Key West (53 page)

Sonnie had never expected to feel pity for Frank, but she pitied him now. “What have they done to you?” she asked him. “I’ll call a doctor.”

“No,” he told her, smiling faintly. “A doctor cannot help. There’s a lot I’d like to share with you, but not tonight, not so soon. Tonight I only need to be with you.”

He had never treated her with either such gentleness or such singular attention. “I will tell you that I was abducted,” he said. “They took me from place to place until I no longer knew where I was. At first they said they intended to hold me for ransom. Then they said I would become more valuable as a hostage they could offer in exchange for some of their own people. I never even knew who they were. But you don’t need to worry about that. Sonnie, I’ve had a long, lonely time to think. I missed you so much. In the middle of all that time, all I could concentrate on was you, on needing to be with you and take care of you. I have prayed that you will allow me a new chance. Allow us to start again, Sonnie. Please.”

Chris descended the stairs so fast he barely touched them. A jumbled call had come for him, jumbled but with enough detail for him to get the message. He had to get to Roy. One of those damned old wooden racks over the bar at the Nail had come loose. Glasses had cascaded down, and Roy had been in the line of fire. He’d been rushed to the emergency room at the hospital on Stock Island.

“Sonnie, where are you?” he yelled, and skidded to a halt in the doorway to the parlor.

“Chris?” Sonnie said. “It’s Frank.”

He needed no introduction to recognize the man—even though he’d never seen him. “Back from the dead,” he said, too bemused to temper his reactions.

“Sonnie?” Frank Giacano said. “Who is this man?”

“A friend,” Sonnie said. “My good friend.” She kept her eyes trained on Chris’s as if he could magically change what was happening—or make it go away.

“I have to leave,” Chris said. “Now. I want you to come with me.”

“Trouble?” Sonnie asked.

He would not discuss anything personal in front of a stranger he hated on sight. “Yes. Let’s go.”

Sonnie stood close enough to her husband for him to grasp her hand. “Don’t leave me,” he said—begged. “I could come with you, if you must go.”

“Frank”—Sonnie looked at him—”wait for me here. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

The man stood up and clutched her arm. “Please, no.” He fought, unsuccessfully, against tears. “I can’t bear to be alone again.” Turning his attention to Chris, he said, “Give me some time with my wife, please. I don’t know you, but if you are her friend, then allow her to comfort me.”

“I can’t—” He’d started to say he couldn’t leave her with him. “Sonnie? I’ve got to go.”

Fear stretched the skin over her facial bones. He felt how she held back questions about whatever was troubling him. “Go,” she said. “I’ll be fine. But get back as soon as you can, okay?”

“Okay.” Still he couldn’t make himself leave. “Sonnie, maybe—”

“Just go.” Her eyes were moistly luminous. “Now. Hurry.”

“Yes. You’re right. I’ll call the second I can.” He couldn’t make himself look at Giacano again. The most important thing to carry with him was that Sonnie didn’t want to be with Frank—she stayed because her husband was pathetic and in obvious need of help.

Chris walked out, and when Sonnie finally drew her gaze from the spot where he’d stood, she looked into Frank’s sad face. “Did you find someone else while I was gone?” he said. “How can I blame you? I can’t. Loneliness and fear are too much for someone as weak as you. But I am with you now, and I will always be with you.” His trembling grip turned to steel on her fingers.

Thirty-fοur

“What in hell’s name is going on around here?” Chris said, walking into the guest house. He glared at Roy. “There’s a hurricane brewing out there. For real this time. If it doesn’t hit us straight on, we’ll still get bounced around good. I get a call from some maniac—don’t ask me who—telling me there’s been an accident and you’ve been carved like the Thanksgiving turkey, so I grab a cab and rush to Stock Island, only to find out they don’t know a thing about any accident at the Rusty Nail. Then I get back here to find Pep tending the bar on a busy night and you two hanging out in
my
pad. What gives?”

Occasionally shaking rain from the hat he held, Roy stood behind Bo at Chris’s computer. He spared Chris a glance, but only that. Bo sat at the keyboard, apparently checking Chris’s E-mail.

“Is anyone going to talk to me before I have to leave again?” Chris said.

Flynn came through the open door, said, “Hi, all,” and went directly to swing a leg over the Harley’s saddle and sit.

