Chloe managed to rouse her voice for that one. “Absolutely. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Claire Underwood looked between her husband and youngest child, equally frustrated. “I can’t fight the both of you,” she said. “Just make sure you have the security system on, you understand?”
“We never use the security system,” Chloe protested.
“We paid a huge amount of money for it, we might as well use it,” her father said, the traitor. “That sounds like a good compromise. Promise to leave the security system on and I’ll make sure your mother comes with me.”
Chloe had never considered that her mother might
refuse to go at the end. The very notion of a weekend of mother-daughter bonding gave her cold chills. Not that she didn’t love her mother, but Claire’s attempts at bonding were notoriously inept. “I’ll use the security system,” she said. “I’ll even go buy a gun and a pack of guard dogs if you think it’s necessary.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Chloe.” Her mother had given up at this point. “Besides, I think your father has an old twenty-two somewhere up in the attic.”
“Great. I’ll go make sure I know where to find the weapons when the Mongol hordes attack.”
“Very funny,” her mother muttered. “I know the two of you think I worry too much….”
“And we love you for it,” James said. “But in the meantime we’ve got to go. You’ve got a paper to deliver and I’ve got grandchildren to see.” He glanced over at Chloe, sitting on the stool with both hands clasped around the glass of orange juice. “Speaking of which, I wouldn’t mind some more eventually. No hurry, of course, but you might just keep it in mind. I hear Kevin McInerny’s back from New York, setting up a law firm in Black Mountain. You used to date him, didn’t you? Nice young man.”
“Yes, he was nice,” Chloe said. She couldn’t even remember him.
“Maybe I’ll invite him out to dinner when we get back,” her mother said. “You wouldn’t mind that, would you, Chloe?”
She’d rather have her toes eaten by lizards. “That would be fine.”
Her mother swallowed it whole, and by that time her father had reappeared with the luggage. “Have a good time,” Chloe said brightly. “I’ll be fine.”
Her mother gave her a quick hug, pulling back to search her face one more time. She didn’t like what she saw there, Chloe thought, but there was nothing she could do about it.
“Be careful,” her mother said.
Ten minutes later they were gone, blissful silence filling the huge old house. She dutifully set the security system, once she knew they were off the grounds, and then forgot about it. There was an odd chill in the air. The soft ripe scent of spring had been temporarily halted. She should have paid attention to the Weather Channel, but scenes of snowstorms in more northerly climates tended to make her shake, so she usually avoided it completely. The sky was overcast, threatening, and the wind had picked up, laced with an edge of ice. A cold front must be coming through, she thought, trying to still her instinctive nervousness. It wouldn’t affect her traveling family—they were well ahead of whatever storm was blowing in. And it wouldn’t affect her—she had no intention of going anywhere. Instead she was planning on pampering herself while they were gone—taking long, leisurely soaks in the Jacuzzi, watching old musicals on the television. She used to
have a fondness for martial arts movies, but since she’d returned from Paris she found she had a low tolerance for artificial violence. But Judy Garland and Gene Kelly calmed her into believing in a happy place where people woke up singing and dancing. For the next few days, she was going to live in that place, no matter what the weather outside.
It was growing dark by the time she emerged from the hot tub, and she wrapped herself in a thick terry robe and wandered down into the kitchen. The security panel was blinking, the green lights telling her all was safe and secure, and she realized for the first time in months she was hungry. Probably because her mother wasn’t there nagging her to eat. She opened the massive refrigerator that was always kept overstocked, found herself some leftover apple pie. She pulled it out, closing the door behind her, only to look directly into Bastien Toussaint’s dark, merciless eyes.
S
he dropped the pie. It was in a Pyrex dish that shattered at her bare feet, but she didn’t move, looking up at him in shock.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Chloe,” he said, his voice that familiar, mesmerizing sound. “Surely you didn’t think I’d died?”
It took her a moment to find her voice. “I wondered,” she said. He looked different. Thinner, his face lined from pain or something else, and his hair was even longer, though streaked with sunlight that matched his tanned skin. Odd, because she never would have thought of him in the sunlight—only in darkness and shadows.
“It takes a lot to kill me,” he said. He was standing too close, and she started to step back, away from him, when he caught her arm in an iron grip. She fought back, instinctively, but he simply lifted her up, setting her down out of the way of the broken glass. She’d forgotten that her feet were bare.
“You might want to get dressed,” he said. “I’ll clean up the mess while I wait.”
“I don’t need to get dressed,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere, you are. You can leave, right now. I don’t know why you suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but I don’t want you here. Go away.”
“The necklace.”
“What?”
“I came for the diamond necklace,” he said in a calm voice. “You left Paris wearing it, remember? It has a certain value, and I came to get it.”
She stared at him in shock. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“I was…incapacitated.”
“Why didn’t you just call me and ask me to send it to you?”
