Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense) (35 page)

“It
must have been horrible for you,” she went on.  “Having to go through all that
'sleuthing' with me?  All those dead ends?  When you knew all along this was
about a painting.”  He didn't deny this.  “Were you going to take it when you
found it?”  He didn’t say anything.  “And then what?” she asked.

Frighteningly,
his only response was a stoic shrug, as he slipped the cord from her wrists. 

For
the first time in her life—as she would later think—she acted suspiciously,
forcefully and angrily, all at once.  She burst out of the chair.  Out of his
reach, before he could stop her.  And she ran.

“Nicole—wait!”
she heard him call after her.  “I'm not gonna hurt you—”

But
she kept running.  Through the house, toward the front door. 

Vaguely,
she heard him on her heels, but she kept on, her heart pounding like a drum in
her ears, her adrenaline driving her with such a force, the pulsing need to
survive, to push out of this insipid bubble of her own design that had helped
to trap her, and to save herself from something truly corrupt.  Once she made
it to the foyer, she lurched on the front door, unbolted it and bounded
forward. 

She
was moving so fast, she wouldn't even know what had happened until later. 

In a
heartbeat, she crashed into the loose railing that Mac was supposed to fix and
she went flying down off the top of the porch and collided with the ground. 
Her head hit one of the heavy flat stones that bordered the walkway.

“Nicole!”
Michael shouted seconds later, dropping down beside her.  

The
desperation and fear in his own voice scared him.  They were almost foreign to
him, but not quite.  There was something familiar here, a kind of deja vu about
this feeling that he didn't care to place. 

Anxiously,
he felt her neck for a pulse.  Nothing. 

His
heart raced in his chest as a fury grew inside him.  If he couldn't save
her—fuck that, he
would
save her.  If he did one thing in his pathetic
life, he would save her. 

He reached
for her arm and then felt a pulse in her wrist.  With a renewed hope, he
scooped her up in his arms and went back into the house. 

Lucius
was still conked out on the kitchen floor.  Michael dug inside his coat pockets
for the keys to Lucius's rental.  Michael had been ringing the bell earlier
when he'd spotted the rental parked across the street.

Now
he took the keys, still balancing Nicole's soft, warm body in his arms.  Her
head was bleeding by her ear, but still, he was not going to contemplate worst-case
scenarios.  He would get her to the hospital.  Maybe he shouldn't have moved
her, but he was frantic to fix this, and too driven by his own will to
patiently wait for help.

Meanwhile,
left behind on the kitchen floor was Craig Lucius.  As well as the little girl
in the blue dress, snug in her frame.

A
long time later, Michael watched Nicole's chest rise and fall, talking to her
as though she were awake.  They were on the fourth floor of
True
Heart
Hospital
, a few miles
outside of town.  Suddenly a nurse came into the room to check the IV.  “Oh...I
was just talking to her,” Michael explained needlessly.  “I thought maybe it
might help...you know, maybe if I kept talking at her, she'd finally be like,
'shut the hell up already.' ”

At
that, the nurse smiled, gave a little laugh.  “Can't hurt,” she said, as she
fluffed Nicole's pillow and straightened her blanket. 

From
the little that Michael had been told, Nicole was sleeping deeply now due in
part to a shot she was given, but she was not truly unconscious.  When she
awoke, she would probably have the worst headache of her life.  And the doctor
would like to keep her in the hospital for a day or so to monitor her head
wound.

Now,
with his chair against the wall, Michael wondered why he was still sitting
here.  He couldn't do anything more, and even if Nicole were awake—what would
he say?  He thought about how she had looked at him today when his association
with Lucius was revealed, and just that wounded, almost disbelieving emotion he
saw in her glassy green eyes.  Michael got the feeling that perhaps Nicole had
never been betrayed on a significant level by anyone she cared about; it did
something uncomfortable to him to know that he had initiated her into that
dark, embittered aspect of life.

