Masquerade (41 page)

There was just enough light from the window to allow her to see the numbers on the dial. Directory Assistance gave her the number, and she dialed it.

"It's Remy," she said quietly, softly, keeping one eye on the closed door to the corridor. "I need a place to stay tonight, and I didn't know who else to call." She almost sighed in relief, but she knew it would hurt too much. "Can you come get me? I'm at Charity. . . . I'm fine," she insisted. "Just bruised up some. I'll explain when I see you. . . . No, don't come in. Wait for me outside."

She put the phone back on the stand, then half rolled and half slid out of the high bed, gritting her teeth against the waves of pain that every movement seemed to bring, despite the stretch bandage that bound her rib cage. She found her clothes in the closet, but changing into them was agony.

Once she was dressed, Remy leaned against the wall to gather her strengh, then moved to the door and listened for footsteps and the stiff whisper of polyester uniforms. Nothing. Cautiously, she opened the door a crack and peered out. The corridor outside her room was empty. She opened the door a little wider to check the nurses' station. There were three of them there, talking softly among themselves, none of them looking in her direction. But to reach the elevators, she had to go by them, and she knew she didn't have a hope of accomplishing that unseen. Then she spied the fire stairs and silently blessed the architect who had unwittingly placed them so close to her room.

She counted to three and slipped out the door, pulling it almost shut behind her, unwilling to risk a sharp click of the latch. Not a single head turned in her direction. Cradling her right side, Remy darted across the corridor to the stairway door.

Five minutes later she walked out the front door of the hospital. She spied the car parked at the curb, its engine idling. She hurried to it, never once doubting her decision, which had been prompted by one single question: if she remembered what she'd seen on the dock, would she be safe anywhere?

 

 

 

 

26

 

 

The clanging crash of the brass knocker had been replaced by a fist pounding at the door, the racket drowning out the sound of the cathedral bells ringing out their summons to morning Mass. "I'm coming!" Cole shouted a second time, padding across the living room in bare feet, fastening the snap of his jeans as he went. The hammering didn't let up. He threw the night bolt and started to jerk the door open, but it exploded inward and Gabe Jardin charged through, with Lance at his heels.

"Where is she? Where's Remy?" He looked wildly around the room, fury and desperation in his face.

"Remy?" Cole frowned. "What makes you think she's here?"

"Because she's disappeared from the hospital —as if you didn't know." He glared at Cole as if he were a roach to be crunched underfoot, then just as quickly waved a hand at the door to the kitchen, ordering, "You check in there, Lance. I'll look back here."

"Hold it." Cole grabbed Gabe's arm as he started toward the hall that led to the bedroom. "What was Remy doing in the hospital?"

"You mean she didn't tell you?" he jeered and tried to shrug off Cole's hand.

But Cole tightened his grip, easily outmuscling him as he surged forward to growl in his face, "Listen, bastard, you don't like me and I don't like you, but you're not taking one step in any direction until you tell me what Remy was doing in a hospital."

Gabe eyed him uncertainly but held his ground. "She was mugged yesterday afternoon in the Quarter. A couple guys in masks worked her over."

"Why?" Stunned by the announcement. Cole loosened his grip.

"How the hell should I know? Maybe they were a couple of crazies high on crack." He pushed past Cole as Lance came swinging out of the kitchen.

"She's not in there, Gabe."

"Come on. We'll look back here."

When the two of them headed toward the bedroom, Cole made no attempt to stop them. Instead, he turned away in troubled silence.

 

"Where is she?" He had a stranglehold on the black receiver, his hand—like his voice—trembling with fear and rage. "What have you done with her?"
 

"Who?"

"You know damned well I'm talking about Remy."

"Isn't she in the hospital?"

"No," he admitted. "She disappeared from there . . . sometime in the night." He gripped the phone even tighter. "Leave her alone—do you hear? If you touch one hair on her head, I swear I'll—"

"—kill me?" the voice taunted with contempt. "Don't make threats you can't keep."
 

"Dammit, I—"

"Don't give me any of this noble shit! You won't do a damned thing, and we both know it. You're all greed and no guts. You always have been."

