The Mistress

“A girl?”

“She’s down in the front room.”

He looked at Grace and she knew it had happened. Finally. Marie-Laure had started the game.

“Did she tell you her name?” Søren asked as they strode down the hall, Grace following close behind.

“Nope. But she’s looks about eighteen, she’s blonde, she sounds foreign and she’s fucking gorgeous. You got a daughter you never told anyone about?”

“No,” Søren said, his pace quickening. “But I have a niece.”

10 THE PAWN

Laila pulled her knees to her chest on the sofa and shivered. Why was it so cold in here? Was it cold? Somewhere over her head one man spoke to another man. Although she spoke English almost as well as her native Danish, their words did not register with her. She heard static, white noise, and could only stare with fixed eyes at the doorway.

“What’s your name?” a gentle male voice asked in English. “Can you tell me your name?”

Finally the words cut through the static.

“Laila,” she whispered.

“Laila. That’s a pretty name. I’m Wes.”

“Hi, Wes.” She blinked and looked at him. Her eyes finally started to focus and she at last saw the person who’d carried her into the house. Before he’d just been a presence, male and tall. Now she saw him. He had shaggy blond hair and warm brown eyes and easily the most handsome face she’d ever seen on a man in her life. Man? Maybe not. He didn’t look that much older than her. Nineteen? Twenty, maybe.

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think so.”

“Your face is bleeding a little. It looks like you scraped it on the concrete. We’ll clean it up and you’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”

He spoke with such quiet confidence that Laila believed him immediately even if he meant only the cut on her face would be okay.

He took her hand in hers and she clung to it, desperate for comfort from this stranger. He didn’t feel like a stranger to her, though. He didn’t ask her questions about what had happened to her, how she’d gotten here. He knew somehow. He was part of this. They were part of this together.

“Laila?” A familiar voice cut through the haze and she sat up immediately, throwing herself in her uncle’s arms. The one moment of peace she’d felt looking in Wes’s eyes disappeared as the floodgate broke. She sobbed against his shoulder as he gathered her to him on the sofa. In between her choking sobs, she told him the story. She’d come to surprise him. She’d gone into the rectory. She thought no one was home. She heard footsteps … something covered her head. She fought, she struggled, but no amount of thrashing would get her free. They’d taken her somewhere in the trunk of a car. It felt like days in the car but probably only a few hours. When the car stopped, someone pulled her out and when they yanked the blindfold off, she saw …

“I saw Tante Elle. They have her,” she said, switching to English. Other people had come into the room while she was speaking—a beautiful woman with red hair and freckles and a man with dark hair, olive skin and dangerous eyes. They looked as scared as her uncle, as scared as her.

“Who?” Wes asked, over Laila’s shoulder.

“Eleanor,” Søren explained, kissing Laila on top of her head. “Laila and her sister consider Eleanor their aunt. Go on, Laila.”

“She was there on the floor.”

“Was she hurt?” Wes asked.

Laila shook her head. “She has some bruises on her arms, on her face. There was another woman there and a man with a gun.”

“What did the woman look like?” asked the man with shoulder-length dark hair. He spoke in a French accent. Kingsley, that was his name. Her aunt had told her about the handsome Frenchman who she called the bane of her existence. From her tante Elle it had sounded like a compliment.

She stared at him.

“She looked a little like you.” The man shook his head and he swore under his breath. He turned his back to the room. “But older,” Laila continued. “And angry. She was smiling but she looked very angry.”

“What did she say?” Her uncle brushed the hair off her face.

“She said awful things …” Laila returned to her Danish, not wanting anyone else to hear. She told her uncle everything the woman had said, everything her aunt said in defiance. And she told him about the choice they had to make. Laila buried her head against his chest when she confessed what her aunt had done and how powerless she’d been to stop her.

“Søren?” The redheaded woman with the freckles came closer. “What did she say?”

Laila only listened as her uncle recited her tale in English. He left out the part about the woman calling her tante Elle a “whore.”

“Marie-Laure made them choose,” he said, his voice low but steady. “She told Eleanor and Laila that one of them could leave and deliver a message to me. The other one had to stay behind as … entertainment. Eleanor …”

He paused to clear his throat and Laila began to cry again, sobbing silently against his chest.

“What?” Wes asked. “What happened?”

“Eleanor covered Laila’s mouth so she couldn’t volunteer. So Laila was allowed to leave with her message.”

He fell silent and no one in the room spoke. The confession of her aunt’s sacrifice had made mutes of them all.

“Dammit, Nora …” Wes was the first to speak. She winced at his words, felt her own failure to speak in time, felt more than anything shame over how relieved she was that she’d been allowed to go free.

“She gave me a note to give you.” Laila dug in her jeans pocket and pulled out the paper. “She said to tell you that she gave you her death as a gift and now she was taking her gift back. She said God had a message for you, too.”

Kingsley exhaled noisily and with great and very French disgust.

“And what does God have to tell us?” he demanded.

“She said that God says no more sinning. Time for atonement.”

No one said anything as Laila held out the note to her uncle. Without any show of emotion he read the words before handing it to Kingsley. Kingsley took it from his hand and opened the note.

“What does it say?” Wes demanded. Laila was grateful he’d asked. She hadn’t gotten to read it. “Is it a ransom note? I’ll pay whatever they ask.”

“Not a ransom.” Kingsley balled up the note. “And it doesn’t matter what it says because we’re not going to let her play us.”

“It does matter what it says.” Wes stood up and walked over to Kingsley. “I’ll play any game I have to if it means getting Nora back.”

“You’re not the one she wants to play with, Wesley,” Søren said, and Laila looked up at him. “Kingsley and I are the ones she’s angry with, the ones she’s trying to hurt.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Wes faced her uncle with fury in his eyes. She’d never seen anyone look at her uncle like that.