Masquerade (45 page)

Gabe saw her standing there. His mouth started to lift in a smile, then a stunned look claimed his face and he turned pale. He knew. He knew she remembered. And Maitland—he knew too. She felt the glare of his eyes, then saw him take a quick, angry step toward her. Gabe moved forward to stop him. Remy had a glimpse of Maitland shoving him aside as she turned to run, like an animal scenting danger, with flight her only defense.

She tried to lose herself in the crowd fringing the dance floor, but a quick glance over her shoulder showed Maitland cutting directly toward the main exit. She couldn't make it, not before he was there to block it.

Changing direction, Remy darted out a side exit into the warren of corridors that ringed the main auditorium. She hesitated. What now? She couldn't think. Her mind was reeling—no wonder Gabe hadn't wanted to go to the police about Charlie, no wonder he hadn't wanted charges brought against Maitland, his partner in crime, no wonder he'd wanted to hush the matter up with the insurance company, no wonder he'd been so eager to pin the blame on Cole.

Cole. She spied a bank of pay telephones tucked along the wall of a small alcove. She ran over to them and picked up the farthest one. She had no change, so she dialed his number and charged the call to her home phone.

"Please be there," she whispered, closing her eyes as she listened to the ring.

"Yes." That low, abrupt voice—it was Cole.

"Cole, it's Remy. I—" There was a sharp and very definite click on the other end. She jerked the receiver away from her ear to stare at it in shock. He'd hung up on her! She hesitated, then hurriedly tried again. When he answered, she spoke in a rush. "It was Gabe, not you. I didn't remember that until just now, when I saw him with Maitland. Please don't hang up. I was wrong. You weren't involved. I know that now."

"Your confession comes a little late, Remy."

"No," she choked on the word. "It can't be too late. They know I remember what really happened. And they know I know about Charlie Aikens. I think Maitland had him killed. Now he's looking for me. I can't go to the police. Gabe would convince them I'm crazy. The amnesia, the beating, he'd have them believing I'd become paranoid, schizoid, something. The beating, Cole, that was Maitland's warning for me to keep my mouth shut. My God, I'm babbling." She swallowed a hysterical laugh and tilted her head back, fighting down the panic.

"Where are you, Remy?"

"At the auditorium, the Comus ball."

"Stay there. I'm coming right over."

"I can't. He's looking for me—"

"And it would seem that he has found you," a voice said as her wrist was suddenly seized and the receiver ripped from her hand. Remy turned and had a moment to see Maitland's cold, cold eyes, magnified by the elegant gold-rimmed glasses he wore, then her arm was jerked behind her back and twisted high. She gasped at the paralyzing pain. "Don't scream, Remy," Maitland warned in a dry, confident voice. "I would hate to bruise that pretty face of yours, especially when the other marks are healing so nicely. And it would be embarrassing to carry you out of here because you passed out from drinking too much. You understand what I'm saying, don't you?"

"Yes," she gasped again.

"Good. Now, we're going to take a little walk —very calmly and very quietly. Right?"

Remy nodded. The tuxedoed security men on duty at the entrance to keep the "wrong" people from getting in to the ball—did he think he could walk her past them? How could he explain manhandling her this way? Or did he expect her to meekly walk at his side? If she could create just enough doubt in their minds, enough to make him turn her loose—regardless of any convincing lines he might tell them—she could run.

He steered her out of the alcove and back into the side corridor. He didn't turn her toward the entrance, though, but rather forced her in the opposite direction. Where were they going?

A short distance down the hall, Remy had her answer. There was a side exit—a fire door, the kind that opened from the inside but not from the outside. He propelled her toward it, then reached around and pushed down on the metal bar, swinging the door open, his grip on her tightening rather than loosening.

He pushed her through the doorway ahead of him, the cool night air sweeping over her as she stepped out into the deep shadows of the building. She heard the whoosh of the automatic closure pulling the door shut, and felt the press of his body against her.

"Where are you taking me?"

"I thought we might go for a ride."

