Finally, a minute or so after Francoise had left the room, his niece lifted her face to him and he could see the barest trace of twin tears welling up under each mascaraed eyelid. "You look better without make-up though," he commented. "All that shit on your face makes you look hard."
"I am hard, a real tough cookie," she said with a trace of self-pity. "What has it been? A month I guess, since I've been here with Rene. He's a good teacher."
"I wouldn't doubt it. He also trains his servants and retainers quite expertly. Francoise is a most accomplished cockteaser. She'd command high prices in New York."
"This is stupid, isn't it? I mean, there you are and here I am and what's the point, anyway? I'm not leaving, Uncle Drew. I know you came to Paris to find me and take me home. But let's get one thing straight. I'm not leaving."
"Who's asked you to," he replied without the slightest trace of emotion in his voice. "Your parents asked me to find you, but before I left I knew I wasn't the person to drag you home. I've always told you that, remember."
"What?"
"You're a free agent, seventeen years old or not, you still have the right – in my book, at least – to make of your life what you want to. I just want to have a chance to spend a few days with you. Alone, the two of us together, the way we've never done before. You know how fond I am of you and, well… I can see that you're not a baby," and he swept his hand over his body as if to indicate that she was not ashamed to stare at her uncle when he was stark naked and in the raw.
"I've seen a lot of bodies since I got here," she replied. "Anyway, you've got a nice one. I've always thought that. So what's to be ashamed about? Too bad you're my uncle," at which point she threw back her head and giggled sardonically and a chill of fear and apprehension for her well-being swept over him.
"So? Will you come back to Paris with me, just for a day or two?" he asked her once again.
"Rene won't like it."
"Fuck Rene! What is it between you two? He's old enough to be your father, but it seems to me he treats you more like you're his prisoner than his mistress," Drew snapped at her.
For a seventeen-year-old adolescent, he knew she had been through quite a lot, but he still couldn't figure out the nature of the relationship she shared with Rene Martinon. And he couldn't understand why the whole business with Francoise had been set up. If anything, it had just given him an ideal opportunity to display his considerably arousing male body to his niece's wide and staring eyes, rather than serving to put her off.
"I… I can't explain," she whispered, hanging her head down once again as if she was filled with shame.
"You see, Monsieur Livingston, your niece is now… how do they call it in America? A junkie, yes? Is that the term, my sweet frail little Amy?" Rene Martinon said with a nasty smirk, standing now by the opened door, still dressed as he had been when Drew had awakened after being knocked unconscious.
He cast Drew a malignant glance, his eyes traveling up and down his naked body with a flicker of contempt before turning back to stare at Amy. "What's he saying, Amy? What does he mean?" Drew demanded. And then he moved towards Martinon, "What the fuck is going on around here, mister! A junkie? Who's a junkie?"
"I am, Uncle Drew. I am," Amy whispered, shuddering with anguish and seemingly insurmountable horror and fear.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In retrospect, Drew likened his experiences at Fontenay-aux-Roses to scenes out of a detective movie or a television series about gangsters and the like. It had all happened so quickly that he had hardly been aware of what he was doing.
When Rene Martinon had announced with considerable delight that the reason his niece refused to leave his company was because she was now hooked on drugs, thanks to him of course, who supplied her daily with all she would need to sustain her habit, he'd grabbed Amy's arms and examined them for needle tracks.
These he had found without a single second of difficulty, the telltale needle marks on her arms telling him everything he had to know. Suddenly he had snapped inside and his temper had turned into a rage, a rage which had caused him to thrust his niece aside and seize Rene Martinon by the throat as if the man was a devil in disguise, a Satanmanque who had lured his niece down paths of horror and addiction.
Before Martinon had had a chance to defend himself, it was Drew who had knocked him unconscious this time, pounding his fists down against the back of the man's skull with all of his considerable might. Amy had screamed out for an instant, but then she'd realized what was happening and she'd slammed her hand over her mouth, stifling and muffling her cries of fear and horror.
Drew was totally in control now and once Rene had been knocked unconscious, he swiftly closed the bedroom door behind him and dragged the man to a closet he had spied at the other end of the room. Stripping off the bedcovers, he fashioned lengths of rag out of them and these he used to rapidly tie up Martinon's arms and legs, fashioning a gag which was stuffed down the Frenchman's throat and tied around his head.
Still unconscious, Martinon was dragged to the closet and stuffed inside. And once that was accomplished, Drew hurried into his clothes and warned his niece that if she didn't cooperate with him, he wouldn't think twice about knocking her over the head and taking her away bodily and with force, if necessary.
"What are you going to do?" she'd asked.
"Get you into a sanitarium so you won't go cold turkey when you're detoxified. But right now I'm getting you out of here. All you need is your passport."
"It's in my room," she'd replied, going along with him. They'd slipped out of the bedroom and down the narrow hallway that led to her room.
Fortunately, neither Francoise nor the young man who'd opened the door for Drew earlier, were anywhere to be seen. Rapidly, Amy stuffed a few things she wanted to take with her into a canvas tote bag and then, by the back stairs, the two of them crept out of the house as silently and stealthily as possible.
But by the time they'd gotten back to his hotel room, she was already experiencing the first symptoms of drug withdrawal. It was thus that Drew once again demonstrated his quick thinking. Contacting an old friend he'd known through business dealings, he was recommended to a private sanitarium less than an hour's drive outside of Paris.
Amy was nearly wild and beside herself by the time they arrived at dusk, but a sedative was quickly administered and the necessary formalities taken care of. He then placed an overseas call to his sister and brother-in-law, not telling them of the drug problem but explaining that all was well and that he'd be returning to the States with Amy at the end of the month, giving as an excuse the fact that he felt she needed a little more time to pull her head together, so that he was going to take her on a tour of Italy prior to returning home.
Had his niece been on heroin for longer than the three weeks or so Rene had given her the drug, the cure would have taken that much longer. But she was yet to build up a tolerance to high dosages and so her habit was not as heavy as Drew had first feared when he'd seen the needle marks on her arms.
Thus, a little more than three weeks later he picked her up at the sanatorium, took care of the bill and helped her into the front seat of the car he had rented during his European stay. She looked worn and tired, but other than that he had great confidence that the worst was over.
He drove south, knowing that a week in the Mediterranean sun would do both of them good after their long and grueling ordeal. It was on this drive that he was able to piece together the parts of the story he as yet hadn't figured out.
Much he knew already, how Amy had met Rene in Paris, how he had wined and dined her and ultimately seduced her, how she had turned on with him, then snorted coke and then had had her first intravenous hit of heroin. After that, she said it was all a blur, that she'd stayed at Fontenay with him, that he provided her with the drug while she provided him – as well as the young man who had hit Drew over the head – with as much sex as they demanded of her and at all hours of the day.