9. Remy
Chapter nine
Remy
Elaine stares at me with her mouth open in shock, anger in her eyes. She looks absolutely scandalized as I hang up on Claire and slide the phone out of the way so that I can ignore the impulse to open the camera app and see her. I can imagine her, though, tearing through her room and looking for the hidden camera, her cheeks red with the heat of her anger and embarrassment. It’s so damn delicious that I want to kick my housekeeper out and fist myself to the reminder of Claire’s warm body and hot mouth. But Elaine wants to tell me why she’s been so weird lately, and I know somehow it has to do with Davos’ castle—the place we’re raiding tomorrow. As much as I don’t want to push my thoughts of her aside, Claire can wait.
“What is it, Elaine?” I demand. “No more distractions. We’re alone.” I remind her of that by gesturing around the study, showing her that our only company is in the form of words on a page. Words are great company when you need them, but they’re not a threat to whatever secret she wants to relay to me. Elaine must agree, because after she glances around, she lets go of a small breath.
“When I was young, I didn’t have many prospects for the future. College wasn’t for me, and I didn’t like the idea of finding a man to settle down with to take care of me ,” she wrinkles her nose in a show of disgust that matches her words. “So, I started cleaning houses. I worked on references, taking the biggest houses I could because more work meant more money. Eventually, I started to have people reach out to me… doctor’s wives who were too busy with Pilates and Yoga to keep their house running, or some investors’ wife that didn’t have the energy to clean up after her two point five kids all day.”
I nod, hopefully encouraging her to get to the damn point. As much as I care about her and would be happy to listen to her life story, this isn’t the time that I want to do that. I have business to attend to, and my mind is already running back to thoughts of Claire.
I’m not worried, given that her bodyguards have been thoroughly briefed on what will happen to them if anyone touches her, but my blood is boiling at thoughts of her unfurled beneath another.
Elaine must sense she’s losing my interest, because the next words rush out of her mouth quickly. “I took on a job for a Senator one day. His wife had just passed away and his son was away with the military, but he had a daughter that still lived at home. He needed help with little things—meals, general housekeeping.”
“What you do for me.” I confirm that I’m following her so far, even though I have no fucking clue how this is relevant.
“Yes. Except, I was still early in my career, and I was so easily intimidated. I was young.” She bites her lip. “But I always had a bad feeling about that guy. I never knew what it was until after his son—who had taken a leave to attend his mother’s funeral—went back out of the country. He’d been gone for a few weeks when the senator hosted a party. One that he told me he didn’t want me around during. But his daughter—Ally—she was sick with the flu, and I felt so bad for her. She was crying that she just wanted her mother, and I mean, she was sixteen, not like this was a child. I mean, she was a child.” Elaine stammers. “But she was really not well, and I didn’t know what to do. She had a friend over with her, a friend who practically lived with them, and the friend—Lauren—she was trying to make everything better, but nothing was helping. So, I brought her soup. ”
“Dastardly.” I say with false accusation, because Elaine looks so guilty over taking a sick girl soup that I can’t meet it with anything other than sarcasm. But she doesn’t rise to my bait, stuck in whatever horror she’s constructed for herself.
“The senator was having a party, and I’d been warned to stay away. I was in the house even though I wasn’t supposed to be, and that’s how I ended up seeing Lauren for the first time in weeks… the first time since her boyfriend left. She was dating Ally’s brother, you see. She was a regular in their house, and even though I didn’t talk to her much, I remember her face… she had an angel’s face.”
I can sense now that something bad must have happened that night, so I’ve abandoned my sarcasm and simply nod to let her know I’m listening. “I took the soup up to Ally while she was in the restroom, and I figured maybe she’d caught the same thing. She was in there so long, and I could hear splashing, crying… like she was throwing up.” Elaine sighs. “And when I asked if she needed anything, she opened the door with a dry face and smiled and told me everything was fine. But I saw the pregnancy test on the counter behind her. I wasn’t close enough to read the results, but I’m sure she was pregnant.”
“She said she was fine, and Ally fell asleep, and I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I left. I never saw Lauren again.”
I blink, trying to process the abrupt end to that random story. “You think she was… what, taken by Davos to be used as a sex slave just because you never saw her again after you heard her throwing up?” I try not to laugh, but that is quite a leap. It makes sense, with her apparently guilty conscience, that our earlier conversation made her think of a repressed memory. And as pervasive as human trade is, it’s not impossible that that really is what happened to her. But there are a million other possibilities for why a young, possibly pregnant girl may have disappeared.
“No.” Elaine drums her fingers against her mouth like she’s working through something in her head .
“How much do you know about this girl? I mean, she could have been scared to have a baby so she got an abortion and then couldn’t face up to it. She could have decided to run off and start a life in another state. Maybe her parents sent her away so she wouldn’t bring shame to them or something with her pregnancy.”
“No. She didn’t have parents. She was an orphan herself, raised by an aunt that worked for them before me. When her aunt died, she became a ward of the state or something. Ally was worried from the jump that something had happened to her—she didn’t answer any of her calls, she never sent her an e-mail or left her a note. She didn’t send her boyfriend any kind of letter. He found out she was missing from talking to his sister. I don’t know what ever happened to the investigation, because just a week after that party, the senator pinned me against his counter and tried to…” She clears her throat, letting me use my imagination. “He tried to coerce me into things that weren’t in my job description. I got away because Ally walked in, but if she hadn’t…”
She shudders, and anger unfurls in the pit of my stomach at the idea of another woman I care for being victimized.
“I never went back, but a gracious friend put in a recommendation with your mother, and when she called me, I started working for your family. I recognized your father’s driver from the night I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I knew from that moment that your family was wrapped up in something cruel. But I needed the work, and no one ever bothered me, so I stayed in blissful ignorance all this time. I never thought about Lauren again until six months ago.” Her voice breaks on a sob, and I watch as she tries to shove it back inside by clamping her hand over her mouth.
I blink, waiting for her story to make sense. But it doesn’t. None of it makes sense… until Elaine taps on the phone she’s been clutching for dear life. The screen comes alive, and she stares at it with heartbreak in her eyes for a moment before she slides it across the desk to me .
My eyes rove the photo, taking it in all at once. It’s a yearbook photo, a grid of pictures not unlike the ones sitting on my kitchen counter right now with numbers beneath the pictures. This one doesn’t have numbers, though. It has names on the left of the page… names that I can see despite the zoomed in photo of the girl who disappeared that night.
Lauren Marshall.
I know that’s who it is because she’s the first photo on the page, her name the first one on the top of the list. But I’d have known what Elaine was getting at even if she hadn’t already told me the girl’s name. It’s impossible to miss.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I’m looking at a photo of Claire Monroe.