Final Masquerade (36 page)

"It's only cars out on the main road,” Paige said.

Spirit rose and hopped onto the couch and stared at the closed shade as though trying to see through it. A sharp knock sounded on the front door. The cat hissed and raised her hackles, still staring at the white cloth shade.

Paige got up and peered through the tiny slit between the shade and the window nearest the front door. She hadn't yet turned on the porch light and had to depend on the sparse light from the quarter moon. A tall dark figure stood in silhouette.

"It's just Chuck,” Paige told the cat. Since she'd moved in, Chuck and Darla had taken to bringing her casseroles and tiny desserts, apparently assuming a single person didn't bother to cook. She flicked on the porch light and opened the raised panel door. “Well, I certainly didn't expect to see you—"

Paige didn't finish the sentence, but her mouth remained open as an angry fist pounded into her chest and forced her back against the hallway wall. A startled squeak escaped her lips as the intruder hefted her by the shoulders and slammed her into the wall. She gulped frantically as her feet left the floor and she felt herself suspended in powerful hands.

The pressure eased off her left shoulder. She braced herself for a drop to the floor. “Stefano. How—"

Her question was stifled when he reared his fist back and punched her in the face. She thought she heard, as well as felt, her cheekbone break.

Paige kicked desperately with her feet and thrashed at him with her fists until she was finally released. She fell to the hardwood floor in a heap, arms wrapped protectively around her aching head. The hands grabbed the back of her shirt and lifted her again, this time propping her against the wall. She leaned there, sobbing hysterically.

"Stef—” she began as his fist prepared for another assault. She could feel her face already beginning to swell. “What—"

But the look he turned on her said he was a man on a mission, and no amount of reasoning was going to stop him.

He slammed his hands against her ears. She screamed again as he held on and smashed her head back against the wall, once, twice. Before he could wind up and deliver the third slam, she groped for something to use as a weapon. Feeling something solid, her fingers clenched around it. She swung, hitting Stefano's head broadside with the brass lamp Chuck and Darla had given her as a housewarming gift.

The lamp's base made solid contact with his temple. She heard the squish of metal cleaving flesh and felt the warmth of his blood as it spurted onto her face. She hauled back and pounded the lamp into his face, recalling something she'd once heard about breaking the nose upward into the nasal cavity. This time there was a satisfying crunch as the bridge of his nose shattered.

He toppled to the floor, releasing his grip on her shoulders as he fell. She stumbled also, nearly landing on top of his inert form. Paige staggered into the living room, gripping her wounded face, and stooped over, trying desperately to catch her breath.

Outside of her ragged breathing, the place was deadly still. Paige realized she was still holding the lamp. Keeping an eye on the hallway door, she set the lamp carefully on the table, as though the mangled item might somehow still be useful, then lifted the receiver of her cordless phone and dialed a nine and a one. Before she could punch the third number one, she was dropped to the floor by a blow from behind.

"My coin. I want it. NOW,” Stefano spoke for the first time. His voice rasped and bubbled as a bloody froth oozed out and down the front of his white silk button-down shirt.

She could barely move her jaw to say, “In th-the bedroom."

He hoisted her into the air again and heaved her back down. “What? I couldn't understand you."

She gaped up at the nearly unrecognizable face, with the swollen wad that was his nose bent to one side and the lump that was growing on his temple. Blood poured from all his wounds.

Repulsed, she wanted to—but didn't dare—close her eyes. Stefano swiped blood from his face with the back of his hand, then used the same backhand on her broken cheek. She screamed in agony.

"I
want
my coin."

She raised a hand as a stop signal. “I'll g-get it."

"Damn straight.” He backed two steps to allow her to rise. “No more tricks, or else."

"Or else? Do you think I'm s-stupid? I know you're going to...” sniff, “...kill me after I give it to you."

Stefano's once handsome features oozed into a horrific sneer. “I could kill you first, but I'm in no mood to tear the place apart looking for it."

Paige staggered to her feet and crossed the hallway into her bedroom. She pointed to the oak-framed artifact and leaned on the nearby wall for support.

