Die for You (16 page)

“Yeah, right.”

“What?”

“Let’s just say I see you more as a lover than a fighter.”

“Nice,” he answered, slightly offended. They were partners after all; supposed to have each other’s back. Did she really think he couldn’t hold his own in a brawl? He stopped short of asking.

“Seriously.”

“Hurt it working out. Punching bag.”

She nodded, looked skeptical, but didn’t say anything else. She had that motherly way about her, always with a tissue in her purse and a nose for bullshit. She always had snacks, too—peanut-butter crackers or granola bars.

“I know it’s not easy,” she said finally, looking out the window and not at him, almost as if she was thinking aloud. He didn’t bother pretending that he didn’t know what she was talking about. They took the rest of the ride in silence.

“Isabel Blue,” he said.

He’d called me this since we first became friends, a few years after he married my mother. The timing of this coincided with my sister leaving for college. When she moved into the city to go to Columbia University, she took a lot of her anger with her. I’d always adored and worshipped my older sister and I grieved her departure from the house, but even I had to admit that the dynamics in our home shifted for the better without her.

Like sand over ice, her absence allowed us to find firmer footing with each other. We were able to welcome my father’s memory home—hanging old photographs, my mother and I talking openly, fondly, about him and the good things we remembered. Linda had hated for anyone to mention him, had sunk into despair on his birthday, Father’s Day. For Linda, sadness had always been best expressed through anger. And her outbursts were frequent and passionate. With therapy and Erik, that had changed in her adult life. But out of loyalty to her—and not a little fear of her temper—I had kept my distance from Fred for the early years of his marriage to our mother.

Fred always weathered the storms of Linda’s unhappiness with patient stoicism, as though he believed on some level that he deserved her anger. Maybe he did. I don’t know. With the fog of her unhappiness dissipated, Fred and I saw each other for the first time over the kitchen table. I was dressed for school, feeling sad, missing my sister. He said, “Isabel Blue.”

I looked at him and he offered me a warm smile. “It’s not so bad, Isabel. She’s just a train ride away.”

I didn’t have words for it then, the sad hollow inside me, the recognition that everything changes, that people die or they just leave you, and that you’re expected to move along in the current of your life as though nothing has happened. It seemed terribly unfair to me at thirteen years old. Why did people even bother with anything if it was all just going to fade away or be wrested from you?

“My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.” Fred was fond of haiku.

What a weirdo with his stupid sayings and those long, slow walks. How could she have married him?
My sister’s nasty comments lingered in my head. But that morning I suddenly saw someone different. Now that she was gone, not always whispering something in my ear, I saw someone kind, much like my father, but someone present, mindful—
not
like my father. Even when my father was smiling, laughing, joking, I could sometimes see it behind his eyes—anxiety, unhappiness—flickering like a firefly in a jar.

“What does that mean?” I asked. I liked the rhythm of the words. I liked the way each word fell to the ground with its particular weight but how the meaning seemed to hover somewhere just above me.

“Think about it.”

I did. I thought about it a lot.

He laid it over the settee in the triple-height grand foyer. The entry was bathed in a sunny wash from the skylights above. The sunlight caught on the million tiny crystals in the chandelier and cast rainbow flecks around us on the floor.

If my mother had been home, there’d be noise—a television, music, the sound of her chatting on the phone. The sound would bounce off the high ceilings, the marble floors, seem to come from everywhere and nowhere. She couldn’t stand a quiet house, or a dark one. There must always be sound and light. Today it seemed to echo with her absence with Fred’s thoughtful, quiet energy.

“What’s happened to you, Isabel?” he asked finally, turning me gently to face him with hands on my shoulders. “Who did this to you?”

“I—” I started, trying to think of a lie. But then I didn’t have the energy. “I don’t exactly know.”

“Let’s sit you down somewhere,” he said, again moving me along with that strong arm. I felt myself rest against him, the weight of it all just too much suddenly. He brought me to the large plush couch in front of the fireplace, which was lit but dwindling to embers. I sank into the soft chenille, the cushions seeming to fold around me like an embrace. I told Fred what happened to me, withholding nothing, from Marcus not coming home two nights ago through my visit to the ATM.

“I need to use the computer, figure out how much he’s taken from me. I need to try to do some research into this other missing Marcus Raine.”

Fred sat on the hassock in front of me. He’d paced and frowned during my surprisingly calm and distanced telling of events, then came to sit there and put a hand on my arm.

