Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(59)

He expected us. He was ready.

“I’ll be able to ind witnesses who saw her with you,” Chris points out. “If there are none—”

“Dig around all you wish,” Neuville interjects.

He’s too conident. I don’t know why I feel this, when hon-esty breeds conidence, but everything about this feels of. “Did Ella replace her passport?”

“Not while she was with me.”

My brow furrows. “That makes no sense. She was due back to school.”

He leans back in his chair, the long ingers of one hand resting on the table. “She wasn’t in a hurry to return to the States.”

Disappointment ills me as my hope of inding Ella through this man fades. “You really have no idea where she is?”

“Why else would I hire someone to look for her?”

“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?” Chris drawls softly, and Neuville’s eyes narrow on him. The two men stare at each other, and I stare at Neuville, and several tense seconds pass before Chris says, “Sara, we need a few minutes alone. I’ll meet you at the bar.”

My gaze jerks to Chris’s, but he’s still in his stare-down with Neuville and I barely bite back an objection to leaving.

I have to force myself to let go of my need to hear everything and try to control what I clearly cannot. I trust Chris. If he can get something out of Neuville by speaking to him alone, I want him to.

I stand up and walk away without another word. I’m pretty sure it’s as surprising to Chris as it is to me.

At the bottom of the stairs is a waiter. I make a drinking motion with a pretend glass, and he points me in the direction of the bar, which is on a lower level. I discover the spacious basement level illed with a cluster of six tables and enough beautiful people standing and sitting around to need twice that, all wearing expensive dresses and tailored suits. Suddenly, my jeans feel out of place. No, not suddenly. The doorman started my walk down Awkward Lane and it simply continues.

I head to the U-shaped bar and lag the bartender for help with my escape. “Toilette?” I ask. I’m becoming quite a master at this one-word question.

The bartender points and I head behind him and down the hall to his right. I’m gaining a powerful appreciation for the art of pointing and its ability to break the language barrier.

Inside the bathroom I ind two large sinks to my left, and my nostrils lare from the scent of the cinnamon candle burning in the center of the marble counter. Three fancy wooden doors are farther inside the room and, after listening a moment, I determine the stalls are empty. Thankfully.

I lean on the sink and my image comes into view, then immediately fades as I replay everything Neuville has said to us, trying to igure out what bothered me most about him and the conversation. Three weeks, he’d said Ella had been with him.

Three weeks. Hmmm. That feels of. Ella left San Francisco in late August. It’s October. So Neuville’s claim that he’s been looking for her for a week might work, but it means that Ella and her iancé broke up almost immediately after arriving in Paris. It also means that if Ella intended to come back to school for her October 1 schedule, she had waited until the last minute to have her passport reissued. But wouldn’t Blake have discovered it had been reissued when he investigated her travel?

My thought process is waylaid as the bathroom door opens, and my skin prickles with warning even before I see Isabel in the mirror. Instantly stifening, I turn to face her, readying myself for whatever comes next. And something is coming. It’s in the crackle of the air.

She shuts the door and crosses her arms over her chest as she had when I’d headed up the stairs; she has another smug look on her face. I’m starting to think it’s her permanent makeup. “You actually think he’s yours, don’t you?” she purrs, as if it amuses her.

“Talk about getting right down to business,” I say. “At least we aren’t going to play the fake-niceties game. He is mine.”

She takes a step closer to me. And another. I curl my ingers into my palms but I don’t move. She doesn’t have a whip sharp enough to intimidate me. “Until he needs more,” she promises.

“The kind of ‘more’ only I can give him.”

Anger lights me up like ire and my nails dig into the soft lesh of my palms. “If you mean until he needs pain, he won’t.”

She inches even closer, way beyond my personal space.

We’re toe-to-toe now and I can smell her loral perfume over the candle. It turns my stomach. “He will need pain,” she promises. “He always has and he always will.”

“You want him to think he does, because you think that means he needs you. Only he never needed you. It was the object you held in your hand. The whip anyone else can hold, if they’re a big enough bitch to do it.”

Her eyes light with fury and she snaps. One second I’m watching her livid expression turn her beautiful face ugly, the next she explodes at me, shoving me hard against the narrow wall behind me. I gasp with the impact, feeling sharp pain in my left shoulder. Her hands are still on me, pressing into me, holding me captive.

“You’re the bitch,” she hisses. “You’re nothing, just one of his many attempts to deny what he really needs. He’ll fail this time, like always. And when he comes back to me I’ll f*ck him extra hard, sweetheart, just for you. Maybe I’ll add an extra few lashes with your name on them, too.”