Chapter 12 #2
'My sister writes about murderers for a living. She thinks everyone has something to hide.'
The tone was fond, exasperated. The cadence of someone complaining about a sister she loved enough to complain about forever.
I'd smiled. Involuntary. I remember the smile because involuntary smiles are rare enough that I track them.
She died weeks later.
The woman whose name I never retained. The one who asked me whether trust should feel like what she was carrying.
Her sister writes about murderers.
"Sebastien." Luc hasn't moved from the doorframe. "What just happened?"
I don't answer. The connection is assembling with a speed that makes my vision narrow.
Natalie Chastain is digging into the same ground I've been circling for years. Asking questions about incidents that cluster around the period a woman died. A woman whose sister writes about murderers for a living.
The physical resemblance I've been filing without understanding. The jaw. The head tilt. I noticed it weeks ago and set it aside because the observation had no frame.
I stand up. The chair scrapes across the heart-pine floor hard enough to leave a mark. I walk to the window because the desk is too small for what's hitting me.
"Sebastien." Luc's voice has shifted. Alert now. "Talk to me."
"She's not writing a book." My reflection stares back from the dark glass. "She's investigating her sister's death."
The silence between us has weight.
"The woman who died," Luc says. He gets there fast. He was always fast. "Natalie is her sister."
"Yes."
"You're sure."
"The woman at Elysium had a sister who writes about murderers. Natalie writes about murderers. The questions she's asking, the people she's talking to, the time period she's focused on. The way she looks when she tilts her head." I turn from the window. "I'm sure."
Luc crosses back into the study. Sits down. Picks up the bourbon glass and stares at the empty bottom like it owes him something.
"The death was ruled accidental." He sets the glass down. "Natalie writes true crime. She's not here to write a memorial. She thinks someone murdered her sister."
The word settles into the room. Murdered. Not died. Not accidental.
"Yes," I say. "I think she does."
"So the woman wearing your collar is the sister of the woman who died. She's been hunting answers under your nose for weeks. And you collared her." He leans forward. "That's a lot of stupid in one sentence, Sebastien."
"I didn't know."
"You know now. What are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to think."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
I come back to the desk and don't sit. My hands flatten on the surface, weight forward, and I stare at the page where Gaudet's name is circled twice.
"I can't unknow who she is," I say. "If I keep taking what she gives me without telling her what I know, the terms between us aren't the terms she agreed to."
"That's Dom math. I'm asking about the operational problem."
"The operational problem is that she's building a case I couldn't build alone. If I confront her now, I could scatter whatever she's assembled."
"Or you could give her your fragments and help her build the case more quickly and safely."
"Or she decides I've been withholding information from the moment I collared her and pulls the whole thing."
Luc leans back. Crosses his arms. "You're not worried about the case. You're worried about losing her."
He already knows the answer. I don't insult him by pretending otherwise.
"I'm going to say something you won't like," he says.
"You've been doing that all night."
"The woman you collared came to Dominion to find out who killed her sister. She's been lying to you since the first conversation. Every time she knelt, every time she surrendered, she was working you." He holds my gaze. "And you're standing there worried about betraying her trust."
"No."
Luc stops.
"She lied about why she came. She used the collar for access. I'll give you all of that."
I face him. "But what she gave me wasn't false. I've watched enough performance to know the difference. What happened on that Cross was real."
The room is quiet for a moment. Luc looks at me the way he looks at a problem whose parameters just changed.
"All right," he says. "So she's the real thing who came for the wrong reasons. That makes this worse, not better."
"I'm aware of that. But she asked me for help." My voice is quieter than I intended. I set the scotch down. "The sister. At Elysium. She asked whether trust should feel like what she was carrying, and I had a chance to ask one more question. I didn't."
"That's not your—"
"It is." My hand closes around the scotch glass. Doesn't lift it. "And now the other sister is wearing my collar and I didn't see it."
Luc watches me for a long moment. Then his phone is in his hand, thumbs moving.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Bumping the priority on the Elysium records." He doesn't look up. "You need information, not feelings. I'll get you the information. You sort out the rest."
He stands. This time he doesn't stop at the door.
"Luc."
"Don't tell her tonight. You're not thinking straight enough to have that conversation." He turns. "And Sebastien? The sister who died. You had one conversation with her. That doesn't make you responsible for what happened to her. But what you do with what you know now—that's yours."
He walks out. The front door opens and closes.
I stand at the desk. The pad. Gaudet's name circled twice. The fragments that refused to assemble for years now forming a picture with a clarity that has no mercy in it.
A name surfaces. Claire.
I don't know whether I learned it at the time or absorbed it from the aftermath. The incident reports. The hushed conversations.
But the name is there. Claire Bergeron. The name she used at the club, the name on the death report.
Claire Bergeron asked me for help. I gave her a textbook answer. She died.
Her sister walked into Dominion. Sat at the bar. Wore my collar. Knelt at my feet. Surrendered to my rope and my flogger and my hands. And I didn't know.
Gaudet sits inside my fragments. Whatever Natalie is investigating runs through the same territory.
And she's managing a threat outside Dominion she hasn't disclosed, because disclosing it would mean telling me why she's here.
I pick up the phone. Put it down.
The desk is waiting. The legal pad. The pen.
For five years she was the submissive who died. The woman whose name I told myself I'd forgotten. The question I answered wrong.
I write: Claire Bergeron.
The ink is steady. The hand holding the pen is not.
Beneath it: Natalie Chastain.
Two names on a page. Sisters. One dead. One wearing my collar.
I set the pen down. Turn off the lamp. The streetcar passes on St. Charles. The sound is the same as every other night.
The silence underneath it isn't.