Midnight Train to Paris (18 page)

Three snow-white cribs circle the shadowy room, and dozens of
baby mobiles dangle from the ceiling, swirling violently with each gust that
blows in through the open windows. Creepy, off-pitch melodies swim through my
ears as I run toward the center of the room, to the young woman with the sweet
face and the dark brown curls who is beaten, bloody, and tied to a chair.

“Rosie,” I whisper, kneeling down before her and tugging
frantically at the ropes that bind her limp body. “Rosie, it’s me, Jillian.
Wake up, Rosie. Wake up!”

“So, Jillian is your name.” A bone-chilling female voice
calls out to me in French.

I flip around, my gaze landing on a woman dressed in a long,
billowing black dress, her matching stone eyes and jet black hair immediately
making me recognize her as the
original
matriarch
of the powerful Morel family—Agnès Morel. Wife of Henri, mother of Alexandre.
The woman who
would’ve
been Rosie’s
mother-in-law, had Rosie stayed true to Alexandre.

“So
you
are the
third, mysterious woman we plucked from the Orient Express,” she says in French
as she taps a shiny silver blade against her palm, the blood that covers the
tip of the knife smearing all over her pale skin. “We’re so glad you could
finally join us. Aren’t we, Rosie?”

Agnès
Morel paces toward me, turning the jagged blade over in her bony hands. Her
wicked gaze is void of any kindness, love, or hope she may have once possessed.
Instead, all I see in those endless black holes are rage, jealousy, and pure,
unadulterated evil.

She doesn’t shiver or show even a hint of discomfort as a
glacial blast of air swoops through the room, swishing the hem of her long
black dress around her ankles and twirling the baby mobiles above her head in
ferocious circles.

Their wretched song makes me nauseous.

The fact that I’ve already witnessed this same brand of crazy
in my own sick, imprisoned mother should give me an advantage over the
knife-wielding woman before me. But in my experience, women who are this far
gone are not capable of feeling any true, virtuous emotions, leaving no point
in trying to reason with them.

Still, I have to try.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask her as I crane my neck toward
the door, wondering what has happened to Samuel. “What has Rosie ever done to
you to deserve
this
?”

A loud, deranged cackle breaks through the incessant melodies
that twist and stab like daggers through my eardrums. I turn back to Agnès,
wondering why it sounds as if her voice has suddenly changed. But in a flash,
her face morphs from the creepy 1930s woman with black hair and haunting eyes
to that of a
different
Morel
woman—one with chin-length, dyed-blond hair, a pearl necklace, and angry,
flaring nostrils.

Hélène Morel?

Hélène’s sparkly diamond bracelet dangles loosely on her
wrist as she taps the dull side of a clean knife against her palm. She glares
past me as if I’m not even here, her vengeful gaze settling on the girl behind
me tied to the chair.

But when I turn to find Rosie, I realize exactly what is
going on.

It isn’t Rosie tied to the chair anymore—it’s
Isla
.

I am having another vision of the future, and in 2012, in
this same haunting ice castle, it is Hélène Morel who is holding my sister
hostage.

Just as I lunge toward my sister,
the image flashes once more.

Agnès is now towering over me, her pointy black heel pinning
me to the ground as she grips
my
gun
in one hand and her bloody knife in the other.

Shit.
   

“For as brave as you seemed storming in here to save the day,
you’re certainly not very quick on your feet,” Agnès says to me as she removes
her foot from my chest and paces toward one of the cribs. “You know, Jillian,
it’s not
only
Rosie who has wronged
me and my family name.” Without looking down, she points the dagger toward her
feet.

Following her gesture, I have to stifle a scream as I
discover a mess of blond hair, stained brown with blood, sprawled on the white
marble floor. The victim’s face is turned away from me, and the rest of her
body is hidden by one of the large cribs, but I recognize her nonetheless.

It’s Frances Chapman.

Just like Emma Brooks and Francesca Rossi in the future
version of this monstrous crime, Frances has been slayed.

Which means that in this impossible convergence of the past
and the future,
only
Rosie and Isla
are left.

And with no sign of Samuel, it is up to
me
to save them both. Just as I was told I would have to do.

