics from that hospice he worked for and selling them.”
Caridad’s sharp intake of breath sounded exactly like the punches to the chest that had been hammering Dree ever since she got off the bus to buy milk a few days before. Caridad asked, “Francis was a drug dealer?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. I just figured out that Peaceful Transitions Hospice isn’t an enormous organization like we thought it was, like their regulatory documents say they are. They’re just a tiny little facility with three beds. It’s a converted ranch-style house.”
Caridad scowled, her nose and eyes wrinkling in disgust. “If it’s so small, why was he always coming in here to ask us to transfer cases of narcotics?”
She nodded. The world blurred, and hot water dripped down her face. “That’s how I figured it out. He shouldn’t have needed anywhere near that much. And then, like yesterday, Francis said that I had to give him six hundred thousand dollars.”
“You have six hundred thousand dollars to give him?” Caridad asked, her luminous dark eyes wide and aghast on Dree’s tiny phone screen.
“God, no.” Dree said, gulping air. She used her palms to smear the tears off her cheeks. “I had seven thousand, total, in my savings account, and I’d saved that by scrimping for years. I bought all my produce off the half-rotten shelf. I drove a ten-year-old Hyundai Accent, the base model one, and I don’t even like green cars. And he stole it and sold it.”
“If he was a drug dealer,” Caridad said to her, “why did he need money? Isn’t that the whole point of dealing drugs, that you get money for doing it?”
The question was so obvious that Dree’s head seemed to be filled with buzzing. “I don’t know.”
“If he’s six hundred thousand dollars in debt, he’s a really bad drug dealer.”
“He said he was. I don’t know why. He said some awful things to me about what he was going to do to get another six hundred thousand dollars. I mean, he said some scary, horrible things.”
Caridad asked her, “What did you say to that?”
“I told him to drop dead.” And now she felt awful about her choice of words.
“Good,” she said, nodding on Dree’s phone screen. “I know now he’s dead so it doesn’t make any difference, but you can’t go back to a man like that. You can’t go back to a known drug dealer. In the Philippines, when we have a guy like that, we all get away from him. It doesn’t matter if he’s your cousin or your uncle, we get away from him.”
“I did. I broke up with him. But he’s dead now.”
“Is that why they fired you and they want us to call the police? Because they thought you were the drug dealer?”
Oh, God. That made sense. “I don’t know. I guess so.”
“They told us not to call 911 or the general line. They told us to tell HR, and then HR was going to call a certain police guy.”
Dree’s heart fell. “What certain police guy?”
“The police officer who has been snooping around here every day. He says he’s waiting for you and wants to know where you are. None of us told him anything, though.”
“Is he a white guy, tall, with light brown eyes and squints?”
“Yes,” Caridad said. “That’s him.”
That was the guy who had driven her around in Phoenix until she’d jumped out of the car at a stoplight and who’d been on the phone when she’d tried to report Francis.
Caridad and Dree said their good-byes and stay-safes, and they hung up. Dree thanked God for good friends at work who hadn’t told that dirty cop anything.
Later, a woman massaged Dree’s back while she stared at the floor through the round window in the massage table. She blinked while she tried to make sense of what was happening, but the ragged pieces whirled like a dust devil that had sucked up tumbleweeds and broken glass.
The massage therapist said, “Madame, you are very tight in your shoulders. You must reduce your stress.”
“Uh-huh,” Dree said. Her eyeballs were dried out, so she blinked again.
The woman dug her fingers into Dree’s trapezius muscles. “You Americans are all so very tense. This is not good for your blood pressure, and I’ll bet you have problems with your posture.”
“Uh-huh,” Dree said, trying to breathe, but her chest felt like a dozen bungee cords coiled around her ribs. She could only manage a gasp and a sigh every few minutes.
Near the end of the spa day, she got one more phone call. She answered it before she realized that the phone number was from the Phoenix Police. “Hello?”
The man said, “You’re Francis Senft’s girlfriend, and you owe us six hundred thousand dollars.”
Dree recognized the voice of the police officer who had driven her around and grilled her in Phoenix, which was the same man she’d been connected to when she’d tried to call the
anonymous crime report line. He was probably squinting at the phone.
