she have internal injuries?
Anais wiped her jaw with her sleeve and nodded. Then she burst into tears, sobbing.
“I wish to God I knew,” she said.
Aimee pulled out her phone to get help, but her battery was dead. They were stuck.
“How—who is she?”
“The sow my husband slept with,” Anais said, catching air. She straightened up, then took deep breaths through her nose. “On a regular basis. Sylvie Coudray. It was over. But I think she blackmailed him.” Anais began sobbing again. “Philippe, he’s such a weakling.”
Aimee wiped Anais’s mouth clean and smoothed her hair back. She knelt closer, trying to ignore the stench.
“What did Sylvie give you?”
“Who knows?” she pleaded, her eyes wide in terror. She reached inside the handbag. Her hand came back with something metal, the size of a makeup brush, and passed it to Aimee.
Aimee recognized the five-fingered brass hand covered with Arabic writing, a good luck ‘hand of Fat’ma’ strung with hanging blue beads and a third eye. A talisman to ward off evil spirits.
Sirens sounded in the distance; the hee-haw got closer. Aimee figured they came from the boulevard. More pounding came from somewhere outside the building. Louder and stronger. Startled, Aimee almost dropped the Fat’ma symbol.
“Open up!” shouted a loud voice.
Aimee stuck the charm back in Anais’s purse.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Anais said.
Aimee steadied her hand on Anais.
“What kind of hell is this?” Anais said, covering her ears with her blood-spattered hands, and rocking back and forth. “You’ve got to help—so sordid,” she gulped, grabbing Aimee’s arm.
Aimee brushed Anais’s skirt off and helped her to stand.
“Philippe’s a minister. I can’t let them find me here!” Anais’s knees buckled.
“Can you walk?” Aimee asked.
Anais nodded.
From the passage, she heard scraping metal noises and footsteps.
Aimee looked around the courtyard. They were hemmed in by the U-shaped building and stone wall.
Behind Aimee and Anais, the passage’s wooden door banged. The footsteps pounded closer. Aimee figured the only way for them to escape was over the stone wall topped by jagged glass.
Aimee helped Anais to the wall, then cupped her hands. “Climb. Be careful of the glass.”
Aimee winced as Anais stepped a high heel on her hands. She heaved her up and heard Anais groan. Aimee braced herself and pushed Anais’s slender frame over the wall. For a small woman, Anafe felt heavy.
“Go on,” Aimee hissed. “Let yourself drop to the other side.”
She heard wood splintering and figured Anais had landed.
“Run toward the boulevard. Whatever happens, just get to the Metro,” Aimee said. Getting back to the car would be impossible.
Aimee climbed and gripped the jutting stone. She shimmied herself up trying to find footholds, afraid to cut herself to shreds on the glass if she got stuck. Her fingertips had just reached the ledge with broken glass when she heard voices. She had to move and forget the pain.
Stretching her leg as far as she could and scraping her heel across the stone, she hit something flat and pulled herself up.
She took a deep breath, then pushed off the wall into the yard of the next building. She landed on her feet. No Anais. Aimee took off, running, into a disused garage lot, but slowed down to avoid banging into something and alerting the neighbors. A heap of rusted bicycles and once-chrome car bumpers were piled close to each other.
“Over here,” Anais whispered.
Aimee narrowed her eyes and saw Anais crouched on her knees in the mud behind a faded Pirelli tire sign.
“Let’s go,” Aimee said.
Anais crawled on her hands and knees, low moans escaping from her. When Aimee reached to help her, she realized that Anais’s legs were cut to ribbons from the glass.
“I tried to walk, but my legs won’t hold me,” she said, her face a chalky white in the moonlight.
Aimee looked again and saw blood oozing from Anais’s thigh, soaking her skirt. If she didn’t stop it, Anais would pass out. She couldn’t get Anais this far and leave her. Aimee quickly looked around—why didn’t Anais wear a silk
Anais managed a weak smile. “Forgive me, Aimee, for pulling you into this.”
“You’re being really brave,” Aimee said, hoisting her up and linking her arm around Anais. She brushed the hair from Anais’s eyes. “I know it hurts. Try to walk; we’ll get to the Metro. It’s not far.”
“But look at me! What will people think?” Anais asked, gesturing toward her leg and blood-spattered suit.
She was right, Aimee thought. But what choice did they have?
Aimee half dragged and half carried Anais several meters through the abandoned lot, puddled and muddy, past the semi-roofed garage. She couldn’t keep this up all the way to the Metro, and she doubted the chances of catching a taxi here. Not to mention staying out of the sight of curious neighbors. Running away from an explosion wouldn’t look good to the
Anais grew heavier, more like dead weight. Aimee noticed that Anais’s eyes were closing, and her body went limp.
Aimee set Anais down under a corrugated overhang jammed with old bikes and mopeds. They were stuck in a muddy garage lot.
She couldn’t leave Anais here. She tried to think, but her shoulders ached, her legs were scratched with glass cuts, and she wondered what in hell she was doing with a minister’s wife who was being chased by men who’d probably planted the car bomb under his mistress’s car.
What could she do now?
Barbed wire crested the chain-link fence. But only a Bricard lock held the gate. She kept Anais’s bag around her, then reached for her makeup bag inside her backpack. She found the Swedish stainless-steel tweezers. Within two minutes she’d jimmied the lock open, muffling the clinking sounds with her sweater sleeve. That done, she wiped the sweat off her brow with her other sleeve and surveyed the bikes strewn around Anais.
No way would she be able to pedal, steer, and grip Anais. She was exhausted. She noticed a beat-up but serviceable Motoguzzi moped by an oil can. It was like her own moped, but a lot older. And with more horsepower. One thing she knew about mo-peds—they could run on fumes for several kilometers, and if the spark plug was still good they might make an escape.
After unscrewing the spark plug, she blew on it to get rid of the carbon, scraped corrosion off the pronged head with her tweezers, and screwed it back on. She shook the body from side to side to slosh any gas around, pulled out the choke, and prayed. She started pedaling. Silence. She kept pedaling and was finally rewarded by a cough. Good, she thought. Temperamental as these Italian bikes might be, with patience and coaxing they would deliver. With much more encouragement, the cough had developed into a full-throated hum, and she hoisted Anais up and urged her tourniqueted leg over the moped’s passenger ledge. Anais’s eyes fluttered, then widened. She pushed Aimee’s shoulder and tried to get off.
“No!” Anais yelled. “I can’t do this.”
“Got a better idea?” Aimee asked.
In the distance the sound of a siren came closer.
“I hate motorcycles,” she wailed.
“Bien, this is a moped,” Aimee said, gunning the engine and popping into first. “Hold on!”