"Where's Remy?"

"I don't know. But you'd better find her before I do."

 

Fog. A menacing white mist swirling thick and cool around her. Out of the night fog came an eerie yellow glow, dancing, wavering, coming closer and closer. Remy wanted to run from it, but her feet were rooted to the ground. The yellow light kept moving toward her, flaring, separating into two, three, then four towering columns of flame. Black faces loomed from beneath the dancing fire, black faces on black bodies wrapped in white rags, bodies dancing, gyrating, high-stepping, holding aloft their flaming torches, grinning at her, and rattling their tin cups in her face.

Flambeaux. Remy laughed in relief. It was a parade, a night parade, complete with black torch-bearers to light the way. Riders emerged on snorting, sidestepping steeds, their rich costumes, knightly in design, all with plumed helmets and hooded faces, glittering in the mist. Then came the float, a dazzling display of bright, shining paint and sparkling glitter. Riding atop it was the god Comus, the chosen ruler of the parade, a silver and white specter of rhinestones and blinding white stones. He raised his jeweled goblet to her, and Remy clapped her hands together in delight, seeing gray eyes smiling at her from behind the full mask. Cole. Comus was Cole, the god ruler of—

Suddenly the mask changed shape, sprouting a snout and huge, gleaming tusks. Remy recoiled from the image. No—Cole couldn't be the man in the pig mask. She backed away, shaking her head in denial, as he kept pushing the goblet toward her.

Then she remembered that Comus was never the true ruler, not in the arcane society of the krewe. No, the true power in the krewe lay with the captain—one of the riders who had preceded Comus's float. She turned and ran through the thick fog after the disappearing riders. But her legs moved so slowly, so very, very slowly, that she couldn't catch up with them. She could see the streaming tails of the horses and the gleam of their polished hooves as the mist started to gradually swallow them.

"Wait! Wait!"

A rider stopped and turned in his saddle. Gone was the shimmering hood that concealed his face. In its place was a pig mask. Mean, glittering eyes fixed their accusing gaze on her.

Remy froze and whispered, "Who are you?"

"I told you to stop asking questions!"

All of a sudden the mist around her dissolved and she was surrounded by riders, riders in pig masks. In unison, they chanted, "You were warned. You were warned," and walked their horses toward her, tightening the circle.

"No! No!" She was screaming, but no one was listening. She could see the parade crowds along the street, their arms outstretched to the riders, but they weren't looking at her.

She felt hands on her and she struck out wildly, feeling the pain again, stabbing, slicing. . . .

"It's all right, girl," a voice crooned. "Sssh, now. You're safe here. Do you hear? You're safe."

She came awake with a rush, aching and disoriented, still half in the grip of the dream. She stared into Nattie's face, the dark and gently knowing eyes looking back at her.

"Nattie," she murmured, trying to swallow the fear that still choked her throat. "I—" She glanced around, seeing the rose-flowered paper on the walls, the white woodwork, the chintz curtains at the windows, and the old chiffonier against the wall, the top of it cluttered with framed family photographs and crystal atomizers. The spare bedroom at Nattie's house—that's where she was. She remembered now—Nattie had picked her up the night before at the hospital and brought her home to her small cottage-style house in the Channel. She felt the pressure ease from her shoulders and realized Nattie had been holding her down. "... I was dreaming, wasn't I?" She saw she was clutching at the sleeves of Nattie's chenille robe, and she let go of them to run a hand lightly over her cheek, feeling its soreness, its ache.

"The way you were thrashing around, I'd say it was more like a nightmare," Nattie declared as she rose from the edge of the bed.

"It
was
a nightmare." She relaxed against the feather pillow and felt the last of her terror drain away. "Has it only been five days that I've been home, Nattie? In some ways it feels like a lifetime." Nattie didn't comment as she walked over to the window and raised the shade, letting in a bright glare of light. Remy winced at it and lifted a hand to shield her eyes. "What time is it?"

"Going on eleven o'clock."

"It can't be." Remy started to sit up, but her injured rib raised an immediate and painful objection.