“It’s not something I would trust to the mails, or even to a courier. I’m sorry if my presence distresses you, but I had no choice but to come myself.”
She felt nothing, Chloe told herself. It was like prodding a wound, only to discover it had healed. She looked into his dark, unreadable eyes and was certain she felt nothing at all.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go get it, and then you can leave. I really have nothing to say to you.”
“I didn’t expect you would,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “Just get me the necklace and I’ll be on my way.”
She stared at him for a moment longer. He didn’t belong in her mother’s kitchen. He didn’t belong a few feet away from her, while she was wearing nothing but a loosely tied terry robe. She didn’t feel a thing for him, not hatred or passion—she was totally numb, the blessed numbness that had protected her during those last few days in Paris. And she had to get him out of there, fast, before that numbness faded.
“Stay right there,” she ordered, moving past him, holding herself out of reach as she headed toward the kitchen stairs. He made no effort to touch her, and she felt stupid, but she couldn’t help herself. The closer she got to him the shakier she felt.
Most of her clothes were in the guest house, but there was some clean laundry in the dryer upstairs. While the selection didn’t provide her with much choice, she managed to find a pair of old gray sweatpants, a baggy gray T-shirt and a thick pair of wool socks. Her hair had begun to grow again, and she’d pulled it back in a low ponytail, refusing to look at her reflection in the mirror. She knew what she looked like and she didn’t care.
She’d actually forgotten about the necklace. She’d taken it off, halfway across the Atlantic, and her father had locked it up in the safe once they got home. If only she’d remembered she could have figured out some way to send it back to him.
Or could she? She didn’t know his name, who he
worked for, where he lived. She knew absolutely nothing at all about him. Except that he killed.
The evening light was an eerie blue-gray, and she glanced at the window, wondering where his car was. Wondering how he’d managed to get past the alarm system. Silly question—he could probably materialize through stone walls if he wanted. A commercial security system would be child’s play for him.
She watched with stunned disbelief as a few flakes of snow began to fall. It shouldn’t snow in April, not with the daffodils and the rest of the beautiful landscape about to bloom. He must have brought the storm with him, like the coat of black ice surrounding his heart.
He’d cleaned up the broken pie dish by the time she arrived back in the kitchen, and he’d made coffee. It annoyed her, but not enough that she refused the mug he handed her, rich with cream and no sugar, just the way she liked it. She wondered how he knew. In their time together she couldn’t remember having time for a leisurely cup of coffee.
“Here,” she said, dumping the diamonds into his outstretched hand, careful not to touch him.
He put the necklace in his pocket. Black, he was always wearing black, and today was no different. Whose blood was he hoping to hide?
She was being ridiculous. She took a sip of the coffee and couldn’t quite stifle her soft sigh. She hadn’t had as good a cup of coffee since she’d left Paris.
He was sitting at the breakfast bar, looking oddly at ease among the clutter. He didn’t belong there, she reminded herself, and she took another sip.
“How did you get past the security system?” she asked.
“Do you really need to ask?”
She shook her head. “I suppose that means it won’t be any protection at all if someone wants to come after me?”
“And why would they?”
“I don’t know. But then, I never understood why they wanted to kill me in the first place.”
“They’re all dead, Chloe. No one wants to hurt you anymore. And the security system is very good. Just not good enough.” His eyes ran down her body, and there was just the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “You look well.”
“Do we have to do this? You got what you wanted. Why don’t you get on a plane and go back to France and we can forget we ever knew each other.”
“I’d like to,” he said with his customary lack of flattery, “but there seems to be a small problem.”
“What’s that?” she said. She should sit. The hours in the hot tub, followed by the spring chill of an open window and the shock of seeing Bastien once more made her disoriented. If she blinked maybe he’d disappear.
“I don’t want to blink,” she said out loud, her voice
sounding peculiar. Bastien looked odd as well—prettier than she remembered, which was certainly unfair of fate, and she would have said as much but she seemed to have lost the ability to speak.
“Then don’t blink,
chérie,
” he murmured. “Just close your eyes.” And the blackness closed in around her.
He caught her as she fell. He’d lied to her—nothing new. She didn’t look well at all. She’d lost weight, and she had circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but he’d hoped…he’d hoped to find a healthy, buoyant American female ready to hand him his head on a platter. She’d had time to recover, to move past things.
But she hadn’t.
He picked her up, carrying her into the living room. The big old sofa was covered with books and newspapers, and he swept them on the floor before laying her down. He’d probably given her too much—he’d calculated the sedative in her coffee based on her Paris weight and she was down at least ten pounds from that.
Still, it would just keep her quiet longer. Maybe long enough to deal with the problem and then leave, with her none the wiser about her close call. She didn’t need to know that there was an unexpected survivor of the Hotel Denis debacle. And that particular survivor would risk anything to get to Chloe.
