Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (39 page)

“You’re good,” he said in that same chilling voice. “Even when you had no idea we were playing, you played your heart out. Every test … you passed.”

Everything,
I realized. He’d been part of everything. That circle I’d envisioned before, the one being drawn around me, thicker and darker and closer with every scratch of the marker. He was the one circling.

“The guy in the gold car worked for you,” I breathed.

He made a clucking noise. “Not anymore.”

The cold wind sent trash swirling in all directions. And the sirens were getting closer. All I needed was time.

LaSalle stilled, listening. Then he lashed with lightning speed. “Time’s up,” he said, and fired.

I darted around the hub, heard the sickening clang of the bullet against metal a few inches from my head. Breathless, I started to crawl as another bullet exploded against the dirt at my feet.

“Freeze!” someone shouted.

Detective Jackson I realized, but knew better than to look.

“Trinity!”
That was Dylan.

Scrambling, I inched farther around the hub, listening …

“Gotcha.”

I looked up, and Detective LaSalle stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, waiting.

THIRTY-SIX

“No!” I screamed, scrambling.

He charged after me.

“Trinity—no!”

“Dylan,” I cried as LaSalle lifted his gun—and his eyes went dead dark as his body bowed toward me, as if pierced from behind.

I saw the red bloom against the baby blue of his shirt, turned and started to run. But he was on me before I could take two steps, tackling me from behind and driving me into one of the swings. It rushed out from beneath me, leaving me to go down hard. He fell with me, landing on top as my head slammed against something sharp and metal.

“No,” I cried, twisting against the weight of his body. But his hands closed around my neck, and squeezed. I fought, tried to hang on, knew I had to hang on—

The edges of my vision blurred as Dylan and Detective Jackson shouted. There wasn’t time. I had to—

The switchblade. I still had it.

Silver flashes …

With his fingers crushing my windpipe, I worked the knife, lashed out with everything I had left and jabbed the blade into LaSalle’s side.

Everything tilted. His eyes went wide as he let out a shout of pain. His hands went slack. He jerked back. I tried to roll, knew I had to roll, to get away …

But the fog wouldn’t let go, and then I could see her, her long dark hair trailing behind her as she ran toward me. “Mama…” I whispered.

And everything went dark.

*   *   *

“I’ve got you … I’ve got you…”

“Oh, my God! Is she—”

“Breathing.”

I could hear the voices, hear them drifting around me. But could latch onto none of them.

“She’s bleeding—”

“It’s stopping.”

I struggled, tried to move, open my eyes.

“Easy,” someone said, and finally sensation came, a blanket of warmth. I was being wrapped in it, could feel it closing around me so very, very tight.

“She’s so pale…”

“She’s in shock
.
”

The roughened voice whispered through me, and again I shifted, reaching …

But then someone else was there, someone else was touching. The feel was different, softer.
“Sweet baby…”

“Mama…” The word leaked out, and with it I made my eyes open.

The harsh glare of white stabbed like needles. I blinked against it, squinted, and saw the scraggly dark hair hanging down toward me.

“Easy,” he murmured, as he always did, and then his hand was there, the rough pads of his fingers streaking against the side of my face, where only moments before there’d been the most excruciating softness.

“Dylan,”
I tried to whisper.

He cradled me closer, bringing his face close to mine. “Don’t try to talk.”

“Paramedics are here,” someone else said, and with another blink I glanced up to find Dylan’s father standing behind him. The lines of his face looked hard. In his hand, his gun glowed.

Adrenaline kicked against the grogginess. “LaSalle…” I managed.

“Can’t hurt you,” Dylan promised, and even though everything was fuzzy, I could see the hot glow of his eyes.

“Aunt Sara—”

“Safe,” he said, feathering his thumb along my cheekbone.

“Chase…”

His hand stilled, and the bleed of cold returned. “Sh-h-h,” he said quietly.

“But…” The words were there, right there, the questions, but the heaviness swept back, surging through my body and carrying me … “Chase,” I managed as Dylan and his father lost form, and once again the shadows stole everything.

*   *   *

She was holding my hand. I could feel her even if I couldn’t make my eyes open. I could feel the gentle strength of her hand around mine, holding on so very, very tight, and not letting go.

