Midnight Train to Paris (19 page)

December 25…

The French Alps

The sight of Senator Williams's lips on
anyone
—let
alone on Hélène Morel—is enough to make both my twin sister and me physically
ill…not to mention physically violent.

The problem is that Isla is still tied to a
chair, her mouth covered with tape, and I have only traveled to the future as a
helpless spectator—a fly on the wall with no physical abilities, no way to save
my sister from the sick, unlikely couple who have worked together to plan and
execute her abduction
and
the murders of two other innocent women.

And there is no telling when this revolting
scene will flash and I will find myself back in 1937, very much physically
present, and most likely at the mercy of the evil Agnès Morel.

Hélène pulls her lips from Williams's round face,
then nods to the center of the room, where Isla is squirming beneath the taut
ropes that bind her.

I am invisible to our enemies, but as Isla lifts
her fiery gaze to mine, I am certain she knows I’m here. Now I just have to
find a way to save her life before Williams finishes what he surely came here
to do.   

Williams's bushy gray eyebrows pinch together as he meets
eyes with Isla. “I thought you were going to take care of her,” he quips, turning
his gaze toward the clean knife in Hélène’s hands. “What are you waiting for?”

Hélène paces coolly toward Isla, pointing the
dagger at Isla’s stomach. “How far along are you, Isla?” she says in English,
her thick accent jarring to my ears. “Two months? Three months?”

“She’s pregnant?” Williams says, not hiding the
shock on his greasy face.

Hélène gives a slow, calculated nod. “Which is
why we’ll be waiting until
after
she has the baby to take care of her,
as you say.”

Williams storms toward Hélène, digging his
fingers into her shoulder. “This wasn’t in the plan,” he growls. “And the
only
way this will work is if we stick to the plan, Hélène.”

She flips around, shrugging him off of her. “And
I suppose kidnapping the Ambassador’s nineteen-year-old daughter and murdering
her was in the plan too?” she shrieks, pointing the knife at her lover’s chest.
“How could your men have made such a grave error?
Both
of our families
are friends with the Brooks family! And why in God’s name would you resign from
office while all of this is going on? Was that all a part of your brilliant
plan too?”

Williams wraps a strong hand around Hélène’s
wrist, stopping her from coming any closer with the sharp edge of the knife.

“My men followed the instructions you gave me to
a tee. Just like you asked, they kidnapped Isla and two other women at random
so that there wouldn’t be a connection made between the three women, and
consequently no connection would be made to you
or
to me. The fact that
Emma Brooks
happened
to be on the same train as Isla was a complete
coincidence. And there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Isla lets out a muffled scream as she thrashes
underneath the ropes. Her frantic movements tell me she knows something about
why Emma Brooks was taken…and that it
wasn’t
a coincidence.

I need to figure out a way to get that damn tape
off her lips so we can all find out
exactly
what she knows.

The lovers’ quarrel continues to erupt behind me
as I will myself closer to my sister.

Suddenly I am engulfed by the stench of evil.

It is Senator Williams, approaching my sister,
staring her down with his menacing glare.

“Need I remind you, Hélène, that this woman who made a fool
out of your son, out of your whole family, is a whore. Do you really want a
whore’s baby?”

A thousand men could not hold me back from the
rage that plows through me at Parker Williams's revolting words.

My sister is not a whore!

 I lunge at the monster who stole everything from Isla, and
to my complete surprise, his tall, blundering body actually stumbles backward,
knocking right into Hélène.

Annoyed at his clumsiness, Hélène pushes past
him, dagger pointed at Isla. “Whore or not, that baby belongs to
my
family!”

Hélène switches into her native tongue of French as she
slithers up to my sister. “I always knew there was something off about you,
Isla…from the first time Frédéric brought you home. It’s funny because my
husband’s dear grandmother Agnès warned me about you on her death bed. She told
me to be on the look-out for a woman just like you. And to do
everything
in my power to protect this family from the money-grubbing whore who would
defame my family name, who would try to take away everything I—and she—worked
so hard to build.”

Hélène gestures above to the tall, arched ceilings, and
around to the same creepy paintings that still adorn these walls seventy-five
years after Agnès spilled blood in this exact room. “On the day Agnès predicted
your arrival, she gave me the keys to this very castle as she told me the story
of a woman just like you, a young girl by the name of Rosie Delaney, who stole
Agnès’s son’s heart and
tried
to steal her son’s baby. But the story
didn’t end so well for Rosie, and it won’t end so well for you either, Isla
Chambord.”

Hélène’s voice cracks with desperation as she continues on
her diatribe. “I lost a child once. A little girl. It should never have
happened.
Never.
And I just know that baby you’re carrying is a little
girl. But after the way you lied to me and to my entire family, you
don’t
deserve her.” Hélène crosses her arms tightly over her chest, tapping the dull
side of the knife furiously against her arm. “That’s right, Isla. I know
all
about your dirty little past. I had my close friend here, Monsieur Williams,
perform a background check on you. Lo and behold, my instincts were correct, as
usual. He told me all about your days as a prostitute. Do you actually think I
would allow a woman like you to marry my only son? Did you think I would stand
idly by while you ran off with that pitiful artist and tried to steal my son’s
baby?”

