Confessions: The Paris Mysteries (20 page)

James stood between C.P. and me,
using his outstretched arms to keep us apart.

He looked like the boy I loved entirely. And at the same time, he was so unbelievably detached I didn’t recognize him at all. He was the perfect stranger: handsome, cool, unknowable.

And this did not compute. It was like finding a sign on your closet door reading
FOURTH DIMENSION. ENTER HERE.

“You okay, C.P.?” he asked.

Was
C.P.
okay?
I
was the one who’d been betrayed.
I
was the one who’d been wronged. And so I just lost it—again.

“You owe me an explanation, James. Because I don’t get any of this, at all.”

He grunted, “Hunh.” Then said, “What do you want, Tandy? Romance or the truth?”

That stung. Much worse than a slap across the face.

James clearly meant that romance and the truth were at opposite poles. That our relationship was a pretty story but a lie. And that the truth was going to crush me.

C.P. smirked, then stepped away from the doorway. She was out of my direct view, but I saw her put on James’s shirt. Like she owned him.

I shouted at James, “What do you know about the
truth
? You lied to me from the start. You came to Paris to see me. Why did you tell me you
loved
me? Why would you
do
that? Why did you lead me on?”

James looked uncomfortable, maybe even flustered.

He said, “You might be crediting me with more forethought than I have, Tandy. I was glad to see you. I was with you when I was with you. And I do care about you. That’s all true.

“You don’t know how powerful my father is. He said he’d hurt you and the rest of your family. I believe what my father says. You should, too. And by the way, your uncle Peter is a hundred times worse than my father.”

I listened intently, but nothing James said connected
with the feelings I’d thought we had shared. What he seemed to be telling me was that he was done. That I was dispensable. Disposable.

That I was history.

That should have been enough answer for me, but I had to ask the most wrenching question of all.

“How could you hook up with C.P.? She was my best friend.”

James turned to watch C.P. put on a pair of jeans, then turned back and said softly, “What we had was good, Tandy. Right? So why does it have to be more than that?”

C.P. came out of the shadows and stood behind James. She looped an arm around his waist, pressed her cheek to his shoulder. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I spat, “C.P., you’re
dead
to me. James, obviously, I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Then James said the strangest, nastiest thing of all. “Try to understand, Tandy. I have to live at a certain level. My father was going to cut me off and disinherit me if I didn’t stop seeing you.”

I understood. He chose money over me. What could possibly be colder or clearer than that?

I turned away from them and walked down the stairs with some of my dignity intact. No tears. No tears at all.
At least those two didn’t see me cry. My parents’ training had finally come in handy.

I strong-armed the front door and marched down the steps to the narrow little road. And although I didn’t turn around, I was pretty sure James and C.P. were watching me through the upstairs dormer window.

But the car wasn’t there.

About then, I remembered to phone Anton. It took a few minutes for the Lincoln to round the corner, but then it was coming for me like a great blue chariot sent by the forces of good.

Anton opened the door and I got in.

“Please take me home, Anton,” I said.

“You bet, Ms. Angel.”

I looked at my phone. I’d been inside that house for a total of twelve soul-searing minutes. But as horrific as those minutes had been, it was a cure for that lying, cheating snake, James Rampling.

Who, by the way, was nothing to me.

My mind was resolved, but my
heart was shredded.

I put my hands over my face and wept, and I didn’t even care that Anton could hear me. I pretended the car was driving itself and wrapped myself in my shattered illusions.

How had I been so blinded by James? How had C.P. been able to betray me with no remorse at all? How could I ever trust anyone again, ever?

The parkway wound through a wide cut in a woodland. As the leafy miles breezed by, I dried my eyes and gathered my strength. I began to analyze both the facts and the holes in the story in the hope that I would arrive at some giant breakthrough.

To start with, Royal Rampling and Peter Angel were our sworn enemies.

Rampling’s motive was revenge. He’d lost a fifty-million-dollar fortune by investing in Angel Pharma before it went bankrupt. He was vindictive and had proven that he’d do whatever it took to keep me away from his son. He had hurt me. But he hadn’t murdered anyone.

James was right when he said Peter was more evil than his father. Peter’s motive was financial, and he had no conscience. He had hurt people for sure, been responsible for the deaths of
children
, and he was desperate to eliminate the remains of his experiments, good, bad, and ugly.

Katherine had said not to be surprised if a bad phoenix arose from the ashes of Angel Pharma, and I wondered if Peter and Royal Rampling could be in a partnership to bring the company back. Reinvent it. Recover the lost millions.

And then I had my big idea.

Every time an Angel sneezed, the press assembled.

What if we gave the press the whole story? That children had been dosed with untested pills to give them superpowers.
But wait—there’s more.
Many subjects aged fast and died young. Yes. The pills were often lethal. I could see the media going crazy over this irresistible tale of greed, cruelty, and murder.

It might not all be provable, but the press didn’t depend on the facts. If the scandal was big enough, Peter Angel would stay far away from his family. Rampling would stay away from us, too.

Or—on the other hand…

The absolute opposite could happen. There could be a mad rush to put Angel Pharmaceuticals in business again. There would be a big demand for superpills for superkids. Going public could be the best thing that ever happened to Peter.

I was thinking about Angel Pharmaceuticals, the Next Generation, when a black car filled the window to my left, blocking out the light.

