MORTAL COILS (11 page)

“How
did you find me, Mr. Welmann?” Audrey Post asked.

“Your
grandchildren.”

Her
eyes became slits and her lips compressed to a single line.

That
struck a nerve. So no one was supposed to know about the kids? Maybe that was
the card to play. “Eliot and Fiona,” he said, “ages fifteen, twins.”

Her
delicate jaw clenched. He was definitely on the right track.

“My
employer respects you. You two should talk.” Welmann reached into his jacket
for his cell phone.

“Put
that down.”

Welmann’s
hand immediately obeyed and dropped the phone. That was a nice trick. Audrey
Post had the juice all right.

“Look.”
He leaned forward. “I’m just a Driver, but if you’re in trouble, I can talk to
them for you.”

She
closed her eyes. “So sincere,” she whispered. “That is sweet. But your employer
and the rest of his family—I need not their favor, tolerance, or permission to
do anything.”

Welmann
didn’t get that. People didn’t come to his boss’s interest unless they merited
favor or punishment. Both of which he knew how to do very well.

“How,
precisely,” she said, “did you discover the children?”

Welmann
was no genius, but the lightbulb finally flicked on in his head. Were the kids
what this game of cat and mouse between all the players was about? Sure, he’d
been sent after the grandmother, but maybe—as impossible as this sounded—his
boss hadn’t known about the two kids.

He
knew the smell of pay dirt, though, and those kids were it.

Welmann
sipped his tea, chamomile in bone china. He was a black-coffee guy, but this
was nice, too. It served as a much needed pause while he studied her and
figured this all out.

Audrey
Post shifted in her seat, her feathers ruffled.

“I
didn’t find out nothing. A guy named Uri Crumble did the legwork.”

One
of her eyebrows arched. “Crumble? Another Driver?”

“I
don’t think so. At least not one who works for my people.”

Her
smooth olive complexion paled and her lips parted in astonishment.

Apparently
Audrey Post had a clue whom Crumble worked for, too. And if they were half as
nasty as he heard they were, he could use that to flip her to his side.

“These
are not guys you want to mess around with. They don’t exactly play by rules.”

She
drew her hands together in a steeple. “Of course . . .” Her gaze drifted far
away, deep in thought.

If
Welmann had any advantage, he had to press it now. Make a connection with her
and get her to trust him—for her own good. Sure, she had power; anyone could
sense that. But no one had enough power to tangle with Crumble’s pals . . . or
for that matter his boss.

“You
and your grandkids are in danger,” he said with genuine concern. “I can help.
The people I work for can help.”

“I
know they can,” she whispered. She blinked rapidly, reached for her teacup, and
sipped. She then stared into the bottom as if she could read the dregs.

The
moment stretched into a vacuum of uncomfortable silence.

“Not
to be rude or anything,” Welmann said, “but time is running out. With Crumble
involved, the sooner we move the better.”

Audrey
Post snapped out of her fugue and looked up.

She
reached for a plate, picked up the eight-inch knife, and sliced the cake.
“Would you like a piece, Mr. Welmann? Cecilia’s cooking usually leaves
something to be desired, but today she’s made an effort.”

Whatever
connection Welmann thought he had made a second ago was gone. “I don’t—”

“Understand?”
A wry smile crept across her features. “This is, undoubtedly, for the best.”

The
danger he had felt before came rushing back. He flexed his ankle and felt the
reassuring weight of his PT-145; he shifted forward, opening a gap between the
chair and his spine so he could quickly draw his Colt Python if necessary.

Audrey
Post inhaled deeply. “As you said, time is a consideration.” She wiped the
frosting off the kitchen knife with a napkin. “Now, you need to go, Mr.
Welmann.”

“If
you don’t let me help you, they’ll find you.”

“‘They’?
Which ‘they,’ Driver?” She pointed the knife’s tip at his heart. “I think
‘they’ have already found me. You would have never come here without reporting
in, would you?”

He
stood, held up his hands in a universal nonthreatening gesture, and took a step
toward the door. “Okay, lady. Take it easy.”

Welmann
saw his reflection in her knife. That was bad luck. He was sweating so much now
his shirt clung to his chest. But what was the worry? There was no way she
could reach across the table. And he had two guns. He had to get a grip and
make as graceful an exit as possible.

“Maybe
like you said,” he whispered. “I should go.”

“You
must do as your nature dictates and serve your master.” She rose from her
chair, still holding the knife. “As I must do as it is in my nature to do:
protect my children.”

He
suddenly smelled death in the room: the corpse-dry paper from all those books,
a formaldehyde scent, and somewhere . . . blood.

Welmann
drew his Colt Python and aimed at her center of mass.

Audrey
Post didn’t blink; she didn’t even look at the gun. She dimpled the cake with
the tip of her blade. “You never said if you wanted cake.”