My body wouldn’t work. Everything was heavy, leaden. But I made my fingers curl. I made my fingers … hold on.

I was aware. I was aware of the ambulance ride, the hospital. I knew the exact second she let go, and the exact moment she came back. Even in the darkness, I saw the light. Even in silence … I heard her voice. In stillness … the promise.

Time stretched, dragged, fell away. They medicated me. A sedative, I think, a soft veil separating me from my body. I could hear, but I could not move. I could only drift, soaking in snippets of conversation, but feeling nothing.

Detective LaSalle was dead. His partner had shot him, and he’d died fast. My aunt was safe. Dylan had found her in the warehouse, bound and shaken and in shock, but physically okay. She’d confirmed everything, that Detective LaSalle had abducted her from the airport, and that he’d been playing me,
playing us,
all this time.

Grace was conscious. Delphi was safe.

There was only one name no one mentioned.

“Chase,”
I whispered, fighting. Chase. Over and over again. In my heart—my mind. I screamed.

But no one heard.

Not for a long, long time. Until the sedative wore off, and the thickness of my tongue moved against the cottony dryness of my mouth. “Chase…”

“Trinity.”

Her voice was soft, gentle—just like before. Dizzily I made my eyes open and saw the hair, long, dark, silky. “Mama…”

Then she looked up and her eyes met mine, and the fragile buffer of illusion shattered. “Aunt Sara.”

She was wearing a hospital gown. Her hair was combed straight, her face scrubbed clean, pale. “Ah,
cher,
” she whispered, taking my hands.

My eyes flooded. “Are … you okay?” I managed. Then: “I’m sorry…”

“No—no! This is not your fault—I’m okay,
cher.
He didn’t hurt me, that wasn’t what he wanted.”

But that wasn’t true. I could see it in her shell-shocked eyes. Maybe LaSalle hadn’t hurt her physically, but emotionally was a different story.

“I was so scared,” I whispered. “I … All I could think was what if I never saw you again. What if I never got the chance to say … I love you?”

Tears spilled over her lashes. “I love you, too.”

The words settled around me in a gentle caress. Looking away, I blinked, but Julian Delacroix still stood by the window, his arms crossed over his chest, watching us. His hair was loose. He wasn’t wearing … black.

His eyes met mine, and the strangest sensation of strength shifted through me.

There were so many questions, but at that moment, only one mattered.

“Chase,” I whispered, looking back toward my aunt—and the leather bracelet lying on the bedside table. “Where’s Chase?”

*   *   *

Monitors beeped.

His little brother stood in front of his father, both at the far side of the bed. His mother sat beside him, tears running down her stricken face. Drew sat at the foot of the bed, his eyes blank, staring. His phone was clenched in his hand, but he wasn’t texting.

Chase lay in the middle, the white sheet stretched up to his chest. His bloodstained T-shirt—the one I’d given him, the one I’d
seen
in my premonition—was gone, the soft blue of a hospital gown draping over his shoulders. His face was pale, relaxed, like he was sleeping, with his bangs swept back to reveal the fading bruise at his temple. An oxygen cannula ran to his nose.

I’d never seen him so motionless, not even when I’d found him lying in the rain by the side of the canal.

Aunt Sara had tried to prepare me. She’d used words like massive internal injuries and critical condition, bleeding, but somehow I’d expected to see him propped up in the bed when I came into the room, like last week in the ER …

“Chase.”
My aunt pushed me closer. The nurses had refused to let me walk. Instead I slipped toward the edge of the wheelchair and reached through the cord of the pulse-ox monitor for his hand.

“Can he hear me?” I asked his father.

Richard Bonaventure nodded. “I think so.”

“Here,” Drew said, helping me from the chair to the edge of the hospital bed.

“I’m here,” I whispered, wincing as I leaned over him and took his hand. Aunt Sara said I had a broken a rib. “I’m here.”

The limp heaviness against my hand shredded me.

Say something! Do something! The words screamed through me, but I couldn’t say them, knew they were wrong, not what he needed to hear.

