Hearts of Glass (The Glass Trilogy Book 3) (7 page)

My mind was still reeling. “What about Daniel?”

“He’s stable. That’s where we’re going now.”

Stable.
I closed my eyes, silently thanking God that he was still alive.

Sophie chimed in, “Kristin Jürgen will be meeting us there.”

“What?” I said, alarmed.

“If what you told Elodie was true, that she’s the one who induced his coma—then she’ll need to reverse it. She has his medical details on file, too—can’t be too careful. If this isn’t handled with care, he could wind up dead. Plus, I want to see that bitch, face to face.”

Adrenalin cursed through my veins. It was true, Daniel’s life was at stake. Freeing him would be no joke. We’d need specialists there, and nurses. There was no way I’d trust Kristin Jürgen. “But she’ll never agree to helping us,” I protested.

“Yes, she will,” Sophie assured me. “You watch. She’ll be taken by surprise.”

What lay ahead terrified me. Elodie and her mother were outlaws! I admired them for their convictions, their courage, but now I was involved in . . . in . . . I couldn’t even find the right word for it . . . the whole thing was madness. But I didn’t have a better alternative. No Plan B.

I was completely out of my league.

“We need the law on our side,” I suggested, “if we have any chance of rescuing Daniel. Neurology specialists, too.”

Sophie glanced over her shoulder at me and shot me an irritated look. “You think I hadn’t thought of that? Relax, Janie,” she said, her voice calm. “I have means. I have a fuck-off team of professionals, don’t you worry.”

I’d heard that expression, “fuck-off” as an adjective. A British-ism. It meant incredible, unparalleled.

“By the way, Kristin’s ‘marriage’ is total bullshit,” Elodie chipped in. “No record whatsoever of a union with Daniel. She has no legal right to call the shots as to what happens to him. Wishful thinking on her part, I guess, so she’d have control of him and his fortune. Maybe that had been her plan: to fake a marriage. Anyway, we didn’t find anything.”

“But Ethan, the concierge at Daniel’s hotel, told me he’d been a witness,” I told her, remembering what Ethan said about Daniel being drunk, and how they’d all come back to his hotel to celebrate.

“Yeah, he’s on her payroll, Janie, bet he told you all sorts of bullshit just to scare you off, get you out of her hair.”

I felt flooded with relief, but seconds later, anguish settled in my gut again. How would we pull this rescue off? Anything could go wrong.
Everything
could go wrong. I was with a team of irreverent, law-breaking French people, who did things their own way. I wondered if Pearl had any idea what her sister-in-law and niece were up to. Or Alexandre, for that matter.

“What’s the plan?” I ventured. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but my confidence was waning.

“
Maman
has an attorney friend who owes her a big favor,” Elodie said. “US government level. Also a neurosurgeon and a neurologist whose credentials make Kristin Jürgen look like an amateur. They’re part of our plan, don’t stress it.” She whispered in my ear, “I don’t think you understand quite how powerful my mother is. The contacts she has.”

My fears were alleviated. Somewhat. “Why are you helping me like this?” I asked under my breath. “And Daniel? You don’t even know us.”

“
Maman
wants that bitch to go under, for personal reasons, not just on behalf of the animals.”

The car raced along, swerving around potholes. We were getting nearer to the city.

Sophie turned around and glared at us. “My ears are burning, are you talking about me?” I could feel myself flush. Then she smiled. “Talk away, I’m going to put some music on.” She chose a classical piece . . .very strident and dramatic, which fit the occasion perfectly. I recognized it as one of Wagner’s symphonies, but not sure which. It reverberated through the car as we shot through the dark night.

I finally took off my protective gloves. My hands were no longer shaking like they were about to fall off. I held Elodie by the forearm to catch her attention. “What ‘personal reasons?’ ” I murmured.

“Sophie’s wife—you may have heard of her—the actress Alessandra Demarr?”

I nodded. She was a major movie star and had been in the
Stone Trooper
films that Hooked Up Enterprises had produced, with that grease-ball Samuel Myers. A huge commercial success that had earned them millions. I knew that Alessandra Demarr was gay and was dating Sophie Dumas, but I had no idea that they were actually married.

“Anyway,” Elodie continued, “Alessandra used to be great friends with Natasha Jürgen. They did a couple of movies together. She
adored
Natasha. Alessandra knows for a fact that the sisters never got on. Natasha hated her sibling, yet P.S., Kristin inherited Natasha’s fortune. Alessandra thinks something fishy went down. Definitely. But she hasn’t been able to prove it. You calling Pearl’s cell phone was lucky . . . really lucky I picked up. It led us to her. Alessandra and Sophie knew about the chimpanzee sanctuary—that it had supposedly been left to Kristin—and Alessandra was convinced she was up to no good.”

“How did you get the rescue organized so quickly? The French Foreign Legion team?”

Elodie whispered in my ear again. “When you’re as loaded as my mother, and as crazy as she is, mountains get moved, believe me. She could move Everest if she put her mind to it. Plus, my uncle got on the case; he organized the men.”

So this
was
considered an emergency and worthy of interrupting his vacation.
I only hoped that Daniel’s wellbeing would also be deemed as important. I lowered my voice so only Elodie could hear. “But your mom didn’t have to be personally involved tonight. She could have just paid others to do the dirty work for her.”

“Saving these animals is not dirty work, Janie. This is a cause my family strongly believes in.”

I felt ashamed of what I’d just said. “No, of course not. I get it. She wanted to be hands on.”

