Page 76 of Icebound

She had forgotten the guard outside her door. This was a different one, but they all looked the same, and she started to think of them as Thing One and Thing Two. One look at his grim face and she knew she was going nowhere.

She was going to go mad, trapped in her rooms without even Maddelena’s raunchy romances to keep her busy. Where the hell was Bastien? She needed him.

The day stretched endlessly ahead of her. They brought her breakfast and lunch, but nothing else, and she had nothing to do but lie in the bed that she and Bastien had lain in and try to think about something else.

The bloody sweats were returned to her, free of stains, and she changed into those, just because she knew they were Bastien’s. They had to get out of there, both of them, and soon. Because sooner or later, Le Fauçon would decide that she was an inconvenience, and he would do something about it.

He would probably wait until Bastien was gone. Le Fauçon was no fool, and he knew that his precious Jean-Marc would balk at killing her. She suspected Luc had no such scruples.

She wasn’t going to let that happen. She was up against a force far bigger than she was, and she didn’t even know for sure that she could count on Bastien. But she wasn’t about to go gentle into that dark night. She had children she adored, a husband who was her life. She was not going to be a victim.

By the second day of her confinement, she began to worry. There’d been no sign of Bastien, probably due to her constant guard, but Bastien was inventive. He could have found a way to get word to her, at the very least.

It wasn’t until the third night that things changed. She was sitting on the bed, expecting her dinner, when she heard the lock on her door being opened, and Thing One appeared, this time without a dinner tray. He surveyed her with his expressionless face.

“Le Fauçon requests the pleasure of your company for dinner,” he intoned, totally without irony.

She didn’t know if that was fear or hope stirring inside her. She rose from the bed. “In these?” she said, gesturing to her sweats.

“Do you have anything else?”

“No.”

“Then those will have to do. Come along—Le Fauçon doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Her heart rose inside her. At least she’d be seeing Bastien again. But when the guard ushered her into the rustic dining room there was no sign of him. No sign of Maddelena either, which was a relief. Unless they were together.

Le Fauçon already sat at the head of the table, looking magisterial. Only Luc was in the room, seated at his right side.

“Come and join us, my dear,” Le Fauçon said in his plummy British voice, gesturing to the seat on his left. She moved forward slowly, reluctantly, sinking down into the chair.

“Where’s Ba…Jean Marc?” she said.

“He’s away for a few days.”

Panic swept through her. If Bastien had already gone after Peter then she’d be unable to stop them, and one of them might already be dead. Maybe both of them. Maybe their children.

“Did he go to kill that man you were talking about?” She had to ask the question.

“And how did you know about that?” Le Fauçon’s voice was silky with menace.

“You told him about it when we were at dinner,” she said, determined not to stammer.

“And you were paying attention. How clever of you, my dear. But then, I’ve always known you were clever. Brains and beauty so seldom go together. Look at my daughter.”

“I’d rather not,” she said.

Luc laughed at that, and Le Fauçon joined him. “Such a clever girl,” he said fondly, and Chloe wasn’t sure if he meant her or his own daughter. “As for your question, no, Jean-Marc has not yet gone to take care of my mission. He’s a very thorough man, is Jean-Marc, and he does complete reconnoitering before he does a job for me. It took him weeks of preparation to take out LaDonna, and even then he failed.”

“What do you mean, he failed? She’s dead. She was shot.”

“I’m afraid Luc had to fill in. Jean-Marc couldn’t be found. It turns out he was with you.”

“Yes,” she said. It would be a waste of time to deny it.

Which meant Luc was even more dangerous than she’d thought. She turned to look at him, and he met her gaze, totally without any emotion at all.

“I can always count on Luc,” Le Fauçon continued. “Even in the most difficult of circumstances, he always sees things through. LaDonna was merely one example of his thoroughness.”