Blood Trust (14 page)

“Who’ll kill you?” Jack asked. “Who are you so afraid of?”

But the teenager was in a panic, shaking his head back and forth, and Jack suspected he’d gotten everything out of him he could.

“All right.” Jack handed him a pad and pen. “Don’t say another word, just give me the Stem’s address.”

Thatë’s hand shook as he wrote a line on the pad. Jack took the writing implements back, then he asked for the teen’s cell. He took note of the number, then added his own cell number to the other’s phone book. “Now we know how to get in touch with each other.
Mirë?
”

“Mirë.”
Thatë nodded weakly.

The vibration of Jack’s cell had become too insistent for him to ignore any longer. He hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, especially by Dennis Paull, who he was concerned might be calling him to move up tomorrow’s departure time. Jack needed every hour he could get in D.C.

But it wasn’t Paull; it was Alli. Shit, he should have picked up the call right away. Even as he was listening to her desperate message on his voice mail, he was heading out of Dime-Store Slim’s. He heard Naomi’s voice asking a question behind him, but there was no time to answer. He slammed open the door and sprinted out into the rain-slick street.

*   *   *

A
LLI
,
SHIVERING
with the chill rain and the tsunami of adrenaline racing through her, lay in the shelter of the copse of pitch pines, to give Rudy less of a target. There was no use running. He had a gun and she didn’t. The minute she turned tail he would spot her and bring her down. Better to wait here and think of how to avoid being found.

And then, as she heard him rooting around in the fringes of the evergreens, she realized her error. She was thinking like a rat or a mouse—like the prey. She forced herself to forget that Rudy was armed. How would she deal with him? It was up to her, she knew. Even if Jack picked up the voice mail right away, who knew where he was and how fast he could get here? No, she couldn’t—she
shouldn’t!
—count on him. It was up to her to stop Rudy.

The obtrusion of a root caused her to shift her position. Rolling over, she found herself momentarily looking up into the webbed branches of the pitch pines. That’s when the idea came to her. Rudy was drawing ever nearer. Scrambling to her feet, she grabbed hold of the lowest solid-looking branch and swung up. Though their wood was soft, pitch pines were easy climbs, with plenty of long, spreading branches. Carefully, she moved upward until she sat on a thick, nearly horizontal branch perhaps fifteen feet above the carpet of needles. A quick glance above her head convinced her that there was no point in climbing higher.

Staring at the roughly circular area below her, she waited for Rudy. Not the prey now—the hunter.

Soon enough, she heard him picking his way through the underbrush. He certainly was making no effort to be quiet, and when he came into view she realized why. In his left hand he held the .38 she had lost. His own .38 was in his right. He knew she was unarmed; he had no need to be discreet.

She knew she had to time this right; she wouldn’t have a second chance. She bolstered her courage with the belief that her small size would work in her favor. As he came under her perch, she slid off and fell with legs spread. Landing on his shoulder, she clamped her thighs tight around either side of his head.

He staggered with the shock and the unexpected weight, but instinct took over instantaneously. He raised both weapons, firing them blindly. Alli knocked them sideways, then reached down to his face. The best wound is a new wound, she thought, as she attacked his nostril again, inflicting such pain that he roared and tried to use the .38s as cudgels, battering them blindly against her thighs and hips.

But she had got her grip and wasn’t going to let go. His head raised up in order to lessen the pain, but all this did was give her finger easier access. As she plunged it in all the way, his eyes rolled up, his left knee gave out, and he toppled over. He swung out wildly as he fell, the side of the gun barrel in his right hand slamming into her ribs, knocking the breath out of her. She tumbled off him, lost her hold on his nostril, and fell heavily to the ground.

On hands and knees, bleeding profusely from his nose, Rudy crabbed his way after her. He was almost upon her when she grabbed a broken branch. It was old and rotten, but it would have to do. She swung it in a shallow arc into his left knee. Rudy screamed, grabbing for the agonized joint. Alli snatched up the .38 he had let go of and, reversing it, brought the heavy butt down on his temple once, twice, three times.

It was some moments before she realized that Rudy had stopped moving. She stared down at his ugly face. Blood still oozed from his nose, and a thick dribble of it stained one corner of his mouth. Without thinking, she took his own .38 and lay it beside Conlon’s. The two weapons looked incongruous on their bed of rough, brown needles, as if they were now without will, without a reason to exist. She wished they would dissolve into the earth.

Staring into Rudy’s bloated face, she was never more repulsed. His aggression was enough to put her off men forever. She was reminded of a story Emma had told her of Attila the Hun’s death, which, Emma had said, with a grim laugh, had served him right. He had died when a major artery burst in mid-thrust, as he was deflowering one of his beautiful virgins. She wished the same fate for Rudy, a true Vandal in the historical sense, who had delighted in terrorizing her.

Alli found she was weeping. All around her the rain dripped and slithered. She tasted it on her lips, felt it sliding down the back of her neck. Both the rain and her tears tasted of blood. She knew she should move, but she could not. Like the guns, she lay on the bed of needles, without will or volition, resting, heart pounding in her chest, waiting.…

That was how Jack found her.

She looked at him as he knelt down to scoop her up. “My hero,” she whispered. And, then, in a louder voice, “You look like crap.”

Jack laughed, and at that moment cop cars, sirens blaring, started to converge on Henry Holt Carson’s house from both east and west.

T
EN

D
ENNIS
P
AULL
was at Claire’s apartment in Foggy Bottom when he heard about the debacle at Carson’s country residence. The news came via a text message. He stared at it a moment in disbelief, long enough for his daughter to ask what was wrong.

“Nothing,” he said, sliding his PDA back into a breast pocket.

