Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (21 page)

They were very good questions.

I opened my mouth to reply.

And a peculiar thing happened.

Dark, blurry images flashed in my mind like a film strip.

JW. Veronica and Ericka. Nevada.

And one more image, blurrier than the others.

Nevada’s unborn child.

Mine, as well?

So blurry was this final image, I couldn’t tell if the child were a boy or girl.

Siobhan said, “Did you hear me?”

Her voice halted the movies in my head. I glanced at her.

“Say something, Shell. Did you hear me?”

Yes, I had.

She wanted some answers. My mouth was still open.

But no words came.

TWELVE

AFTER AWHILE WE MOVED the silent conversation to the kitchen. I pulled down two glasses from the cabinet over the sink, rinsed them out, and filled both with cubes of ice and tap water. We settled ourselves in chairs on opposite sides of the glass-topped dining table. Siobhan tinkled the ice in her glass and took long swallows of the cold water and drummed her fingers on the table between gulps. I nursed my drink.

“Say something,” I said.

It took her a moment. “So it’s true? You really were some kind of hired killer?”

“I’ll go into some of the background,” I said a beat later. “But the entire dossier is not necessary. And I won’t speculate about how I came to be or what I came to be. Understood?”

Siobhan nodded.

“Most of us are troubled by something or
someone
in our lives,” I said. “Very few of us know how to remove that trouble. The lucky few that do are usually unwilling to take the necessary steps to do so.”

Siobhan blinked and I felt something inside of me shift.

“Those willing to remove their trouble understand the risks,” I went on. “They understand the need for professional help in most instances. If they want their trouble removed correctly, they understand the service will be costly.”

“I understand from Nevada that you are quite wealthy,” Siobhan noted.

I ignored that. “As a professional I was intimately aware of the risks I was taking as well. I developed a well-thought plan of attack, so to speak. Five women in five different cities. Each one had a specific role in my affairs. Any potential client, or enemy for that matter, wishing to get to me personally would have to get beyond those five firewalls.”

“Veronica and Ericka, those were the two women’s names, correct?”

“Yes,” I said, looking away.

“They were two of the five firewalls?”

It wasn’t a question but I nodded and trained my gaze on her once more. “The Network was foolproof,” I said.

“Until it wasn’t,” she offered.

I nodded again. “Until it wasn’t.”

“The women were kidnapped?” she said.

Again, it wasn’t a question.

“Roger Coke was a drug and gun trafficker,” I explained. “Someone wanted him dead, and they wanted me specifically to satisfy that end. In lieu of payment they would spare the lives of the women in my Network.”

“What happened?”

“Five were lost,” I said.

Siobhan frowned. “It was my understanding that Veronica and Ericka were the only…deaths.”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t understand.”

“There are two sides to every coin, Siobhan. Two sides to every story. Two sides to every fight.”

“You’re saying that—”

“Whatever’s happened to Nevada is unconnected to what happened to Veronica and Ericka.”

After another long stretch of silence Siobhan sighed, sat back in her chair, and focused her eyes on me. I held her gaze but didn’t speak.

“So if I correctly understand what you’re implying,” she started, “we don’t need to worry about the men who killed Veronica and Ericka because you—”

“You understand just fine,” I cut in. “Say no more.”

“It’s hard to imagine anyone capable of…” She shook her head. “I see it in you, though. Nevada wasn’t lying about what you do.”

“Used to do,” I corrected her.

“Does it ever leave you?”

I took a moment before admitting it didn’t. Once you had traveled to the dark places where I had gone, the knowledge would always affect you.

She sighed again. “I have so many questions.”

“You know I won’t answer them.”

She smiled. “I imagine not. It’s funny though, I don’t feel threatened around you.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. The commencement of a tension headache sent pinpricks of pain shooting through me. If not for Siobhan’s company I would have laid in the dark with my eyes closed.

