Jake & Mimi (36 page)

It isn’t moonlight, and it’s coming from straight ahead of me. Jesus. Coming from inside a circle of wine barrels. High-powered
lamps, pointed in and down. Standing in the light is a man. It isn’t Pardo. A man standing at some kind of table, like an
operating table. Looking down at someone. Jesus Christ. A woman is on the table. Tied to the table. Stripped. Wheels and pulleys.

I drop to a knee. He’ll see me if he turns, but I can only kneel here, frozen in the doorway, and stare at the table under
the lights. Stare at the man who has to be Andrew Brice. And the woman — Mimi.
Move, Jake
. I move, low to the ground, to the only cover in the room — the circle of stacked barrels in front of me. I crouch down behind
one, pressing my cheek against the wood.

No sounds
. I stand and look carefully over the double stack. Brice stands at the middle of the table. Mimi’s eyes are shut, her face
turned away into the table. He is touching her. Jesus Christ, she is… spread, her hands and ankles held in some kind of cuffs.
I duck behind the barrels again. Where the hell is Pardo?

My hands are slick with sweat. I check my pants pocket, quietly. Car keys, nothing else. And as I stare down at the dirt floor,
it hits me. Brice would have heard Pardo coming.

Think, Jake
.

Two barrels down from the one I hide behind is a gap in the circle. It’s the only way in. From the gap to the table might
be twenty feet. I stand and look again over the stack. Brice is touching her again. Lower now.

“The key to you is in here, is it?” he says.

“Please,” says Mimi.

Brice reaches to a tray beside the table. He takes from it a shining blade.

•     •     •

I ease the scalpel between lace and hip, and I cut. I reach across her and cut again.

Her hips are bare now, and I am trembling. I stare down at the tiny triangle of lace that covers her. I lay my hand on her
belly, an inch from the top of the lace. She gasps in pain, stretched so tightly that even this small pressure pierces her.
I rub her skin gently. Never could I have imagined such softness. Such warmth. My fingers find the edge of the lace. I can
feel her heat beneath it.

I close my eyes. So this is the dance that so entranced her. The slow, brutal seduction. The final unveiling. And then…

No.

I release the lace and take my hand away. I open my eyes.

I tremble still, but from anger now. Pure, saving anger. I stare at the white lace. All that is left of her purity lies beneath
it, and in her final moments she would lure me into removing it. No.

I look at the tray. The pincers are ready now, their ends glowing red. Ancient, implacable. I reach for them.

“Wait,” she says, a pleading whisper.

The others begged, too. To the last.

She whispers again, so low that I cannot make it out. I step to the head of the rack and lean down to her. I will hear her
final words.

“Touch me,” she says.

•     •     •

I rush low and hard.

Mimi saw me. I stood in the opening and she saw me, and she drew him to her. “Touch me,” she says, and Brice stares down at
her. I need two more seconds. One.

He whirls.

I can’t stop in time. I get my arm up and feel the blade slash through my jacket, my shirt, my skin. I’m off balance, right
in front of him, and he slashes again, a full, hard uppercut. I feel the breeze from the blade as it just misses my jugular,
and I fall hard to a knee, one hand on the ground, the other clutched to my throat. I rasp as if cut and look down at the
floor as if stunned.

My eyes watch his feet. Slowly, awkwardly, they square up to me. He’ll bring the blade straight down now, like an ice pick.
With all of his weight committed.

I pivot, roll, and rise.

He misses and falls to his knees, crying out, somehow keeping hold of the scalpel. He’s welcome to it. I stand by the tray
now, with a full second to lift from it one mother of a black iron claw, its sharp ends glowing with fire. I grip it tightly,
and as Brice comes up with the scalpel in a clumsy, desperate swipe, I stop his elbow with one hand and drive the claw, with
all I have behind it, up into his chest, feeling the crack of bone as the force of the blow lifts him to his feet.

He stands in front of me, gasping for air. He drops the scalpel and presses one of his hands, both of his hands, to the claw,
holding it to him, pressing it into his broken chest as the blood seeps down around it. He staggers forward, past me, past
the table.

