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He had even stopped to see a movie in an actual movie theater for the first time in five years. It was a horrible bloody action flick from some even more horrible talentless American actor, but Alexander had been thrilled to watch it. He hadn't bothered to look and see what the movie was about before he bought the ticket. Mostly, he'd just wanted to see how it felt to watch a movie in a room full of strangers, as opposed to a theater full of body guards, and to lose himself in the crowd.
The sun had almost set, so the people who had been milling around the streets of the city had finally begun to move to the cafes and the bars. The brisk breeze coming off the Seine had driven almost everyone away from the river, which was just how Alexander liked it. He'd been able to mingle with people most of the day, and now he was ready to experience the pure joy of being totally alone. The only noise he heard was the gentle flow of the river, the occasional call of a night bird...
…and screaming.
Wait… screaming?
That couldn’t be right.
But a woman's panicked scream in the distance wasn’t something he could ignore.
Paris felt as if she'd already been wandering the streets of the city for an entire miserable day, even though it was probably more like two hours. Her feet were killing her, and she'd spent what little money she'd brought from the hotel on a map that she didn't understand. However, in that very short amount of time, she'd already managed to get completely turned around again and wind up in a smelly alley next to a trashy bar in the middle of nowhere.
This was not how she had expected her dream vacation to turn out. She was both angry at herself and angry at the student tour group for her situation.
Yes, she was a loner—when someone moved as much as she had as a kid that was to be expected. Paris had learned a long time ago that making friends was pointless. Just as soon as she got to know someone, she’d be off to a new town.
Atlanta, her sister, had had the opposite reaction to their childhood though. Rather than retreating into herself, she had become outgoing—the life of the party. Everyone was drawn to Atlanta, and Paris could only watch in admiration.
Leaving 3 “best friends” in one year had been enough for her. Paris had retreated into herself and consoled herself with the idea that she actually preferred being alone. It gave her more time to think and to study.
And anyway, in med school, who had time to make friends? There were the people in her first-year study group that she got together with once a week… but they didn’t really count. There were the three other black people in her cohort that she would give ‘the nod’ to when they passed each other on campus, but she didn’t really know them.
And so, while she was mad at the tour group—how could they have forgotten her!?—on some level, she knew she had no one to blame but herself. If she was more of a ‘people’ person, maybe this wouldn’t have happened to her.
Suddenly, for one of the few times in her life, Paris felt utterly, completely, desolately, lonely. A wave of self-pity washed over her, but she pushed back the tears that threatened to come and tried to focus on the problem at hand.
Think, Paris. Think.
She was a smart girl, she was used to making her own way in the world and having to find her way out of sticky situations. How many times had she been responsible for her brother and sister as a kid? How many times had she had to figure out how to take a bus to the grocery store, carefully count out the change she had found in the couch cushions for the clerk, and read the cooking instructions on the back of the box of mac and cheese?
She was used to a challenge. She could handle this. Paris straightened her shoulders and tried to ignore the early evening chill in the air.
The problem was… she was used to handling things in English. She didn't recognize anything, couldn’t read anything, and the urge to break down in tears was becoming pretty overwhelming. Paris had already tried three hotels, but all of them said—in what little French she understood—that they were full.
She wasn’t sure if her credit card would have had enough to cover a night in this swanky part of town anyway, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the night sleeping in the street.
Paris was just about to turn around and try to retrace her steps back to the chapel to see if the guard might still be there—he had seemed friendly enough—when two huge men stepped out of the shadows sneering at her.
“You zeem to be lost, mademoiselle.” One of the men gave her a not-so-reassuring grin.
“We can, per-haps, ’elp you…”
Her stomach dropped straight down to her feet. Danger was danger in any language.
The croque-monsieur she’d had for lunch hadn’t been sitting well with her, and now there was a decent chance she was going to be sick all over herself.
This was how she was going to die, she was sure of it.
She did a quick mental assessment of her options.
Fight? Two against one wasn’t good odds—and who knew what type of weapons they had.
Flight? The large frame of both men seemed to take up the whole alleyway. There wasn’t much of a chance she could squeeze past them, even if she was inclined to try.
Freeze? That’s probably what they would expect…
The men ambled toward her, with dangerous confidence, leering at her and saying things in French that she didn't understand. She didn’t have to understand a word though to understand their intent, and Paris knew it wasn’t going to be a pretty outcome for her—that much she understood.
