Black Ice - Anne Stuart [64]
Clearly she wasn’t going to be able to dislodge him, and any more attempts at trying would probably wind up with another enforced sleep, or possibly something worse. She shut her mouth, keeping her eyes trained on the narrow shaft of light that somehow made her able to breathe. As long as she could breathe she could survive. The things she had seen, had heard, were too horrific to even comprehend. If she stopped long enough to really feel anything but this odd, terrified numbness then she’d start screaming, and nothing would make her stop, unless Bastien snapped her neck as he’d threatened to do. She was cold, inside and out, cold and numb, and all she could do was try to survive. She took another breath, and without any warning the vision of Sylvia’s body flashed into her mind and the numbness began to crumble.
She’d only seen her for a second, but that brief glimpse was forever burned into her brain. Someone had cut her throat, so deeply that Chloe could see bone. The pool of blood had been thick and viscous, and her eyes had been open and staring. Somehow that was the worst. Sylvia staring sightlessly into the world that had left her behind, and it had been Chloe’s fault. She was the one who was supposed to be dead, not Sylvia. Sylvia, whose only fault was to love life too much. To prefer a good time to a weekend of work in the country.
Sylvia wouldn’t have poked her nose where it didn’t belong. She would have cheerfully gone to bed with Bastien, translated and come back home with no disturbing questions. She’d always had the ability to ignore nagging discrepancies, but she’d died anyway, because her friend couldn’t leave well enough alone.
“Stop thinking about it.” Bastien’s voice was a sleepy whisper in her ear, just a breath of sound. “There’s nothing you can do about it, and brooding will only make it worse.”
“It was my fault.”
“Bullshit.” The word sounded strange in such a quiet voice. “You didn’t kill her. You didn’t even lead them to the apartment—she was dead before you got there. For what it’s worth, she died quickly.”
“If I hadn’t taken the job—”
“‘If’ is a waste of time. Let her go. You can mourn her once you’re safe at home.”
“But—”
He put his hand over her mouth, silencing her last protest. “Go to sleep, Chloe. The best thing you can do for the girl is survive. Not let them destroy you, too. And in order to do that, you need sleep. I need sleep. Enough.”
He was holding her against his body, and she couldn’t turn to see his face. Instead she looked upward, through the narrow slit of light into the cold gray Paris sky. A few stray snowflakes drifted down into the room, landing on the black cashmere coat that had become almost a second skin. Drifting and melting and gone. And Chloe slept.
15
Chloe wasn’t quite sure what had woken her up. She was alone in the bed, and cold, but it wasn’t the dense, suffocating blackness. A small flashlight lay on the mattress beside her, the light a tiny beacon in the dark.
She sat up, slowly. Her entire body ached, her stomach was twisted in knots and her head hurt. Her best friend had been murdered because of her, and she was on the run for her life, with only an enigmatic killer to turn to.
But she was alive. Painfully, undeniably alive, despite the guilt and the fear that were tearing at her. The only question was, what would she do next? And where was Bastien?
There was always the possibility that he’d finally abandoned her. Taken her to this deserted house, dragged her up to a tiny room and locked her in there to slowly die of starvation.
But there was a window in the roof, and she could climb out. And he had no reason to drag her all the way here if he wanted her dead.
If it was a question of simply hiding her body, then he wouldn’t have abandoned her to starve or scream or fall to her death on the pavement below when she tried to escape. He would have killed her, quickly, painlessly. He’d promised her that much, and she found the notion comforting. It was a sick, twisted reaction, but she was beyond conventional thought and emotions. Everything