“If it’s not a repeat of what happened to those other women,” she said, shattering the barrier of quiet. “And you certainly would know that it isn’t, then we’re avoiding the obvious.”

I didn’t ask. I nodded and said, “Sweet.”

“The elephant in the room.”

“Our disbarred lawyer slash something else,” I said.

It was the “something else” that pained me.

“New Jersey’s one of only a handful of states that doesn’t permit the reinstatement of lawyers that have been disbarred,” she said.

I took a sip of my water. Then said: “So a new line of work would be necessary.”

She ignored the comment. “Ohio, Oregon, Kentucky, Iowa, and Indiana are five others with a similar approach.”

“In Kentucky you could train horses,” I said. “Grow corn or soybeans in Iowa. But in a corrupt state like Jersey…”

“Most of the states allow reinstatement after something like five years.”

I reached across the table and touched Siobhan’s wrist. The gesture seemed to capture her attention. She stopped talking long enough to actually listen to me. “We might have to make peace with the fact that Nevada and Sweet weren’t involved in anything good, Siobhan. And to answer your question from earlier…I won’t make her suffer for it, no matter what I discover.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate you telling me this.”

I nodded. “It needed stating.”

She took a deep breath. “I checked the Office of Attorney Ethics’ Discipline Report,” she told me. “Hoping I could find out what Sweet was disbarred for.”

“And you came up with nothing, correct?”

She nodded. “The report’s arranged by the discipline taken. Disbarments, of course. But also suspensions, censures, and admonitions. All it shows is when the discipline was decided and when it became effective.”

“Nothing specific about the discipline itself,” I said.

She nodded her head again.

I let things settle for a beat before asking, “What do you know about Sweet? Did you ever have conversation with him?”

“Barely,” she said. “Like I mentioned, Nevada was very protective of that part of her life.”

We looked at each other for as long as we could stand it. She broke the eye contact, took another huge swallow of her water, draining the glass in the process. I gently took it from her and moved to the sink. Turned on the tap and let it run with my back to Siobhan.

“This is crazy,” she called out. “We need to stop thinking what we’re thinking. Nevada is one of the kindest women I know. She respects herself. She’s beautiful and intelligent.”

“We all wear masks, Siobhan. Neither of us knows what troubles Nevada may have been having. I do know that desperate times call for desperate measures.”

I filled Siobhan’s glass, turned off the faucet, and returned it to her. Our hands touched during the exchange and she didn’t pull away. I didn’t either.

“What other desperate acts have you committed?” she whispered. She meant other than the vengeance for the loss of Veronica and Ericka.

“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” I said.

She smiled and took the glass. “Nevada said you could be tender.”

“Don’t believe it.”

Another smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. My sudden awareness of her lips changed the rhythm of my heartbeat. I nearly closed my eyes to will myself unaffected. Women have always been a distraction for me. I couldn’t be distracted at the moment, though. As thorny as the relationship with Nevada had been, she deserved my best effort to find out just what was happening or what had happened. Until proven wrong I would operate with the belief that Nevada was alive and in trouble.

“Think,” I said to Siobhan. “If you talked to me for any length of time you’d discover that I know details about the most inane things.” I thought of my first moments with Nevada. I’d recited the particulars about Bizet’s opera, Carmen, and Nevada responded with a wisecrack about Wikipedia. “During the times you
barely
talked to Sweet what sticks out in your mind? Something. Anything. Think, Siobhan.”

She shook her head. “Nothing sticks out, Shell. All of the times we spoke wouldn’t add up to a long commercial break.”

“Don’t discount what you know,” I said. “Let’s talk it through.”

“You really have the wrong impression of my involvement, Shell.”

“The first time you met him…”

She let out a breath of frustration. “There was no first time I met him.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You never met him?”

“We weren’t formally introduced.”

“Tell me about it anyway.”

“You’re persistent, I see.”

“I can be. Tell me about the introduction that wasn’t an introduction.”