Her body flushed cold, like damp frost on her skin. “No, I don’t.”
God, where did those stupid answers come from?
The man said, “You are in Paris, France. We traced the money you transferred to your sister’s bank account yesterday, so we know where you are. If you don’t wire six hundred thousand to us, we’ll hunt you down and kill you like we did Francis, or we’ll find some other way for you to pay off your debt to us.”
“I don’t—” Dree gasped. “I don’t have that much money. He never gave me any money. I bought most of the groceries, and we split restaurant checks. I don’t know where his money went, but I don’t have it.”
“You’d better get it, or you will die.”
Dree’s numb fingers dropped her phone, but she scrambled on the floor and jabbed the red button to disconnect the call. She swallowed hard so she wouldn’t throw up, and she clutched her phone to stop the shaking in her hands.
The esthetician—a tall and gangly Asian lady who had been so warm and welcoming that Dree had been too ashamed to cancel the Australian Application when she’d figured out what it was—had been applying butt bleach to Dree’s down-under when she had gotten the call.
She stared at Dree and shook her head. She said, “Americans sommes crazy,” with a sophisticated French accent.
Dree agreed with her and re-assumed the tushy-up position to finish the procedure.
Anal bleaching takes a lot longer than one would think, between the painting-on and letting-it-work to the final rinse.
Dree had a lot of time to think about her life choices as the woman painted her asshole with bleach.
Without a doubt, Dree’s worst decision was ever allowing Francis Senft into her office at Good Sam that first day.
He’d seemed so nice, but Dree was beginning to see that he had wanted the narcotics and had been buttering her up like a biscuit.
She had few options. Her ex-boyfriend had threatened to sell her into sexual slavery. The people who’d killed him would probably do that or worse to her.
She didn’t want to die.
She couldn’t die. If she died, there would not be enough money for Victor’s therapy.
So, she couldn’t die.
It was as simple and as hard as that. She needed to do whatever she had to in order to stay alive and send money to Mandi and Victor. Augustine’s generosity would help for a while, and she could earmark all that money for Victor. However, autism therapy is expensive. Really expensive. And even everything that Augustine had given her could be eaten up as fast as she gave it to Mandi because there is always a new treatment or supplement or off-label drug that isn’t covered by insurance.
If Dree was going to keep herself alive, she couldn’t go back to Phoenix, and she couldn’t stay in Paris.
So, it was time to plan.
If she went back to Phoenix, no doubt the police would find out she was back somehow, and they would tell the corrupt cop who had threatened her. It wouldn’t be hard to track her. They’d just need an APB out on her, and the airline would tell them when she landed. If she tried to rent an apartment or buy a car, the credit check would ping them.
The problem was that the corrupt officer had also known that she was in Paris. Either he would send someone to kill or kidnap her here, or he would have French law enforcement extradite her.
So, she had to go somewhere else.
Dree didn’t know where else to go. She was just a little New Mexican farm girl who thought Phoenix was an exotic location and a big change. She didn’t know anyplace else to go or how to get a job and an apartment once she’d gotten there. Her friends had always told her what hospital was good to work at and what apartment complex or dorm was safe to live in.
She needed her people for advice.
But she did know one person who would know of somewhere far enough away and how to get her there.
Once her butt beautification was over with, Dree sat in the otherwise-empty sage-smudging meditation room. First, she prayed harder than she had since her confirmation when she was fourteen, and then she made a video-phone call.
The phone rang and then clicked, and a nun’s weathered face filled the screen. “Andrea Catherine? Are you all right?”
“Yes, Sister Ann, I’m fine.” Dree’s voice sounded choked in her own ears. “You said you could send me someplace where no one could find me.”
Sister Ann smiled sadly. “Catholic Charities are always in need of trained medical staff, and no one would pry into the past of a qualified nurse practitioner if I vouched for you.”
Dree said, “I need you to tell my family that I’m okay but I can’t come home for a while. I’m afraid even to try to contact them at this point.”
As a high school principal, Sister Ann was known more for her discipline than her compassion, but that public image was not everything she was. “Oh, my child. We’ll get you somewhere safe where they can never find you, and I’ll make sure your parents are okay.”
