Chapter 14
To Do:
- Buy another suitcase for boots and purses
- Check on Rosie
A knockat the door drew Claire from sleep. Why was she so exhausted? The sheets puddled around her waist, and the bed next to her was empty. Where the hell had Luke gone now? If he had ditched her in France after finally getting laid, she would burn his house to the ground.
Wait, she hadn’t sleepwalked in the middle of the night and crawled into someone else’s room, had she? But no, those were her shoes by the bathroom door. Thank god.
She rolled out of bed and tugged on the terrycloth robe. Why did her tailbone hurt so much? Oh, right, the Great Rat Crisis. She reached instinctively for Rosie’s leash, but her furry best friend was three thousand miles away. Her shoulders dropped, and she made a mental note to demand a picture. Mindy better have sung her the bedtime song. Rosie couldn’t sleep without it.
Another knock sounded, and Claire tied the sash of the robe before cracking the door open. A hotel employee offered a tray of something that smelled delicious. Luke must have ordered breakfast in bed. She stepped back and allowed the employee to arrange the dishes and a beautiful vase of flowers at the tiny table in the room before departing.
Claire crossed the room and twitched the curtain aside. Luke was standing shirtless on the balcony, phone pressed to his ear. Freakin’ Pete, the night owl workaholic.
She had time to brush her teeth and put on a coat of mascara before Luke slid the balcony door open.
“Morning, beautiful.” He ducked his head and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Sleep well?”
“Too well,” she said. She hadn’t even sleepwalked. The city of Paris should really thank her. Who knew what kind of damage she could have done? “You?”
“Not bad.” He sat across from her. “I hope you don’t mind I ordered breakfast.”
“It smells amazing. What’s wrong? You look tense.” She took a sip of the café au lait. Delicious.
“Nothing, just work stuff.” He removed the silver lid to reveal a croissant with jam and a pain au chocolat. How did the French stay so skinny while eating nothing but carbs? Smoking, probably.
“Pete again?”
“Yeah, listen. I—” He glanced at the flowers on the table. The knife fell from his hand and clattered on the table. “I didn’t ask for flowers.”
“It’s probably part of the room service deal,” she said, spreading fig jam on her baguette.
“There’s a card.”
The bottom fell out of her stomach. The pastry thunked onto her plate. “What?”
Luke reached out and pulled a small, square card from the flowers. He ripped the envelope open and pulled out a sheet of cardstock.
“What does it say?” The room was starting to blur at the edges and shadows danced across her visual field.
“Get your phone. We need to call Detective Smith.”
Claire slid sideways out of her chair, and the darkness claimed her.
The smell of ammonia hit her like a meteor. She gasped and sat up, nearly smashing her head on the breakfast table. She was still in the hotel room, thank god, and not in a French hospital. Her health insurance definitely wouldn’t cover an international fainting spell. Luke knelt next to her, a small packet open in his hand.
“How’s your head?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Are the police coming?”
Someone knocked at the door. Luke squeezed her shoulder and got up.
“Don’t get up yet. Take it slow.”
The door opened, and a team of people walked inside. They immediately canvassed the room.
How could this have happened? Who could have found out where she was staying? Had someone followed them to Paris? How dedicated was this psycho, anyway?
Luke stood in the corner of the room with his phone on speaker and appeared to be translating for the French cop next to him. A lady with a camera took pictures of the breakfast table, where the note still sat.
Claire climbed shakily to her feet. She rounded the table and peered over the cop’s shoulder at the typed note.
“You can run, but you can’t hide,” she whispered. Chills exploded down her spine despite the fact that her stalker had invoked the most overused bad guy line in the history of time. She collapsed onto the bed and hugged her knees to her chest, but she couldn’t catch her breath.
There were so many people jammed into this room. It was suffocating. She grabbed her hotel key off the bedside table and rushed barefoot out the front door. A frenzy of French exclamations followed her, but she headed straight for the stairs.
She half-sprinted down thirteen flights and burst into the lobby. She heaved the front doors open and stepped out into the sunshine. The robe hung around her. Shit, she didn’t have any clothes on underneath. Now she looked like a crazy person wandering around Paris barefoot in a robe. Thank god Doozer, the robe-stealer, was a seven-hour flight away.
To her right, a small garden sat back from the bustling street. She hurried through the archway of climbing roses and followed a concrete path to a bench. A small fountain tinkled pleasantly, masking some of the noise from the street. She staggered to the bench, barely sitting before her knees collapsed.
Roses perfumed the sharp breaths she was able to steal. Whoever had sent the note surely wasn’t winning any points for creativity. They couldn’t have used a more generic threatening phrase. But how the hell had they found her? She was in a different friggen country. Were they tracking her phone? Was it Barney? How could he possibly know where she was from inside the prison? He had to be working with someone. The Widowmaker was behind bars, but he wasn’t done with her.