The parking lot. There'd be people in the parking lot. But again, he didn't turn her in the anticipated direction. Instead, he made her keep in the building's shadows, staying parallel with the wall. She heard the jingle of car keys, then spied a black BMW parked close to the building's service entrance. Her heart sank.

As if sensing it, he murmured, "I never guessed how convenient it would turn out to be."

"You'll never get away with this," she said tightly.

There was a mocking click of his tongue. "Really, Remy, that sounds like a line from an old B movie or a bad TV script."

"You won't," Remy insisted, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt. "First Charlie, now me. Won't that look too suspicious?"

"Did you read yesterday's paper? There was an article in there about a young coed from LSU who died from a drug overdose. She was an honors student, came from a good middle-class family— not the kind of girl you'd think would get mixed up with cocaine. It was just a small story. When I read it, I couldn't help thinking how different it would have been if she had been the daughter of a wealthy, prominent family. It might have stirred the police to take action against these drug dealers."

"My family would never believe that."

"They wouldn't have any choice," he said curtly, then returned to a smoother tone. "Besides, the family is always the last to suspect their child's on drugs—until they're faced with irrefutable evidence."

"No," she whispered in protest.

"It won't be so bad, Remy. Think how high you'll be flying when you go."

She couldn't get into that car with him. Somehow she had to get away. Then she realized that he'd either have to shift his hold on her or be forced to unlock the car with his left hand. In either case, that would be her chance—maybe her only chance.

He steered her to the passenger door and jerked her to a stop, then positioned her at right angles to the door. He wasn't going to switch hands; instead, he'd probably tighten his grip, as he'd done before. She'd have to block out the pain.

It stabbed through her shoulder as the keys jingled and he leaned toward the car. She sank her teeth into her lower lip and turned her head, focusing on his legs. She kicked as hard as she could, aiming for the side of his knee.

Remy felt his leg instantly buckle and heard his loud groan as his fingers loosened on her wrist. She spun free of him and broke into a run, grabbing up the front of her long taffeta skirt in one hand and ignoring the thousands of needles that seemed to be embedded in her other arm.

She heard him mutter, "You bitch," and then the slam of the car door. She looked back and saw him hobbling after her, the light from an auditorium window glinting on the lens of his glasses—and on the metal barrel of a gun.

She ran blindly. There were cars on the street. Should she try to flag one down? Would it stop? Would they help—or speed away? If she tried, wouldn't that give Maitland a chance to catch up with her—to catch her? She looked back. He was still coming after her, still favoring his leg, still slowed by it, still carrying the gun. She had to get away.

The park, with its twisting, dimly lit paths, its thick shrubbery and quiet lagoons—she could hide there. She could lose him there.

She ran away from the streetlights, toward the gaping darkness of the park, sobbing with each breath. She plunged into its blanketing shadows, her heels immediately sinking in the grass. She stumbled and fell, her lungs, her side, her whole body on fire. For a brief moment she simply lay there, fighting for breath, not certain she could get back up. But she did, pausing long enough to slip off her high heels before pressing on, slower this time, hugging the shadows and holding her full skirt tightly around her to keep the taffeta from rustling so noisily.

Someone cursed long and low. Remy froze. It had sounded close. How close? Where? She searched the shadows and caught a movement. Someone was over there. There was a gap in the bushes behind her. She started to back into it, one quiet step at a time. Would he see her? Would he catch the faint shimmer of her sequined top in the darkness?

As a hand grabbed her from behind, she screamed and whirled around, striking out blindly to free herself. Both arms were seized.

"Stop it, Remy. Stop it," someone demanded, shaking her hard when she persisted in struggling. "Do you hear? Stop it."

Something penetrated—the sound of that voice, the sensation of the hands, the flashes of images in her mind. Remy paused to look at the man's face.

"You." She recoiled from the sight of her father. "You're the one who hit me. You're the one I was arguing with at the Espace Masséna." She moved her head slowly from side to side, not wanting to believe it, not wanting to remember. "Why?"