“Business, Dad. Always business.” Her voice was mocking rather than admonitory.

“The government never sleeps.”

She laughed. “No, Dad. It’s
you
who never sleeps.”

She put a delicate-fingered hand over his. They were sitting on a sofa in her living room, companionably, even lovingly, side by side, in a manner he’d never have believed possible up until about a year ago. That’s when he and Claire had reconciled, when he had met his grandson, Aaron, for the first time. For him, it was love at first sight; he was certain Aaron felt the same way. At seven, he’d been in desperate need of a father figure, and Paull had striven to be just that, rather than the indulgent grandfather that might be the norm. Claire’s strong suit wasn’t discipline, something every child required, in his opinion. Clearly, Claire agreed, because she allowed him his head with Aaron. On the other hand, he was careful not to criticize her parenting skills, which were exemplary in all other aspects.

In some respects, he still felt as if he were walking on eggshells around her. He was dismayed that he no longer knew her. When she came back to him, she was, to all practical purposes, a stranger. She didn’t even look the way he remembered her. She had left him when she was still a girl. Seven years later, she had returned a woman. While a certain disconnect should not have come as a surprise to him, it nevertheless did. She was his flesh and blood. He and his wife had raised her, and now it seemed to him as if she were someone else’s daughter. His heart fractured at the thought, though he never for a moment allowed her to see his pain. Besides, the break was essentially his fault. Recognizing that was his first giant step toward reconciliation, both with Claire and inside himself.

“How long will you be gone, Dad?” Claire stirred half-and-half into her coffee. She liked it light, no sugar, but strong, he had learned. When she had left, she hadn’t been drinking coffee at all. So many differences!

He sighed. “I wish I could say.”

“Even if you knew, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?” She smiled to show him there was no need to answer.

He glanced around the room. It astonished him how quickly and easily a woman could make a home cozy, warm, and bright, right down to the photos and little knickknacks and souvenirs. All he required was a laptop, a comfortable lounge chair, and a well-stocked bar. Oh, and his stack of history books—the history of warfare, the fall of the Roman Empire, the history of medicine, of philosophy, of the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, between Christianity and Islam. The depressing fact was that they all came down to one thing: war, killing, death.

“What will you tell Aaron?”

“The truth, so far as I know it.” She took a sip of coffee, then put her cup down. “One thing I’ve learned out of all this pain, Dad, is the importance of the truth. I strive to raise Aaron with that in mind.”

Paull studied his daughter. He didn’t know whether to pity or admire her. Perhaps it was both. That’s how life was, anyway, he thought, always a series of choices, always a series of contradictions, some of which could be untangled, others not. It was learning to distinguish one from the other that proved to be a bitch.

But, he thought now, just the fact that he felt pity toward her was a prime example of how long he had lived in the shadows, because one couldn’t survive there without learning to lie. Where he toiled, lies were a necessity. And very soon—so soon, in fact, it was disorienting—lies became the norm. That was where he was at when he began manipulating the man Claire wanted to marry. The result? She had told him to go fuck himself when she found out, married the man without Paull knowing, and then divorced him. In the meantime, his wife got old and sick, and he just lost interest in everything.

That’s what had happened to him, he reflected, and to so many of his compatriots. The ones who it hadn’t happened to were dead. So, too, his wife, but he had been given a second chance with Claire and with Aaron, and he meant to make the most of it.

He couldn’t take his eyes off Claire. She was so beautiful he had difficulty believing that he’d had a hand in creating her. She didn’t look like either him or Louise. Maybe like one of Louise’s aunts, or possibly a little like his own grandmother, his father’s mother, who was definitely a looker. Despite her looks, she had no one. She’d left her idiot husband and now wanted nothing to do with him. Aaron despised him, so happily there was nothing more to say on the subject.

“Are you seeing anyone new?” he said.

“Oh, Dad…”

“Just asking.”

She considered for a moment, turning her cup around in its saucer. “Okay, there is someone.” She held up a hand. “Before you start the inquisition, I’m putting the subject off-limits. We just started dating and … Well, there’s nothing more to tell.”

“Okay.”

She cocked her head, her deep gray eyes inquisitive. “Really?”

He nodded, smiling. “You’re a grown woman, Claire. You can make your own choices.”

She put a hand over his again. “Thank you, Dad.”

Sad commentary on their past relationship, he thought, that she felt she had to thank him for considering her an individual. He sighed internally. More muddy water under the bridge, one more sin to atone for.

He rose. She looked as if she were about to say, Leaving already? but instead she bit her lip and, rising as well, produced a bittersweet smile and kissed him on the cheek.

“Be safe,” she whispered.

He headed for the door. “Tell Aaron I love him.” He turned back to her. “You, too.”

That bittersweet smile was still in place as he walked out the door.

*   *   *

“W
HAT THE
fuck happened here?”

McKinsey said it, but Naomi felt it. They had arrived at almost the same time as the first state police responders, having done their best to follow Jack’s reckless driving. On their obligatory tour around Henry Holt Carson’s country estate, Naomi was gripped by trepidation. The place was crawling with state police investigators and forensic personnel. A veritable armada of official vehicles, including SWAT armored trucks, filled the driveway, overflowing onto the immaculate lawns. Surely an overreaction, she thought, until she saw the havoc wreaked: the cook and gardener recovering from being knocked out cold by person or persons unknown, one guard’s chest burned to a crisp and a second one with a broken nose, and the third …

“I have a bad feeling about all of this,” she said as she stared down at the corpse of Rudy Laine.

“Join the club.” McKinsey, glancing up, got rainwater in his eye. “Once again in the fucking trees.”