Once
the nurse left and the door clicked soundly behind her, Michael continued to
talk. “So where was I?” he said, sitting up a bit in his chair.  One good thing
he remembered about his childhood was the way his father would tell him stories
before bed.  When Christopher Corso had died, Michael's mother, Eliana, had
grabbed the torch right away, trying to tell the same stories, but it was never
quite the same.  Though soon Michael had believed himself to be too old for
stories anyway.

But
maybe it wasn't really a maturity issue, he realized.  Maybe sometimes it was
just a desperate kind of effort—like now. 

“So I
was telling you about this guy,” Michael continued, resting his forearms on his
thighs, as he leaned forward and resumed his story.  “A guy...from my block
when I was growing up.  Just a regular kid, I guess, but the type you see who's
usually alone, kinda pissed off all the time,” he said, with a hint of a laugh
like he had just realized that detail, himself.  “I mean...the guy had friends,
don't misunderstand.  But he was just one of those solitary people, you know?” 

Nicole
lay there, sleeping softly.  Or quietly listening, if that was what one wanted
to believe.  “So this guy was working at a garage.”  Michael shook his head at
the memory.  “His hands were always dirty.  I remember that his mom would take
them in her own sometimes and just look up at him and shake her head.  And I
remember one time she said, 'You're too young to have such dirty hands.'  And
his mom...she had started spending time with a guy named Ben.  And I know you'd
think that her son would hate that, hate his mom getting together with anyone
after his dad had died, but it had been years and years, and this Ben, well, he
was a good guy.  Nice to her...really nice to her...”  Automatically, Michael
suppressed a rise of emotion that came with the memory of Eliana.  He
continued:

“The
kid didn't realize it then, but he was about to get in on something that was
over his head.  But you know, when you're nineteen and poor, you don't think
far enough ahead.  You don't think enough, period,” he reflected simply.

“Ben
tells him about a business opportunity.  To open a car wash and tire shop. 
Doesn't sound too appealing to you, I'm sure, but hey, you've gotta
understand—to a kid that's been working at a garage, cars are comfortable.  And
the thought of running his own place, making real money, well it felt like a
step
some
where.  Something more than the same old regular mechanic
shit.  Stuff, sorry,” he said, correcting his language.

“Before
he'd met Ben, it never occurred to him to try for something big like that, but
the way Ben explained it, Ben would use his business contacts to get the shop
started up, and then the kid would take over and run the place.  Why would Ben
want to help the kid do this? you ask,” Michael said to a sleeping Nicole. 
“Good question.  Well.  It was because he supposedly loved the woman.  Wanted
her to be happy, wanted her son to have something, be successful.  Yeah...Ben
was a real good guy.”  His tone had changed then, bitterness singeing the edges
of his words.

“The
only thing Ben needed from this kid was some good faith money to help start up
the place.  Well, all the kid had was a meager savings account and the gold
jewelry pieces that had belonged to his dad.  Yeah, his dad had some big clunky
gold watches that had been
his
father's, and a few other gawdy,
jeweled-up things.  Hey, they were Italian—don't judge,” Michael threw in
kiddingly. 

Then,
with a resigned conclusion, he nodded.  As if anyone could see where this was
going, even a girl who was sound asleep.  “So he turns this over to Ben, who
promises him that all this will be put down as 'good faith money'—kind of a
security deposit was how Ben explained it.  That they'd need that for the
initial bank loan, but that the kid would get it all back once the shop was up
and running.  He was so young, so stupid...or maybe it was just that he trusted
the guy.

“When
he and his mom didn't see or hear from Ben in a few days, the kid stopped by
Ben's apartment.  Found it vacant.  The door just swung open.  The place was
furnished and decorated the same as it had been.  The only difference was, Ben
wasn't there, and when the kid looked around, he found that all of Ben's
clothes were gone, too.”  With a wondered kind of recollection, Michael shook
his head.  “I couldn't believe it...I mean—
he
couldn't believe it.  Ben
was gone.  The money and the jewelry—gone.  There never were any business
contacts that were going to help them, there was never going to be any bank
loan.  I—he had been a fool.  Oh, by the way, he'd soon discovered after asking
around in the building, that the apartment actually belonged to some consultant
who was away on a four-month assignment in
Chicago
.  To this day, I don't know how
Ben knew him, or if he knew him, or how he managed to use his place to set
himself up.