“The wheel,” Mimi says. “Jake.”

I look at her, not comprehending, still stunned at the sight of Brice holding the claw in his chest as he moves. “Jake,” Mimi
screams now, and I see where Brice is going, to the tall wooden wheel ten feet past the head of the table, and I see that
the wheel connects to the whole device, that it binds her, that it pulls her apart.

I start toward him, but it’s too late.

Brice has reached the wheel now and leans against it, swaying, one hand on a spoke, the other holding the claw to his crushed,
bleeding chest. He looks back at us, no, at Mimi, tries to speak, but blood spills from his mouth. I close in on him, but
he lets go of the claw and grabs the wheel with both hands.

It won’t turn.

He’s too weak, and as I reach him, he slides down to the floor, clutching at the wood as he falls, landing facedown now at
the base of the wheel with a strangled cry. I step back as he rolls over, his shattered chest heaving, heaving again, and
then still, his hands seeming to cradle the claw into him, his wide eyes staring blindly into mine.

I
t’s just the two of us now.

We’ve left everyone else behind. Pardo in the hospital, overnight for observation. The police in the winery and in the fields
behind it. Brice in the morgue.

We’ve driven almost fifty miles in silence. Since Cementon, when I pulled into a gas station to get her a bottle of water.
She drinks it now, curled up in the passenger seat, her legs tucked beneath her, my blue jacket around her shoulders.

The police tried to insist that she go to the hospital. They would call an ambulance for her. Mimi said no. They told us they
would need to see us again tomorrow. I assured them we would stay local and gave them Pardo’s address. But when we got into
the car, we both knew, without having to say anything, that we would drive home to the city.

We pass the sign for Newburgh. It is almost six in the morning. Mimi looks out the window at the trees along the Thruway.
She holds the Evian bottle in her lap in one hand. Her other hand rests on her neck, rubbing it gently.

The sharp tones of a cell phone break the air. We both start, and now look at each other. The tones come from the black purse
at her feet.

“My fiancé,” she says.

The phone rings three times, four. I watch the road ahead of me. Five, six, seven. The car is quiet again. Rain starts to
fall as we pass the exit for Salisbury, the traffic gathering around us now as we near the city. Ahead of us on the right
is a motel billboard.

“Pull off,” Mimi says softly.

I keep driving. Another ten miles, only the sound of the wipers and the wet road beneath us. Highland Mills. Harriman. Arden.
We’re into Rockland County now. Almost home. Just ahead of us is another motel sign.

“Pull off, Jake.”

I stay in the center lane until we’re almost to the exit, then put on my signal, cross to the exit lane, and leave the Thruway.
I pay the toll, bend around onto the short access road, and turn into the motel parking lot. I pull into a space in front
of the motel office. I turn off the engine.

We sit together in the quiet car in the soft, spreading gray of dawn, both of us looking through the windshield at the motel.
The rain has lessened but still it falls, streaking the windshield, and after a few minutes we can’t see anything outside.
Still we sit, in the warmth and peace of the car, listening to the muted whoosh and rumble of the big rigs on the Thruway
behind us.

Her cell phone rings again. Mimi reaches into her purse and takes it out. It rings a second time, and she opens her door and
throws the phone onto the wet pavement. It bounces, the ringer cuts off, and the phone disappears under a parked car. She
shuts the door, closing out the rain and wind.

Mimi holds her hand out to me. I take my hand off the wheel and close it around hers. She looks into my eyes for the first
time since we left the winery.

“A few more minutes, Jake,” she says. “Then you can drive me home.”

Thanks to my editor, Michael Pietsch; to his assistant, Ryan Harbage; to senior copyeditor Stephen Lamont. Thanks to my agent,
Jillian Manus. Thanks to the reading group: Camille, Cyril, Jacob, Joe, Kay, Lora, Merrill, and Marcy. Thanks to David Gibson.
Special thanks to my mother and father.