Impulse (44 page)

She opened her eyes suddenly and stared up at his chin. He needed to shave. “Hi,” she said, and was surprised at the hoarse quality of her voice.

“Hi, yourself,” Marcus said, and looked down at her. His relief was palpable.

“I’m okay, Marcus, really. Tell me.”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Might as well.” She paused a moment, then said, “We’re in a plane?”

He nodded, then told her what had happened, concisely, quietly. “We’ve probably got another eight hours or so until we get to Miami. I suppose we’ll refuel there, but who knows? Maybe we’ll just go directly to St. John’s. You sure you feel all right?”

In that moment she knew she had a problem. She wanted to shake her head because she was so embarrassed, so humiliated. She saw the woman who’d faked being a nurse and she was just sitting there, looking toward them, her face impassive, ugly, and cold. “I’m bleeding.”

Marcus automatically lifted the covers and looked down. He winced at the sight of the bright red blood smeared on the white sheet, soaked through her hospital nightgown.

“Is it normal bleeding or do you feel it rushing, like a hemorrhage?”

“Normal, I think.”

“Okay. Do you want me to help you to the bathroom? How weak do you feel?”

“I’m okay. I’d like to bathe and dress too.”

Marcus rose and leaned down to lift her up.

The woman straightened suddenly, raised her .38, and aimed it directly at Rafaella.

“I can’t miss from this distance, Mr. O’Sullivan. What are you planning to do with her?”

“She needs to use the bathroom.”

The woman looked at Rafaella’s face a moment, then said, “Her suitcase is in the bedroom. I’ll watch her while you get it and put it in the bathroom. Put her on the floor.” Marcus moved quickly. When he returned, he pulled Rafaella to her feet. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

The woman said, “She’s bleeding on the white carpet. Get her to the bathroom.” And when they walked past her, she added, “It would serve her right to bleed to death, stupid girl.”

Marcus just stared at her.

The bathroom was a marvel. It was equipped with a shower, a bidet, a toilet, and a pink marble basin, and there was adequate space, with hooks to hang things on. And a rod that warmed the towels. Marcus left her at the door, his brows drawn together, not moving until the woman ordered him back. He still didn’t move until he heard the sound of the shower.

He was getting worried. Fifteen minutes had passed. The shower had stopped eight minutes ago, not that he was looking at his watch every second. He sat on the floor, his back to the bulkhead, his knees bent and his arms wrapped around them. What to do? The first thing, he supposed, was to hear what Rafaella had to say.

When she came out of the bathroom, he stared at her, then broke into a wide smile. It was
his
Rafaella, healthy-looking and standing tall, her hair nearly dry and pulled back from her face and held with clips. She was wearing lipstick and dangly earrings, dark blue wool slacks, a blouse with a white sweater over it, and running shoes. “You look great,” he said, and patted the spot beside him. “Don’t tell me this outfit put you out eight hundred dollars.”

“This is some of my old working-woman stuff, actually
part of my bright-young-graduate-student persona. With a pencil tucked behind my ear, it’s perfect.”

The woman said nothing, just pointed the pistol at them. The men were quiet too. They just watched, drinks in their hands, not guns. Rafaella fell quiet.

When Marcus asked for lunch, it was provided quickly by one of the men. “Drink all the orange juice,” he told Rafaella. “I remember reading someplace it was good for anything that ailed you.”

They ate the ham-and-cheese sandwiches. The low hum of the jets drowned out the noise from their three captors. They could have been alone, but they weren’t, of course. Marcus held her hand, his eyes searching her face for fatigue, for pain, but he saw none. He said, “Did I tell you that I haven’t had a single nightmare since you took over things?”

“What do you mean, took over things?”

“Well, since you took over me, inside and out.”

“I like the sound of that, kind of like I’m the boss. What nightmare?”

He told her about his father, Chomper O’Sullivan, a pallid man with fanatic eyes, whose only weapon was a powerful pen, a father who couldn’t toss a football but could quote famous remarks from all different sorts of professional athletes. And how all he wanted all his life was justice and fairness and how he’d been murdered when Marcus had been eleven and his murderer was probably Carlo Carlucci but he’d been too powerful, too protected, to be brought to justice.

