Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

She could almost think she’d imagined the whole encounter as he went back to mixing drinks. But she hadn’t mistaken it. He’d just told her where she’d find ‘Lucy.’

She slid off the stool and walked to the back of the club towards the restrooms. Surprisingly, no line stood in front of the ladies’, and she found the inside deserted, as well. Only two stalls, one with its door ajar. She pushed the panel open and stepped in. Nothing seemed amiss in the loo, except for the water tank, its lid slightly off centre.

She lifted the heavy ceramic covering. Could the tank be the hiding place?

To her mild surprise—for she hadn’t really expected the plan to go without hitch—she found a zip lock plastic bag containing a handful of little orange pills behind the floater.

A chuckle escaped her as she dried the plastic with some toilet paper before placing the parcel in her purse. So water tanks in the loo were really not an innocuous location—hadn’t she herself ‘lost’ her phone in one of them back in London? She’d known, as if by instinct, that what she expected to find would be in the tank. What had it been—some secret hiding code between dealers and junkies or something?

And since she found herself in on the secret, did it make
her
a junkie?

Not the time to think of another dead-end question. She had more pressing matters to attend to.

She stalked out of the restroom, colliding with a blonde who went in and started retching in the stall.

“Thank God they opened the loo again,” the woman who followed the blonde told her.

She’d been right. Delivery had been ensured in the restroom, and they’d shooed everyone else away to make certain the transaction happened without a glitch. She couldn’t help but be awed and deeply surprised at the way those men in the club had handled their drug dealing. There hadn’t been a name or even a word to implicate any one of them had the whole encounter been wired. Hell, even the bartender’s words could’ve been interpreted as him telling her where they could have a quickie.

She shook her head and left the club. No wonder they plied their trade out in the open.

After hailing a taxi on the pavement, she settled into the back seat and asked the driver to take her back to the hotel. She rummaged into her purse, where she fingered the plastic bag, thinking of what awaited her when she got to the privacy of her room.

At the front desk, she caught a glimpse of the same young man who’d directed her to the business lounge. He nodded at her, and she cocked her head in acknowledgement, heading for the lift.

Once inside her room, she threw the handbag on the bed and retrieved the plastic bag. Seven pills in it—take only one, or two? Yet, two LSD tablets didn’t make for an overdose, did it? And she had no time she could allow for caution. LSD supposedly had no real threatening or lethal side effects—one of the reasons she’d so easily given in to the urge to get the drug to assist her memory. She needed results, answers, all of which could come through a trance-induced experience. The other, safer avenue she’d tried looking into had been a dead end. A good shag, but a dead end, nevertheless.

In the bathroom, she filled a glass at the tap and came back to sit on the bed. She took two little spheres in her hand, threw them into her mouth, took a gulp of water, and swallowed. She then placed the glass on the bedside table and settled back against the pillow.

Soon after, the ceiling looked like it started freefalling towards her. Her eyes remained open, and she felt herself floating. So rather than the ceiling falling, she had risen up to hover with her nose a few inches from the plaster. The solidity under her melted softly, her body swaying on a wave of rippling air.

With a deep, sucked-in breath, she allowed the void to take hold of her, hoping it would lead her where she wanted to go.

***

Marseille.
Vieux Port

Monday, December 17. 4:17 a.m.

Gerard received the first text message from Marcel around eleven, telling him she’d gone out, dressed to the nines after a purchase in the hotel shop.

Where could she have gone? She knew no one in town, or so he thought. What could she be up to?

He’d come to the
commissariat
immediately after leaving her, sitting in his office with Rashid while they went over the Stepanovic case file again with a fine-toothed comb. Something must’ve escaped their notice the first time around, and what to make of the man whom Amelia claimed was involved in her life? Who was he, and how did he fit into the whole thing?

What the hell is going on
, he yearned to shout. But he couldn’t, and the only person who could help currently stayed off his radar. Where had she gone?

Marcel’s next text message came at close to four in the morning. Gerard left as soon as he knew she’d come back to the hotel. She had some explaining to do, for sure!

He went to her room and knocked first. When he failed to get any reply, he didn’t hesitate to use his card and open the door, stalking inside...only to freeze in his tracks when he got closer to the bed.

She lay inert, in a dress barely covering her. With horror growing inside him, he darted a gaze to the bedside table where he saw the glass of water. Had someone drugged her during her outing? The clubbing scene could be very dangerous for a lone young woman, and judging by her dress, she must have gone to the clubs.

He rushed to her side and swore.

A fine sheen of perspiration covered her skin, deathly cold to his touch. But her eyes ended up sending him into a panic. Unfocused and wide, the pupils looked dilated; big, black, empty spots in the blue irises.

“
Putain.
” He cursed as he shook her. “Amelia. Wake up.”

She didn’t respond, her body like dead weight. He reached for her neck, feeling for a pulse. Erratic, beating wildly, much too fast.
Bon sang
, what had happened to her? Could someone really have drugged her, hoping for an uncomplicated lay? And why hadn’t she called him?

She doesn’t have your number.

Quel con!
Such an idiot.

Too close. He’d played it too close. What if all this had happened to her because of him?

After pulling his mobile out, he was dialling the number for the SAMU when he saw her purse lying on the bed next to her. Reaching for it, his knees trembled at the sight of the plastic bag inside. He pulled it into the light, to find five orange pills still in the wrapping.

The SAMU dispatcher answered. He identified himself and gave his location. “Send an ambulance, quick. LSD overdose.”