Without warning, Hélène smacks Isla hard across the cheek.
“Before she died, Agnès also gave me the keys to the nice little cabin where
you’ll be staying until you have the baby. I believe you made a quick stop
there on your way to the castle, no?”

Isla struggles beneath the ropes as Hélène moves
in closer. “The only reason I’ve kept you alive is so I can claim what’s
rightfully mine. Once I have that baby in my hands, you’re finished, Isla
Chambord. And I’ll personally see to it that no one ever finds your disgusting,
used-up body.”

This time I go for Hélène. I’m not sure how this
invisible presence of mine is able to turn physical, but it doesn’t matter how
because
it works.

Hélène plummets back into Williams with a thud, a startled
look splashing across her heavily made-up face.

“Who did that?” The diamonds dangling from
Hélène’s ears swish around as she scans the chilly room.

But I’m not paying any attention to her or to
her equally slimy partner-in-crime any longer. I’ve turned all of my focus,
every ounce of my energy, onto Isla.

As I envision peeling the tape off of my
sister’s mouth, I watch in disbelief as the silver tape actually unravels and
falls into her lap.

She sucks in a loud breath while I go to work on
the ropes that bind her wrists together.

“The story your
friend,
Parker Williams,
told you isn’t true,” Isla says coolly in French as both Hélène and Williams
stare with mouths agape at her newly freed lips. Williams storms toward Isla,
but I redirect my force right at his groin this time, and I almost laugh as he
crumbles in half, clutching himself and moaning like the pathetic weasel of a
man he is.

Isla winks at me, then continues on her rampage
as a petrified Hélène cowers on the ground. “I was never a prostitute,” Isla
says. “My
mother
was the prostitute. And when I was only thirteen,
before your knight in shining armor here became a senator, he used to stop by
our house for weekly
visits
with my mother. The first day he saw me
though, he cut a deal with my mom. He paid her twice the normal rate to have me
instead.”

Hélène’s pencil-lined brows lift in horror as
she glances at the man still writhing on the cool marble floor before her.

“That’s right Hélène, your lover is a sick
pervert who sleeps with young, innocent girls like me…and Emma Brooks,” Isla
says.

While Hélène climbs slowly to her feet, her
vindictive gaze turning now to Williams, I lean closer to my sister and quickly
tell her the story on Senator Williams that went to press the day after the
train abduction.

I have no clue how, but Isla can hear me, and
she doesn’t miss a beat. “And you want to know why the senator resigned so
suddenly, putting your abduction plans in jeopardy?” Isla quips. “Because he’s
wanted for the murder of two young sisters who were sold into the child
prostitution ring that
he
was running back in D.C. Oh, and he was
funneling money from that prostitution ring directly into his campaign.”

With each word of truth that is spoken in this
godforsaken castle, both my twin and I feel a surge of empowerment. I focus
with all my might on the ropes that bind her wrists, and like magic, they slip
from her hands and fall into a pile on the floor.

Luckily, the knife-wielding woman in the room
isn’t paying any attention to my sister. Instead Hélène Morel towers over her
lover, pointing the knife at his chest.

“Is this true?” she shrieks in French. “Is it
all true?”

Isla works furiously to untie the ropes around
her waist and legs while Hélène—with her back to us—continues grilling the
speechless, despicable man at her feet.

She stomps a pointy boot into his groin, making
him cry out in anguish. “Is it true?” she demands one more time.

Hélène doesn’t need to ask him again because the
defeated look in his hollow eyes says it all. The knife that was meant to scare
Isla and that would’ve eventually served to end her life now finds its rightful
home in Parker Williams’s chest.

Just as my sister is untying the last rope from
her bloody ankle, Hélène wrenches the knife from the senator’s lifeless body
and turns to Isla.

“I don’t care about that baby anymore. This has
to end,” Hélène says flatly. “
Now.
”

As Hélène charges Isla with the bloody weapon in
hand, her eyes turn the color of an inky black sky. Pooling every ounce of
energy I have in this incorporeal body of mine, I throw myself in front of my
sister.

But in an instant, the wicked face before me
flashes and morphs into one with those same dead black eyes—
Agnès
.

She is coming at me with the dagger, poised and
ready to kill.

I glare at Agnès, knowing
she
is the vile
seed who started it all. It was the inherent evil, sickness, and desperation of
this
woman that set off the entire chain of ill-fated events that will
ultimately lead to my sister’s abduction seventy-five years in the future.

Even though I am aware that changing the course
of history could have irreversible consequences, I know without a doubt that
this
is the reason Samuel and I have been sent back in time. I must end the evil
that has plagued my sister and me since the day we were born.

Agnès’s long black dress swishes around her
ankles as she charges me. I should be scared as she presses the tip of the
knife into my neck. I should be shaking with terror at the wickedness that
pours out of her like a gushing black river.

But I grew up with a woman just like Agnès—a
mother with no motherly instincts.

A mother who I wasn’t afraid to fire a gun at
when I was only thirteen.

I am older now. Stronger. And I’m still not
afraid.