“This day started out as a fraud,” Flynn said. “Sunshine to fool us. Just listened to the weather. They reckon we’re going to get the edge of a hurricane by sometime tonight.

They’re not talking about evacuation, but they are suggesting battening things down.”

“Thanks for the weather forecast. I don’t lean on your Mustang; get the hell off my Harley,” Chris said, not caring how juvenile he sounded. “Then go away, all of you. Do something useful, like find something to batten. But first, did something fall on you in the bar, Roy? Did you have to go to the hospital? And did you get someone to call me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Roy said. “You see any sign of me needing to go to the hospital? We came over because Aiden called in and said we should watch for a message from some friend of his. Haven’t seen anything since we got here.”

“Right,” Chris said. “So I fell for a setup. I’m outa here.” And his heart did nasty, suffocating things.

Flynn sounded the Harley’s horn, sending all hands to ears. Then he grinned and said, “Got your attention.”

Fortunately the urge to land a punch on Aiden’s grinning mouth didn’t last long enough for Chris to follow through. “Frank Giacano surfaced again. He’s at Sonnie’s. Looks like he’s wrecked, but I don’t trust him. I’ve got to get back there.”

“Holy hell,” Aiden muttered. “What a shock. You think he’s dangerous to her?”

“No,” Chris said with complete honesty. “I just don’t like her being with him. And I want to know who called me—called me away, folks.”

“Well, it wasn’t Frank Giacano if he was with Sonnie, was it?” Bo pointed out. “You’d better cool it, Christian J., or you could end up looking possessive and overbearing and all the things Sonnie didn’t like in good ol’ Frank.”

“Yeah,” Aiden said. “And the way it is now, I think she loves you. Now, that doesn’t say much for her judgment, it’s true, but who ever understood the way a woman’s mind works? And I think you love her, schmuck.”

Chris rubbed his skinned knuckles. “I do.”

“Glad we’ve got that straight,” Roy said. “What do you know that I don’t know?”

“This has been a wild day.” Chris wiped at rainwater that ran from his hair. “Everything Sonnie talked about happened. The voices, the whole thing. It would take too long to go into it now.” He checked the clip in his gun and pulled his jacket over the weapon again.

Flynn stood up. “Seems tonight’s the night. Showdown time. We’d better get on the road. Cory Bledsoe’s going to be brought back to Key West under guard. Seems the local boys have kindly volunteered to cooperate by staging a little get-together designed to bring on the songbirds.”

“I don’t get it,” Chris said.

“Neither did I until—did I mention I flew up to Miami?—I didn’t get it till I got into the hospital and managed not to get assassinated for being NYPD. All it took was humility on my part. I’d
looove
to work in Miami.” He rolled his eyes. “But we need to get Sonnie out of the way. That means out of her house, because that’s where the action’s expected to take place. Don’t worry; we’ve got time. No need to panic her.”

“Quit yakking,” Chris said. “Flynn, travel with me. That Mustang is a beauteous thing, but it does get noticed. Roy, I think it might b—”

“You know where I’ll be if you need me,” Roy said. The voice was light again, but the eyes were old and scared. “Be careful though.”

Chris looked away and went for the computer. He leaned over Bo’s shoulder. “I’ll just make sure nothing else came in.”

He looked at the list of mail and said, “No. Hey, Flynn, there is something else from your buddy. Subject says it’s for you.”

Wind hammered the metal building and the walls moved. Chris glanced from Roy to Flynn, but neither of them commented.

Flynn left the bike and opened the post. “Annette Roberts’s husband was a magician,” he read aloud. “Got a picture of him from a local newspaper archive. Probably won’t help, but I’ve attached it. Later.”

The downloaded picture opened on the screen. Flynn turned to Chris and Roy and said, “Now, that’s a face I know.”

“Edward Miller,” Chris said, “alias Mitchell Roberts. This has been weird, but it’s getting weirder. Edward was Ena’s husband. Write back to the guy. Thank him, and we’ll get going. One of us had better stick close to Sοnnie. Then it’s time to see what the club contingent is up to. By the way, I ought to mention that they think they might be happier with me dead, so I’ll be keeping my eyes open wide.”

“Shit,” Roy said with feeling. “That means the plans go this way. Aiden, you go to the club. I’ll be watching Chris’s back wherever he chooses to be while he’s watching Sonnie.”

