Chains of Fire by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online Page B

time, she touched the little boy. She flinched at the blast of pain from his arm. The tearing misery of broken bones. The bleeding in his lungs. The disease that rested in his genes and ate at his muscles.
    She struggled to take control of his anguish. Yet it overwhelmed her senses, swamped her with sensation. She sagged in her chair.
    Then Samuel put his hands on her shoulders.
    Strength flowed into her. A trickle. A heat. And the memory of a cold day long, long ago when she had helped Samuel . . .
    Mathis sighed as he felt the first modicum of relief that flowed into his wasted muscles.
    Isabelle took a breath, gained control. The disease that ate at him retreated a little bit, allowing her to place her hand on his chest, to breathe for him as she took his injury and healed it.
    “That’s better.” Mathis sighed, and relaxed. “So much better.”
    “Yes.” As his pain eased, Isabelle’s pain eased, and she laughed softly. “Look at Samuel. Doesn’t he look handsome with his scarf tied rakishly around his head?”
    Samuel struck a pose, hands on hips, head back. “Like a sheik,” he said, and flipped the ends of the scarf over his shoulder.
    “Like a sheik who lost his desert.” Isabelle touched Mathis’s shoulder, his upper arm.
    “He does look funny,” Mathis acknowledged; then his lip trembled. “But isn’t that blood on the scarf?”
    “You should see the other guy.” Samuel took her shoulders in his hands again.
    She didn’t want him to help her. But he fed her strength. And she desperately needed that strength.
    “Samuel is a very powerful fighter.” She stroked the air above the boy’s lower arm. “He’ll take care of us until we get you home.”
    “My mother and father will be so worried.” Mathis’s lip trembled again; then, as Isabelle lightly stroked his skin, knitting the torn muscles, the shattered bones, his face relaxed and he gave a small sigh of relief.
    “That is better. Merci, mademoiselle.”
    “Do you remember your parents’ names?” Samuel asked. “I could give them a call and let them know you’re safe.”
    “Of course I know their names.” Mathis sounded impatient and superior, as if he’d never had a lapse in memory. “They are the Moreaus of Paris.”
    The name fell into the room with the weight and prestige of a thousand years of French aristocracy.
    Yet Isabelle covered her dismay with a casual tone. “The French ambassador to the United States? I know him. I saw him earlier tonight.”
    “You know my papa ? Please call him and tell him to come and get me.” The child’s eyes brimmed with tears.
    “It would be better if we take you to him.” Isabelle signaled to Samuel. “We don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to, do we?”
    “No!” Mathis said.
    “Your wheelchair is injured, so Samuel will carry you to the car and we’ll drive as quickly as we can to your home.”
    “Yes, please.”
    “Then you can sleep in your own bed. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
    Mathis yawned.
    Isabelle stood and swayed.
    Samuel caught her by the waist and steadied her. “I wish you’d take an aspirin or something.”
    “For me, medication merely gets in the way.”
    “What do you get out of this?” Samuel’s voice was scratchy with irritation.
    She indicated the child, relaxed and no longer in pain.
    “Yeah, yeah.” Samuel leaned over and gathered him up. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter 8

    S amuel and Isabelle watched Mathis’s reunion with his parents from the back of a police van.
    “This is so touching. Do you think they’ll remember us before the police put us away for three hundred years?” Samuel chafed at being treated like a criminal.
    The Swiss police clearly didn’t believe a word of Samuel and Isabelle’s story. Officials stopped the car before they got within a mile of Moreau’s château. While Mathis shrieked at the police to stop, Samuel and Isabelle were yanked out of the car, handcuffed, and stuck in the back