B008KQO31S EBOK (2 page)

There were no half measures with Lucia. All or nothing was how she played the game. He had had all and never realized it until he had nothing from her. All was definitely better, regardless of what price she demanded.

He had missed this place.

He had missed her.

It was a dangerous and unwelcome realization, a chink in his armor of self-sufficiency and one that hopefully he’d be able to hide.

He discovered that the door was slightly ajar, not that uncommon an occurrence with Lucia. She was untroubled with mundane details—once he would have pushed through the door without a thought, but on this day, he hesitated, wondering whether he should knock.

It had been so long.

But she had asked summoned him.

He gripped the old brass handle, his thumb rolling over the welcome familiarity of its smoothness, and pushed the heavy door all the way open. The hinges creaked with a predictable whine and he guessed that no one had oiled them since he had done it last.

He stepped over the threshold and gave himself the luxury of a moment unannounced within the foyer. He found himself relieved at the familiarity of it all even in change. The two models of crucified thieves were definitely new acquisitions, but they stared down at him with glassy eyes only Lucia could have thought to touch up with Vaseline.

And they complemented the snarling taxidermied lynx that perched on the banister. The great cat was looking a bit woebegone, its fur more patchy than he recalled. The decor of the foyer might have made any one else hesitate but it made him smile. He shut the door behind himself, petted the stuffed lynx—some of its fur clung to his hand—and called her.

The house cast his cry back at him.

But it was a big house and its sole occupant was getting older. Convinced she hadn’t heard him, he dropped his bag at the foot of the stairs and headed for the kitchen. The swing door creaked beneath his touch and admitted him to Lucia’s sun baked, spotless refuge.

She hadn’t cooked.

Disappointment made his steps falter, but he hadn’t come this far just to walk away from a fight.

In fact, he was looking forward to it. The door to the greenhouse was ajar, revealing his grandmother’s location. She would be puttering with some exotic beauty of a plant, talking to it, replanting it. She would be absorbed in her task, characteristically giving it her full attention.

Or at least pretending to do so until he “surprised” her.

It could have been twenty years before. He could have been coming home from school, running through the house with Sean, snagging a snack in the kitchen, bumping into everything and being scolded from his grandmother for some boyish transgression.

But that was before.

There had been no point in shirking her then and there wasn’t any now. He called her again from the threshold of the greenhouse. A trickle of water echoed from a hidden fountain, but no one replied.

She wasn’t going to make this easy.

He should have expected as much.

The air in the greenhouse was oppressively humid, so thick with moisture that it seemed to push against his skin. Some plant filled the air with a noxious odor and he guessed she had found a new oddball for her collection. The sunlight was filtered through leaves of a thousand shades of green, the heat making him want to shed his jacket.

He followed the path, his footsteps crunching on the pea gravel. That plant’s smell grew stronger and made his bile rise. The vines overhead had grown even more lush, their little mouths open and glistening as they waited for flies and spiders. The expectant look of them always made him shiver.

He rounded a corner of shrubbery, more than ready to argue with her choice of specimens, then stopped.

His grandmother lay on the stone pathway, sprawled where she had fallen. Her red garden clog had slipped from her foot, revealing a thick ankle blue with veins. Her face was grayish, her eyes were wide and unseeing, her mouth open in what might have been dismay.

It was blood he smelled,
her
blood.

It ran across the stones and glistened darkly in the sunlight; it stained her dress where a knife had been driven into her throat. The swirl of colored glass around the handle caught the sunlight. The blood was drying on her flesh, her chest did not rise and fall.

It was too late.

He stared at the knife, numbed by the memory of the little shop in Venice where he had found it. He’d known as soon as he’d seen it that it would be perfect for Lucia. A stiletto for a letter opener would suit her style and her sense of humor.

It would be the perfect peace offering.

But it had become something else. And he knew all too well that there were no coincidences. Someone had chosen this weapon with care, someone who didn’t want him reconciled with Lucia.