“Claire?” Luke’s voice came from the archway.
“Here.” She sat up straight and ran a hand through her hair.
Luke slid onto the bench next to her and pulled her close. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Is it?”
He eased back from her and held her at arm’s length. “Like I said last night, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You can’t promise that. And besides, you’re going to be in California soon anyway.” Anger flared inside her. Why was the idea of him leaving so upsetting? She had never needed anyone before. Not even her ex-fiancé.
“I’m not going.”
She shrugged his arm off. “Luke, you have to. This is your career, your livelihood. I won’t keep you from it. I’ll be fine. In case you forgot, I was all alone when Barney kidnapped me. He stabbed me and tortured me, and I still lived. Whatever this copycat weirdo throws at me, I can handle it. I don’t need a keeper. Just…don’t tell my mom.”
He was silent for a long minute. “I should have been there.” He wasn’t talking about breakfast.
She reached for his hand. The anger fizzled. “You were.”
“No. I was too late. You would be dead if Sawyer hadn’t shown up, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
“Hey, I was handling myself just fine. Sawyer even said so. Sure, he tased him. But I was like fifty yards from the highway. I could have made it.” She had also passed out from blood loss and hallucinated a taco order, but still. “Are they finished up there?”
“Almost. Want to day drink and look at some fine art?”
Claire stood and offered one shaky hand to Luke. The smell of ammonia still burned in her nostrils, and her stomach churned like she was on a ship at sea. But this was Paris. This international creep would not ruin the first vacation she’d taken in years. She needed to compartmentalize what just happened and get on with the trip. There was a partially stale baguette to eat and activities to cross off the To Do list.
The note had undeniably stolensome of her enjoyment of Paris. It seemed to have affected Luke too. Even as they viewed some of the most precious works of art in the world, there was a pallor over the day. The rich brush strokes of Gustav Klimt seemed less remarkable after the threat. The Mona Lisa smiled mockingly at them. At least the wine was still good.
Claire shivered and drew her shawl around her as they stepped onto the gangway of a dinner cruise boat, one of Luke’s last surprises for the weekend. As much as she appreciated the change of scenery, she was ready to be back home and in control of her life and her daily activities again. Her ankle wobbled on the slick surface, and he steadied her. Candlelight flickered through a long row of glass windows. The stars were out again, though not as clear as the night before.
A waiter led them to a small candlelit table. Champagne bubbled in glasses. The boat hadn’t even left the dock before they both downed their first glass.
“Your phone’s ringing again.” Claire plonked her empty glass onto the table. She bristled. It must have been the fifteenth time today. Something was up, but getting information from Luke was like beating a stone wall with a dandelion.
“Sorry. Let me just turn it off.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to talk to him?” He was definitely hiding something. Again.
“It can wait.” He lifted their glasses as a waiter passed by. The dinner was already shaping up to be their second-most tense. Right after the Rachel incident.
“Really? He’s called like a thousand times.” A backlit monument slid by them, but she missed what the tour guide had named the structure.
A waiter passed by with hot hors d’oeuvres. She had no idea what she grabbed—a crab puff maybe?—but it melted in her mouth.
They sat in silence as the boat passed half a dozen landmarks. Tension radiated between them like a collapsing star. They ate their salad course wordlessly.
“Okay, this is ridiculous.” Claire slammed her fork down on the table as they approached Notre Dame. “Tell me what’s going on. I know it’s not just the note that has you so uptight.”
Luke rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “I have to ask you something.”
It was about freaking time. “Okay, shoot.”
“I hate to ask you this.”
Uh-oh. What could it be? Was he going to work with Wendy on a project? Was his mother moving in with him? “We’re not having a threesome with Pete. I don’t care what he promised you.”
“It’s not that. The reason why I’ve been getting so many calls from the producers is because they want me to have one more interview before they’ll approve the funding for production, advertising, soundtrack, everything that will make a difference in how many people this will reach. It’s a big interview. You.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. She gripped her butter knife so tightly that her knuckle cracked.
“Me?” she croaked.
“You’re the only survivor of the West Haven Widowmaker.”
“You can’t be serious.” The shock began to ebb, but her heart still pounded as though she was being chased. Was she really hearing him correctly?
“He’s right. It would really help the documentary.” He looked at her with soft eyes. “It’s not a complete story without you.”
“Is this why you brought me to Paris?” Claire whispered incredulously. “You wanted to butter me up so you could make me relive the worst night in my entire life for your personal gain?”
