Perfect Strangers

24

The taxi driverthinks I’m a lunatic. I know because he shouts after me, “You lunatic!” as I claw my way out of his cab, flinging money over my shoulder and panting like a Labrador.

In and of itself, that little display of mental instability probably wouldn’t have been quite so upsetting to him. But taken together with the way I hurled myself into the cab and screamed at him to Go go go! while pounding on the plastic divider between the front and back seats, then dove onto the floor and curled up there, babbling to myself as I hid underneath the safety of my suitcase, it was a bit too much.

I don’t have a clue where he’s dropped me.

It doesn’t matter, however, because what I need is only half a block away. The cheerful sign of a hotel beckons me from the side of a tall brick building, promising safety and anonymity.

And a minibar. Arguably the most important of the three.

I hustle up the street, dragging my suitcase behind me, sweating and swearing and out of my mind with panic. At the front desk, a bearded young man with a tranquil smile greets me. His name tag reveals him to be Christoph, which I take as an ominous sign, but at least it doesn’t say James.

I’m not particularly superstitious, but there’s a limit to what I can handle.

I shout, “I need a room! Whatever’s available!”

“How many nights, madame?” He waits, hands poised over his keyboard.

Clutching the counter, I wheeze and gasp. “At least one. I’m not sure. Can I tell you later?”

He looks me up and down, his tranquil smile never faltering. Like Jean-Luc at Café Blanc, he probably thinks Americans are insane. “Certainment. Your credit card, please?”

I scrabble around in my handbag for my wallet, fumble through it with shaking fingers, then toss my Amex his way. It slides off the counter and onto his keyboard. He picks it up delicately with his index finger and thumb, as if maybe it’s swimming with germs.

Why would James have so many guns? My brain flashes a set of wolfish teeth. The better to shoot you with, my dear.

“Ms. Olivia Rossi,” Christoph reads from my card. “Welcome to the Saint Germaine. Any preferences on the type of room? Bed size? View?”

“No, no.” I glance nervously over my shoulder. “Whatever’s fastest.”

His typing is quick and precise. He consults his computer screen. “I have a lovely room on the fourth floor, madame. King bed with a fireplace, overlooking—”

“I’ll take it!”

He pauses to glance at me. In a lowered voice, he gently inquires, “Ms. Rossi…is everything all right?”

Oh God. Don’t get thrown out. Act normal. Pushing my hair off my face and clearing my throat, I try my best to appear like a civilized human being and not a woman fleeing the devil.

“Actually, no. My boyfriend…” I glance with genuine fear at the door. “We had a fight. I don’t want him to know where I am.”

“Say no more,” Christoph says briskly, puffing out his chest. “I will check you in under a different name, madame.” His typing is even faster now, bless him. He hits the Enter key with a flourish, then leans over the counter to whisper, “You are in room 402, Madame Pollitt.”

“Pollitt. Thank you.”

He informs me conspiratorially, “Maggie Pollit was the name of the character Elizabeth Taylor played in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Have you seen the film?”

“No.”

“Best American film ever made. Of course, American movies do not have the same quality as French cinema, but that particular movie was perfect. And you, madame, bear a striking resemblance to its star.”

Despite my panic, I have to laugh. I look like Elizabeth Taylor? Clearly, he’s been drinking.

He insists, “It’s true. No one has ever said this to you?” He waves a hand at my face. “It’s the eyes. That incredible color—violet, que c’est belle! Haunting, one could say.”

If I never hear that word for the rest of my life, it will be too soon.

I thank him weakly for the compliment. He beams at me, then turns to get a room key from a small cabinet hanging on the wall behind him. I sign the paper he offers me, take the key, then lurch away toward the elevators.

When the mirrored doors slide shut and I see my reflection, I’m surprised the nice front desk man didn’t call the police. I look like I’ve just broken out of prison.

The room is well appointed with elegant furniture and is much larger than I expected. I suppose I should’ve asked the price, but when one is dealing with the discovery that her ex-husband has kidnappers on his payroll and her lover has a stockpile of weapons in his apartment that could rival that of a small country’s, commonplace things like money don’t seem quite so important.

Maybe I’ll send Chris the bill.

Leaving my suitcase inside the entryway, I throw my purse onto the bed, then yank the curtains shut over the windows. I could care less about the gorgeous view of the Eiffel Tower right now, and the suspicion that somehow James will discover where I am has lit a paranoia fire under my ass.

I raid the minibar under the TV cabinet and gulp down three tiny bottles of whiskey before drawing a breath. Then I sit on the edge of the bed and look around, wondering what the hell I’m going to do.

The obvious thing is hightail it back to New York. But waiting for me there is Chris’s invisible surveillance team. The thought that I’ve been being watched for—how long?—makes me queasy. And, frankly, furious. Not only about the invasion of privacy, but also about everything I don’t know that made Chris think a secret security detail was necessary in the first place.

“I have enemies,” he said. Powerful enemies. Ruthless ones.

Enemies that might use me to get to him.

I reach for the phone on the bedside table to call Kelly for advice, but stop. If Chris had me under surveillance, might he have had her under surveillance, too? And what exactly does “surveillance” mean, anyway? People peering at me through binoculars? Listening to me through devices planted in my house?

Tapping my phone?

I feel sick to my stomach.