Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cosette
When one day passes with no sign of Lyam, I start to come up with another plan.
I know I need to leave. I’m not going to stay here on his dime after he’s rejected me, knowing that he put every detail in here back when he still liked me.
I don’t know what he thinks about me, but I know it isn’t what I need.
And when another day passes, I’m confident that he isn’t coming back.
I manage to convince myself that not only does he not care about me, but if he truly thinks I’ve plotted against them, my life could be in danger.
I can’t let that happen. Not for me, and most definitely not for my baby.
I decide it’s time to pack a few things.
I take stock of the money that I’ve saved, tucked away in a high yield savings account.
I think about where I could go. Where could I go where he wouldn’t find me?
Except I know he’ll find me wherever I go.
Does that mean I can’t try? Otherwise I’m doomed to be kept prisoner here for the next eight months until I give birth.
Of course there’s no luggage here. Why would there be?
But I have to find something that will work.
When I cross the room and pass the window, I see him.
He’s here. It’s Lyam. What’s he carrying? I look wildly about the apartment and wonder if he’ll be able to tell I’m packing. Clothes piled on the bed, my toiletries arranged in the closet, but thankfully I have so few things it might just look like normal…
A knock sounds at the door. I’m completely consumed with fear and worry and concern and I don’t know what he’s going to say when he sees me. Has he come here to hurt me? To make amends? Has he come here to punish me? Or, worst of all… Is he going to be detached and cold?
I’m not sure what would be worse.
There’s a low hum of voices outside the door. Lyam is talking to my guards. Finally, the door opens. I draw in a breath, my heartbeat racing.
Just one of my guards.
“Mr. Gerard is here to see you.”
I square my shoulders. I can’t talk. I can only nod.
The door stands open. I hold my breath.
Thayer steps in. I blink in surprise.
“Thayer,” I say in a hoarse voice.
“Hey. Lyam told me you were here.” He goes on and says something about the snakes and Savannah and Avril, but I don’t hear a word he says because… he isn’t Lyam.
I told myself I could leave him. I told myself I could run away and hide and save myself, but for that one brief moment when I thought Lyam was coming, I can't deny that I was hopeful. I wanted to see him. Even if he was angry and cruel and distant, I wanted to see him.
My heart sinks.
The Gerard brothers look so much alike that from a distance, I thought it was him.
I look down and realize that the thing Thayer’s carrying is actually a pet carrier. Princess, Lyam’s ball python, is curled up fast asleep.
I open the cage and stroke the large, gentle creature. I never liked snakes before Lyam, but Princess is tame. And right now, there’s something about her that makes me feel closer to him. Most people can’t train snakes, but Lyam has taught this one literally to eat out of the palm of his hand.
“She ate an enormous breakfast and is set for the next week,” Thayer mutters. “She’s tired. Now, I don’t know when Lyam’s coming, so I figured he was here with you. Where is he? I need to talk to him.”
I blink in surprise and stare at him. They never lose touch with each other, not ever.
“What do you mean you haven’t talked to him? Thayer, he isn’t here.”
Thayer stares at me for a minute, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”
“How else do I say he’s not here?”
Thayer’s face goes dark as he processes what I’m telling him. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“It was two days ago. My God, Thayer, this isn’t good. I haven’t seen him and you haven’t seen him—”
Thayer turns to me, as stern as I’ve ever seen him. “Tell me the truth, Cosette,” he snaps.
“What?”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“Yeah. Somehow, he thinks I’ve betrayed you guys. Imagine that. You told him Montague was my father, and he thinks I betrayed you.”
“Jesus.” Thayer scrubs a hand across his face. He looks older, as if he hasn’t slept in days. “This is not good. Okay, so you saw him two days ago.”
“Yep. Right before I was escorted here. He said he’d come back that night, but he never did.”
Thayer throws his hands up in the air. “And you didn’t think to tell me that?”
I throw my hands up in the air. “Why would I think to tell you that? We left on bad terms. He was pissed at me. I needed to figure my shit out. He got it in his head that I was somehow in league with Montague which, I’ll have you know, is patently false.
I figured he didn’t come to me because he was angry with me. ”
Thayer’s eyes narrow. “Is it like Lyam to go back on his word?”
I shake my head, panic rising. “Absolutely not.” Angry or not, furious with me, whatever he is, he isn’t one to ever not do what he says he will. He hates the concept of being unreliable and means what he says. It’s one of the scariest things about him. “So where the hell is he, then?”
Thayer takes a menacing step toward me. “If you had anything to do with this… I’m telling you right now, Cosette, if you worked with your father—”
Something inside me snaps. I could slap him silly right now.
“Oh fuck off! No! I’ve never talked to my father, and now all of a sudden, just because he decides he wants to get on your ass, I’m suspected to be in cahoots with him?
No. Fuck all the way off, Thayer. My man is missing, and after what he went through when he was taken hostage before, I am not letting you start putting false blame on anyone and wasting any more goddamn time.
Now are you going to find Lyam, or do I have to call in favors myself?
” I’m shaking, my hands on my hips as I glare at him, daring him to take me on.
He stares at me for a moment before responding. I don’t know what to expect. “I’m on it. I have to make some phone calls. Christ. You call him, too.”
I take my cell phone and call Lyam, but not surprisingly it goes to voicemail.
Thayer’s talking on the phone, his voice hushed but vehement. “No, I have no idea where he is. Jesus. The one time I don’t get on his ass about not staying in touch.”