“He was killed in front of me and my mom, shot three times.” And he told her how the dream had started then, and sharpened, adding exquisite terror over the years. And it had stayed with him until now. He smiled at her and said, “Anyway, Rafe, for what it’s worth, that nightmare is dead and buried.”

“You’ve got a mom?”

He grinned and told her about Molly. “One tough broad, my mom, and the biggest heart, almost as big
as her biceps, big mouth, all full of advice.” He gave her more orange juice and another sandwich and watched her eyes begin to close. What she had to tell him about her stepfather and
Bathsheba
could wait. They had plenty of time. They weren’t going anywhere for the moment. He wanted her strong again.

While she slept, Marcus did too. He wanted both of them to be as close to the top of their form as possible. He awoke to night, and the woman said to him, “You were stupid, Mr. O’Sullivan.”

So she’d gotten bored with her two stooges and herself and she wanted to talk. How long had she been savoring that line?

“Could be,” he said mildly. “Being the brain of the western world ain’t all that easy.”

“You shouldn’t have screwed Mr. Giovanni.”

“That’s interesting. I don’t suppose you’d know why he thinks I screwed him?”

She shook her head, but he could tell that she was angry because she hadn’t been told what he’d done. She was a hired gun, nothing more. He wondered if she was free-lance. Whatever, she’d accomplished her assignment.

Dominick had moved with incredible speed. It was impressive, but Marcus didn’t like being on the other end of all that impressiveness. He wondered who owned the jet. It wasn’t Dominick’s. Then he remembered Mario Calpas. He owned a jet, probably this one.

“Obviously it’s got something to do with her.” The .38 waved in Rafaella’s direction. “He was very clear that he didn’t want her killed. I guess he wants to do it. Was she his mistress first?”

“Nope, she’s his biographer.”

The woman snorted, a very unattractive sound. She wasn’t a pleasant sort. It was after midnight. Marcus wished she’d just go to sleep.

So she’d had orders not to kill Rafaella. But Marcus
knew that if it had come down to it, the woman would have killed Rafaella without a blink, both of them in fact, and any other person who got in her way.

“She’s a very good writer,” he said.

“Bull. She wouldn’t be lying there bleeding if she’d been writing.”

“She’s multitalented.”

The woman snorted again.

“I don’t suppose you had a sister who lived in Mannheim, named Tulp?”

“No.”

“Oh, well, you look a bit like her.”

She didn’t tell him her name, which was just fine with Marcus. No, she held her tongue and turned to stare into the dark night from the window at her elbow.

When Rafaella woke, she had to go to the bathroom.

“You swear you’re okay?”

“Yes,” she said, and he believed her. He helped her up, aware that the woman was watching every move. Didn’t she ever sleep? He waited outside the bathroom door.

He fetched them more food. When Rafaella came out of the washroom, he knew her well enough to realize that she was ready for business, any business. She’d nearly gotten it together again.

Rafaella drank down more orange juice. When she finished, she felt almost ready to take on the woman, who still sat there, holding the pistol at the ready, watching them. It was scary, that soulless stare of hers.

Rafaella looked at Marcus, then leaned toward him, her nose practically touching his, and whispered, “Dominick Giovanni is my father.”

As a bombshell, it won highest marks. She’d never before seen him utterly speechless; in fact, she’d begun to believe that her suave, smooth-talking Marcus
couldn’t be caught off-guard, but she’d gotten him this time.

“My God,” he said finally, and a black eyebrow shot up toward his hairline. “You’ve got to be making that up.”

“My mother is married to Charles Winston Rutledge, just in case your brain hadn’t leapt to make the connection.”

“My God,” he said again.

“Dominick doesn’t even remember her. Her name is mine—Holland—but when he met her, Dominick knew her only as Margaret Pennington. She was—and still is—very rich, you see. Her aunt and uncle insisted that she use their name, to keep away men who wanted heiresses.”

“Your eyes—damnation, your eyes. I thought they were familiar. They’re the same color as Dominick’s.”

“I hope that’s all I inherited from my dear father. My mother is lying in a coma because she was hit by Sylvia Carlucci Giovanni—that’s what Charles was told. I can’t buy it myself—the coincidence goes too far.”

Marcus stared at her. “And here I thought my secrets would blow you out of the water. I’m not in your league.”