“You saved my life,” I whispered through the hot sting at my eyes. “You saved us all.”

By going to search the warehouse. By having the presence of mind to take pictures—to call me. To get his phone into my hands so that I didn’t leave with the monster masquerading as a cop …

“He can’t hurt us again,” I promised. “Not ever, ever again.”

I felt it first, the faint movement against my palm. Then his mother gasped and I looked up and saw the flutter of his eyelids.

“Chase…” I said through my tears, leaning over him to bring my face to his. “We’re all here.”

The glassy blue of his eyes found mine. “Tr-r-r-in…”

“Sh-h-h,” I murmured, and then my hand was there, too, slipping along the side of his face. Touch him, it was all I could think. I had to touch him. “We can talk later.”

About so much. Not just what had happened with LaSalle, but before then, at the party. About … us. About trust and honesty and secrets, where we went from here.
Pensacola
.

Against my hand his fingers moved, sliding to curl around the leather band hugging my wrist. “You’re a hero,” I whispered. If he hadn’t been there, LaSalle would have gotten away with everything. “You know that, don’t you?”

“You … found her,” he mumbled as his dad moved closer. I could feel him beside me, near one of the monitors.

I wasn’t sure if Chase could actually see me, so I kept my face close to his, sliding the softest of kisses against his mouth. “She’s safe, too,” I assured him. “Aunt Sara—”

“N-no.”

“Yes,” I said as everything slowed. Vaguely I was aware of his dad’s voice, urgent, talking to someone. But I couldn’t make out words. “She’s right here…”

His fingers loosened. “Not … your aunt.”

I stilled.

“Your … mom…”

The coldness came fast, sweeping in from somewhere deep inside, and wiping away everything. I started to tell him no, but the word wouldn’t come.

“So … beautiful,” he murmured so quietly I could barely hear him above the monitors. “Just…”

I held on tight, held on for both of us. “Don’t talk—”

The beeping slowed, and his father started to shout. And Aunt Sara was moving closer, her hands to my shoulder, curving, holding …

“Like…” Chase whispered, and his eyes met mine once again, with a warm glow, a promise, the echo of that same promise I’d seen from the very beginning, when I’d walked into homeroom all those months before, and he’d looked up, and smiled. I could see him again, see him that day, the strength and vitality …

“You,”
he said.

And then the light faded, and everything about him relaxed; all the pain, the anguish, the torment he’d tried so hard to hide from the world, slipped away.

Still, I held on, held on so very, very tight. And even as his eyes closed, the illusion formed all over again, the one that would burn in my heart forever, and he was the way he’d always been,
the way he’d always be
—strong, protective, invincible—living the only way he knew how, perched on a razor’s edge.

“Think about this summer,”
he’d said only a week before, when I’d told him how scared I’d been after the car accident.
“Think about Pensacola…”

“I’m there,” I murmured against the stillness of his mouth. And then I was doing it, doing what I always did. What everyone did. I was rewriting the moment, word by word, breath by breath, long after everything else had fallen quiet. Because there behind closed eyes was Chase’s world, where the sun always shone, turquoise waters waited, and there was no pain. Where the only dreams that came true involved winning football games, going to college, and living happily ever after. And with nothing more than his smile and my dreams, I could go back,
I could always go back,
and live it all again.

“Standing in the waves,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “With you.”

Epilogue

I lit the votives, one at a time.

Around me dusk fell in a silent, shimmering veil. Even the breeze whispered.

I knelt in front of the intricate iron fence for a long moment, watching the flames flicker. Then I reached for the daisies. With quiet reverence I divided the flowers between the two stone vases, giving each half of my water.

Lifting my hand to the stone marker, I stared at the names forever etched in my heart.

John Mark and Rachel Monsour

Beloved parents

My breath caught. “Hey,” I said, tracing my fingers along the familiar letters. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

Normally St. Louis Cemetery bustled with tourists and other visitors, but I’d seen almost no one since Aunt Sara and I arrived. Earlier, beneath the glare of a bright winter sun, she’d stood holding my hand while the priest read Scripture, bagpipes played, and balloons drifted out into the morning. Now she waited near the front gate, just as she had the first time she’d brought me here.