Chapter Thirty-Five
Juliette
Paris, France
Sometime
“W hat is your team doing with the men you captured?” His voice was a rich bass. Strong, steady. It was that man, Thorn. He’d been with and fought for her. He was the one with the gentle, competent hands. He’d found her, again. The thought of him sparked a small flame of hope. Something about him made her feel like she needed to survive. That she had to fight a little harder. A little longer. And stay at least a step away from the precipice that called her to fly free.
“We’re going to leave their fighters tied in place. They’ll sort themselves after we’re gone.” That was a woman’s voice that Juliette didn’t recognize. “We don’t have a way to handle them. And they look like the muscle, the brains took off.”
“Ma’am.” Thorn’s hand rested on Juliette’s shoulder. “I’m going to roll you to your side. We have a stretcher here that we’re going to use to get you off the roof.”
Juliette wanted to open her eyes and look at him, but she was so tired. She’d rest just a moment more…
***
Juliette curled her fingers into her sheet and blanket. Something was wrong with the sensation. With her eyes still shut, she licked at her lips. Where was she? Her mind went back to the flight to France, her trip to talk to her grandmother. The fire from the apartment that had destroyed all her childhood pictures, surely wouldn’t have destroyed the pictures her grandmother had of her. Juliette just wanted to see what she’d looked like as a baby. She wanted to know what her mother looked like. She’d have to look like her mom; she looked nothing like her father.
And for the first time, her brain stuttered over a simple fact. There were no pictures.
When she’d asked her father, he’d talked to her about her childhood memorabilia, but that was only half the story, wasn’t it? Juliette thought back to the interactions. He’d pointed to the burn on her inner thigh, a pink mark that wrapped her like a garter belt. He’d said that she’d been burned in the fire and her mother had saved her. Her mother was her hero ? she’d risked life and limb to save Juliette.
But now, lying here in no-man’s land of consciousness, that story didn’t hold up. She had lived beyond her youth, beyond the fire, beyond her time in France. Why were there no new pictures? Even if they were a family culture that didn’t take a lot of photos, it was improbable that there wasn’t even one.
Her head was noisy.
It was a clash of tinnitus, heat, and thoughts.
Memories were exploding through her mind, and she gripped at her bedclothes and hung on for dear life.
Where was she?
She thought of the Russian men. They were scientists, and she’d seen them before. They’d kidnapped her before. George had been there, tied up beside her looking terrified. But she’d escaped from them here in France. Had she escaped them before?
When she tried to think about it, her body shook with terror.
A gentle hand ran down her arm and rested on her clenched hand. “You’re safe.” It was his voice.
Juliette worked to blink her heavy eyelids open. She found herself in a dark room. The only light came in from a street lamp shining through a crack in the drapes not far away. The dark shadow of a giant of a man was beside her.
Where was she?
Her mind raced. She’d driven a car. She’d bought a phone. She’d found a ride. Paris. She was in Paris. She’d found a small hotel room, and the fever had been a slash of red across her vision. She vaguely remembered falling and the rough feel of carpeting beneath her cheek and that was all she could remember. Was she still in that room? The sheets clasped in her fingers were soft and they had been rough and cheap before.
The man was talking to her, but Juliette’s mind was so busy that it was just waves of sound that her ear recognized but didn’t register.
The man stopped touching her. He stood, his body looming over her. Her muscles contracted, bracing, making herself smaller as she cowered on the bed.
There was a click and a soft light came from behind her. Her eyes scanned the room as she turned her head. It looked like a hospital room. Her gaze settled on his face.
Wracking her brain, she was fairly sure she’d never met him before. He moved slowly and showed her his hands. Juliette thought it was to help her feel safe. And oddly, she did. Something about this man felt solid and kind. She wanted to see his eyes, to look into their depths and see if she could trust him, or if he was just playing one of those roles, like had happened when she was held prisoner ? good cop, bad cop.
Juliette stopped breathing.
Had they caught her again? Was she going back? A sound crawled up her throat and pushed past her lips, she sounded like a wounded animal as she tried to huddle farther away.
The man sat down on a chair.
He showed her the flats of his hands, again, and then he used sign language as he said, “Hello. My name is Thorn. I was sent by the United States government to protect you.”
