Read Online Dearly Departed by Hy Conrad - Free Book Online Page B

breath or a calming effect. Certainly not a worsening of the symptoms, not like this. Laila gasped in desperation. Her face flushed. Her eyes widened, searching the room, begging for help, even as they seemed to lose focus.
    â€œIt’s empty,” said Nicole, finally losing her calm. She sent it scuttling across the floor, then turned back to the purse and began rummaging for another. “Who the hell brings an empty pen?”
    â€œNo,” Laila managed to say between her gasps.
    â€œDamn. That was the only one.” Nicole had emptied everything out onto the marble. Nothing looked even remotely like an EpiPen case. “Was that your only one?”
    â€œNo,” Laila said again. Her voice was weaker now.
    Amy was about to reach for her phone when she remembered it was back at the Crillon. She turned to face the rest of the room. By now the waiter and his patrons and everyone else were staring, openmouthed. “SAMU,” she shouted to everyone and no one. “Appelez le SAMU! Composez le quinze. Vite!”
    A dozen phones materialized out of pockets and purses. All it would take was one call getting through to the emergency number fifteen. And after that, how long? Amy had experience with the emergency response in Rome, not in Paris. And Rome had not worked out well. She tried not to think about that.
    â€œ Ici .” A woman’s voice cut through the concerned murmurs and the soft beeps of a dozen phones. The woman rising from her chair on the other side of the brasserie—young, under twenty—was looking straight at Amy, holding something in the air.
    At first Amy thought it was another phone. What? You want me to dial for you? You can’t dial your own . . . ? Then she realized.
    The woman and Amy edged through the tables and chairs and curious diners and met halfway. “ Merci ,” Amy said, filling the word with as much meaning as she could. Then she took the stranger’s EpiPen, raced back through the tables and chairs and curious diners, and handed it off like a baton. Nicole grabbed it in her fist, removed the cap, and jabbed it smartly into Laila’s other thigh.

CHAPTER 9
    A my could have flown first class. No one would have said a word, except perhaps Nicole, who seemed to take each expenditure personally. No one else would have raised an eyebrow.
    Amy wouldn’t have minded flying coach under normal circumstances. The actual flight was comfortable, with decent KLM service and a plane that was less than half full, such a delightful rarity. No, the reason she wanted to be in first class was that Laila and Maury Steinberg were up there, without adult supervision.
    Laila had stayed overnight at the Clinique Paris-Montmartre for observation and had stayed an extra day at the Crillon, just to be safe, while the others had taken the private 757, with its flight crew of six, onward to the next destination. Peter had toyed with the idea of postponing the flight so they could all travel together. But the pilot had already filed his flight plan, and Laila kept insisting that she didn’t want to upset everyone’s schedule. They would fly commercial and catch up.
    Amy could have gone with the group. She’d been tempted, having grown quite fond of private travel, with seats that converted into beds more comfortable than her bed at home. And nearly the same size. Plus rose petals and a chocolate on the pillow every night. Under any other circumstances, she would have been fine with leaving a couple of tour members on their own for a day.
    But these circumstances were unnerving. Maury had urged his wife to go to a Parisian brasserie and to order a dish that—and this was mentioned in the Times review; Amy had looked it up online—contained an ingredient that his wife was deathly allergic to. Then, once she was in the throes of anaphylactic shock, while fumbling through her purse for one of her lifesaving EpiPens, Laila would find that, inexplicably,