“The
worst part was having to go home, back to that cramped run-down apartment in
Jersey City
and tell his mom
that Ben was a fraud.” 

He
fell silent.  Didn't say out loud the rest of what was running through his
mind.  It would all sound trite anyway.  That you can't trust people.  That
everyone has a price. 
Watch your back.  Strike first if you can.
  As
he'd already told Nicole during their poker lesson:
Play the players
. 

The
difference between him and Ben was that Ben was swindling decent people. 
Michael, on the other hand, was a card shark, a hustler; the people he'd
scammed were shady hustler-wannabes that he’d met at the tables.  This con with
Lucius was a total departure.  Surely that distinction had to matter...

Who
was he kidding?  It was all a moot point now, with Nicole lying in a hospital
bed.  What right did he have even to try to talk to her after what he had
done?  First he'd broken his mom's heart and now Nicole's.  God, when had he
become such a selfish asshole?

Michael
rubbed his face roughly.  He wanted to evaporate this guilt sitting heavy on
his chest.  Bringing his chair closer to the bed, he reached out and touched
Nicole's bare hand.  Slid it into his.  Images of the little intimate moments
they'd shared streamed through his mind.  They shouldn't mean so much, but
suddenly they did. 

“Nicole,”
he said, his voice soft and low, “are you awake yet?”

Just
then, the door opened.  Michael turned his head, and saw a cop enter the room. 
His gut tightened, but he kept his poker face.  Nodded hello and stood up. 
This
was it
, he thought. 
I'm busted
.  He knew he should have left as
soon as he brought Nicole to the ER, but he'd stayed and now here was the downside
of that choice. 

Nosy
neighbors must have phoned in some disturbance and then the cops had found
Lucius and the paintings, and hell, maybe Lucius had even implicated Michael to
throw the cops off his own scent, and now here they were—

“Mr.
King?”

That
surprised him.  King, not Corso.  Maybe Lucius hadn't talked to them after
all.  Was he still lying unconscious? 

Waiting
to see how this played out, Michael simply nodded. 

The
cop introduced himself and shook his hand.  “I'm hoping you might be able to
help me.  One of Miss Sheffield's neighbors called and reported her fall.  Said
she took a nasty spill over the front banister—and appeared to be running? 
Neighbor wasn't positive, didn't get a perfect look.”  The officer tipped his
head.  “Any idea why she was running?  Or if she was running from someone?” 

Michael
paused, hesitated really; he hadn't been expecting this.  What about the thug
criminal on the kitchen floor?  That would be the first clue. 

“Some
kind of domestic disturbance?” the cop asked.

Now
Michael could see where the guy was going with this.  It stood to reason that
the nosy neighbor watching from the window had interpreted the situation as
Michael chasing after Nicole, especially since he'd come out of the house only
several paces behind her. 

“No,
nothing like that,” Michael assured him.  “She was upset, yes, but not about
me.  I would never hurt her.”  Not physically, he thought with disgust.  “It's
really not my place to say more.  I think you should wait until she wakes up
and let her tell you,” Michael added, knowing that the sentiment would work in
his favor.  After all, a person with something to hide would have used this
opportunity to spin the story. 

After
a beat, the cop nodded.  “Okay, I'll do that.  We took a look around the place,
just in case.  Because the back and front doors were unlocked.  We found the
dog sleeping on the back porch.  She woke up and seemed a little groggy.  We
didn't want to leave her alone, so we left her with a next door neighbor to
watch.  Ginger Bloomingdale.  Hope that's okay.”