Juliette longed to believe him. But she’d been duped before. George had duped her. George had played her for a fool and then…her body quaked. She couldn’t put a reason behind those thoughts or feelings.
Thorn slid a warm hand from her shoulder to her wrist. Then he tapped where it felt stiff and painful. He let go to say and sign, “This is an IV. You’re in a clinic now. In Paris. I found you ill on the floor.”
Juliette reached up with the hand that didn’t have the IV and fingered the hospital gown at her neck. “Who else is here?” she whispered.
He stopped and smiled at her. “It’s nice to finally hear your voice. You and I are the only ones in the room. Can you hear me?” He signed.
He must have been told about her hearing disability. He had a wonderful low rumbly voice. She could hear him past the ringing. “Yes. I hear you.”
“We’re the only two people in the room,” he continued. “I came here to help you. From America. From DC. I want to get you home again safe and sound.”
“Washington?” Juliette whimpered and then she turned herself into her pillow and started to cry. The move was wholly a body response, and it had surprised Juliette. The analytical part of her brain seemed to stand off to the side. It didn’t try to comfort her, it simply tried to understand. Something about the government and Washington DC equaled pain. “Are you here about the whales?” Juliette asked past her sobs.
Thorn had sat perfectly still as she was reacting to her thoughts. He didn’t try to shush her or tell her to stop. He simply sat with one warm hand resting on her arm. It felt like a safety line. Even if he was frightening her.
“I have nothing to do with whales. Is there something I should know about that?”
Good question. What was upsetting her about the whales? All she could conjure was the vision of men in white military uniforms. And so that was what she blubbered out.
And her analyzer brain said, no they had been her foe, but they weren’t her enemy.
She must have said that out loud, too, because Thorn said, “I need to know who your enemy is, so I can protect you.”
Juliette focused on that question. Who are my enemies? The voices that she heard in her head were speaking in Russian and then the pain. Her feet jerked up toward her stomach as she pulled into fetal position.
“Who hurt your feet? Who burned you?”
Russian was the language, but who were the people? She had no idea. Yes, she did. It was the men who had tried to kidnap her in Toulouse. “They were scientists.”
Wait.
Juliette froze ? mid-thought, mid-breath, mid-beat of her heart ? froze. These were memories. Again, the fact that she could remember was startling.
“Say it out loud, I need to know how to protect you.”
“I remember,” Juliette whispered. “I’m experiencing a memory from before the accident.” Her hand moved up to her scalp to touch the scar, but the move made the tape of her IV pull and it moved the plastic insertion, uncomfortably, so she went back to gripping the sheet. “I had an accident.”
Thorn nodded.
“I’ve formed memories since the accident, but I had amnesia from what happened before the operation.” Her words weren’t even whispers. Her lungs had stiffened and felt solid in her chest. She couldn’t deflate them to push air past her vocal cords. “I had a few memories of my childhood, but they weren’t like a film. They were like stagnant pictures, like I was turning pages in a photo album. I…I’m remembering something. I’m remembering something that happened before.”
Thorn lifted his hand in a fist and coughed but left his hand up covering his mouth. From the shift in his jawline, Juliette thought that he was mouthing something. She’d seen a movie where the secret service talked into their cuffs, but Thorn was wearing a turtleneck that was made out of sports material and was tight to his body. There was nowhere for him to hide a communications device.
Juliette’s gaze travelled up his arm to the sheer strength of his shoulders and chest. He looked like he was capable of heroism. But Juliette wasn’t sure it would be enough.
Wow, that was a thought.
How did she come to be in such a predicament? What about her made her unique enough that someone would hunt and try to capture her? More pictures of the men kidnapping her from her grandmother’s street, crawling under the leaves through the ditch, changing her appearance in the bathroom.
How did this Thorn guy find her to protect her? And why would she be worth protecting?
“That’s a rabbit hole,” Thorn said.
Juliette cut her eyes to him.
“Or a tsunami. Hard to tell what’s going through your mind. But I can see the thoughts whirring. How about I help you calm them a bit?” He waited for her to nod before he spoke again. “Take a moment and think about the word ‘serenity.’ Where would you go ? anywhere in the world ? to feel peace and quiet.”
Juliette thought that she didn’t have a lot of experience with places where one could find peace. “Peace isn’t quiet,” Juliette said.
