Black Ice - Anne Stuart [92]
He released her. “Breathe, Chloe,” he whispered. For the final time. And then he was gone, the BMW disappearing into the Paris night before she could do more than catch the coat as it fell from her shoulders.
“Where in the world did you happen to find such an interesting young man?” Her mother had come up to her, putting her arm around her. “You were always so traditional when it came to your boyfriends.”
Boyfriend, Chloe thought dazedly. The last word she’d spoken out loud before the chaos and death had begun. “He found me,” she said. Her voice sounded odd, strained.
“A good thing,” her father said. “It seems as if he managed to get you out of a very dangerous situation. I just wish he’d let me look at that gunshot wound.”
“He wasn’t really shot,” Chloe said. “It was just a fake we…he set up earlier this evening. Fake blood and a tiny explosive device to simulate being shot.”
“Chloe, my child, I hate to correct you but I spent more than ten years as an emergency room physician in Baltimore, and I know a gunshot wound when I see one.”
“It wasn’t—” And then it came to her, with an odd, sickening rush. The wound was on his left side. The fake gunshot had been taped to his right. “Oh, God,” she cried, trying to pull free of her parents. “You’re right! We have to find him….”
“It won’t do any good, sweetheart. He’s long gone. I’m sure he’ll go straight to the hospital….”
“He won’t. He’ll die. He wants to.” The moment she said the words she knew them to be true. He wanted to die, had been almost courting death, until she got in his way. And now that she was safely disposed of, there was nothing to stand in his way. “We have to find him, Daddy!”
“We have to catch our plane, Chloe. We promised.”
There was nothing she could do. He’d driven off, speeding on the icy roads, and there’d be no way to follow him, no way to find him. He would get help or he wouldn’t, but either way it was no longer any of her business. He was gone from her life, forever.
Breathe, he’d always told her. She took a deep, shaky breath, pulling his coat more tightly around her. She said nothing as her parents shepherded her through the back entrance of the hotel, over to the international departure lounge and onto the jet with surprising ease. They were in first class, but she was beyond noticing such luxuries. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes, refusing to surrender the coat to the solicitous flight attendant. She was past tears now, past feeling anything at all. She had blood on her hand—his blood, she realized now, not phony blood. And she had no intention of washing it off. It was all she had left of him.
Stockholm Syndrome, she reminded herself. An aberration, or a legend, or maybe just a moment of utter insanity on her part. It didn’t matter, it was over. With a perfect kiss.
He shouldn’t have done that. She would have been better off if he’d just walked away. Then she would have never known how sweet it could be, that there was something besides the blood-quickening need of sex.
They were halfway over the Atlantic when she opened her eyes, to see both her parents watching her, identical, anxious expressions on their faces.
“I’m fine,” she said calmly, a complete lie. But her parents nodded, since their youngest child had spent most of her life being just fine. “Just one thing.”
“Yes, sweetheart?” her mother said, enough anxiety in her voice to prove that she wasn’t fooled.
“I don’t ever want to go to Stockholm.” And she closed her eyes again, shutting out the world.
21
It was April—warm, damp, full of new spring promise. Paris would be jammed with tourists. Next to August, April was the most crowded month of all. But Bastien was nowhere near Paris, and didn’t plan to be for a good long time.
He knew how to disappear, better than almost anyone. He’d had the best training in the world. And once he’d yanked the IV out of his arm and walked out of his hospital room in the private facility they’d stashed him in, he’d managed to vanish, even in his weakened condition,