Page 5

CHAPTER 5

Of course, it didn’t matter how hard Maarja had tried. What mattered was…what was.

Mrs. Arundel was dead.

After the ambulance had left with her body, Dante called the EMTs over to check Maarja. She found herself flat on her back receiving oxygen, having someone peer into her eyes and listen to her heart. She was diagnosed with shock, hooked into an IV, and given a drug to calm her.

“Who do you want me to call?” Dante asked as they placed her on the stretcher.

Maarja tried to think. She lifted her hand to rub her face and Dante caught it. “Don’t. You’re burned.”

“Um. Call my mom. Octavia Maldovitch. Make sure she knows I’m going to be okay. I don’t want her to try to get to the hospital. She’s better staying close to home.”

“Do you know her number?”

“It’s on my phone. Autodial.” She fumbled in her coveralls, trying to find it in her hip pocket.

The EMT handed a phone to Dante, who made a funny face.

“Also call Saint Rees. Leave a message. With the emergency van takeoff, he’ll be concentrated on that. You know his num ber. Leave a message, tell him to send someone to take me home when I get out of the hospital.”

“Right.” Dante stepped back.

“Wait!” She took a quivering breath. “Ask if my crew is safe. Ask if Alex…is safe.”

“Of course,” Dante said.

As the EMTs transported her toward a second ambulance, she caught glimpses of a scowling Béatrice, still clutching her oxygen mask, of an impassive Nate, arms crossed over his chest. Someone held a phone high above everyone’s shoulders filming her now as if she were a high-strung actress dealing with a contretemps on the set.

In the emergency room, she was immediately and thoroughly checked out, given pills for stress and to sleep, ointments for her burns, and more fluids. The doctor told her to go to her own doctor in the morning, and she was released. When she asked about billing, she was assured the matter had been handled. Which meant Saint Rees’s well-thought-out insurance policy had kicked in. Julie, the young nursing assistant, told her she had a driver waiting, put her into a wheelchair and pushed her out the doors.

It was night, Maarja realized. Hours had passed since the explosion.

Grief had not passed. Drugs could only do so much. Time and again, she smashed into the unacceptable fact; she had failed to rescue Mrs. Arundel… More blood on my hands. Always blood and heartache and the slow erosion of self caused by loneliness.

There on the hospital’s brightly lit sidewalk, she expected to see Saint Rees or one of the people from his firm.

Instead Dante Arundel leaned against a black sedan. He scrutinized her and frowned. “You look like you walked through hell.”

She bit her lip and blinked away tears. “I’m fine.”

Julie frowned as sternly as he ever did. “Shock is a terrible thing, Mr. Arundel, and that attitude won’t help her.”

“I’m fine,” Maarja said again.

“Sure you are. So am I. We’re both fine.” She remembered how firmly he’d held her when she fought him, how he’d demanded she get medical help, be transported to the hospital, not rail at the villains who’d taken his mother’s life. How did a man who had lost his mother today manage to infuse the situation with such biting sarcasm?

As Julie set the wheelchair’s brake, he reached down to wrap his arm around Maarja’s back and help her out.

She flinched.

He halted. “Are you bruised? Bones broken I don’t know about?”

“No. No. I don’t like…” She knew better than to give too much information. “Thank you for your assistance, but I can stand on my own.”

“Mr. Arundel, you get in the driver’s seat. I’ll put her in the car.” Julie replaced his arm with her own.

Dante nodded curtly, opened the passenger door, and went around.

In a low voice, Julie said, “You don’t have to go with him if you’re afraid.”

“He wants to talk to me about what happened.” As Maarja spoke, she realized that must be the case. “The explosion. What I heard and saw.”

“You should be talking to the cops, not him.”

“Sooner or later I’m sure I will, but right now—he’s one of those men who gets his way. Surely you see that.”

“I don’t have to like him for it. Don’t put up with any shit from him.”

“I won’t. I’m tougher than I currently seem.” As Julie tucked her into the passenger seat, Maarja said, “Thank you. For everything.”

“Hmph.” Julie shut the door, whipped the wheelchair around and headed back inside.

Dante put his arm across the back of the seat and scowled at Maarja. “You don’t need to act like I’ve got cooties. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to assault you.”

All right, fine. He was going to make a thing about her flinching at his touch, and surprisingly, having Julie instruct her to not put up with any shit made Maarja feel stronger. “It’s not you. I don’t like to be touched.”

“At all?”

“When I was eleven, there was a…bad moment.”