It was all too obvious who that was. The past rose to choke him. He backed away.

A police siren began to wail. It grew louder with alarming speed. He felt the trap closing around him.

It was happening again.

But not by his choice.

He bolted, as graceless as the gangly kid he once had been. He grabbed his bag from the foyer and lunged into the thin sunlight, leaving the door swinging behind him.

He ran, putting as much distance between himself and trouble as he could. It was only a matter of time but he would claim every minute he could. Sweat ran down his back and he shivered in the cold of the wind, but he ran until he couldn’t hear the siren.

And then he ran further.

When he finally stopped, he stood by the sea, miles from the house. His chest hurt, his feet were sore, his face was wet with tears he hadn’t known he’d shed. He dropped to a crouch and pressed his shaking fingers to his temples, listening to the thunder of his heart. He closed his eyes and saw Lucia again.

He rubbed his face with his hands, feeling more alone than he had even since he left this place.

He was sure he’d been seen, sure he couldn’t just catch a plane back to the coast and escape as he had the last time. Oddly enough, he didn’t want to flee.

He took a deep breath of the wind and savored the icy stab of it. Lucia deserved better than another lie. He’d come too late to tell her the truth or, more accurately, that opportunity had been stolen from him.

He owed her better than another lie. The unfortunate fact was that the past would ensure that no one believed him now. Someone was counting on that.

There was one other person who knew the truth. One other person might believe him.

He wondered what had become of her. He stood and watched the windows of the skyscrapers light up against the dusk like stars in the twilight. He wondered whether she would believe him—she would only have his word this time.

He wondered whether she would help him. She had had her own reasons for helping before, and he wondered what had ever come of those. He hadn’t asked, maybe he hadn’t wanted to know.

Maybe he didn’t have a choice any more.

He hefted his bag and began walking toward the city.

* * *

Lucia Sullivan waited a full twenty minutes, twenty minutes that seemed to stretch clear to eternity, before she moved. Nicholas was long gone, his footsteps faded to silence, but she didn’t trust him to not return and check.

The boy had always been too conscientious.

Meanwhile, she congratulated herself not only on a job well done, but the splendid good timing of that police siren. It warbled into the distance now, a happy coincidence that had served her purposes well. Nicholas could have looked too closely, found her pulse, some hint of her breathing, or the line where the stage makeup ended below her chin.

That would have ruined everything. She was good, but a perceptive eye could see through the very best effect. The sun had come out from behind the clouds at the worst possible moment and, as much as she hated to admit it, her skills weren’t quite what they used to be.

Which was the point.

Her lips thinned as she considered Nicholas’ response to the police siren. Fear didn’t suit him, particularly a fear of the law.

But despite a twinge of compassion, Lucia wasn’t going to change her plan. The boy had to learn from his mistake.

For Nicholas—her favored grandson, a child so honest it had pained Lucia to watch his dawning realization that the world would not play on his terms—had
deceived
her. She wasn’t inclined to let that slip, not now that she had the opportunity to twist the knife in the wound.

No pun intended. The use of his gift had been an inspired choice, she thought, though stagecraft demanded that the blade be sawed off. It would never be the same again, but it was a comparatively small price to pay.

Lucia intended to teach him to never make such a mistake again. Tit for tat, as that fool woman Donnelly liked to say. He wouldn’t miss this lesson of what could have been lost by his choices—and if it was harshly granted, well, that was small restitution for the heartache she had endured.

Fifteen years was a long time. She wasn’t getting any younger.

Lucia sat up and grimaced at her body’s reminder of that. She had a splendid set of aches for her troubles and she sat for a moment to catch her breath before getting to her feet. Her heart was running a bit too fast.

She’d never given in to anything without a fight and Death wasn’t going to have an easier time of it.

She wiped some of the raccoon’s blood from her face. There was no substitute for the real thing, all stage concoctions aside. And the smell had been the coup de grace.