I sit up slowly, lifting my heated glare back to the
heartless, deranged woman who surely has no plans to spare my life either. “You
killed Frances for sleeping with your husband, and now you’re going to steal
Rosie’s baby? What happened to you, Agnès? Why would you take it this far?”

She tosses the gun into one of the cribs before charging
toward me with the knife. She thrusts the bloody tip toward my neck, but my
instincts are quicker. I reach up and wrap my hand around her weak wrist before
she can break my skin.

“Who the hell are you to question me?” she spits in my face,
struggling against me. But for as evil as she is, I am stronger. I shove the
old hag off me, slamming her back into one of the cribs. She pushes herself
away from the railing, smoothing out her dress with the knife, streaking blood
all over the heavy black material as she sets her vindictive gaze on me.

“How dare you,” she growls. “I am the queen of one of the
wealthiest, most powerful families in this entire country. My husband may get
all the credit for making our fortune, but he was
nothing
before he met me.
Nothing
!
All I asked for in return was his faithfulness and a baby girl to carry on the
Morel line of
women
.”

“Why isn’t your son enough?” I shoot back. “Why do you need
to steal someone else’s child? You have no right!” I block Rosie’s body with my
own as I stand to look straight into Agnès's hollow eyes.

“I grew up watching my father and my brothers make horrific,
selfish mistakes, and I knew a son could never cut it. A son could never carry
on the legacy of a powerful, smart, wealthy woman—and I was right. That idiot
son of mine, Alexandre—while I’ll do anything to protect his name,
our
name—he’s as worthless as they come.
Mesmerized by Rosie Delaney, the innocent little
américaine
. Little did he know, she’s a heartless floozie who fell
in love with a pitiful French soldier and got herself pregnant with his baby.”

As Agnès speaks, her disturbing facial features warp into
Hélène’s and back again several times, making me realize that Hélène is telling
almost the exact same story in the future. Like Agnès, she loves the jewels,
the money, the power of her position in the infamous Morel family. And like
Agnès, she thinks her son, Frédéric, is an idiot for falling for Isla…a woman
who would choose the love of a lowly artist over the authority and wealth she
could have had by marrying the son of the Morel dynasty.

Which meant that as crazy and jealous as he was, Frédéric
wasn’t
involved in Isla’s abduction. And
Alexandre wasn’t involved in Rosie’s.

All along, it had been the demented mothers.

I should’ve known.

Agnès walks around the still unconscious Rosie, smearing
fresh blood on her cheek with the dull side of the blade. “It better be a girl,
Miss Rosie,” she whispers in her ear. “I’ve already lost three of them, and I
won’t lose another.”

Agnès had lost
three
baby girls? Suddenly the old cabin nursery, the three white cribs surrounding
us, and the incessantly twirling baby mobiles make sense.

Agnès's threat makes me remember the story Samuel told me
about Hélène Morel—how she once lost a baby girl as well. The similarities
between the two mothers and between their equally atrocious crimes is uncanny…
making me wonder if before Agnès died, she had the opportunity to
groom
Hélène into the kind of woman who
would stop at nothing to hurt anyone who messed with their precious family
name. The kind of woman who would go so far as to steal someone else’s baby
girl just to carry on her sick legacy.

Agnès keeps her gaze pinned to me, pacing in frantic circles
around Rosie and me, as if she is trying to keep time with the baby mobiles
that continue to spin wildly over our heads.

“You want to know why I would take it this far?” she shrieks.
“Why I would orchestrate such an elaborate abduction? Hiring a team of trained
men to obstruct the train tracks, storm the Orient Express, take Rosie,
Frances, and
you—
a third woman simply
to make the entire incident look random. Because I won’t stand for the kind of
betrayal my husband has made me suffer through. I’ve known for years that he
was seeing that whore, Frances! After everything I’ve done for him, after the
man I’ve made him into, how dare he go behind my back with
her
. I was not going to allow him to make a fool out of me any
longer.”

A devious grin spreads over Agnès's thin lips. “
I
gave Henri the Orient Express ticket
to give to his precious little mistress, and I even pretended to fall ill the
day before our Morel Holiday Gala, so he could break up with her in
private
.”