"Maybe it can't be, but it is," Nattie stated, then laid a brightly patterned velour robe over the spindled foot of the bed. "The bathroom's across the hall and the coffee's in the kitchen."

Ten minutes later Remy walked into the living room, a cup of black coffee in hand, wearing the caftan-style robe over the cotton shift Nattie had loaned her the night before. Nattie sat curled up in a colorful chintz armchair, the Sunday edition of the
Picayune
on the floor beside her, the section with the crossword puzzle folded open on her raised knees.

Nattie gave her an inspecting look, then said, "As soon as I get this puzzle finished, I'll get you some witch hazel for those bruises on your face. It'll take some of the swelling down and ease the sting."

"Thanks," Remy said, then hesitated. "I'll need to use your phone to make a call."

"If you want some privacy, there's an extension in the kitchen, or you can use the one in here." With a nod of her head, Nattie indicated the beige phone on the end table next to the sofa.

Remy glanced at the phone and wished she could wait until she'd drunk her first cup of coffee before making the dreaded call. But she knew that postponing it wouldn't make it any less of an ordeal. She crossed to the end of the sofa and sat down carefully on its hard cushion, then picked up the receiver and dialed the number from memory.

"Hello?"

"Mother, it's Remy—"

"Remy! Where are you? Are you all right?" she rushed the words then turned away from the mouthpiece and called, "Frazier, it's Remy. She's on the phone." Then she was back. "We've been so worried about you. We didn't know what to think when the hospital phoned us this morning and said you were gone."

"Remy, is that you?" her father broke in with the demand.

"Yes, it's me. And I'm fine—"

"Where are you? We'll come get you."

"No." This time it was Remy who broke in. "I'm not coming home—not now. I'm only calling to let you know I'm fine and I'm perfectly safe where I am."

"But where are you?"

She hesitated an instant, then replied, "I'll talk to you later." And she hung up. She stared at the phone for several more seconds, then looked at Nattie. Her dark eyes regarded Remy with open curiosity, but she asked no questions—she hadn't even asked any the night before, when she'd picked her up at the hospital. Beyond telling Nattie that two men had beaten her up and flatly stating that she wasn't going home, Remy hadn't offered any other explanation—and Nattie hadn't demanded one. But she was entitled to know. "I'm sorry to draw you into the middle of this, Nattie, but they want to put me in some clinic outside of Houston. They were going to have me flown there this morning. That's why I snuck out of the hospital last night. I didn't know how else to stop them."

"That must be the same clinic they were talking about sending you to when you first came back," Nattie guessed.

"Yes. There's more, though, Nattie," Remy said, then briefly told her about the insurance company's claim of fraud over the sinking of the tanker, her belief that she'd witnessed something that night on the dock, and her attempts to find out what it was.

"Are you sure you should be telling me all this?" Nattie frowned warily.

"I have to. You see"—Remy paused and cradled her coffee cup in her hands—"before those two men beat me up, they warned me to stop asking questions and to keep my mouth shut."

"And you don't plan to do either one, do you?" Nattie folded her arms across her chest in a gesture that indicated both resignation and challenge.

"How can I? Somehow I have to find out what or who I saw that night. Until I do, how will I know whom to trust? Whom to believe? Obviously I'm a threat to somebody." She stared at the black coffee in her cup. "And the more I think about it, Nattie, the more convinced I am that there's a connection between the man I was seen struggling with in Nice and the two men who worked me over. Maybe they aren't the same men, but they must have something to do with the
Dragon.
It's too much of a coincidence for it to be anything else."

Nattie swung her feet to the floor and laid the crossword puzzle aside. "You're saying you think somebody followed you all the way to France and cornered you there?"

"It makes sense, Nattie. Whoever doesn't want me to talk now couldn't have wanted me to talk
then.
Maybe that's what we were arguing about when he struck me and I hit my head on that tree." She sighed at the irony. "He must have thought he was home free when I ended up with amnesia."

"And he couldn't have been too pleased when he found out you were asking questions."

"I know." She combed a hand through her hair and glanced at the room's small fireplace, framed in metal stamped with a design of entwined morning glories. "He probably thinks I'm close to remembering what happened. Who knows? Maybe I am."