Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(102)

It didn’t.

The guard is lying on the ground in what used to be the prison yard, his arm pinned beneath a boulder-sized hunk of masonry. Face contorted in agony, he writhes in a futile effort to free himself.

“Please,” he begs her. “Please help me.”

Stepping closer, she regards the situation, wondering what to do.

Ah, Deuteronomy: I will render vengeance to mine enemies.

She reaches toward the guard.

“Thank you.” He exhales and his eyes flutter closed in anticipation of relief.

Pulling his gun from the holster at his hip, she takes aim and fires.

Fragments of skull, flesh, and brain scatter into the drift of dust and snow at her feet.

“Thy will be done,” she whispers, satisfied.

Hurrying on toward the woods behind the prison, she’s about fifty yards away when she hears the deafening explosion.

Whirling around, she sees that the prison—what’s left of it—is engulfed in flames.

For a long moment, she allows herself to stand and watch, a wondrous smile playing at her lips, the words of the prophet Isaiah ringing in her ears.

For, behold, the LORD will come with fire…to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.

Then she steals into the night, clutching the gun in one hand and her Bible in the other.

The Ansonia, New York City

One year later

Nothing like a hot bath on a cold February night, Sylvie Durand muses, as hot water runs into the tub and the bathroom fills with the scent of Chanel bubble bath. A glass of Haut-Brion waits amid flickering white votives beside the tub, and Edith Piaf croons over the recently installed surround-sound speakers.

Music piped into the bathroom—it was the perfect Christmas gift from her grandson Jeremy, who installed the wiring in less time than Sylvie takes to put on makeup for an evening out.

“There, Mémé—now you can listen to your music while you relax in the bath. It’ll be just like a spa,” he told her.

He’s grown into a wonderful man, Jeremy. To have overcome such tragedy in his young life…

He’d been given up at birth by his unwed parents, winding up in the foster care system. After several troubled placements, he was one of the lucky school-aged children who found his way into a loving adoptive home. Elsa and her husband Brett had their hands full—Jeremy was a troubled child—but they adored him. They were devastated when he was abducted from their backyard as a seven-year-old.

Sylvie—like the rest of the world—assumed he’d fallen victim to a child predator and would never come home again. She was right—and wrong.

She shakes her head, remembering the terrible day she’d learned that Jeremy had been murdered overseas not long after his abduction—and that his own birth father, the powerful and famously pious New York gubernatorial candidate Garvey Quinn—was responsible.

Less than a year later, Jeremy turned up alive after all. It was a miracle.

They can happen, Sylvie has learned. But one miracle in a lifetime is more than anyone should hope for. She learned that the hard way a few years ago, when Jean Paul became ill.

Humming along to “Mon Dieu,” she admires her reflection in the mirror above the sink.

Just this morning at the salon on Madison Avenue, as she was leaning back in the sink chair to be washed, the new shampoo girl commented, “You know, I was expecting to see facelift scars, but you don’t have any.”

“Pardon?” Sylvie decided that she would never become re-accustomed to brash American manners.

Having lived in New York most of her adult life, she’d returned to her native France for over a decade after rekindling a teenage romance. Adapting to her native culture had been surprisingly easy, but the homecoming wasn’t meant to be permanent. Her heart may be in Paris, but her daughter and grandchildren—not to mention her own fabulous apartment—are not.

And so, after Jean Paul passed away, Sylvie settled back in on the Upper West Side. That wasn’t nearly as seamless a transition as she’d anticipated. Maybe she’s simply too old to deal with change.

American culture feels foreign to her even now; she’s perpetually caught off guard by this penchant for barging into strangers’ lives with such audacity. Europeans tend to respect each other’s privacy.

“It’s just that your skin is so beautiful, and your bone structure is amazing,” the shampoo girl continued, massaging Sylvie’s temples, “I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised—I know who you are—but I figured you must have had some work done. It seems like everyone does, especially in your business.”

“Not I,” Sylvie replied haughtily, though she was secretly flattered by both the praise and the recognition of her stellar career.

The shampoo girl refused to leave well enough alone. “I thought that was why you always go around wearing those hats with the little veils—to cover the scars.”

Sylvie was speechless at the audacity—so much so that she couldn’t point out that she’s been wearing hats with blushers for decades. They were—and remain—her personal trademark.

Now she turns her head from side to side, her legendary blue eyes narrowed as she studies herself in the misty mirror. Yes, the porcelain complexion and facial bone structure that made her one of the world’s first supermodels have certainly withstood the test of time. And her hair, freshly dyed a becoming shade of brunette, looks as natural as it did when she was strutting the runways.