Minutes later, he’s got Philippe in the room and Fabien on the phone. Men and women I’ve never seen before or heard of pile into the apartment one at a time. Some are officers in uniform, still others look like beefy bodyguards. Thayer fills them all in simply.
“Lyam is missing, and we need to find him.”
“Is it possible, sir, that this had anything to do with the mob scene near the Louvre the other day?” someone asks.
“The what?” Thayer’s eyes are thunderclouds. “Someone tell me what the fuck he’s talking about.”
I pull out my phone and start searching.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, shaking my head. “Thayer—”
I scan the article and look for a picture, but all I can find is a fuzzy picture of the back of his head. It doesn’t matter, though. I’d know Lyam anywhere, anytime. It’s him.
I hand Thayer the phone. “Motherfucker,” he mutters under his breath. “We need to find out everything we can.”
I scan the details and look on social media until I piece things together. “This was right after our fight,” I say in a little voice. “We were—he left, angry, and it looks like shortly after that there was a mob attack. But there’s no telling where he is or if he was taken, he just… vanishes.”
My throat is tight. I’ve heard Lyam’s cries in the middle of the night.
I’ve seen his scars. I’ve seen him thrashing in the sheets as if trying to escape.
If they took him again… if he’s held at the mercy of someone else…
God help his captors. He’ll slaughter them. That is, if I don’t get to them first.
“Cosette.” Thayer’s sharp tone cuts through my mental haranguing.
“What?” I snap.
“Sit down.”
I stare at him as if he has an eye in the middle of his forehead. “What?”
“Sit down.” He points to a chair. “Now.”
I don’t have the energy to argue, so I sit but I glare at him just the same.
“Have you eaten today?”
“Are you even serious right now? Lyam is missing and you want to know if I’ve eaten?”
“Of course he does,” Philippe says, shaking his head at me. “What would Lyam say?”
I know exactly what Lyam would say. I grumble but I take the piece of bread with butter Thayer hands me and eat it. I chase it with hot tea, hoping it melts the lump in my throat, but no luck.
“Sit, Cosette.”
I didn’t realize I’d stood back up.
“Stop pacing and sit.”
I flounce into a chair and look away from Thayer. Aggravating, bossy brothers.
I look around the apartment. It looks like the middle of a crime scene investigation.
Computers open, notebooks at the ready, twelve of the most high-tech mobiles I’ve ever seen.
People are concentrating, speaking in hushed voices.
There are phone calls and notes, someone’s brewed a pot of coffee.
One thing is clear for sure: they’ve lost one of their leaders, and it’s more than a little unnerving.
I want to bury my head in my arms and cry, but I can’t. I have to stay strong.
I stand and stretch. Drink a bottle of water. Pace the room. Look down at my phone and back up again.
God, I wish we hadn’t argued.
I wish we’d had a nicer conversation before he left.
I wish I knew he was safe.
I wish—
“Got it!” Manny, one of the youngest Gerard family interns, sits in front of a massive computer screen. “Got it!”
We all pause. Silence reigns in the room while we all look at him.
“The drone! I found the security drone from that location.”
Thayer’s gone stone silent, stiff as a board.
“Let’s see it,” he says. He shakes his head. “This is usually Lyam’s field of expertise.”
Manny pans out on his screen. The date’s clearly written across the top of the screen. It’s the same day he left.
The screen blossoms into bright light and it takes me a minute to realize we’re functioning as eyes for the overhead drone.
From this bird’s eye view, we can see the density of the buildings, the general layout of our urban area.
The traffic looks like little play cars, and the Louvre from this distance looks tiny.
Vibrant green spaces mark the parks, the tinge of blue the River Seine.
But as we draw nearer, I can see crowds of people.
“Look,” Manny says. “This guy here gives a signal. Then after he signals, they turn on him.”
I shake my head from side to side. “It was a setup. A total setup, wasn’t it?
You can tell just by looking at that… It wasn’t like someone just saw him and got upset.
Between the footage from the drone and this clip I found online, this isn’t the way things go.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there are like fifty people attacking him? They were planted.”
“Agreed,” Thayer says. “It would be the easiest method in the world, right? Get people afraid of us, then blow the whistle. Have them think that they’re in danger because the bad guys are here.
Make the actual bad guys innocuous enough that the others there don’t send a guard after him. Then, attack. Yeah, it makes sense.”
My heart races. I want Lyam safe. The first time they had him, he was a bargaining chip, but now… “Zoom in,” I tell Manny.
I stand and cover my mouth when I see two men bring Lyam to the ground. One sticks something in his neck. A second puts a bag over his head, and a third helps carry him away. I blink, staring, waiting for them to emerge from the crowd so we can see where they went.
They don’t.
“They didn’t leave,” I tell Thayer. “How come they didn’t leave?”
He scratches his chin and shakes his head. He’s got Fabien on the line. “What the fuck does that mean, they didn’t leave?”
Thayer frowns.
“Maybe we should check out that area at another time? Let’s go to two days ago, six a.m., same spot.”
Thayer eyes me curiously.
“Good thinking,” Thayer says approvingly. “Very good job.”
His praise sounds hollow compared to Lyam’s, but I give him a wan smile.
Manny’s fingers fly over the keys as he zooms in further, a few days earlier.
“Aha! There, look!” Right in that location is a manhole cover. “Let’s find out what that leads to.”
Minutes later we have an underground map of the tunnels.
I reach out and stroke Princess. She makes me feel closer to Lyam.
Thayer’s eyes go dark. He shakes his head. “Well, look at that. The tunnels lead straight to the Capitol.”