Thorn put his forearms on his thighs, leaning slightly forward. “Tell me about quiet not being peaceful, I’d like to learn.”
That was an odd turn of phrase. She ran her sentence through her head again as a question. Why isn’t quiet peaceful?
Juliette decided to open her mouth and see what came out. “I was thinking the word silent when you said quiet, and they’re really not the same at all.”
“Interesting,” Thorn said. “What’s the difference?” He reached out and his hand came back with a cloth that he used to wipe over Juliette’s mouth and forehead.
It was soothing.
“Okay silence, the human brain is not well equipped to deal with silence. There are places that are built for exactly that purpose ? rooms that absorb sound waves ? they’re called anechoic chambers. There’s a lab in the mid-west in America that has a noise decibel level below zero. It’s supposed to be the quietest place in the world.”
Thorn nodded.
“It’s a terrible place. I was in there once…” Juliette stalled. Did she read it? Did she watch a documentary? No. This seemed like a memory. Her body reacted with agitation. Her legs flutter kicked, and her hands clasped and kneaded the blanket.
“It’s safe for you to tell me the story,” Thorn said. “We’re nowhere near there. You won’t go again unless you want to.”
But Juliette’s agitation wasn’t about the place, but that this information came from before the accident. She pushed on to see if she’d didn’t have some kind of revelation, forcing herself to be brave and stand in front of what felt like a tidal wave. “Yes, there was a penetrating, horrible silence. And then it was crazy sounds that I could hear. I mean like spiders crawling over your skin horrific. I could hear my lips rubbing across my teeth when I moved my mouth. Swallowing was so loud that it hurt. I could hear my pulse throb. It was…gross. Awful. Torturous.”
And when she said torture, she gasped in horror. She was back in a room, tied down so she couldn’t move. They showed her a candle, then they said they planned to melt her skin. The pain of it. The horrific, world-collapsing pain of it. She had to promise her cooperation. And if she didn’t, they had her sisters. Whatever torture happened to her, they’d perform the same on her sisters. “Comply or suffer,” he had said in a thick Russian accent. Juliette didn’t speak Russian yet. Now she could. After years under the men’s power she could.
As those thoughts bubbled to the surface, Juliette’s stomach rumbled and burbled. She threw herself to the edge of the bed.
Thorn in one swift move swung a waste basket under her mouth with one hand and lifted her hair away with the other.
Her body heaved, and she couldn’t get anything out.
Long minutes of cramping and hacking and no relief.
Thorn had tucked her hair and had his hand on her back. He was crouched by the side of the bed. “Say what you just remembered out loud. Get it out.”
She did as he said, word for word. And amazingly, as the last words came out, “Comply or suffer,” her stomach stopped its violent attack. She collapsed, panting. Her sweat-covered body started trembling.
Thorn touched her hospital gown then got up and opened a cabinet. He came back with a fresh one folded in his hand. He shook it out, then showed it to her, before he helped her get changed.
Modest by nature, Juliette realized she didn’t have an ounce of embarrassment around Thorn.
She remembered the last time she was in the hospital and her dad was introducing himself to her. “I’m your father. David DuBois.”
“What was that thought?” Thorn asked, adjusting her sheet and blanket around her hips. “Better out than in right now.”
“I have scars on my leg and feet. My father told me that I got the burn mark on my thigh when I was a little girl, and my mother had saved me from a fire. And that later, in the accident when she died, I got the burn scars on my feet. But I had a flash of memory. That’s not how I got any of those scars.”
Thorn’s face was a study in calm. But since Juliette had lost a lot of her hearing, she’d learned to watch and read faces. The muscles around his eyes and at the corners of his lips tightened. There was a fierceness ? a protective fierceness ? that swelled his chest. Thorn said he was here to protect her, and in this moment, Juliette felt right down to the marrow of her bones that this man would throw himself in front of anything coming her way. She was safe with him. It was such a painfully, surprisingly, crazy thought that she gasped.
Thorn stilled and focused his gaze on her eyes, then bent around to snap the back of the gown.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’ll feel better now that you’re not damp.” He got up and tossed the old gown in a receptacle. “Go on with your story about being in the anechoic chamber. You hated being in perfect silence because your body made its own creepy noises. What kind of sound makes you feel peaceful? Do you have a happy sound memory?”