Last Safe Place, The (7 page)

Because the pain that spawned it was real. And poetry was the voice of Gabriella’s soul. She’d been a rising-star poet when she walked away from her blossoming career to put into words the feelings her twin brother could only express musically.

And suddenly, he was
gone.

The way Garrett died and the reason he died had combined to rip Gabriella’s heart right out of her chest.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think or move or …
be
without him. Born three minutes before she was, he had always been there, every second of her life. They had their own language no one else spoke. How could there be life without him? Her husband and son faded into a background world
where their voices were muted, like people shouting in a soundproofed room and what you hear through the closed door is muffled.

In the end, both her marriage and Garrett’s band disintegrated without him. The band fell apart because of the absence of his presence; her marriage fell apart because of the presence of his absence. The rest of her life crumbled while she mourned his death, poured out her anguish and anger the only way she knew how—by tacking words onto it. But her hurt was too ugly for the delicate sensibilities of lyric verse. To release that putridness onto the page required the sturdier genre of fiction.

Gabriella wrote what the girl had asked, handed the napkin back and said “We’d like our check, please.”

“Oh, yinz don’t owe me nothing. Your check’s already been paid.” The girl leaned closer. “The tip, too. A twenty-dollar bill!”

“Already paid?”

“Yes ma’am. That’s how I knew. But soon’s he said your name …
The Bride of the Beast
was the first book I read all the way through since I was—”

“As soon as
who
said my name?” Gabriella felt an empty, hollowness in her chest that made it hard to talk.

“The man who paid for your lunch.” The waitress turned and pointed to a man sitting alone at a table beside the door. He hadn’t been there when Gabriella came into the restaurant. Nobody had been sitting there when Theo left to go to the food court for coffee. She was sure of it. But he was there now. A man dressed in black—shirt, pants, tie and coat. With pale blonde hair, ice blue eyes and the perfect Germanic features of a Nazi SS officer. He faced them, smiling at her with a sneering, crooked smile. There were crutches leaned against the empty chair on the other side of the table and he had a splint of some kind from his left foot halfway up his leg.

Gabriella’s heart began to knock so hard in her chest her vision pulsed; the arteries in her neck thumped like jolts of electricity were firing through them. She got to her feet, though she did not will her body to rise, and walked slowly toward him, her eyes manacled to his, such a brilliant blue she could see the color from all the way across the restaurant.

The closer she got, the colder she felt, as if she were approaching a glacier. She stopped in front of him and expected to see her breath frost in the air.

“Going on a trip, I see,” he said. “The Warwick offers a great location but I consider the accommodations in such an old hotel lackluster at best.
I can get you the presidential suite in any five-star hotel in the city with a single phone call. And about those show tickets. I—”

“Stop …” she whispered. As soon as she saw him, fear had expanded in her chest like an inflatable life raft and now it was so huge she could barely speak. “Stop following me.”

“I’m not following you,” he said pleasantly, his smile as thin as a filleting knife. “I’m not going anywhere.” He glanced down at his injured foot and a murderous look flashed across his features like a puff of wind scattering dry leaves. The leaves settled back into place as he lifted his eyes to lock into hers again. “As you can see, I’m not up to traveling right now. But it was certainly worth the price of two plane tickets to …” He pulled a boarding pass out of his pocket and noted the destination. “… ah yes, Cleveland, to watch my man hand-deliver your little invitation to court. And there’s more where that came from. I—”

“Can’t you …
please
… leave me and my family ...” Her words struck the hard surface of his demeanor—splat, a rotten tomato on a window pane—and slid off it to the floor.

An armed TSA air marshal appeared in the concourse a few feet away and as he walked past them a tiny flame from the furnace of anger in Gabriella’s heart began to warm her. Hard to find a safer place than an airport. You couldn’t slip so much as a pair of fingernail clippers through security and the corridors were patrolled by guys carrying automatic weapons.

“
Leave us alone!”
She heard the words leap out of her mouth before she could grab hold of them. Emboldened by the environment, she went on. “It’s not real, none of it. Can’t you see that? You’re not The Beast of Babylon.
I made him up!
Go away—”

He struck like a pit viper, grabbed her wrist, twisted it and yanked her down toward him with such force she almost toppled into his lap. “You will not speak to me like that when I rule—”

The murderous growl of an angry wolf froze Yesheb like an ice sculpture. He released his hold on Gabriella in surprise and turned slowly to see P.D. poised to pounce, only inches from his face. Teeth bared, canines glistening, the ever-affable golden retriever had been transformed into eightyfive pounds of savage beast that would go for Yesheb’s throat if the man so much as blinked. Gabriella allowed herself a tiny smile. She’d managed to pack a weapon through security after all!

