Tonight I Said Goodbye (St. Martin's Minotaur Mystery) (38 page)

"Let him go," Alexander said. Rakic and Malaknik released me and stepped away slowly. Krashakov had been fighting against Thor's grip but without success. Thor stood calmly, oblivious to the power of the man struggling against him. His handhold on Krashakov's throat cut off the man's air supply, and after a few seconds Krashakov went limp and slid to the ground, unconscious. Thor let him drop.

"Dainius would like to see you, gentlemen," Thor said to Rakic and Malaknik. "We will take your car."

Rakic started to mumble something, but Alexander stepped over to him and struck him repeatedly with the butt of the AK-47, driving him to the ground. Then he took the weapons from both Rakic and Malaknik and ordered them outside. I slid onto the deck and watched as Thor walked down the steps, dragging Krashakov behind him with one arm casually wrapped around the other man's throat. When he reached the drive, he opened the rear door of the Navigator and shoved Krashakov's bloody body inside. He reached inside, withdrew his hunting knife, and carefully used Krashakov's pants to wipe the blood from the blade. Then he stepped over to the cowering Malaknik, who was waiting at the base of the steps, and hit him once in the jaw. Malaknik crumpled as if someone had dropped a Honda on him. Thor picked him up as if he were a small child and tossed him into the car on top of Krashakov. Alexander hit Rakic in the back of the head with the assault rifle and dumped him in beside them, then dug a set of car keys from one of their pockets and closed the doors.

Thor turned to me and fixed his glacier-ice eyes on mine. I was still sitting on the steps of the deck.

"You were looking for them, and they were looking for me," I said.

He nodded once.

"Good timing," I said.

He nodded again, then walked past me and back into the cottage. I followed. He gazed around the living room and pointed at Kinkaid, who was still lying on the floor with his hands over his head. A wet stain had spread across the back of his pants.

"Do you want him?" he said.

"Yes."

"Fine. Understand that you never saw this. You never saw us." I nodded. "I understand."

He looked at Kinkaid. "Make sure he understands it as well."

"He won't be hard to convince."

"No, it does not appear that he will be."

He turned on his heel and walked back out onto the deck and down the steps. Rakic was already inside the Navigator. Thor opened the driver's door but didn't get inside. I thought about asking where they had come from, but that was only going to be answered with a cold, empty smile, so I let it go. They must have left their car at the top of the drive so as not to tip Krashakov off to his followers.

Thor was still standing with the driver's door open. "Dainius sends his thanks for your help in resolving this matter. If someday you should need his help, he hopes you will not hesitate to seek it."

"All right."

He started to get in the car, then leaned back and looked at me again. "Dainius is a good man to find favor with."

I thought of the hunting knife sinking into Krashakov's thigh. "I believe it," I said.

They were gone then. I stood and watched the Navigator pull up the drive and out of sight, and I tried not to wonder where it might be headed. Kinkaid was sitting on the deck now, and he looked ill. I walked up and knelt down beside him. Ten minutes earlier, I'd wanted to beat the shit out of him. Now I didn't think I could lift a fist to anyone if I had to. I felt weary.

"Kinkaid," I said, "those men would have killed you. They still may. You have worked against them, and they are not men to work against."

He was breathing in ragged gasps. I stared at him and thought about Hartwick, about the fat, pale man, and about the gun that had been pressed to my kneecap. I thought about all of it, and I tried to come up with some more rage. I couldn't.

"Go back to Sandusky, Kinkaid."

I stood on the deck and waited until he had started his car with trembling hands and driven away. Then I went to get Julie and Betsy.

I went down to the crawl space and started to pull the panel away, then thought better of it and yelled out my name before I took a bullet in the chest.

They crawled out and into my arms, and they were both crying. I sat on the ground and held them as Betsy buried her face in my chest and Julie wiped at her eyes and tried to compose herself.

"What happened?" she said. "Oh, Lincoln. I was so scared. Where'd they go?"

"They left," I said. "And they won't be back. That's all that matters." I stroked Betsy's soft hair with my hand and then gently tugged her face away from my shirt. "Hey, pal, relax. Everything's fine. You're fine."

We sat there for a while, sharing a hug that meant more than any embrace I could remember, and then Betsy said she was cold, so I picked her up and carried her inside.

"You're taller than my daddy," she said as we went up the steps, and I closed my eyes and didn't respond.

They got what things they had left in the cottage, and I put them in the back of the truck. Then I stopped Julie in the drive.

"Put Betsy in the truck, and then I'd like a moment alone with you."

She stared at me for a few seconds, then nodded and went up the steps. I watched her hips move as she went. Tomorrow. She was going to leave tomorrow.

I walked down to the pond and tossed rocks out onto the ice. They bounced across the surface without breaking the ice near the shore, but when I started lobbing them out into deeper water, they found pockets of broken ice and sank. The effort made the aches Krashakov had left behind flare up anew, but I ignored them.

A few minutes later, Julie walked out and joined me. She stood next to me and watched me throw the rocks. I didn't stop throwing them until she spoke.

"Betsy's in the backseat of your truck," she said. "We're ready whenever you are."

"Okay." I tossed a few more rocks out at the pond.

"I don't want to leave you," Julie said.

I dropped the rock that was in my hand. "I know."

"You can't come with us."

I shook my head. "No. I can't."

She sighed. "But I can't stay here anymore, Lincoln. I can't raise my daughter here."

"No. You can't."

She moved to stand in front of me, then slipped her arms under mine and wrapped them around my back. She stepped in close and pressed her body against me, and I looked down into her beautiful face and beautiful eyes and for a moment I think I forgot to breathe. She squeezed me tightly, then leaned back, still holding me, and looked up at my face and smiled.

