“No.” My hands were pressed on top of Eve’s, over her wound. I was no nurse, but I knew she needed bandaging, pressure. He will not let her have any of those things, he will see her dead first—but I still said, “No.”
He fired another shot, making me scream as the doorjamb beside me splintered. “Let her go, and slide along the wall that way.”
Eve’s voice was ragged, but clear. “Do it, Yank.”
My fingers were clenched so tight over Eve’s I had to force them open. Her hands were gloved in blood, and more blood oozed down her torso, slow and implacable. René’s pistol followed me as I inched away and set my back against a tall bookshelf, but his eyes stayed riveted to Eve as she managed to pull herself half sitting against the door frame. Her eyes were flat stones full of agony, but I didn’t think it was the pain of her own wound. It was the pain of seeing him still on his feet.
Failed, her gaze screamed, filled with self-loathing. Failed.
I was the one who’d failed. I couldn’t keep her safe.
“Hands off that wound, Marguerite.” René’s voice was rattled out of the toneless calm he’d maintained at the restaurant. “I’m going to watch you die, and I don’t want anything slowing that down.”
“Might be a while.” Eve looked down at her own shoulder. “Nothing too v-v-vital in a shoulder for a bullet to hit.”
“You’ll still b-b-b-bleed to death, pet. I like that better; it’s slower.”
Eve peeled her crimson hands away from the dark, spreading stain. My throat closed as I saw it. Just a shoulder wound, and yet it was going to kill her. We were going to sit in this elegant study, the home of all Eve’s nightmares, and watch her bleed out.
René ignored Eve’s wound, his eyes mesmerized by her knobbed, bloody hands. “You wore gloves this afternoon,” he remarked. “I wanted to see how they looked, after all this time.”
“Not too pretty.”
“Oh, I think they’re lovely. I made a masterpiece there.”
“Gloat all you want.” Eve nodded toward me. “But let the girl go. She has n-nothing to do with this; she wasn’t supposed to be here—”
“But she is here,” René cut her off. “And as I have no way of knowing what you’ve told her, and what kind of trouble she could make, she dies here too. Once you’re dead, I’ll take care of her. Do think on that as you bleed out, Marguerite. I can see she means something to you.”
I sat in an ice-water drench of terror with my arms folded tight around my budding belly. I was not even twenty years old and I was going to die. And my Rosebud would never live at all.
“You can’t afford to shoot her, René.” Eve’s voice was even, conversational, at what cost I couldn’t imagine. “I may be a raddled crone with no friends and f-f-family to look for me, but she’s got both, and they’ve got money. Kill her, you’ll have more trouble than even you can ooze your way out of.”
René paused, and my heart nearly stopped in my chest. “No,” he said at last, touching a hand to his mangled ear and wincing. “You broke into my home and attempted to rob me, a frail old man living alone. I managed to fire back; naturally I had no idea in the dark that you were women, much less the women who accosted me at the restaurant today. I had to sit down with heart palpitations after firing, and by the time I managed to telephone the police, both of you were sadly dead. Simple country people like those here do not look kindly on intruders.”
My hopes crashed. I wasn’t entirely sure he’d get away with it as easily as that; the restaurant’s staff could surely testify that he’d known us . . . but he could muddle things long enough to flee if it proved necessary. He’d clearly already been preparing to run; the traveling case told that story. Eve had been right: René Bordelon always ran from consequences. He’d outrun the consequences of two wars, and with money and luck—two things he’d seemingly never been short on—he could in all probability outrun this too.
Over my dead goddamn body, I thought, and nearly burst out in hysterical laughter because that was exactly how it would happen. Eve would die, and then I would, and then he’d step out over our bodies. He probably would have shot me already if he’d thought about it more clearly; I was young and strong and still a physical threat. But he wasn’t thinking clearly. The woman who had humiliated and outwitted him lay dying before his eyes. Until she had gone, she was his whole world and I was an afterthought. His eyes devoured her.
“You th-th-think you can shoot a strange girl between the eyes as she stares at you, René?” Eve was still arguing, still staring him down, but the pulse of blood from her shoulder was coming faster. “The only time you ever pulled a trigger, it was to shoot a man in the back—”
I had no doubt at all that he would be able to kill me in cold blood. None. He might have been too fastidious to do his own dirty work when Eve first met him, but he was a different man now. “Eve, don’t talk.” My voice came out tinny. “Save your strength—”
“For what?” René looked contemptuous. “Rescue? I assure you, no one heard our shots. The nearest neighbor is at least three miles away.”
Rescue. My thoughts leaped another way, toward Finn for whom I’d left a hasty message at the hotel desk telling him where we’d gone and why, in case things went wrong. Well, things had certainly gone wrong. I had a brief delirious image of him roaring out of the night to rescue us, but I didn’t think fate would be so helpful.
“I assure you, I have no qualms about shooting your little American here.” René fished a handkerchief one-handed from his breast pocket, clapping it to his shredded ear. “My study is already ruined. A trifle more blood on the walls makes no difference to me—”
Rose, I thought in a stab of anguish, Rose, what do I do? I didn’t know if I was asking my cousin or my daughter. My eyes hunted everywhere for a weapon, but Eve’s pistol lay halfway across the room. My gaze traveled up the bookcase behind me—a pair of silver candlesticks on top, too far away, he’d shoot me before I could get to my feet. But closer, on the middle shelf—
“Leave her alive, René. I am begging you.”
I barely heard Eve pleading. On the middle shelf above my head was a white shape. A miniature bust staring blank eyed across the room. I’d never seen that bust before, but I was fairly sure I recognized it.
Baudelaire.
“I confess I didn’t think you’d be this quick to find my home.” René paced, moving stiffly, as if his age was settling back into his stalky bones after this jolt of action. “Who gave you my address, Marguerite?”
“I can wheedle information out of anyone, René. Didn’t I p-prove that with you?”
The ripple of rage across his face was instantaneous. How ridiculous he was, eaten up with fury over a decades-old mistake. But his rage was useful. It could be turned against him. I gave the bust over my seated head a last measuring glance. One lunge, one good swipe, and I could get a hand on it.