Her legs weakened.Exhausted, she pressed on.
In the distance, she heard the faint sounds of the baying dogs.
Mon Dieu,he’d brought the dogs!
She put on a burst of speed.A tree branch snagged her veil and yanked her head back.Whimpering, she grabbed at the veil, not wanting to leave a trail even though the dogs could easily smell the wake of her fear.She tripped over a root, stumbled a few steps and went down on one knee.She swallowed her sobs, tears leaking down her cheeks.
A glance over her shoulder showed only leafless branches, ghostly in the fog suspended over the forest floor.The sound of the dogs appeared closer, but that could have been a trick of the fog.
She began to pray.Broken prayers that never helped before but in which she’d never given up hope.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis,”she whispered through uneven breaths,“sanctificetur Nomen tuum.”Our Father, who art in heaven…
The voices of her pursuers approached, closer now.Her heart nearly stopped and she forgot about praying.
“Do you have those papers?”
Lainie looked up from her computer monitor to find Giselle inside her office door, one pale, perfectly plucked eyebrow rising in inquiry.She’d been expecting Giselle all day, had futilely hoped she wouldn’t show, but knew this conversation was inevitable.Lainie was exhausted from a night of tossing and turning and from the strange dream that plagued her once she did fall asleep.She wasn’t in the right frame of mind to verbally spar with her boss, but she also knew Giselle wouldn’t go away if politely asked.
The questions that had kept her awake most of the night weighed her down.Why would Giselle send her on a mission with phony papers?And were they truly phony or was Chevalier playing some game?No.The look on Chevalier’s face and his anger convinced her he wasn’t playing a game.So why did he believe the papers were fake?
She wasn’t any closer to the answer than she had been in Chevalier’s office.Just more tired.
“About those papers.”She sat back and eyed Giselle, trying to quell the nervous flutters in her stomach.Things weren’t adding up and it was making her uneasy.Uneasy enough to question what she should do.Tell Giselle that Chevalier thought the papers were fake?Or keep the information to herself?Right now playing things close to the vest was her best option.“Mr.Chevalier knew nothing of our appointment.”
Other than a slow blink, Giselle’s face remained expressionless.
“I had to wait in line and pay twenty bucks to get in.”If she expected Giselle to offer reimbursement, she would have been disappointed.Good thing she didn’t expect it.“I only saw him because he saved me from being accosted by a customer.”
That got a reaction, but only a slight twist of the lips.Sometimes Lainie believed Giselle was made of ice.
“Is there a point to this drawn-out story?”Giselle asked in a bored tone.
Lainie tamped down her rising anger.“My point is he knew nothing of the appointment, yet you were adamant I had an appointment with him.”
“I can’t help it if he’s so disorganized he can’t keep his calendar straight.”
Lainie highly doubted Chevalier was disorganized.She was pretty sure, just from meeting him once, he knew everything that went on around him.
However, she chose not to comment on the last remark.Arguing with Giselle was useless, and damaging to one’s career and psyche.“Mr.Chevalier seemed angry at the content of those papers.”
Again no expression, but it seemed as if Giselle was trying too hard not to express any emotion.On a normal day, Giselle wouldn’t have a problem expressing to Lainie or anyone else exactly what she was thinking.But today wasn’t normal.Nothing had been normal since she walked into The Chevalier last night.
“I repeat my first question.Do you have the papers?”
Lainie took a deep breath.“No.Chevalier wouldn’t sign them.”
The muscles in Giselle’s face tightened in contained anger, putting Lainie even more on edge.
“So you left the papers with no idea if he would return them?You have no idea what was in those papers or how important they were.”
“He didn’t seem to think they were very important.”
Brows slammed down over pale blue eyes.Everything about Giselle was pale.Her hair was so blond it was almost white, her skin so fair it was translucent and on the days she wore red—which was almost every day—the look was jarring.“What are you trying to say?”
The slight headache Lainie had been battling all day threatened to erupt into something much worse, but her spurt of anger pushed it away.She didn’t like being played with.“I’m just telling you what happened.Chevalier wasn’t impressed with the papers.”
Giselle’s look turned speculative, which was odd.Nothing about this conversation was going as she expected and it made her headache worse and her anxiety skyrocket.