There was no mistaking the expression of shock and
horror on her face when she saw him, and he couldn’t blame her. She would have counted on him being out of her life forever, and to have him show up was undoubtedly a nightmare come true. Fortunately he’d had the excuse of the old necklace, and she’d believed him. He just had to hope his luck would hold, as it had so many times before.
He’d hoped to leave it with her—the necklace. He’d had it for years, the first step on his self-determined road to hell. He’d been twelve years old, old enough and tall enough to be an embarrassment to his mother and Aunt Cecile, who liked to think of themselves as at least a decade younger. It was Monte Carlo, they’d been gambling unwisely, and his mother had had to sell her diamond necklace. She’d raged and cried and stormed, and young Bastien had never seen her so upset, and like a child he’d resolved to do something about it. He couldn’t get her necklace back, but he could replace it with another necklace.
It had been easy enough—people don’t suspect a child, even a tall, gangly one. And he was agile as a monkey and totally fearless. The woman who owned the necklace was so old and so fat that the wrinkles in her neck covered it. His beautiful mother deserved it far more.
She was lying in her bed at the hotel when he came in. He waited until her partner for the night left, a middle-aged wine importer whom he sincerely hoped
wouldn’t become her next husband, and then he tiptoed in.
The curtains were pulled against the cruel daylight, and the room stank of cigarettes and perfume and whiskey. And sex. She was passed out, her artfully streaked blond hair flowing down her narrow back, and he whispered,
“Maman?”
She didn’t move. He tried it again, but she simply let out an inelegant snore. He reached over and touched her shoulder, tugging at her, and she turned over, blinking up at him before her eyes focused.
“What the hell are you doing in here, you little brat? I’ve told you to keep a low profile when I’m having friends over.”
“I brought you something.” She’d lost the ability to frighten him when he was about nine, but the anger in her ragged voice almost made him turn around and leave.
“What?” She sat up, not bothering to cover herself with the sheet. He was used to his mother’s body. She had no modesty, and he surveyed her dispassionately. She was getting older. “What did you have to wake me up for?”
He held out his grubby little hand, the diamond necklace glittering even in the shadowy light. “It’s a present. I got it for you.”
She sat up farther still, reached for her cigarettes and lit one. “Give it to me.”
He put the necklace in her hand, and she examined it for a moment, then let out a little laugh. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it….”
“Where did you get this?”
He swallowed. “I stole it.”
He wasn’t sure what he expected. Rage. Tears. Instead she laughed. “Already embarking on a life of crime, Bastien? Maybe your father was that pickpocket after all, and not the American businessman.” She put the necklace back in his hand, stubbed out her cigarette and lay down once more.
“Don’t you want it? You were so sad when you lost your diamonds.” It was perhaps the last vulnerable thing he ever said to her.
She turned and looked at him out of slitted eyes, her makeup caked around them. “Those belong to Gertruda Schondheim, and she has some very nasty connections. I would never dare wear them. They’re far too recognizable. Besides, Georges has already redeemed my own, and I expect he’ll be good enough for a few other trinkets as well. Now go away and let me sleep.”
His hand closed around the diamond necklace. He turned and walked toward the door, when her voice stopped him. “You might as well leave it,” she said. “I don’t know if I can find a fence around here, but sooner or later I can find someone to cut it down and sell it stone by stone.”
He looked down at the necklace. It was a beautiful thing, very old, very elegant, and he’d chosen that one on purpose for his mother’s beautiful neck.
He turned back, ready to pour all his rage and love and hurt out, but she’d fallen into a drugged sleep once again, her son forgotten.
So he’d pocketed the diamond necklace and walked out of the room, and she’d never mentioned it again.
He never knew for certain whether she even remembered the useless gift. It didn’t matter. He had no intention of giving it to her, or even his marginally more affectionate Aunt Cecile.
Nor was he going to return it. It had become a symbol, an icon of power and independence. As long as he held the necklace he had something of value, and he was no longer dependent on his mother’s whims.
Oddly enough, he’d kept it for all those years. There’d been times when he could have sold it, should have sold it, but instead he’d kept it with him.
It should have been easy prey for a thief, as it had been in the first place. But the shadowy world of criminals was far too close to the Committee, and no one would attempt something so dangerous, no matter what the prize. In the twenty years since he’d stolen the damned thing he’d never seen it on anyone’s neck until he fastened it around Chloe’s.
He went through the house swiftly, efficiently, checking the doors and windows, the vulnerable en
tryways. The security system was state-of-the-art, which meant it would hold off a determined operative for approximately five minutes. He’d had enough time to boost the outside defenses, and he worked quickly, doing what he could on the inside of the house. Locking them in.
He glanced at his watch. There was no guarantee that Jensen’s detailed information was accurate, though his infallible instincts told him he could trust him. But plans could change, transportation could be delayed, as he knew far too well from the debacle of the Hotel Denis. If the Underwoods had landed on time Chloe would have been out of harm’s way long before the shooting began.