Lucia had no qualms about killing a wild creature for the greater good. One less raccoon wouldn’t be noticed, and even if it was, the garbage-rummaging beast wouldn’t be missed.

She snorted, retrieved her garden clog and pushed to her feet. A restorative cigarette was called for, then a hot bath. Maybe she’d even treat herself to a brandy after she put the greenhouse to rights. It would have to be a quick one though.

There wasn’t a moment to waste. Sooner or later, Nicholas would be back.

And the stage for Act Two had yet to be set.

I
was drunk on the night it began.

But then, that’s not really true. It wasn’t so much beginning as continuing, though I didn’t immediately get that part.

As far as whether this whole mess should have ended already, or whether it should even have begun in the first place, well, that’s an entirely different issue. I’m sure my mother has an opinion about it, and I’m equally sure it’s not one that I want to hear. You’re welcome to ask her, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Beginning or continuing, though, there was no doubt that I was pickle-dee-dee. I had the world on a leash—one of those pink rhinestone-studded specials that even poodles find embarrassing—but I had felt that way before Veuve Clicquot and I made our acquaintance. A critical distinction, even if it was a bit blurred in that moment.

You see, getting drunk was a first for me.

Now, don’t be too incredulous. You have to respect your genetic weaknesses, in my opinion, otherwise they’ll ambush when you aren’t looking. I had resolved long ago that I would never join the family galley of lushes.

But this had been a special, special day and my partner Elaine does have her persuasive moments.

It was about eleven on a Tuesday night, not a respectable time to be dancing on air and champagne bubbles, but there it was, and there I was. Fa la la. All the proper brownstones scowled down at me as though they would rat on me in the morning, when all their proper occupants—who were now properly tucked in and properly sober—had risen to properly face another day.

There’s something irresistibly frivolous about pink champagne. It
looks
like a party in a glass—Barbie’s victory drink of choice—and it does the fandango on your tongue in starlight slippers.

Make that sequin-studded fuchsia sling backs.

Which was why Elaine insisted we had to have it. No mere sparkling wine or even those pedestrian golden bubbles would have done for us. No, sir. Only the rosé champagne was good enough to celebrate such a coup—though it was humbling to learn just what a cheap date I was. All those years of guzzling herbal tea had taken their toll—one tall skinny glass of froth and I was completely toasted.

Fortunately Elaine is made of sterner stuff and had no quibbles with polishing off the rest of the bottle. No chance of our treat going flat. She even looked sober after it was gone, which might have been sobering with any other companion. But I’ve known Elaine long enough to understand that she’s not one to waste any of life’s goodies—she even laughs when I call her a regular little martyr to the pleasures of the flesh.

But that’s another story.

We had succeeded where others have failed and lo, it was very good. Lady Luck was smiling down on us and nothing could ever go wrong again. Life was full of opportunity and possibility, success was ours for the taking. All those years were finally paying off.

Have you ever flailed away at a dream? You begin because it seems such a terrific idea that success is inevitable—not to mention all the fame and fortune that will fall into your lap as a bonus-pak—but you learn the error of that thinking in a hurry. It gets tough, the dream loses its luster and eventually, you run on the refusal to admit you’re wrong.

Which doesn’t pay well, in case you aren’t sure. I’ve eaten more mac-and-cheese over the past few years than I’d like to think about and I’m not talking homemade cheese and noodle comfort food like Mom used to make. I mean the kind out of the box.

You can make it with water, you know, and it’s not all bad.

Sometimes it’s startling how far we’ll go to conquer dreams, even further than we might have guessed ourselves. But then, the alternative is even less pretty than mac-and-cheese fusing overnight with the unrinsed pot.

The urge to avoid failure is powerful stuff indeed. Even as you smile that big confident grin and slog onward, in some hidden corner of your heart you wonder how long it will take you to fail, how long it will take your dream to fall so far into the scrap heap that there’s no hope of salvaging it at all.