With a grunt of satisfaction, Stefano lowered the frame from the tiny nail in the wall. In one movement, he smashed it on the corner of the dresser. Paige flinched at the sound of the breaking glass. Stefano picked the coin from the frame and eyed it almost lovingly in the dim light.

She mentally searched for another weapon knowing now that he had the item he'd come for, he had just one other duty to perform—her murder.

Keeping one eye on her, he flipped open his wallet and tucked the coin deep in its recesses. “Thank you,” he sneered, returning the wallet to the back pocket of his slacks.

His expression said it was now her turn. He took a step toward her. Just one, because that was how a panther tormented its prey. One stealthy step at a time.

Anger seeped from each of Stefano's pores. Back in California, this same anger had sent her cowering into a corner. She now realized this was what he wanted in a woman. To dominate. To control. When she'd run, he realized his domination had ended. Perhaps he'd known the previous night, when she'd hidden in her room.

Well, running and hiding were not her traits any more. She'd suffered and endured and almost been killed. Fighting was what got her through it all. Fight was what she'd do now and die if she had to. Fight not just for what he'd done to her cheek, not just because of what his henchmen had done to Habib, not just because of what he'd done to Luther, but because of how she'd let everyone stifle her whole life.

Paige dove toward her bedside table, grabbing the lead crystal cat that had been another housewarming gift. She raised it over her head. Stefano lunged at her, knocking her off her feet, banging his face on the corner of the table, and falling to the floor.

He shrieked in a high pitch she would have expected from a woman. Twice, she pounded the heavy knickknack into his ear, making mush of it, getting bathed in his blood. Enraged, he grabbed at her ankles. She hit him again and wrestled her foot away, kicking over and over.

He held an arm over his face and stumbled to his feet, a gun now gripped in his left hand. Paige backed away until she felt the coolness of the window on her left arm.

He chuckled, raised the weapon, and aimed. There was nowhere left to go. She closed her eyes feeling the ache of defeat.

The sound of the gunshot filled the room.

In an ephemeral flash of memory, Paige recalled the sound of the shot in Stefano's den last summer. In her mind, she saw herself fall in a heap atop Luther. Heard again, the jingling of coins in his pocket.

She didn't know how long she had her eyes closed. Maybe it was just a moment, maybe a lifetime, but when she opened them, she was still on her feet, still cowered in the corner, the window glass still warming against her right arm. Her right hand still clutched the crystal cat.

Not three feet away, in a growing pool of red on her newly polyurethaned floor, lay Stefano Santangelo. A figure dressed in black leather knelt beside him.

Paige shrank back against the wall and screamed the same high-pitched scream that Stefano had recently uttered. She raised the crystal cat over her head and tensed for an assault on two men. She'd only have one chance and intended to make the best of it.

"Shh,” came the stranger's voice.

She screamed again. It was a quiet, rarely traveled road, but maybe some lonely soul was out for a walk.

The leather-clad figure rose and came toward her, hand out. She screamed out “Help!” and jabbed the cat at his gut, making contact that was so insufficient he didn't even react except to say, “Quiet."

She hauled back and launched the cat at him. He ducked athletically. The missile thudded off the wall just above the mirror and gouged the brand new paint.

He stepped toward her, arms outstretched. He grabbed her biceps and clamped his fingers into her flesh. “Will you stop it?"

"Oh my God,” was all she said before fainting dead away.

Paige came to seated on her paisley print sofa against a blue overstuffed pillow. A steaming mug of cocoa sat on the coffee table. She blinked several times. Flashing light through the front shades lit the room in alternating electric blue and yellow. Heavy footsteps clomped at the rear of the house, in her bedroom.

Memory returned with the vengeance of a flash flood. Stefano. Gunfire. Blood.

She raised a hand that felt heavy as lead and felt all over herself: stomach, thighs, face. She looked at the hand that curiously contained no blood. Three nails were broken, so the recollection of a brutal fight
might
be true. Nothing hurt, but the sound of the gunfire still rang in her ears.