“Just keep listening. It’s hard even for me to believe it all. My mother wrote journals. I didn’t know about them until after she’d been struck by Sylvia or whoever. Then I found them and read them all. That red book you saw beside me that first night on the beach? Well, that was one of her journals. It’s so sad, Marcus, so sad. Anyway, Charles found out about the journals and read them too, nearly a year ago. I guess he decided to murder Dominick, get him out of her life once and for all. The painting
Bathsheba
—I suppose he saw a sort of irony in it, the king, himself, dispatching the man who had an incredible hold on the woman he, Charles the King, loved. That explanation
would probably make a shrink cringe, but it’s the best I can do.

“I just happened to see the painting a very long time ago, by accident. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but it made an impression that finally came back to me. And that was when I made the connection. I couldn’t tell you then, Marcus. He’s my stepfather and—”

“I understand. Forget it. This is crazy, utterly crazy, but I still love you, and we’ll get out of this somehow.” Marcus took a deep breath. “Dominick will kill your stepfather.”

“We must stop him.”

“I hate to remind you, Ms. Holland, but you and I are also prisoners and our future isn’t the brightest I would have planned for us. Dominick doubtless thinks you’re in on the assassination attempts, but he doesn’t know why. Which is why he didn’t want you killed.”

“We’ll think of something, Marcus, we’ve got to.”

“Yeah, just not at the moment. I want you to tell me everything, Rafe, don’t leave anything out, not even a semicolon. But first hug me and tell me you can’t live without me.”

But it wasn’t to be. Even as Rafaella put her arms around Marcus’s waist, the woman said suddenly, her voice an odd mixture of envy and anger, “That’s enough. Mr. O’Sullivan, move away from her. It isn’t smart to let you two go on and on, because I can’t hear what you’re saying. If you want to tell her how cute she is, then do it in my hearing.”

Marcus gave her a long look, then moved away. “Go to sleep, sweetheart,” he said. “Dream of solutions while you’re at it.”

“And no nightmares for you, okay?”

Giovanni’s Island
April 2001

The two men stared at each other. Finally Dominick said, “Welcome to my island, Mr. Rutledge. I have heard a lot about you, of course, particularly from your lovely stepdaughter. Do sit down, sir. Do you mind if I ask your age?”

“Fifty-six,” Charles said, staring at the man who’d betrayed Margaret, the man who’d killed his own wife, the man who’d made Charles’s life a mockery. Margaret had never been all his own, and he’d known it deep down even before he’d found and read her journals, known there was someone else, a man who haunted her. This man, Dominick Giovanni, had always lurked there in the shadows of her mind, always locking Charles out. Charles wanted to kill Giovanni with his bare hands.

“I am fifty-seven.”

Somehow that one year made Charles feel a bit better, which was, of course, ridiculous. “Why did you bring me here, Mr. Giovanni? And in such an unorthodox manner?” He looked over at Frank Lacy as he spoke.

“I believe you know quite well the answer to that, Mr. Rutledge. However, if you wish to begin the game in an obtuse fashion, well, in just a little while I’ll accommodate you.” He stared for a few more moments
at Charles Winston Rutledge III and said aloud, “You must, among other things, tell me why you chose the name
Bathsheba.
”

“What are you talking about?”

“Pretending ignorance at this stage is truly unworthy of you, Mr. Rutledge. The game is mine. This final match is mine. I have won. Now, why don’t you accompany Merkel here. He will take care of you.”

Merkel himself was still feeling tremors of shock. The man behind the assassination attempts—this educated easterner, his voice clipped and aggressive. Why? It made no sense, none at all.

Why did this man want Mr. Giovanni dead? Because he didn’t like his name? Because Mr. Giovanni had stolen a painting he’d wanted? Merkel said nothing as he directed Mr. Rutledge to a guest room with an adjoining bath. He gave him fresh clothing, not telling him that the clothing belonged to Mr. Giovanni. The clothes would fit, except for the length of the trousers. Mr. Rutledge was the taller of the two.

Merkel left him and returned to the library to report to Mr. Giovanni. He drew to a halt outside the door at the sound of DeLorio’s voice.

“
He’s
behind the assassination attempts? He’s
Bathsheba?
That old man? But why? What did you do to him?”

“That man is my age, DeLorio. He isn’t an old man. His name is Charles Rutledge and he’s a very wealthy American entrepreneur and newspaperman, and I don’t know yet why he wants me dead. We will discover the truth shortly.”