Before I could tell what was happening, the SUV scraped long and hard against the body of our Town Car. Metal screamed against metal. Sparks flew.

My God. We were being attacked.

The black Cadillac Escalade had the
same license plate as the one I’d seen off and on all day. It was grinding the side of our car, maneuvering us toward a steep, rocky drop-off to the reservoir far below.

I was too scared to scream.

Anton seemed to be coping well with the attack: braking, evading, racing ahead. I looked to see who was driving the Escalade but couldn’t see through its tinted glass. Then there was another shock as the SUV slammed against our side panels, even as Anton buzzed down his window. He had his gun in his hand, a semiautomatic, and he was firing at the Escalade’s right front tire.

He yelled to me, “Miss. Get down on the floor.”

I wrestled with my seat belt, then dropped to the floor of the car and crouched there.

Shots rang out, but I could tell that the Escalade hadn’t been stopped because we were now being rammed from behind, followed by more awful scraping against the left side of our vehicle.

I popped up to get a fix on what was happening, and for sure, the Escalade was still pushing us hard toward the thin metal guardrail that stood between the Town Car and the immense void at the bottom of the cliff.

More shots pinged, and this time
we
were taking fire. Glass shattered, and Anton barked out a yell; then he groaned and slumped to the side.

The car veered in a gentle arc toward the guardrail, and at the same time a voice on the car radio asked Anton to respond. Which he didn’t do.

I called out to him, then leaned over the front seat. What I saw was worse than I could have imagined.

Anton had been shot through the temple. He wasn’t breathing or moving—I knew he was dead. Anton had lost his life protecting me. I couldn’t help him—and now I was alone.

If I didn’t somehow get control of this driverless car, I was living the last minutes of my life.

There was only one thing to do. I reached over the
back of the front seat and grabbed the steering wheel. I wrenched it to the left and brought the vehicle back to the roadway just as the drop-off ended and was replaced by a wall of rock.

But the Escalade was coming up fast on my left again. At the same time, because I couldn’t give it any gas, the Town Car was slowing down. I desperately wanted to get to the wooded area a hundred yards ahead, somehow engineer a soft crash landing in the trees, then jump out and hide.

Meanwhile, the Town Car was grinding against the rocky outcropping. As the friction of metal against rock slowed the car to a violent stop, I looked for Anton’s gun and saw it on the floor under the gas pedal.

I was readying myself to climb over Anton’s body when I heard a loud engine roar. I glanced over my shoulder.

Another car was coming up from behind, heading toward the Town Car at high speed.

I was outnumbered. I was done.

Anton was dead. And I was
next.

I scrunched down on the floor of the back compartment and covered my head.

My mind swirled with fear, and thoughts about my too-short life were broken up with bright flashes of relief that soon I could put down the despair and anguish I’d been carrying for too long.

Just then, there was a new sound, the
rat-a-tat-tat
of automatic gunfire, followed by the
whoosh
of a speeding vehicle flying past the Town Car.

I knew I should stay down, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I poked my head up and saw that the car that
had been speeding toward my Town Car had passed by and was going after the Escalade.

Time stretched like a rubber band. The sound of each rapidly fired bullet was distinct. I saw each of the Escalade’s tires blow out, and each blowout propelled the SUV farther into a screeching wild spin, until it flew off the asphalt and into the thicket of mature trees at the edge of the parkway.

There was a horrific crash that seemed to unfold one long second at a time. Smoke billowed, and even from so far away, I could smell burning rubber.

Then the band snapped back and real time resumed.

The pursuit vehicle pulled alongside the Escalade and braked. The driver got out of his car, but his vehicle blocked my view of him. He seemed to inspect the crashed Escalade, then get back into his car. Immediately, he began to back up at high speed toward the Town Car.

I ducked again. A hit man was coming for
me
. I was going to be executed gangster-style. Why? And by whom?

As if that mattered anymore. This was the end.

There was a tapping on the window above my head. A voice called, “Ms. Angel. Tandy! Are you all right?”

The rear door of the Town Car opened, and I peeked up to see Mr. Kenny Chang. He looked scared—for me.

A river of relief ran through me.

I recovered from the shock enough to say, “Mr. Chang. I think Anton is dead.”

Chang said, “There are two fatalities in the Escalade. I’ll call the authorities. Actually”—we both heard sirens at the same time—“I’m sure the state police are already on the way.”

“Who died?” I asked. Was it James and C.P.? Finishing out his father’s orders to get rid of me?

“Let’s wait for a positive identification.”

“I have to know now.”

My legs were wobbly, but I was sure I could reach the smoking one-car wreck that had smashed spectacularly into the thick stand of trees.

“Tandy, it’s an ugly scene,” said Mr. Chang. “Trust me. It’s something you really don’t want to see.”

I started walking.

Mr. Chang called out, “Tandy. No walking on the highway, okay? I’ll drive you there.”

It was a short ride, maybe a hundred yards. When Chang’s car was alongside the wreck of the Escalade, I got out of the car and peered into the crumpled front seat,
where two bleeding, twisted bodies lay half covered by airbags.

I looked closer at their faces, and what I saw made me scream.

Then I collapsed. Just freaking passed right out. I heard Mr. Chang calling my name, but honestly, I didn’t want to wake up again. Ever.