"I didn't mean to," he murmured. "But you wouldn't listen. You wouldn't understand. We would have lost everything. Wall Street . . . the real-estate deals that went sour in Texas . . . what money we had, we'd gambled on Maitland's offshore venture. When it failed too, he had to pay it back. That's all we did. Make sure he had the money to pay back what he owed. The extra was just . . . interest."

" 'We'? You and Gabe. . . ."Then she remembered. "No, it was Marc and Lance too. It was all of you."

"For God's sake, no one got hurt."

"Only Charlie and Cole," she taunted.

"Buchanan's a cat. He'll land on his feet. Charlie .. . he was your fault."

"Oh, God." She bowed her head, unable to look at him as she strained to get as far away from him as possible.

The leaves whispered a warning. "Frazier," a voice said. Her father started to turn, relaxing his hold on her arm, and Cole stepped out of the shadows, his right hand swinging out of the darkness to clip Frazier Jardin's jaw. As her father reeled sideways, Cole caught her arm, his gray eyes smiling briefly at her. "I've wanted to do that for a long time." Then his hand was sliding around her waist, coaxing her along. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"Maitland's out there somewhere. He has a gun, Cole."

The information elicited a few choice obscenities from him.

From a nearby street came the scream of police sirens. "Cole—"

"I called them before I left." He drew her with him as he moved slowly along the hedges. "Unfortunately, they're going to the auditorium. Maybe we can fool Maitland by doubling—"

At that moment Maitland stepped out of the bushes directly in front of them, the small but deadly-looking barrel of his gun leveled at them. "Look what we have here," he murmured coolly. "What do you suppose happened? A lovers' quarrel, maybe. In the rage of rejection, he shoots her, then commits suicide. Sounds plausible, doesn't it?"

Cole stepped a little ahead of Remy, placing himself between her and Maitland. "It's plausible
only
if you come close enough to leave powder burns. Why don't you do that, Maitland?" He wagged his fingers, urging him to come closer.

"Carl, no," came her father's strangled cry as he plunged out of the shadows a few feet from them, a frightened and panicked look on his face. "My God, she's my daughter. You can't do this."

"I suppose
you're
going to stop me," Maitland jeered in contempt. "How, Frazier, when you couldn't even stop her? I should have remembered that Jardins are notorious for never having the guts to finish what they start. Well,
I
do."

There was a noisy thrashing in the brush to his right. Maitland swung toward the sound and Cole lunged for the gun, driving his arm high in the air. A stab of flame shot from the barrel, accompanied by a small, explosive pop as Cole struggled to wrest the gun from Maitland. Gabe charged out of the bushes, and at the same second, Remy saw the gun arc through the air.

"Get it, Remy!" Cole shouted.

It landed somewhere in the grass. She ran to the spot where she thought it had fallen and frantically groped through the short, clipped grass. Then she felt the cool smoothness of metal beneath her fingers and quickly snatched it up. When she turned with the gun, Gabe was standing in front of her.

He hesitated a second, then held out his hand. "Give me the gun, Remy."

She took an uncertain step backward and shook her head.

"Dammit, Remy, I wouldn't have let him hurt you. I was trying to stop him. Now give me the gun."

Suddenly Cole was beside her, breathing hard and taking the revolver from her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the gleam of flashlights moving toward them: the police.

 

 

 

 

29

 

 

The cathedral rang the midnight hour, signaling the end of Mardi Gras and the beginning of the Lenten season, the time of fasting. Remy listened to it and shuddered faintly, staring heedlessly at the bare branches of a mimosa tree in the small brick-walled courtyard.

She heard a footsteps on the flagstones and half turned as Cole stepped through the French doors and joined her on the private patio off his apartment. He silently offered her a glass of brandy. She took it and sipped it, then turned back to her contemplation of the night.

"I was coming to you. I was going to leave Nice the next morning," she said dully, the memory of it all now very clear. "When you accused my family of instigating this fraud and we argued so bitterly, I didn't believe you—even though I was nagged by the memory of that night when I saw Gabe's red Porsche parked on the levee road and stopped to see what he was doing there. I wanted to believe that the fresh water was for bathing and cooking. But when I confronted him—all of them—with it in Nice, they. ..."