“What?”
Confused, he lowered his aim a notch. “I thought you wanted me to leave.”

“No.
I said you needed to go.” She looked up, locking stares with him. “As in ‘be
removed.’ ”

Instinct
took over. It had saved his skin a dozen times before.

No
thinking. The meat part of him knew to move before she spoke again, and the
nerves in his arm and hand squeezed.

Welmann
fired three times.

He
blinked at the muzzle flash.

It
took a split second for his vision to clear, and when it did, he saw a blur of
steel arc at his throat.

No
one could move that fast, not unless—

Audrey
Post’s knife slashed through his carotid artery and severed his spine.

7

MORE
BIRTHDAY SURPRISES

Fiona
pushed through the side door of Oakwood Apartments. She paused on the sidewalk
and tugged at her dress—pulling it down and across her torso—trying to
straighten out the pink fabric. It had all bunched tighter during her sprint
down the stairs.

It
was warm already. The late-summer sun blazed low in the sky. Fiona squinted at
it and wished she could have worn shorts and a T-shirt today.

Eliot
banged through the door behind her.

“No
fair,” he panted. “You . . . took off before . . . done tying my shoes.”

“I
won. Get over it.” She frowned. “Who do you think that Mr. Wel-mann was?”

Eliot
shook his head. “Grandmother said a ‘friend of the family.’ But she’s never had
any friends just drop by like that.”

Grandmother,
in fact, had no friends that either of them knew of.

Fiona
walked up Midway Avenue and Eliot fell in at her side. “You think he knew Mom
or Dad?”

“Why
else would we be hustled out so fast?” she said.

Opening
old wounds, Fiona thought. That’s what Cecilia always told them when they
brought up their parents. Thinking about the past when there was nothing to
learn, she said, you might as well be picking at a scab.

But
Fiona wanted to know something—anything—everything about her parents. They were
this gigantic jigsaw puzzle, just waiting to be put together . . . only the
entire box of pieces had been set on a shelf by Grandmother just out of her
reach.

“Does
it matter?” she said. “What would it change if we heard a lousy story from that
Welmann person?”

“Nothing,”
Eliot replied in a faraway voice.

She
touched the slick, too shiny fabric of her birthday dress. It was poofy around
her hips, corset-tight across her chest. She looked ridiculous. She glanced at
Eliot: a collection of seething stripes. At least he’d be in the kitchen where
no one could see him.

Clouds
crossed over the sun and a breeze stirred the leaves in the gutter. Fiona
welcomed the shade. She flipped her hair off her neck, her skin already tacky
with sweat.

Fiona
concentrated, bringing into focus all the things that hadn’t fit in her
metronome-regular life: no homework last night; the Jules Verne book
Grandmother had given violating her own rule; the broken teacup last night . .
.

Cecilia’s
hands always shook but she never dropped anything. At 104 years old, that
blanking out could have been a stroke. Fiona couldn’t imagine life without her
great-grandmother. More accurately, she couldn’t imagine life alone with
Grandmother.

“You
think she’s okay?” Eliot asked.

“Cee?
Yeah. She’s a rock.”

“How’d
you know I meant her?” Eliot asked irritated.

Fiona
shrugged. “Just wondering about that busted teacup.”

“You
saw how Grandmother looked at it?”

How
could you miss it? Grandmother had stared at that cup with an intense laserlike
focus . . . as if she were counting out the individual molecules in the ceramic
shards.

Chill
bumps rose on Fiona’s forearms, and the world seemed to tilt; the clouds
overhead darkened.

“Listen
. . . ,” Eliot whispered.

Fiona
didn’t hear anything, though. It was as if someone had flipped a switch. No
cars, no birds; even the hum of the power lines overhead had ceased.

There
was a thumping, however; Fiona felt this rather than heard it, pulsing in the
pit of her stomach.

Then
tiny tinkling notes plunked over this, a jaunty rhythm just ahead: it echoed
from the alleyway.

Eliot
moved toward it, quickening his pace.

Fiona
hurried to catch up—her disorientation increasing with every step.

She
had the strangest urge to start skipping. As if she were a little girl and this
was some extended game of hopscotch.

Eliot
skidded to a halt at the alley’s entrance.

The
old bum sat there, cross-legged, smiling, playing his violin. About him lay
tiny envelopes with violin strings uncoiling from a few. He had no bow, so he
had the instrument in his lap and one hand slid over the neck; the other
plucked the violin’s new strings with great flourish as if his fingers were
tiny Cossack dancers.

Eliot
stepped closer to get a better look—near enough so the old man could have
reached out and grabbed him.

Fiona
touched Eliot’s shoulder and gently tugged him back. She had wanted to yank him
far from this bum, but she, too, felt like moving nearer, as if the sidewalk
sloped precipitously toward the music, making it easy to move closer, harder to
move away. Only her sisterly instinct to protect her brother held her back at
all.