“Thank you. I can never repay you for this. I’m in Paris, France. I’ll need a flight from here, and I need to leave tomorrow.”
“I have a friend in Paris. I’ll send you to him tomorrow morning, and he can start you on your way.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cin-Dree-ella
Maxence
Maxence sent Dree to the spa for the day, and he wished he could have accompanied her. His back felt like a snarl of knotted ropes that pulled when he moved his arms.
Instead of allowing his body to be coddled in the spa, Max took some ibuprofen on Dree’s advice and attended business and personal meetings he’d already scheduled.
Early the next morning, Maxence would fly back to the Congo for more work with his charity in that region. He’d worked in the thriving, cosmopolitan megacities of Africa including Kinshasa and in small villages decimated by war. He’d seen the reckoning for the genocide in Rwanda, which was ongoing decades later, which was where he’d met Father Moses.
He met with Father Moses in a small room in the rear of the Église Saint-Sulpice Cathedral to discuss his projects and the ongoing collaboration with Catholic Charities. Maxence saw himself as an administrator, but that hadn’t stopped him from literally taking a shovel and digging wells or raising the beams and doing the carpentry for new schools. Much of Maxence’s physique from the last several years had been built by hard physical labor, and he had thick calluses on his hands to prove it.
After they discussed the projects and progress for the last few months, Father Moses reached over and rested his hand on Maxence’s arm, a comforting pressure that Maxence had missed since the older priest had transferred up to Paris several years before. In a few more years, Father Moses would look to a quiet placement in an abbey or a monastery to live out his days in a more peaceful environment. He’d more than earned it.
Maxence patted the old priest’s hand with affection.
Deep scars crisscrossed Father Moses’s right hand, and a portion of his pinky was missing. “I am worried about you, my child.”
As well he should be, but Maxence didn’t say that aloud. He’d dropped out of his true life and the praxis he’d committed to and gone rogue far too much this last month.
Instead, Maxence said, “I am working on it, Father.”
He nodded his head, but his eyes did not leave Maxence’s. “I know you are, and that’s what worries me.”
They went over documents pertaining to the projects’ progress. Maxence’s family had been Catholic for probably eighteen centuries or more, since he did trace its roots back to the Italian city of Genoa. Indeed, in the year 1180, Maxence’s ancestor Grimaldo Grimaldi had been an ambassador from Genoa to Morocco. His family had preserved the letters between him and his parents, which they had donated to a museum. Many men in Max’s family had been priests, and some of the women had taken the veil.
At the end of Max’s meeting with Father Moses, the old pr
iest said, “We need to discuss your next assignment. There is great need for your singular talents elsewhere for a few months.”
Maxence said, “But I have a household in the Congo.”
Father Moses nodded. “You’ll need to decide what to do about that, and that is another reason why I worry about you, Maxence, my child, my most faithful child.”
The texts flew furiously that morning because Maxence could not escape his extended family. There were just too many of them.
From his older brother, Pierre: I have made inquiries. I did not order surveillance nor any interference. Our uncle Jules sent people to Paris on a plane from Nice the evening after our altercation. I would suggest you look to him for answers.
Maxence could deal with his brother sending goons after him because Pierre probably just wanted Max temporarily detained.
Jules Grimaldi had good reasons to want Maxence dead.
But again, Maxence was leaving the next morning, and Jules would not be able to send mercenaries to follow Maxence to where he was going and kidnap him.
Probably.
His uncle Jules Grimaldi was exactly the type who would send assassins, even more so than Pierre.
From Max’s cousin Alexandre: Something happened with Christine. She won’t tell me what, but she’s freaked out. She quit the symphony and says she’s leaving.
Christine was Alexandre’s younger sister and a violinist. She was one of the steadiest members of Max’s family. If she was freaked out and leaving—
—something bad was going on at home.
Maxence quietly waited in the living room of the hotel suite, running the tip of one finger over his Patek Philippe watch on his left wrist. There was no need to rush. The charity ball could start without them. Indeed, Max preferred to arrive later, near the end of the hors d’oeuvres and just before supper.
Plus, he needed time to reflect.
And time to plan. He sent emails to his household in the Congo. Three-month assignment. Prepare to move house. You’ll meet me there.
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