Two uniformed policemen backed out of her bedroom. They were speaking in serious tones to a black-clad figure. Why wasn't he in handcuffs? She blinked again. No, he wasn't in cuffs because he was using one hand to gesture back into the bedroom.

Then she remembered, he hadn't tried to kill her, he'd saved her by shooting Stefano.

Her thoughts were distracted by the white uniformed man pulling a stretcher from the room. On it was a lump in the shape of a human—Stefano, it had to be. His entire body was covered. He had to be dead. Blood stained the sheet about where his chest and head would be. She shivered but couldn't turn away. The image of him rising off the gurney and lunging at her was too real.

The black-clad man turned and came toward her, followed by the officers.

There was no doubt it was love. It flowed like molten lava through every fiber. She leaped into Chris’ arms and knew at that second she'd never leave his safe embrace again.

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Stefano's body was sent back to California; the bill was paid by the new head of the “family", Burton David Palmer. After the bloody mess had been cleaned by a professional crew, Paige invited Alf and Eva for dinner and made Chris repeat the story of how he'd located her “in the boonies of nowhere” as he loved to say.

"It was real hard because I didn't know her name or very much about her."

This was said with a tender glance at Paige that made Eva blush. If, during the telling, Paige and Chris were close enough to each other, it would also accompany a kiss.

"I knew she wouldn't head west or south because of Stefano, and probably not east because that's where I said I was headed."

Paige raised her eyebrows at him.

"That eliminated a bunch of places you might go. Anyway, I quit my job and scoured every town—at least it seemed like every town—to the north and northeast of where she'd dumped me. In Kansas City I found out she'd become interested in quilting. In Minneapolis I located another quilt place where a woman answering her description had recently joined. In Minneapolis I also discovered she'd taken up with old books,” he paused then added, “That was a real surprise, I never took you to be a book person."

Paige smiled slyly and reminded him, “That's how a person is supposed to get lost, by changing everything about themselves.” She didn't add that a person couldn't change much more than she had.

Chris sipped his beer and continued with the story, “I lost her trail for a while, but one night I was sitting in a bar, reading a Montpelier, Vermont, newspaper—I hardly ever look at advertising, but for some reason I read an ad for a quilt show. I felt silly as hell walking into that building.” He let a bored tone seep into his words. “I spent hours slogging through the crowd, up and down the aisles, past acres and acres of quilts. Just as I was about to give up and go back to Texas, I saw a sign tacked to one of the quilts. It said,
My Canadian Memories
, seamstress and designer—Anonymous. The quilt had a bright yellow border and roses sewn across it, rows of roses in hundreds of different colors, extending from the center, in the shape of a wagon wheel, just like that rose garden she used to visit back in Kansas City."

"He saw my picture on the front page of the newspaper after Burt reported his car stolen.” Paige recalled how that photo had been taken at the Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden and how angry and violated she'd felt.

"There was a woman with a thick French-Canadian accent at the exhibit—"

"Colette,” Paige interrupted to say.

Eva nodded.

Chris grinned. “I asked her who made that quilt. She pointed at the tag and said, ‘What's eet say? Anoneemous. So, eet is anoneemous.’ The more I pressed, the more sullen and unsociable she got. I hung around for
three
more hours and followed her home—to Brandon, Vermont."

"Can't believe she didn't spot you,” Alf said. “She's very observant."

"It was really late and I looked for a place to stay. I found this place called The Inn on Park Street. Over breakfast I heard you"—he nodded at Eva and Alf—"talking about a little cat named Spirit, whom I'd learned about from a reluctant book dealer in Minneapolis."

"Max."

"I got the idea you were very close to Paige and Spirit, and that you knew where she was. I had to follow you around for more than a week—I wasn't taking any chances asking any more questions—before Eva led me here."

Eva laughed. “You could've asked anywhere in town, everyone knew where she was."

Chris leaned back in the dining room chair, pushed his empty plate away and brushed his hands together with a job-well-done gesture. Paige finished her wine and poured more all around. Chris had suffered a long and arduous trip, for which she'd be eternally grateful.