She straightened up, turned and motioned for Ty and Theo.

“You two go on to the gate,” she said, amazed that her voice was level. “I’ll be right there.”

Theo took a step toward Yesheb, his hands balled into fists at his sides.

“I need you to look after Ty. Please, get him away from here.”

Ty’s face was ashen, his eyes huge. He stared at Yesheb with the look of a rabbit caught in the talons of an eagle.

Theo scowled at Yesheb, but nodded and shoved Ty in front of him out toward the crowded concourse. The old man paused as he passed Yesheb, though, leaned close and said quietly, “Some days you the big dog and some days … you the
hydrant.
” Then he limped away.

Alone with Yesheb, Gabriella’s fear returned, rose up in her throat like vomit.

Yesheb spoke without moving, his eyes fastened on the growling, menacing P.D. “I will kill this dog. Give me time and I will devise an appropriately brutal way to dispatch him.” He remained rigid, but moved his eyes up to Gabriella’s face. “I will stomp the old man, crush his brittle bones, leave him to die slowly. And I will kill the boy, your son, rip his heart out of his chest while it is still beating and offer it as a sacrifice to join us together for all eternity.”

The ice in Yesheb’s eyes flowed out of them and into Gabriella’s heart. She reached down a trembling hand and took the handle of P.D.’s harness. He was still growling, the hackles standing up on the back of his neck. The dog had never done anything even remotely like this. Had he merely reacted to a threat to his master? Maybe. Or was it more than that? Could it be that his animal senses responded to the presence of evil?

“Heel, P.D.,” she said, and the dog immediately turned away from Yesheb and moved to a spot beside her right leg. Though no longer growling, P.D. never took his eyes off Yesheb.

“See you in court on June 26,” Yesheb purred. “I’ll pray for rain. And I wouldn’t plan any more little trips if I were you. I’ve convinced the prosecutor—he and several of the circuit judges were dear friends of my father’s—that you didn’t just assault me. You tried to kill me.”

She stepped around Yesheb out into the flow of human traffic in the concourse, didn’t turn when he called out to her.

“When that attempted murder charge is filed against you, my sweet Zara, you’ll be stuck right here until I come for you.”

Y
ESHEB
’
S CALM IS
only skin deep. Below it is a fury as finely tuned as an ice pick, a single, clear high note of rage that he could focus on her back and stab through sinew and tissue and bone right into her heart. He could kill her with his anger alone. He does not need the kind of weapon they look for here with their X-rays and scanners.

He can’t do that, of course. She is his bride, his beloved. He cannot kill her. But he can make her pay. He will extract a high price for all that she has done to him, a high price indeed.

He’d been fantasizing about it in the hospital, lying in bed in agony because he had refused pain killers. He could not allow his senses to be dulled even for a moment. He is accountable. He is being watched.

As he lay sweating on the crisp, white sheets, gritting his teeth to keep from moaning, he had occupied his mind by considering what would be a fit punishment. Many came to mind—all of them involving tools like bolt cutters and tin snips. Disfigurement arouses him in ways beauty never can. Many more would surface, brought to mind by the heartbeat throbbing of his broken bones held in place by temporary splints. Though the fracture had not been displaced—the bones had not moved—his foot was so badly swollen the orthopedist said it would be a week before the splint applied in the emergency room could be replaced by a cast.

“I do a good job?”

Yesheb looks up into the face of the grinning hip-hop process server.

“Splendid.”

“When she saw what it was in her hand she ’bout had a cat.” The young man continues to babble, pumped about sneaking into an airport to deliver a summons. “That old man, his eyes was this big.” He pauses. “Say, he wasn’t that boy’s
daddy
was he? The kid was mixed, but surely …”

Mixed.

That’s what his family had thought Yesheb was. Among other things. When he was born—a blonde, blue-eyed child to Iranian parents—it seemed obvious that his mother had shamed his father by bearing a son who could not possibly have been his. A son about whom there were whispers and
dark rumors even before he was born, a son who engendered terror—even as a tiny baby.