It took him a minute to realize she was done talking. Any conclusions he would draw would be right enough. “Good to know. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

“Thank you.” She watched as he put the car in gear and drove onto the street. He took a route she didn’t know, and she asked the question she should have asked first. “Are you taking me home?”

“You’re in no shape to be alone.”

“Someone will come from the firm.”

“We’re going to my condo in the city.”

“What? No! I don’t want—”

His hand slashed the air between them. “You put your life at risk to save my mother. I owe you everything. I owe you protection. I owe you my life, and I will sacrifice for you.”

“No. You owe me nothing! I did it because she—” Maarja’s voice stumbled. “Because she was a kind and lovely lady who—”

“It doesn’t work that way. You know that.” His low tone grew harsh. “You and I, we live in a world of revenge and reparation.”

“What do you mean?” She spoke quickly, leaning away from his possible implication. “I don’t live in that world.”

“Look at politics. Look at the news. Look at the school shootings and the mass shootings in public places. You have no choice. You were born to this world, and if you try to ignore it, you could be dead in truth.”

She could slash her hand as well as he could. “I take care of myself.”

“When you’re recovered, you can take care of yourself.” He glanced at her as the streetlights blew past, light angles changing, creating an eerie movie-like set. “Whether or not you want me to feel a debt, I do.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. Now close your eyes. You look like hell.”

By the time they pulled into an underground garage and stopped, she’d fallen asleep half a dozen times, and when he helped her out she didn’t have the oomph to argue. He didn’t mock her, she could say that for him, but got her up the elevator forty stories, into his condo, tossed back the sheets on a bed, and left her to toe off her shoes and collapse. Which she did. She slept four hours before her bladder demanded she rise and empty it.

Damned intravenous fluids.

Dante had left the light on in the bathroom, and she stumbled in, locked the door behind her, used the toilet, and stepped to the sink to wash her hands—and gasped in dismay.

Her reflection in the mirror was nothing short of a horror show. Gripping the edge of the cool marble counter, she leaned in.

The staff at the hospital had wiped her face and hands, and anywhere they hadn’t wiped was covered in black sooty streaks. She’d known the ends of her bangs had singed, and her eyebrows and lashes, but she hadn’t realized her skin looked as if she’d stayed in the sun too long. No wonder Dante said she looked like hell.

She wanted to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. Knowing she was so covered with greasy smoke…she had to wash.

The bathroom was decorated in soothing shades of peach with blue accents and European styling. The glass shower occupied one corner, the big bathtub occupied the wall under the window, a bidet sat beside the toilet, and the whole place was so luxurious she muttered about a fur-lined pee-pot, then decided she’d grown sour and envious in her old age.

She took a few minutes to figure out the shower—it vaguely resembled an airplane control pit—and started the water. She stripped off, dropped her formerly white coveralls in a corner—they were black and singed, too, and not worth saving—threw her panties, bra, and socks on top, and stepped into the spray. The spray that came from all directions. It rained on her from above, from the wall in front, and one handheld sprayed at her chest. On the wall to the side, another pulsed at her butt. She used a washcloth to work the citrus-and-lavender soap into a lather, and discovered it cut the sooty grease as if it had been created for that—and the scent relaxed her with every breath.

Dante could have his fur-lined pee-pot with her blessing as long as she could shower herself clean in here every day.

God. She spit on her palms and rubbed them together. An old superstition, probably one she had wrong, but she needed to cleanse the unruly wish away. She did not want to use Dante’s shower every day. She wanted nothing else to do with Dante and his mother, which worked because his mother—

Grief and regret caught her, shattered her into tiny pieces. Mrs. Arundel was dead. Killed by the blast, killed when her heart stopped. Remembering how alert Mrs. Arundel had been in that blast furnace of a library, how her eyes sparkled and her voice snapped…Maarja couldn’t believe it.

Dead. Mrs. Arundel was dead.

Sinking down on her knees, she sobbed. She clutched her hair and beat her fists on her thighs.

It wasn’t fair. Not to Mrs. Arundel, who sparkled with her enjoyment of life, and not to Maarja, to have so many memories resurrected. To have the chance to change the outcome, to think she had and then have her shining hope slammed down and broken.

The bits of the past always, always felt like broken glass in her mind, and now more sharp splinters tore at her composure, her peace, and she was disconsolate. She pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, put her head down, and rocked and sobbed.

The click of the shower door made her look up in shock.

Dante Arundel stepped in.