“What you need is rest, Isabel.” His tone was gentle but firm. “I’m going to call our lawyer and some people we know in the police department, and they’re going to handle this mess. You are going to take a bath and get into bed.”

“Fred, I can’t do that—” I started to say. But the couch was so soft and the room was so warm. He lifted my feet from the floor and placed them on the hassock where he’d sat a moment before. I sank deeper into the cushions. The room around me started to get blurry and I thought of how that ER doctor had told me I needed to rest or suffer the consequences. I wondered if this sudden fading of will and awareness was what he meant. I felt the weight of a blanket on top of me.

“Don’t worry, Isabel. We’ll figure this all out.”

“I just need to use the computer,” I said, but it didn’t sound like my voice, the words thick in my mouth.

“I’ll bring you the laptop,” he said. “We’re wireless now, after Trevor and Emily complained during their last visit.” I thought he might be humoring me but I suddenly lacked the strength to say so. The gray air darkened and swallowed me.

The sliding doors that led from the parlor to the foyer were closed, but the doors that connected it to the large dining room were open. I heard a soft click, like the sound of a lock turning.

I almost called out Fred’s name but something stopped me. Instead I slipped from the couch and let the blanket that covered me fall to the floor. I walked quietly over plush carpet toward the dining room in time to see three bulky shadows drift across the far wall. I felt a deep thump of dread in my chest, and suddenly the air around me, time itself, seemed thick and toxic with the energy of my own fear.

I scanned the room quickly for anything I might use to defend myself, and my eyes came to rest on the wrought-iron fire poker on the hearth. I grabbed it too quickly, sending the stand and the other tools toppling loudly to the stone. In the aftermath of sound, even the house seemed to hold its breath. There was a deafening stillness where my mind raced through various options, none of them particularly appealing.

This house, this new house built to my mother’s specifications, was familiar but not native. I didn’t know which boards creaked. It didn’t have the hidden passages, old dumbwaiters, and storage cubbies. In this house, I couldn’t hide. I’d have to fight.

Luckily, terror is a shot of adrenaline to the heart. I’ve never been more awake or more alert as I moved carefully toward the dining room. But as I turned the corner, poker raised like a baseball bat, I found the room was empty. I paused at the entryway and listened, wondering for a moment if I was being paranoid, imagined the things I’d heard.

I moved quickly around the circle of rooms, wondering if I’d come upon a serene Fred sitting in his study. He’d be surprised to see me wielding a fire poker. But all the rooms were empty until I came to the foyer.

It took a second for the scene to register. Fred, that kind and good man, who’d cared for us all with patience and respect, lay still and white on the marble floor, an impossible amount of blood pooling from beneath his head. His arms and legs were slightly akimbo, as though he was preparing to make a snow angel. I dropped to my knees beside him, let the poker clatter to rest on the floor.

I didn’t have time to weep or scream. Those bulky shadows rose on the wall in front of me. I wasn’t alone. I spun around to see three men move into the foyer from the study. I realized that they must have been following me around the circle of rooms. I reached for the poker, but one of them kicked it away from me.

In spite of his tremendous size—six foot four at least, and well over 250 pounds—there was something sickly and almost fragile about this man, something unwell around the eyes. He was pale to the point of being gray. He held a ridiculously large gun, which he raised slowly, almost reluctantly, in my direction. I held very still, tried to take in all the details.

The other men, similarly armed, were slighter but just as menacing, shared his same unhealthy pallor. The two smaller men looked like brothers, each with sandy-blond hair and something weak about the set of their jaws. I tried to say something but the horror of my situation had made my mouth dry, filled my throat with gauze. I found myself inching backward, like a crab, on feet and hands. Every instinct in my body made me want to be away from these men.

The large man raised his free hand. “Just stay still,” he said with a smile. “Please don’t move.”

I recognized his voice instantly from the voice mail I’d heard. Ivan. But I was smart enough not to say so. I looked at each pair of eyes, searching for something I could relate to. But there was no fear, no remorse there. None of them even glanced in Fred’s direction, as if they were accustomed to being in the presence of violence and spilled blood.

“Just tell us where he is. And,” Ivan said, shrugging and pointing to the door, “we leave.”

I had completely lost my ability to communicate; this scenario was so far out of my frame of reference, something that I might have imagined and written. But nothing in my life had prepared me for this type of event. I looked over at Fred, then back at Ivan. He gave me an almost friendly smile but there was something terrible about it, something dark.