The Wagner was drowning out our hushed conversation. “My mom,” Elodie went on, “has lived on the edge her whole life. She doesn’t do ‘safe.’ She likes breaking the law and playing hardball with criminals, politicians, and God knows who else. That’s who she is. My uncle isn’t much better. If Pearl knew half the shit he gets up to . . . well, let’s just say he and my mom are crazy mavericks . . . birds of a feather.” She bit her lip as if she’d already said too much. Perhaps what had happened tonight was making her more open with me than she would have normally been. After all, I was a stranger to her. How could she know to trust me?

I mulled over what Elodie said before. “You think Kristin forged Natasha’s will, or something?”

“Believe me,
Maman
’s got a bunch of heavy attorneys on the case. Handwriting forgery experts too. In the past, Kristin Jürgen was Alessandra’s bone of contention, but because of the vivisection thing, my mom is now out for her blood too. Whatever Kristin did wrong,
Maman
will make it her business to find out.”

“Wow, your English is good. Where did you learn expressions like ‘bone of contention?’”

“From Pearl. We talk a lot, and she always corrects my English. She and I are very close.”

“She seems like a really cool person,” I observed. “So they have a good marriage, then, Pearl and your uncle?” Why I was so curious, I wasn’t sure. The couple seemed so golden and perfect it didn’t seem real. I wanted to have what they had, with Daniel. But surely there was a catch? Too ‘fairy tale’ to be true.

“The best. Still crazy in love after all these years. Although he’d drive me loopy if he were my husband.”

“Really?”

“You know, he’s pretty jealous . . . possessive . . . can’t keep his hands off Pearl. Once I made the mistake of sleeping in a hotel room next to theirs. Bad move, I didn’t sleep for all the noise they made. And if she’s out of town, working, he calls her ten times a day, monitors her every move.”

“Lucky woman.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I like to be free, you know? Don’t like a man to be too all over me.”

I noticed Remy had been staring at Elodie rapturously, ever since she took off her mask and revealed her beauty. Maybe he was taking note of what she was saying. I could tell he was smitten. His ‘pussy’ talk with me had been a total act. Now that he was confronted with a woman he truly liked—for real—he was dumbstruck. Especially as she had been ignoring him. I bet, with his good looks he wasn’t used to that. He’d hardly said a word since we’d been in the car. Then again, I think we were all suffering from shock at what we’d witnessed tonight, and what we’d been involved in, firsthand.

Images that would haunt us for the rest of our lives.

9

Daniel.

“Y
OU KNOW, DANIEL, it’s all very well gathering information from the chimps—they’ve been extremely useful to our studies. But there’s nothing like a live
human
to compound our theories. I think I should start monitoring your brain, don’t you? My aim is to help mankind understand the human brain
better
. For the good of all. I mean, chimpanzee and human brains are different in many respects. For example, the chimp brain is smaller, and has far fewer neurons; some brain regions are less developed than in humans, some are overdeveloped; some regions present in humans are not present in chimps at all. Some of our animal experiments, to be honest, Daniel, have been a total waste of time.”

I thought I’d met my Maker, but I can smell Kristin again so I must be alive. The sweetness is overwhelming. Sickly. Her hands are caressing my head, stroking my hair, tracing themselves around my scalp as if measuring it.

“To understand the human brain, Daniel, we have to know what the brain
does
: its high level emergent behavior. We need to understand how a genetic mutation, or the wrong positioning of a protein in a cell affects behavior. How a drug acting on a specific molecule can produce changes in cognition. You, Daniel, my dear, could be my breakthrough! There was a reason why God sent you to me, don’t you think?”

10

Janie.

I
THOUGHT I would somehow be involved in freeing Daniel but was not “invited” by Sophie.

“Are you crazy?” she said as the car approached the Bellagio. “Kristin Jürgen already has a bee in her bonnet about you, obviously, or she wouldn’t have locked you up. The last thing we want is to rock the boat. She doesn’t know me or Elodie, so we’re coming along as ‘nurses.’ We want this to go as smoothly as possible, Janie, no hysterics into the mix.”

My mouth dropped open. What a bitch! I’d always heard that about Sophie Dumas, that she was a tough cookie and didn’t suffer fools gladly. But I was no fool! I knew how to behave. I wanted to be there when Daniel woke up.

“There won’t be any hysterics on my part,” I assured her, trying not to feel riled.

“Elodie will keep you posted,” she said. “And you, what’s your name again?” She cut a daggered glance at Remy.

“Remy.”

“You might as well leave now, too. We don’t have time to ferry you back to wherever you came from.”

Remy opened his mouth to say something but then stopped himself. He looked at Elodie wistfully. “Can I take your number?”

“Janie has it. You’d better go, we need to get on with this. Don’t either of you call me, wait till I call you.”

We both got out of the car, feeling rejected. It showed in Remy’s downcast head and the tears welling in my eyes. They could screw the whole thing up and I wouldn’t be there to help . . .

Or hinder . . . I had to admit Sophie was right. I could make things worse for Daniel and ruin everything, just with my presence.

Before I clunked the door shut, I said, “These doctors you’re meeting with, are they—”

“They’re the best in their field. Now go, Janie,” Sophie snapped, “we can’t waste any more time.”

REMY AND I SETTLED into my hotel room, waiting for room service to bring us a midnight snack Actually, more like a full-on supper. While he enjoyed a stiff whiskey—straight up—to calm his nerves, I was mindlessly flicking through TV stations, desperately trying to keep my mind off what could go wrong with Daniel. My fingers fumbled, every once in a while, to my now fully charged cell phone, but I had to force myself not to call Elodie. I listened to a bunch of messages that had piled up: my dad, Will (who said he felt so much better), and several from Star, apologizing for not having phoned earlier, that they had a new puppy who’d chewed up her phone. Of course the messages had become more and more frantic, and the last one—sent this afternoon—announced that she was here in Vegas, looking for me, and if I didn’t get back to her soon she’d call the cops.