“Who made you chief?” Chris said.

“I did,” Roy told him. “And that’s the way it’s going to be until I’m not needed.”

Sonnie wanted to leave. She wanted to go in search of Chris and never come back. But she couldn’t do anything but remain where she was until he contacted her.

Talking to Frank had already exhausted her, and she wanted to escape the haunted stare from his sunken eyes.

“Sit with me in the kitchen,” he said. He had paced the room for most of the last hour, stopping from time to time to look at her where she sat on the couch. “I will make us coffee. We have a great deal to talk about. We have a future to plan,
cara.
And I have to find a way to grieve for our child without making you suffer again.”

Sonnie made straightening her jumpsuit an excuse for avoiding Frank’s outstretched hand. When she’d told him Jacqueline had died, he sobbed and pointed an accusing finger at her before he begged her forgiveness for his selfishness. She didn’t want to touch him. She got up and went ahead of him into the kitchen.

“I don’t want to freshen your pain, but you said there was a crash and you lost the baby. And you were seriously injured.”

She began making the coffee herself. “The Volvo looked as if it had already been to the wrecking yard. I saw pictures.”

“You lost control. I got an old newspaper clipping and it detailed your injuries.”

“They assume I lost control. I don’t remember anything.” He bemused her. “If you’ve seen a clipping, you know the whole story.” When did he get a clipping, and where? And the clipping would have detailed their baby’s death.

“I wanted to hear about it from you,” Frank said. He stood beside her and lifted her hair away from her scars. “So horrible. I noticed at once, but why dwell on what can’t be changed? You will never look the same. And there were so many bruises and lacerations. The broken jaw. The hip. Your toes. It’s amazing you didn’t die.”

He was the same old Frank, the same man who dwelled on the superficial. “Yes. I have a lot of other scars from lacerations.” She didn’t care how repulsive he found the details. “On my back. And from burns on my hip.”

Frank’s mouth turned down. “I am so sorry. It must be very hard for a woman like you to have so much visible damage.”

“No, Frank. I was never the one concerned about physical appearance. Remember? That was you. How did you escape?”

“They got careless for just long enough. Α crowd of tourists wandered into an area where they didn’t belong. Those men ordered them away, I can tell you. And I wandered away with them. I had been brought to the States, to D.C. for some reason. I had no documents, but I went to someone who could produce enough ID for me to be able to establish that I am who I say I am, and flew down here at once. I’m not kidding myself, though. I’d give it twenty-four hours at the most before the press gets a hint and they descend.”

Rain hit the windows so hard the panes rattled. The sky had turned a deep purple, and wind drew down the palms like loaded slingshots.

Sonnie gave Frank a mug of steaming coffee. “I need to go out, Frank. You’ll be fine here. Did you talk to Romano yet?”

The expression on his face shocked her. Something very near hate made hard brackets for his mouth. He quickly produced a smile. “I wanted to see no one but you, Sonnie. You are the one I have wronged. I had months to think about that and to suffer about that.”

“You look tired,” she told him. “Take a nap while I’m out. Can I get you anything?” She was desperate to go to Chris.

“I’m not tired. And you know I never nap. Don’t leave me.” He patted the chair beside his. “I just want to look at you. I’m sure the baby would have looked just like you.”

Sonnie closed her eyes. “I should have been able to save her.” She began to ache.

“We won’t speak of it again unless you want to,” Frank said. “But I would like us to start another pregnancy,
cara,
and soon.”

Sonnie sat down, but opposite Frank rather than beside him. “You’ll have to give me space.” She couldn’t tell him she wanted no part of him, not now or ever. Just the thought of being intimate with him disgusted her. “I’ll have to think things through.”

He looked down into his coffee and stirred it slowly with a spoon. “It’s the ex-cop, isn’t it? Christian Talon. You two have got together and you don’t want to give him up. He is different for you, exciting. But tattoos,
cara?”
He smirked. “I understand, but you will get over him. These things happen when a person is lonely and grieving.”

“Sonnie? It’s me, Billy,” Billy called from the foyer. Sonnie had been too engrossed to hear a car outside, or someone coming into the house.

“Sonnie, where are you?”

“We’re in the kitchen,” Frank said, grinning, apparently at the prospect of delivering another shock.