“He’s not dead,” he said lightly. He pointed to Fred and then to his own square brow. “The head. It bleeds a lot, you know?”

To illustrate, he walked over to Fred and gave him a soft kick in the ribs. I was elated to hear my stepfather groan in pain, see his eyelids flutter. I moved over to him quickly, felt his blood soak through my skirt. I put a hand on his forehead; it was cool and clammy. I looked up at the three men.

“If you’re looking for Marcus,” I said, finally finding my voice, “I have no idea where he is.”

Ivan regarded me carefully, seemed to size me up and consider my words. I became conscious of time passing quickly. My cell phone was in the pocket of my skirt. I wondered if I could press 911 and send without him noticing. Fred needed help fast.

“He betrayed me, stole from me,” Ivan said, angry, almost petulant. “He tried to kill me.”

He lifted his shirt with his free hand to show me a swath of bandages around his chest, too much blood—garish red against the white—seeping through the gauze. I saw sweat emerge on his gray forehead. Was he the one I’d heard screaming? One of his colleagues lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall. The smell filled my sinuses. I shifted my hand into my pocket. But Ivan shook his head at me. I removed it slowly.

“He betrayed me, too,” I said finally. We could have been discussing anything—the crumbling economy, bad weather, gravity, forces out of our control that can change our lives. I felt a sudden wash of rage.

“Look at me!” I yelled suddenly, startling all of them. Both of the smaller men raised their guns. The smoker let his cigarette drop to the floor. I pointed to my own head. “Someone did this to me. A tall woman, a blonde, from Czech like you. She destroyed Marcus’s office, probably my home, too. They took everything from me. If I knew where he was, do you think I’d be
here
?”

Ivan considered me. I noticed a deep scar on his face, that his hands were callused. I was still yelling, trying to make him understand.

“Hush, hush,” he said, as though he was talking to a weeping child. And I realized I
was
weeping, big rivers of tears streaming down my face. I wiped at them with my sleeve. “Don’t yell.”

I saw it then, the way he didn’t like me yelling, was uncomfortable with my tears. He was a bit on the slow side, not quite disabled but someone with a very low IQ. There was something babyish about him, too, and something skittish. A child used to being brutalized, one who’d developed a flinch. Suddenly there was a strangely familiar expression on his face, something around his red-rimmed eyes, the corners of his mouth. I thought of Marcus’s photo album. Had he been in there? Had I seen him before?

“She was tall. Nearly as tall as you, with blond hair and green eyes,” I said more softly. “She knew Marcus,” I continued when he didn’t say anything.

He nodded slowly, a deep frown furrowing his brow, his expression going dark.

“Do you know who I’m talking about?”

He nodded again, but this time to his two friends. He said something in Czech that I didn’t understand. The two men both looked at me for a second and I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. They got what they wanted from me and now they’d have no use for me or Fred. I’d lost my gamble. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, the two smaller men had moved toward the door and were exiting. I heard their footfalls on the landing. They were bold, these men. Coming and going in broad daylight, not hiding themselves or their vehicle. Were they careless or apathetic? Aware that the property was removed from the street, not visible to the neighbors? They must have been watching the apartment, followed me up here from the city. I’d been too oblivious, too naive to notice.

A second later, with my heart a turbine engine in my chest, I heard a car hum to life outside. Ivan raised his gun at me, but this time I didn’t look away. I didn’t want to make it easier for him to kill me; I wanted him to see my eyes.

“Who is he?” I asked. “What’s his name?”

Fred shifted and moaned beside me. Ivan offered that same weird smile again, this time accompanied by a low chuckle.

“Tell me,” I said, holding his gaze. “I need to know. If you’re going to kill me, I want to know my husband’s name before I die.”

Something strange passed between us. Two people who might as well be living on different planets, our experiences and ideas, our intellects were so opposite. In that moment, we were unified by rage and betrayal. He lowered his gun.

“His name is Kristof Ragan.” The smile dropped from his face. “He is my brother.”

He raised a finger to his lips then and made a shushing noise. Then he took that same finger and drew it slowly across his neck, whispering something in Czech that I didn’t understand. On the other hand, I don’t suppose I needed an interpreter.

Then he turned and left, more quickly and gracefully than I would have imagined possible of a man his size. I was already dialing 911 when I heard the car move down the drive.