“Tell me again,” Jane insisted.
She was angry. It raged inside her. These people…Ma Soeur and their bullshit stories. Dreaming the fucking future. How fucking ridiculous.
She’d said nothing to Lieutenant Monaghan when he’d arrived at the diner. She wanted to digest what Andy Bouchard had told her first. She looked at the woman sitting next to Isabelle Templeton. It was the woman who had dragged her from the diner. René something. Allandale. Yes, that’s it. Fucking beast of a woman.
They were in the hospital cafeteria, awaiting news on Andy Bouchard.
“There is nothing to tell,” the redhead—Isabelle—said in a quiet voice. “I don’t know what happened. I arrived when it was all over.”
“And you? What were you doing there?” Jane pointed to Allandale. Allandale had dragged her out of the diner, only to charge back in immediately. By then Natalya Kuznetsova’s bodyguard and the chestnut-haired woman who’d started it all were already dead.
It was all a terrible mistake, the Russian had said. Her bodyguard must have thought the woman who killed Kate wanted to attack her. “A giant mistake. I’m so sorry,” she’d said to Isabelle before Jane had managed to split them up.
Kuznetsova had this thing in her eyes, something like respect, and not for Jane being a cop—no—for Isabelle.
Dreaming the future. Dreaming the frigging future. Ridiculous.
Jane studied Isabelle. She seemed calm, but below that placid exterior Jane could see that she was drowning. Her despair, her potential loss, was etched into those green eyes. She was looking for a way out, but there was nowhere to go.
Some things you couldn’t escape. You could only go through them.
“I was at the diner to look for Kate Bouchard, to tell her that you were looking for her. That’s all,” Allandale finally spoke up.
“And you did this at the exact moment Kate Bouchard’s fiancée tried to kill her. The same fiancée who murdered Arlene Hampton out of jealousy?”
“Yes.” Allandale shrugged, trying to look all kinds of stupid, but with little success.
“And this woman, Claire, was targeting me as well because I was about to arrest Kate Bouchard on murder charges.”
“We think so. Or she wanted to follow you to see what you were up to,” Allandale said. “I’m not too sure.”
“And what—”
“Stop talking!” somebody called from behind her. “Immediately.”
Jane turned around. Fuck. It was the lawyer, Caroline Diaz.
“Detective, you should know better than to interrogate my clients without me being present.”
“We were just talking.”
“Bullshit.”
Diaz looked haggard and angry. “We have nothing more to say. Have you even offered my clients medical assistance, or just dragged them aside so you could interrogate them?”
She sat next to Isabelle. Gathered her to her chest, ignoring Jane completely. “It will be okay. Andy will be okay. I promise. Don’t worry.”
* * *
Isabelle didn’t want to go home. She had made herself comfortable across four chairs next to the ICU as she waited for Andy to wake up. René was next to her, sitting upright, fast asleep.
Jam said Ma Soeur was a mess. Nobody knew what was going on, with both Claire and Kate dead. Caroline had stepped into the breach, trying to repair the damage done by what had happened at the diner.
She was desperately fending off not only the media, but also a federal investigation into Ma Soeur, continuously casting the murders at Claire’s hand as those of a spurned lover and nothing more. And yes, she was convinced there was nothing sinister about Kate meeting with a Russian mobster. Kate was probably trying to get Natalya Kuznetsova into bed, nothing more. She had a history of cheating. She’d been a wonderful woman, but she had her flaws. Nobody would deny that.
Ma Soeur’s board wasn’t too happy about tarnishing Kate Bouchard’s image, but there was no other solution to their problems. They couldn’t afford an in-depth investigation into Ma Soeur’s books or its global reach and influence.
Isabelle thought René would hate the fact that Caroline had moved into Kate’s top floor office, but she’d opted to stay here, happy for Caroline to take control.
Isabelle shifted on the chairs in an attempt to alleviate the pressure on her right hip. Andy better wake up. She’d lost a lot of blood, her body going into hypovolemic shock.
All Isabelle could remember was her weak pulse, her ashen, cool skin as the EMTs sped her to the emergency room.
Isabelle listened to the gentle hum of people talking at the nurses’ station, the constant din of the air conditioning, of the machines counting and measuring and scanning. Finally, she fell asleep.
She woke with a start as someone shook her awake. It was René. Her eyes were bright.
“No. Please no.” Isabelle ran out of words. She closed her eyes as the room started to spin around her.
“Andy is asking for you.” René gently brushed her hair from her face. “Come on, Templeton. Don’t get soft on me now. Get up and go give Bouchard hell for making a lady like yourself sleep on these damn chairs.”