"Were you standing this close to your husband when you shot him?" I asked.

Originally it had been one of many possibilities in an unknown situation. Then it had been an idea dismissed as absurd. It had crawled back as a nagging doubt, developed into an always-present question, and then swelled into a strong suspicion. Now, as I looked down into her face, it became the truth.

"No," she said, and her voice was a hoarse whisper. "I wasn't quite this close."

She let go of me and stepped away. At least she hadn't tried to deny it. It shouldn't have meant much to me, but it was something.

"When did you decide that was what happened?" she asked.

"I'd wondered about it for a while. Wayne was a professional, and I had trouble believing he would have let someone get in a position to kill him with his own gun and make it look like suicide. Certainly he wouldn't have let any of the Russians pull it off. And for a while I bought your story about Hubbard, probably because I wanted to. But that one was weak, too, because you told me you had plenty of Hubbard's money to fund your disappearance. And if there's one thing near and dear to Jeremiah Hubbard's heart, it's his money. If he was planning to kill Wayne or have him killed, he wouldn't have paid him off first. Then when I stopped to think about how determined you are to take Betsy and leave the country, it made me even more curious."

"I see."

"I saw another side of you the night in the hot tub, and it didn't make sense," I said. "It wasn't easy for me to put my ego away, but when I did, I began to question whether I was really attractive enough to make a grieving widow shed her clothes in the middle ofa hotel courtyard."

She gave me cold eyes. "You think that was an act? Some attempt to distract you, keep your mind away from Wayne?"

I shrugged.

"Believe what you want," she said. "But that wasn't the case."

"You settled it last night," I said.

"I did? How?"

"When you asked me about Amy. You told me I let my guard down when I was with her and Joe, and that it was the first time you'd seen me do that. I got to thinking about it, and I realized that was probably true. You'd never seen me let my guard down before, and I wondered why not. I wondered why I kept it up when I was with you. That's when I started coming up with the reasons. There was a pretty long list of them, things that you said that didn't quite make sense, and . . ." I sighed and shook my head, then looked back out at the frozen pond.

"And what?" she asked. Her arms were folded across her chest, her eyes focused on the ground.

"And I saw it in your eyes the night we left South Carolina," I said. "When you stopped me in the hotel and asked me if I could kill to protect your daughter. There was something about the way you said it." I shook my head again. "I tried to tell myself you'd asked Wayne the same question and you'd been disappointed, because he'd only died for her. But that wasn't it.
You'd
been willing to kill for her, and you were trying to tell me that without saying it. You were testing me to see if I could match that dedication."

She stepped closer to me and put her hands on my arms. "And you
did
kill to protect her," she said. "Just like I did."

"No," I said, pulling away from her, "I didn't. I'd like to say that I did, because it's a hell of a lot more noble. But truthfully, when that
man swung the gun in my direction, I pulled the trigger to save myself. Neither you nor your daughter passed through my mind, Julie. It was a self-preservation instinct."

She walked away and stood near the shore with her back to me. I followed her down and stood beside her again.

"Tell me how it happened."

She kept staring out at the water. "I hadn't planned on it. You don't have to believe that, but it's the truth. I was so scared, Lincoln. We were running, fleeing our own home in the middle of the night because people were going to try to kill us. Betsy was in the rental car, and I walked back inside with Wayne. He gestured around the living room and told me to take a good look because I was never going to see it again. When he said that, I stopped being scared and started being angry. I was never going to see it again. My own home." She shuddered, recoiling against the memory as if it were a frightening, physical thing.

"Then he put the gun in my hand. He told me he wanted me to take it with us in the car, in case anything happened. I might need it to protect Betsy, he said. That's what my life had come to, Lincoln--a life where my husband gave me a gun to protect my daughter as we fled in the night. Why? Because the bastard was so damn greedy. And he'd never even told me, Lincoln. He'd never told me what he did. We lived our happy, ignorant life, and he put us in danger. He put my baby in danger."

She looked up at me. "He showed me how to take the safety off, and then he put the gun in my hand. And I put it to his temple and shot him."

For a long time there was nothing but the sound of the wind in the pines and the ice in the pond creaking and groaning as it melted and shifted. The sun was hidden behind the clouds, but the temperature was in the low forties, warm enough to melt the ice. I stared out at it without seeing anything. Minutes passed, and then I turned and walked back to the truck.

Julie followed. "You're going to tell the police, aren't you?"

I stopped and looked at her. "I don't work for the police, Julie. I was hired by your father-in-law to find out what happened to his son. I have done that now. I will go to him, and I will tell him what I have found."

I got in the truck and started the engine. Betsy was in the backseat. She gave me a bright smile.

"Your car is tall," she said. "Mommy had to lift me inside."

"I like them tall," I said. "You wanna drive?" When I asked her, my voice broke, and then I didn't say anything else. Julie climbed into the passenger seat and fastened her seat belt. On the drive back into the city, I did not speak. Not a word. Betsy and Julie talked. I drove.

I brought them to the Marriott. I parked the truck and helped Betsy down out of the cab. She squeezed my neck with her arms as I set her to the pavement, and she told me she would see me in the morning. I told her I'd look forward to it.

"You still owe me an ice cream," she said as she bounced toward the hotel. I leaned against the truck and looked away.

Julie stepped up next to me. We both watched Betsy. "I'll keep her safe and happy," she said. "I will tell her Wayne is dead, but when I tell her we will be far away, and we will be safe. I will see that she is raised well, and raised happily, and not raised in danger or in the shadow of all the publicity."