Black Ice - Anne Stuart [95]
They were all dead—she’d been able to ascertain that much. The police had broken in on the scene just moments after she and Bastien had jumped from the balcony, and those who survived the bloodbath died in the hospital shortly thereafter. Convenient that no one was left to tell the truth. Monique had died on the scene, shot in the face, Bastien had told her. The baron had succumbed a day or two later, and the rest of them were already gone.
The one thing she didn’t think about was Bastien. For all she knew he was dead—he’d been careless and courting it long enough, and he’d been shot. Then again, he was someone who didn’t die easily. Maybe he was off on a new assignment, or maybe…
Anyway, she wasn’t going to think about him. He was in the dark, mixed-up past, and there was no way she could make sense of it, no matter how hard she tried. So she let go, moving through her days in a calm, even state of mind, while her parents looked on with worried eyes.
They were beginning to relax by mid-April. She’d signed up for courses at the university. Chinese would be enough of a challenge to keep her mind totally occupied, and she would start doing some volunteer work at the hospital in a week or so. By the fall she’d be ready to find a real job, even move out on her own despite her parents’ protests. She was healing, and she refused to even consider what she was healing from. She only knew it took time.
For now she was safe. The Underwoods owned two hundred acres on the side of a small mountain, and their sprawling house was casual, comfortable and nicely isolated. The old farmhouse had been renovated, added on to, torn down and fixed up for a hundred or so years, and its current state was rambling, cluttered and completely cozy. Her mother made no pretensions at being neat, and while a weekly housekeeper kept the place clean, order was a lost cause. All the Underwoods had too many interests. Books and projects, fishing rods and sewing machines, microscopes and telescopes and seven working computers pretty much took up any available space.
Even the guest house wasn’t immune, mainly because Chloe was doing her best to keep her mind busy. She read constantly—television was too ephemeral to keep her mind occupied. She knitted, she played Tetris on her Game Boy with single-minded concentration whenever she had to be in a public place. It even went with her into the bathroom. The little blocks falling into place gave her a Zen-like sense of security, and she played till her hands went numb.
She was cheerful, calm and pleasant, and her parents were almost deceived into thinking she was well on her way to being healed. Chloe knew it was going to take longer, but there was no rush. As long as she had her parents’ place to hide in she could take all the time she needed.
“I think you should come with us,” her mother said, shoving a pile of papers to one side of the breakfast counter and setting down a tall glass of orange juice. “You’ve been isolating too much.”
“I haven’t been isolating,” she said calmly, taking the orange juice that she didn’t want, knowing an argument would be futile. “I’m just…on vacation. If I’m in the way I can always—”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” It was hard to annoy her easygoing mother, but Chloe was the one most likely to manage. “There’s always room for you here, as well as the entire family. Why do you think we built the guest house? In fact, you know I wish you’d stay in the main house. I’d feel more comfortable knowing you were under the same roof.”
Chloe drank her orange juice, saying nothing. She knew that was one of the things that worried her family the most, her unnatural quiet, but there was nothing she could do about it. Idle chatter was totally beyond her at that point, even if it meant reassuring