She’d gone out for a fix.
Putain de merde!
What was she playing at? Right now, though, the more pressing question asked how much had she taken. More than one pill, surely, for her heartbeat raced too quickly. He peered at the half-full glass on the bedside table. It had hardly taken him thirty minutes to get here. That she’d be in such a state less than half an hour after ingesting the pill meant she’d taken in quite a dose.

Why? He wanted to shake her awake and tear an answer out of her. But he couldn’t, nothing left for him to do besides biding his time until the paramedics’ arrival while he made sure she didn’t go into cardiac arrest, his fingers on her pulse. Crouching beside her, he waited, his brain going into overdrive while his own heart hammered in a frantic pounding.

She’d said she wouldn’t do drugs again after what her husband had done to her, so why the trip? She hadn’t even taken blotter papers, the usual form of LSD, pretty much harmless as far as drugs went. No, she’d gone for the curious pill that made even seasoned users wary. No one knew what other illicit substance could be mixed with the acid in this form.

After what seemed like an eternity, the SAMU team barged into the room and set to work on her. Although stuck on the sidelines, damned if Gerard would leave her.

He followed the ambulance in his car all the way to the hospital in the area of the
Vieux Port
, where he asked them to take her, seeing it lay under his jurisdiction.

The medics wheeled her into emergency, and he remained in the waiting room. Shortly after, a doctor came to tell him she’d stabilized, but they didn’t know how much damage the drug could’ve done since LSD absorbed very quickly into the bloodstream. The best they could do amounted to trying to flush it out of her system with fluids and medication through an IV line.

Gerard thanked the doctor then cursed a blue string. Goddamned woman! He found her on the sterile hospital bed in a private room. He didn’t want her with anyone else, more so because he needed to question her as soon as she woke up, and wanted no one to be privy to that conversation.

She damn sure had some explaining to do.

***

Marseille.
Hôpital du Vieux Port

Monday, December 17. 3:20 p.m.

When she awoke, she found herself in a room bathed by pale light coming in from the opened blinds at the window. Her gaze remained unfocused at first, but as her vision cleared, she could make out she lay in a hospital room.

Gerard sat in a chair close to the bed, and a strange sense of déjà vu washed over her. She opened her mouth and tried to talk, but no sound came out. Instead, she could focus on nothing except the strong metallic taste like a thick coating on her tongue.

He stood up and came closer. He then picked up a glass with a straw in it, brought it to her lips. She gratefully took sips of the cold water to moisten her throat.

She let go of the straw, and he placed the glass back and sat beside her on the bed. His face resembled a cold mask, but the fury darkening his eyes couldn’t be concealed. Somehow, she knew she’d better be afraid of him when his glare looked so deadly.

“So,” she said, “you’re going to tell me I’ve been in an accident and that you’re my husband?” Caution had never been her forte, it appeared, and even now, she threw out the playful jab when it seemed obvious he wanted nothing but to wring her neck.

Fuck you.
Suits you right for leaving me hanging like you did.

“I’ve never been married,” came his curt reply.

“You haven’t found the right woman,” she muttered while trying to clear the fog in her head. What had happened? She couldn’t remember, the feeling as unsettling as it proved unnerving.

His jaw clenched.

Her chiding was all about buying time. She didn’t want to have to explain herself—something he certainly expected her to do. At the same time, the situation appeared so strangely like the one when she’d regained consciousness after her accident that she wanted to laugh. A small chuckle escaped her lips.

“
Putain.
How can you be so jovial after all this?”

“After what?”

Suddenly realizing the full scope of her situation—the moment not a strange re-enactment of her post-accident wake-up—the cobwebs of stupor cleared from her brain.

“Wait a minute—” As she sat up straight, the tug of the IV line in a vein on her hand reeled in her abrupt movement. Her focus travelled from the adhesive plaster on her skin, up the thin, clear tube, to the colourless liquid in the half-full plastic pouch on a metallic hook.

She frowned, in anger or in disbelief; which won out in the end? “What the hell am I doing here?”

Could it be a ploy of his, to get her where he’d have full control of her? Who knew what he allowed into her body through the tube connected to her vein?

Manipulation. How she loathed the notion, and to think Gerard would fall down to such levels, too. No, she couldn’t allow it to happen. She’d already decided she’d take hold of her own fate.

She reached for the adhesive plaster holding the IV in place. She tried to tear it off her skin, and cried in pain when she only managed to move the thick tube in her vein.

His hand closed on hers, keeping her still. “Calm down.”

“Get your hand off me. I’m not staying—”

“Damn right you are,” he shouted, and the sound made her freeze. “You have no idea what you did, do you? You nearly had a fucking LSD overdose!”

LSD. Yes, she remembered. She’d come back to the hotel and downed the pills, watching the ceiling float down, or had she ascended?

“Why the hell did you do that?” he asked. “And where did you find the fucking thing in the first place?”

The gall of the man. So he’d play it all this way with her? Screw him. She twisted her hand out of his grip. “Don’t get so high and mighty with me. I needed some answers and I did what I had to do to get them.”

“A fucking trip?” he spat. “You needed a trip? To find what sort of answers?” He grasped her shoulders, shaking her. “What was so important that you risked sending your heart into near-fatal tachycardia?”

“You don’t understand!”

He froze, and released her. She had no idea why, only glad his grip had come off. Damn if he didn’t pack herculean strength in those hands.

He held incredible gentleness in them, too—hadn’t she witnessed it firsthand when he made love to her?