Luger clattered to the floor, and her gaunt body sagged against the carpet. I lunged down the corridor, but not fast enough. René had already stepped forward and kicked Eve’s pistol away, into the corner of the study. I’d meant to rush at him before he could shoot again, but he was backing away out of my reach, his own pistol leveled at me.
“Down on your knees,” he said.
So fast. It had all happened so fast. Eve made a faint sound at my feet, her crippled hands clamped over her left shoulder, and I knelt beside her. I felt the hot slide of blood as I gripped her fingers. “Eve, no, no—” Her eyes were open, colorless, blinking slowly.
“Well,” she said in a high, flat voice. “Goddammit.”
The record on the gramophone came to a hissing end. I could hear the rasping chorus of our breathing, mine in hitching gasps, Eve’s in shallow halts, René Bordelon’s fast and deep as he stared at us through a study that reeked of gunsmoke. A ribbon of dark blood coursed slowly down his pristine collar. Half his ear dangled from a shred of flesh, and a silent howl tore through me.
Close. Eve was so close. The thought flashed through my mind as I stared into the infinite black hole of the Luger aimed right between my eyes.
“Move that way, girl.” The barrel gestured. “Away from the old bitch.”
“No.” My hands were pressed on top of Eve’s, over her wound. I was no nurse, but I knew she needed bandaging, pressure. He will not let her have any of those things, he will see her dead first—but I still said, “No.”
He fired another shot, making me scream as the doorjamb beside me splintered. “Let her go, and slide along the wall that way.”
Eve’s voice was ragged, but clear. “Do it, Yank.”
My fingers were clenched so tight over Eve’s I had to force them open. Her hands were gloved in blood, and more blood oozed down her torso, slow and implacable. René’s pistol followed me as I inched away and set my back against a tall bookshelf, but his eyes stayed riveted to Eve as she managed to pull herself half sitting against the door frame. Her eyes were flat stones full of agony, but I didn’t think it was the pain of her own wound. It was the pain of seeing him still on his feet.
Failed, her gaze screamed, filled with self-loathing. Failed.
I was the one who’d failed. I couldn’t keep her safe.
“Hands off that wound, Marguerite.” René’s voice was rattled out of the toneless calm he’d maintained at the restaurant. “I’m going to watch you die, and I don’t want anything slowing that down.”
“Might be a while.” Eve looked down at her own shoulder. “Nothing too v-v-vital in a shoulder for a bullet to hit.”
“You’ll still b-b-b-bleed to death, pet. I like that better; it’s slower.”
Eve peeled her crimson hands away from the dark, spreading stain. My throat closed as I saw it. Just a shoulder wound, and yet it was going to kill her. We were going to sit in this elegant study, the home of all Eve’s nightmares, and watch her bleed out.
René ignored Eve’s wound, his eyes mesmerized by her knobbed, bloody hands. “You wore gloves this afternoon,” he remarked. “I wanted to see how they looked, after all this time.”
“Not too pretty.”
“Oh, I think they’re lovely. I made a masterpiece there.”
“Gloat all you want.” Eve nodded toward me. “But let the girl go. She has n-nothing to do with this; she wasn’t supposed to be here—”
“But she is here,” René cut her off. “And as I have no way of knowing what you’ve told her, and what kind of trouble she could make, she dies here too. Once you’re dead, I’ll take care of her. Do think on that as you bleed out, Marguerite. I can see she means something to you.”
I sat in an ice-water drench of terror with my arms folded tight around my budding belly. I was not even twenty years old and I was going to die. And my Rosebud would never live at all.
“You can’t afford to shoot her, René.” Eve’s voice was even, conversational, at what cost I couldn’t imagine. “I may be a raddled crone with no friends and f-f-family to look for me, but she’s got both, and they’ve got money. Kill her, you’ll have more trouble than even you can ooze your way out of.”