In the Grey (34 page)

“
We’re in a hallway to the
vaults,” Alex said.

“
In Paris?” Cooper asked.
“God, I haven’t been to Paris in ages. Are you sure?”

Alex nodded.

“
Huh,” Cooper smiled.
“It’s really nice to see you. I haven’t seen you
since . . . since . . .”

She collapsed in a faint.
Alex checked for her pulse before dialing 112 for emergency
services. She called Raz and told him where she was. When he
arrived, she called Dominic Doucet, her uncle and the director of
the French Intelligence service, Direction Centrale du
Renseignement Intérieur.

Because Dominic’s
assistant Yvonne, or as Alex called her, “Y”, lived in the building
and was excited to see Alex, she arrived just moments before the
ambulance. Alex told the paramedics that Cooper was talking in a
variety of voices before having a seizure, and that Cooper needed a
secure psychiatric hospital.

They chatted while the
paramedics loaded Cooper into the ambulance. Y thought her
relationship with Xavier, the Belgium computer expert, was getting
serious. Xavier wanted them to live together; Y wasn’t sure, plus
she didn’t want to give up her cool apartment. Alex weighed in on
these important details as they watched the ambulance pull
away.

The ambulance was halfway
down the block when Alex saw a shiny metal object roll out into the
street. She screamed for the ambulance to stop. Unable to get their
attention, Alex took off down the middle of the street. Confused,
Raz and Y ran right behind her.

The object exploded the
moment the ambulance passed over it. Raz grabbed Alex with one arm
and Y with his other. He swung them off the street before pulling
them into him. He turned his broad back to the explosion. The
ambulance flew backwards in the street and landed on the gas tank.
It exploded in a bright fireball sending shards of metal and glass
in every direction.

The force of the second
explosion knocked them apart. They flew through the air and landed
in heap behind a row of parked cars. Fragments of glass, metal, and
body parts struck the cars around them. The street filled with a
cacophony of screaming car alarms, people, and emergency
sirens.

“
Raz!” Alex yelled to
him.

He raised a hand to say he
was still alive. Alex crawled on her hands and knees to Y. Her eyes
were blank and blood flowed from one of her ears.

“
Y? Yvie?” Alex felt her
pulse. “Yvonne!”

She began CPR on her
friend. She did chest compressions and breathed in her mouth for
what seemed like three lifetimes before Y sputtered and coughed.
She moved her hand in front of her face and smiled at Alex. Y
opened her mouth to speak.

Her body twitched and then
twitched again. In rapid motion, her eyes flicked back and forth,
and then stared straight ahead.

Even knowing her friend
was gone, Alex started CPR. She would have continued forever, but
Raz reached her. He pulled her away.

“
She’s gone,” he
said.

“
I brought her back!
I . . .”

A stranger, probably a
neighbor, dropped a dark brown blanket over Y, and the sky began to
weep cold rain.

Raz pulled Alex onto his
lap. Too stunned to do anything but stare, they sat in the rain on
the sidewalk. The police and the French military and the CIA and
the US military and French Intelligence arrived on the
scene.

They sat on the sidewalk
in the rain.

No one could convince her
to get off his lap.

No one could convince him
to let her go.

No one could get them to
move.

They sat on the sidewalk,
next to where Y had died, in the rain, until eventually, a US Army
private stood over them with a large umbrella.

“
Come with me,” a child’s
voice broke through Alex’s fog.

She opened her eyes to see
Claire Martins’s six-year-old daughter Camille kneeling in front of
her. The little girl’s dark ringlets had been cropped for last
summer’s swimming lessons. They stood in a tight, dark halo on her
head. Camille’s precious “real school” uniform was wet and
dirty.

Alex stared at the girl
while she tried to work out the child’s presence at the
scene.

“
Maman will make us real
cocoa to warm our souls,” Camille squatted down and kissed Alex’s
cheeks. “Love you, Alex.”

She kissed Raz’s
cheeks.

“
Love you, Uncle
Artie.”

She looked at them for
another moment before she took an orange Tootsie Roll Pop out of
her pocket. She took off the wrapper and stuck it in Alex’s mouth.
Alex’s eyes flicked to look into the child’s face. Camille took
another orange Tootsie Roll Pop out of her pocket, pulled off the
wrapper, and stuffed it in Raz’s mouth.

“
Let’s go home,” the child
said.

Camille put her hand in
Alex’s and gave her a tug. Alex moved off Raz’s lap. Camille put
her hand out to Raz. He looked at the child’s hand and then at her
face. His other hand reached for Alex. She squeezed his
hand.

Camille held out her hand
to Raz again. Raz took the child’s hand. When Alex stood, she saw
Claire standing at the barricade. She had Becky tucked into a baby
sling and held the toddler Gerard’s hand, but her entire focus was
on Alex and Raz.

“
Dépêchez-vous
,” Claire waved her
hands for them to hurry.

Alex looked for the place
where Yvonne had died. The sidewalk was bare. The ambulances were
long gone.

She looked at the scene.
The police and French military had closed off the entire street.
She nodded to a military inspector she knew. He waved his cell
phone to let her know that he would call her. She
nodded.

She felt a blanket go
around her shoulders and saw one go around Raz’s. The police
escorted them to the entrance of her condo. Once inside the secure
building, Camille tugged on Alex until she picked her up. This
child, the one who’d loved her unconditionally since the moment she
was born, tucked her head under Alex’s chin and held on tight. They
took the elevator to the top floor.

When the elevator opened,
Camille ran out and Alex took Raz’s hand. His face bore the same
stunned look that she was sure her face held. Much to Camille’s
distress, Claire led Raz and Alex to Alex’s bedroom and closed the
door.