“But you weren’t ill,” I say, finally putting all the puzzle
pieces together. “You were on your way here, waiting for the girls to arrive at
your secret castle. So
you
could have
your way with them.” A sudden, vivid memory of Hélène Morel dashing out of the
Morels’ lakefront château to be with her supposed
ill sister
flashes through my mind.

Hélène’s sister was never ill.

She was heading
here
to
this exact castle, to reenact the crime Agnès had committed seventy-five years
prior.

I don’t have time to analyze the similarities any further,
though, because Agnès's hysterical voice breaks my concentration. “I chose that
exact train because I already knew that Rosie, my son’s disloyal fiancée, was
planning to leave him and take the midnight Orient Express to meet her lover in
Paris. Rosie may be beautiful, but she was stupid. So, so stupid. Keeping that
box of sickening letters and the train ticket her lover sent her in a suitcase
in
my
vacation château? Did she
actually think I would never find out?” Another disturbing laugh breaks through
her dry, cracked lips, making my stomach curl. “So I figured, why not kill two
birds with one stone?”

I steady myself against the railing of one of the cribs,
waiting for the moment when Agnès becomes careless in her ranting and looks
away so that I can charge her and steal the knife from her death grip. But for
as crazy as she is, Agnès
isn’t
an
idiot. She knows if I had the audacity to storm this freaky ice castle, I won’t
hesitate to take her down at my first opportunity.

 “It wasn’t easy,
building this empire,” she rambles. “It wasn’t easy creating something from
nothing, especially during this vile depression. I was raised in the slums of
Paris, eating crumbs for breakfast, working the streets as a child. But I was
determined; I wasn’t going to allow anyone to stand in my way. And now, look at
me,” she says, gesturing to the high ceilings and creepy paintings adorning the
nursery walls. “I have the richest husband in the country, I have jewels,
castles,
power.
Do you actually think
I would allow these young, promiscuous harlots to storm in and ruin everything
I’ve worked so hard to create? I need an equally strong woman to mold, to carry
on my legacy.”

I already knew that the sweet daughter Agnès would kidnap
from Rosie wouldn’t grow up to be the heartless, power-hungry woman Agnès was
hoping she’d be. I’d only met the elegant Madeleine Morel briefly, but from
what I’d seen in that snowy Lausanne train station, she was much too warm and
entirely too kind to be Agnès's pawn. Which explained why Madeleine’s portrait
had been removed from the Morel women hall of fame.

And so, before Agnès died at the ripe old age of ninety-nine,
it must’ve been
Hélène
who she chose
to mold into her likeness.

 “I should’ve known
Rosie would never cut it,” Agnès continues as I eye the gun lying behind her in
the crib. “It’s a shame, though, because her father is in such a strong
political position, and her mother was always so loyal to our family. Stupid
like her daughter, but loyal. If Rosie had any eye for power, for wealth, it
could’ve been a perfect match. She could’ve been the daughter I never had. But
you see, Jillian, when Rosie turned on my son, she turned on my whole family.
She threatened to disgrace the family name
I’ve
worked so hard to build. I am only taking what is rightfully mine—the baby
girl I was always supposed to have.”

The story Madeleine had told me was true. She’d been taken
from Rosie at birth and raised as if she were a Morel. She’d always known she
was different, though—nothing like this monster of a woman who stole her from
her rightful mother. And Madeleine’s twin—Georges, the generous chauffeur—was
given up for adoption because Agnès clearly had no interest in raising another
son.

“I suppose this was always our destiny, sweet Rosie,” Agnès
says as she walks past me and whispers in Rosie’s ear. “Too bad you won’t live
long enough to watch your little girl grow up. Don’t worry, though. She’ll be
in good hands.”

Just as I take advantage of the slip in Agnès's gaze to lunge
toward her, the image in this ice-cold nursery flashes abruptly. Now, instead
of defeating the crazed Agnès, I am standing beside my bound up sister, whose
violet eyes are darting frantically toward the door.

I follow her gaze, my insides revolting in disgust at the
scene before me.

Dagger still in hand, Hélène Morel leans forward and plants a
long, sickening kiss on the lips of the man both Isla and I hate most in this
world—Senator Parker Williams.