“No, I wanted to keep you?—”
“Safe.” She cut him off. “Yeah, sure. I know I joke about this a lot to try to cope with the trauma, but do you see this bandage?” She pointed at the mark on her chest. “This is a daily reminder of the night I was stabbed by a psychotic serial killer. I was drugged, bound, gagged, and violated, mentally and physically. I was inches from death that night, Luke. If Sawyer hadn’t shown up, Rosie probably would have been an orphan. My mother would have lost a child.”
Luke bristled. “It might be good for you to talk about it. You won’t go to therapy. You haven’t come to terms with what happened.” He reached for her.
She slapped his hand away. Considered flipping the entire table over. “It’s been two weeks. If you think for one second that I’ll find some remarkable catharsis by describing all the gory details of my almost murder to your audience of mouth-breathing couch potatoes, you never knew me at all.”
She leapt up. Her chair fell, but she didn’t pause to straighten it.
“Don’t you dare come near me.” She held her arm out, one finger pointing accusingly at Luke as he attempted to stand. “I can’t believe that I gave myself to you, and all you wanted was a fucking interview. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning, isn’t it?”
Rage was settling back in, hot and fierce like a coiled dragon.
“Should we review your track record?” she continued. “You knew I was a potential target for murder, but you never told me. Then I almost died, and you’re asking me to relive the experience on camera for your profit. You never cared about me. You only care about yourself, your career, your life.”
“You know that’s not true.” He reached for her hand, but she snatched it back.
People were staring, but she didn’t care. She’d never see them again.
“You don’t understand,” Luke said. “I already told him I couldn’t get the interview, but he knows about my relationship with you and he insisted. He says some of the backers will pull out if I can’t get it. I had to try.”
“Then find another backer. Jesus, Luke.” If Hollywood wasn’t full of rich, opportunistic middle-aged men, then everything she had ever seen on TV was a lie.
“It’s not that easy.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
Unbelievable.
“You know what? This is over. Don’t fucking follow me. I am not your pawn. I am worth more than this. I owe you nothing. I am going home, and I don’t care if I ever hear from you again. Enjoy California, you narcissistic fuckbag.”
Every tendon in her body screamed at her to plunge her fist into that arrogant face, but by some miracle she refrained. She didn’t need another lawsuit. Armed with her clutch and her dignity, she stormed out of the dining room and onto the deck of the ship. When had it started raining? That was just fucking perfect.
“Claire, wait—” Luke said from inside. He was trapped by a waiter with a huge serving tray, but not for long.
She needed to get as far away as possible. The deck was slick underfoot as she hurried down the length, tears blurring her eyes. How could he do this to her? Was every moment together just a grand scheme to get her on the documentary? Her cheeks burned. Nobody was going to take advantage of her. Not ever again.
As she rounded the stern of the ship, she hit another slippery patch. Her heel skidded, and she crashed into the metal railing. Her entire world went upside down for a moment. Rivets on the boat flashed past before she plummeted into the cold, murky water of the Seine.
She spluttered and coughed. River water went up her nose. Holy shit. She’d really done it now. Damn it, her phone! It couldn’t get wet. What if a client needed her?
Her clutch trembled above her head as she treaded water with one arm. With any luck her phone would have survived her brief aquatic touchdown. The boat puttered away from her. No one had even noticed that she had fallen overboard. At least Luke was getting farther away by the second. His betrayal had hit her like an uppercut.
Shit, speaking of wounds. Dirty river water probably wasn’t great for hers. She swam one-armed as best as she could to the bank. Thankfully, she had fallen out right at Notre Dame. She hoisted herself up a rock ledge and onto the walking path that lined the river. Her carefully chosen little black dress clung to her thighs and dripped torrents of river water onto the sidewalk. She stumbled up the stairs to the street and shivered in the chill night air. Trembling fingers unzipped her clutch and dragged her phone out. It was still dry and turned on. Thank god.
She paused under a streetlight, catching her breath. So this was it. Rock bottom. Almost murdered. Twice betrayed by the first person she had opened her heart to after breaking off her engagement. Never again.
She couldn’t call a cab in this state. There was no choice but to walk the eight blocks back to the hotel. Her shoes squelched as she walked, and if she had a dollar for every time someone gave her a funny look, she could have covered her return plane ticket by the time she pushed open the hotel door.
Half an hour later, she ran down the hallway, dragging two suitcases behind her. She had commandeered Luke’s to hold her new shoes. And when she got home, she would burn the suitcase and anything that was left of him.
She collapsed into a cab. Ugh, she didn’t speak French.
“Airport, airport,” she said over and over. Eventually the cab driver seemed to get the idea and headed off in the right direction.
As they passed through the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, Claire laid her head against the window and closed her eyes.