Yesheb’s whole family had been long dead before he understood it all. He learned the truth from an old servant who confessed to eavesdropping on a conversation between Anwar Al Tobbanoft and his wife’s doctor while Yesheb was still in his mother’s womb.

Serena Al Tobbanoft had been carrying twins—two distinct heartbeats. And then there was only one heartbeat. The doctor told his father that one of the twins was dead.

“How did my son die?” his father demanded—certain that his firstborn would be a son and heir.

“One of the twins …
absorbed
the other.”

“Absorbed the other? What does that mean?”

“It means,” the doctor told him quietly, “that one of your unborn sons has
eaten
his brother.”

Though the old servant feared retribution for eavesdropping, and even worse punishment for the awful news he had delivered to Yesheb, he’d been surprised when his master responded with uproarious laughter.

Yesheb’s cell phone rings and he dismisses the hip-hop moron with a wave of his hand.

“Mr. Al Tobbanoft, the surveillance team is in position to pick up the subjects at the baggage claim in JFK.”

“You understand the importance of continuous contact?”

“It’s a crack, four-man team, sir. The subjects will never even know they’re being watched. We’re also tracking them electronically, of course. They couldn’t possibly shake my men.”

“Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

There is a heartbeat pause.

“Yes sir.”

Yesheb hangs up and acid-tasting bile rises in this throat. He has let her slip out of his grasp! He had been injured, hadn’t been thinking clearly. After he’d summoned help and a team to do cleanup at her residence, it had taken a few hours to find her again. She had left the monitoring chips planted in her wallet, the heel of her shoe and her cell phone case behind when she ran. He hadn’t moved fast enough with the summons and the criminal charges and she had slipped through his net. Oh, how he wished
he could simply kidnap her and hold her hostage until it was time. But he couldn’t do that. It must take place precisely as it was foretold. He must go to her alone, unaided, crush her resistance and take her.

Yesheb feels a shiver of doubt run down his spine.

After a millennia of looking for her, he has finally found her. Now the clock that allows him three opportunities to become one with her is ticking. Their joining will grant him unfathomable power; it will usher in the reign of The Beast of Babylon as the sovereign ruler of the abyss. But ancient decrees require precise timing. The first full moon after Good Friday, the day of death, was for preparation. He’d fasted and precisely performed the prescribed rituals and self-flagellation—beat himself with a whip tipped with broken glass and pieces of metal until he was barely conscious. After that, there remained three lunar cycles. He must mate with her during one of them and she had gotten away from him this month! She must
not
escape again!

He rises slowly, in some ways relishing the agony in his foot because it keeps him hyper alert, on a razor’s edge. He picks up his crutches and hobbles on them out into the concourse. He briefly considers going to their gate and waiting there with them until their flight takes off. But there would be plenty of time for intimidation—and payback—later. Revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.

CHAPTER
4

T
HEO HAD TO HAND IT TO
G
ABRIELLA
. S
HE HAD ORCHESTRATED
their disappearing act in New York City like they was characters in a television spy show—not that Theo watched such things, of course. The only time his television was on was so he could watch the news or sports. And that didn’t count as watching television.

Course he didn’t have no television now. Didn’t have nothing. They’d left everything they owned behind. Well, except that rock, Gabriella’s crystal rock. Wasn’t no way she was gonna go anywhere without
that!

Gabriella had launched what she called the Great Escape as soon as they got to New York. They checked into the Warwick Hotel, then went directly to the Bank of New York on East 45th Street where Gabriella had a private conversation in the manager’s office and cleaned out all her accounts, walked out with all the cash she could lay her hands on, a little over $75,000. From there they went to Macy’s, where they purchased a whole new set of clothes each—from the underwear out. Socks, shoes, trousers—the works. Gabriella was certain Yesheb had somebody watching them every minute. But she suspected he might also be keeping tabs on them with some kind of electronic tracking device. In their clothes, their shoes, their luggage, somewhere. So they’d bought new everything, all the way down to their birthday suits. Theo picked himself out a bright red button-up sweater. Gabriella picked him out a fedora to go with it. He hadn’t never worn a hat, told her it made him look like one of the Blues Brothers in blackface, but he knew it was part of the plan.