T en
I opened my eyes.
Pain.
Sometime during the night, I’d shifted off Quinn’s sturdy chest and rolled onto my ravaged back
.
Gritting my teeth, I sat up. The events of my nightmare may have been a grand illusion, but the pain was undeniably real.
I checked the glowing digits on my alarm: 3:55 AM. With a deep breath, I tried closing my eyes—
“I’m sorry, Clare, but you missed the plane. You’re early.”
“Early? What do you mean
early
?!”
Tick, tick, tick . . .
The images would not go away. Neither would the stark feeling of terror. It flooded my waking mind; dislodged bits of memory: the fear in Eric Thorner’s eyes; the blood seeping from his wound; my landmark shop, wrecked and damaged; and the charred black body of that firebombed car, human remains trapped inside.
“Charley” was just a name to me, remote and unknowable. Like the subject of a TV news reports, he was just another casualty of war or random violence. Yet Eric’s chauffeur was a person, a fellow soul, and his senseless murder
should
have mattered more to me. I was ashamed to say it didn’t.
“Mom! What do I do?”
TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK!
Maybe that’s why I dreamed of my daughter suffering the same fate. If
she’d
been in that car, the paramedics would have had to sedate me.
I glanced across the mattress. Quinn was still sleeping, so I slipped quietly out of bed.
I have to call Joy . . .
I knew my nightmare wasn’t real, but my heart was still hammering, and I wasn’t closing my eyes again until I made sure my daughter was safe. Tying on my robe, I stepped into slippers and shuffled down to the kitchen.
*
“M RRROOOOW . . .”
My little, furry raptors wasted no time circling my legs.
“No,” I firmly told the pair. “It may be morning, but it is
not
time for breakfast.”
Java and Frothy begged to differ—in stereo—and loudly enough to send me groping through the cupboard for a giant can of Savory Salmon.
Reading the label made my stomach rumble, and my mind conjured a brief, happy vision of Murray’s pink-smoked salmon glistening on a toasted bagel with a snowy schmear of cream cheese. Despite knowing the difference between premium lox and Fancy Feast (really, I did), by the time I dished up their grub, I was salivating.
Ignoring my pangs of hunger, I sat down at the table and hit the first number on my mobile phone’s speed dial. Joy’s voice mail asked me to leave a message. Instead, I placed another call—to Joy’s best friend.
“Bonjour!”
“Yvette?”
“Oui?”
Yvette’s name might have been French but she was as American as mass-produced soft ice cream—a product that had made her family a small fortune. She and Joy had been friends since their first day of culinary school. Now they shared an apartment in Paris.
“You can speak English, Yvette, this is Joy’s mother. I tried her cell, but she’s not picking up—”
“Joy’s at work, Ms. Cosi, and she never answers calls at work on pain of a Gallic tongue-lashing. Have you forgotten the time difference? You’re six hours behind us in New York, and—”
“Joy is on the dinner brigade. Her shifts don’t begin until two o’clock, your time.”
“Her day starts earlier now.”
“I see. But she’s all right?”
“
Mais oui!
I just stopped by the restaurant to talk to her and she’s perfectly fine—considering the incident.”
I tensed. “Incident?”
“Last week the sous chef went a little
fou
.”
“Crazy? He went
crazy
?”
“The Bresse supplier shorted the restaurant on
poulardes
for, like, the third time in six weeks. So the chef drove all the way to Bourgogne, got into a shouting match with the chicken farmer, accused him of taking a bribe from a rival restaurant to sabotage their menu. They hurled insults at each other, then vegetables, then
poulardes
, then it really got ugly.”
“Joy wasn’t with him, was she?”
“No, but she totally heard all about it. They called in the gendarmes. It took,
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