They stood like statues
staring at opposite walls.

“
I
thought . . . ,” Raz said.

Alex turned to look at
him.

“
I thought you
were . . . ,” he shook his head,
“ . . . wrong.”

His eyes flicked to her
face.

“
Last night,” he said.
“When you said they were going to kill you. But
Alex . . . They’re going to kill you.”

“
I know,” she
said.

“
Trece’s your bodyguard,”
Raz said. “That’s why he’s . . . why
he’s . . .”

“
Yes.”

Shaking his head, Raz
dropped to the bed. Alex’s mind struggled to form a coherent
thought.

“
Charlie is right,” Raz
said. “You need to lean on me to find the light. We’ll find the
light together.”

He took the orange Tootsie
Roll Pop out of his mouth and looked at it. He pointed to the one
in her mouth. She took the candy out of her mouth. She smiled at
the orange candy.

“
Camille’s cure for
everything,” Alex said.

“
She learned from the
best,” he chuckled.

He walked to her. She
looked up into his face. He gave her a soft smile and wrapped her
in his arms.

In his safety and warmth,
she began to cry.

F

Tuesday morning

November 16 – 10:21 a.m.
EST (4:21 p.m. CET)

Pawtuckaway State Park,
New Hampshire

Troy parked his rental car
next to another parked car. The gravel parking area wasn’t marked,
but he figured it was probably a good place to park. He put the
hang tag the guard at the gate had given him on the dash of the car
and stepped out into the cool day.

When his sister, Helen,
suffered a full-scale mental collapse last year, his father was in
jail, his mother was on house arrest, and his elder brother was
dead. Troy was the only person available to help her, and the last
person on the planet she wanted to help her. The paramedics had
checked her into the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. She was
not getting out.

She needed help. But Troy
was caught up in the overwhelm and despair of losing Dahlia. He’d
left his sister in a drug-induced fog for months. Finally, he
gathered up his courage and asked the one person who might be able
to help, Alex’s mother, Rebecca Hargreaves. She listened to his
entire story, blinked, and said, “Good idea.”

The next thing Troy knew,
his sister had moved to this psychiatric equestrian treatment
facility tucked into the Pawtuckaway State Park in New Hampshire.
She was weaned off most of the heavy medications and, according to
the monthly reports he’d received, she was healing from the decades
of use and abuse by his narcissistic father and sadistic
brother.

He was paying the bills,
so he had a right to be there.

He wondered if he should
leave.

“
Homer?”

His sister’s voice came
from the direction of the building that housed the offices. Troy
walked up a grassy hill toward her. Nearing the porch, he saw his
elder sister sitting in a rocking chair with a huge grey cat on her
lap. Her brown eyes were clear, and her lips turned up in a bright
smile. Her curly hair, which was usually tied up in a tight bun,
lay in long grey streaked waves on her shoulders. She wore jeans
and a heavy sweater he recognized from his last gift box to
her.

“
I’d get up
but . . . ,” Helen pointed to the cat. “This is
Sir Galahad. He’s very special and almost never stops for a pet.
You understand, don’t you?”

Troy smiled.

“
Did you bring the boys?”
Helen’s voice rose a notch with anxiety.

“
They stayed with Mom in
Washington,” Troy said. “I thought they might be too
much.”

“
Thanks,” Helen nodded.
“That’s considerate of you.”

Troy sat in the rocking
chair next to her. The morning sun was beginning to peek through
the cold, grey mist. The forest that bordered the wide open pasture
seemed to dance in the light. The porch was warm, and they settled
into a quiet companionship.

“
I’m thinking about
joining the dark side and becoming an Olivas,” Helen
said.

“
Oh?” Troy
asked.

“
Mom told me she’s
changing her name back to her maiden name,” Helen said. “I don’t
want to be the only Jasper.”

“
Makes sense,” Troy said.
“You’d be welcome to join the dark side with me.”

“
That’s it,” Helen said.
“That’s all I came up with to talk to you about.”

“
Really?” Troy
laughed.

Helen had always been a
chatterbox of opinion. She glanced at him and laughed.

“
It’s nice to see you,
Homer,” Helen said.

“
Troy,” he
said.

“
Ah shit,” Helen said. “I
was going to remember. I’m sorry.”

Tears sprouted in her
eyes. Troy smiled and kept rocking. Her psychiatrist said she was
extremely fragile and extraordinarily tough. If Troy pursued the
fragile, he’d get the fragile. If he allowed her to be tough, she’d
be tough. Her psychiatrist said that Helen wanted him to see the
tough.

“
Thanks,” she
whispered.

He looked away while she
wiped her eyes. The grey cat stood and kneaded Helen’s thighs. He
gave Troy a haughty look and jumped off his sister’s lap. Helen
chuckled.

“
I’ve been so anxious
about your visit,” Helen said. “I don’t . . . I
don’t . . .”

Troy held his hand out,
and she took it.

“
I’m so sorry about
Dahlia,” Helen said. “I was always so jealous of her. I never saw
how beautiful she was or that H . . .
H . . .”

Unable to say their
brother’s name, Helen stopped talking. She looked at
him.

“
He did to me what he did
to her,” Helen said. “I thought it was because he loved me,
but . . .”

Helen’s head moved up and
down in a tiny nod.

“
Did you know?” she
whispered.

“
I should have,” Troy
said. “When I think about it, the whole thing makes sense. I was so
focused on surviving that the details of your life,
Mom’s . . . they escaped me completely. I’m
sorry.”

They fell
silent.

“
I truly am sorry, Helen,”
Troy repeated. “I will wish for the rest of my life that I had done
something, anything, but . . . My entire focus was
to get as far away from there as fast as humanly
possible.”