“I was over here with Nevada, talking. We might’ve been speaking about my cousin. Or you. Those seemed to be two recurring conversations.”

I nodded because that was all I could do. I didn’t trust my voice at the moment.

“So we’re talking—we were outside, I forgot to mention—and suddenly Nevada’s attention isn’t focused on our conversation anymore. I’m doing all of the talking and she’s silent. She’s looking at a vehicle pulling up to the curb. I notice and look as well. It’s her SUV. I ask her isn’t it hers and she nods. Then I ask her who the driver is, because by that time a guy is getting out.”

“Sweet,” I said.

“Yep.”

“That’s great, Siobhan. Keep going.”

“Don’t be so quick to praise me. The story ends soon after, Shell.”

“Then we’ll talk through the other stories.”

“Already I can tell that you can be maddening,” she said, sighing. “There are no other stories.”

“Sweet is getting out of the SUV…”

“Maddening,” she said again.

“Go on, Siobhan.”

“He’s handsome. Definitely Nevada’s type. So I made a joke about it. Something about her holding out on me.”

I swallowed. “And she said?”

“Denied it. ‘It’s not like that’ were her exact words. We’d grown to be comfortable friends by that point so I told her she should make it like that.”

“So Sweet’s a good looking guy?” I heard myself ask.

Siobhan frowned. “He’s well put together. Yes.”

“But Nevada denied any relationship with him?”

“Yes,” she said. “And like I said, I believed her. There was something about him.”

“About him?”

“Detached in some way,” she explained.

“What does that mean?”

“When you first met me you undressed me with your eyes.”

“Hardly,” I said.

“Right.”

“Stay on task, Siobhan.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Well Sweet definitely didn’t. He walked up and introduced himself almost as an afterthought and moved right on to the next thing in one quick swoop.”

“The next thing…”

“He gave Nevada a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek and thanked her for letting him borrow the SUV and then they both fell into a deep quiet. But it was as if they were having a silent conversation and I was the third wheel.”

“You left?”

“Later, when I reimagined it all in my mind, yes.”

“But in reality?”

“Stood there like a dork,” she said.

I smiled. “A dork?”

“If you saw me you wouldn’t question my word choice. Believe me.”

“And then?”

“Nevada said something about them rolling up their sleeves and getting to work on the project.”

“The project?” I asked. “That’s how she worded it?”

Siobhan thought about it. “Yes…yes. That’s exactly how she said it. I remember thinking that it was odd. They were definitely keeping secrets.”

“Then?”

“Sweet made a joke about her feeding him because he was hungry. Famished is the word he actually used. I remember that, too. Nevada grumbled and he put his hand up and offered to order in. He asked her if she wanted anything and she didn’t.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “He didn’t ask you?”

“When I reimagine it—”

“Then what happened?” I cut in.

She sighed. “No, he didn’t ask me. He pulls out his cell phone and calls in an order. Grilled vegetable sandwich. Eggplant, zucchini, tomato, feta cheese on herb focaccia, the red bell pepper but skip the yellow bell pepper that normally comes with it, salad dressing on the side. Blah, blah, blah. He hangs up smiling, tells Nevada they humor him but they know exactly what he wants as soon as he calls in. They know his voice and he always gets the same thing. He’s either picking up or getting food delivered several times a week.”

I nodded. “This is a Subway we’re talking about? Blimpies?”

“Subway? Blimpies?” She frowned. “Are you kidding me? I guess you’d have to know Darren to know that wouldn’t fly with him. No, the place is called Picasa. A nice little bistro. I’ve ordered from them a few times since then myself. The grilled vegetable sandwich is good.”

I smiled.

It took a moment but eventually she realized something and matched the smile. “Did I just give you your first lead?”

I said, “Barely.”

“Glad I could be of help.”

“One other thing I need from you.”

“Ask.”

I asked.

“A flyer?” she said, frowning slightly.

“Eight-and-a-half by eleven,” I said. “The size of computer paper. I can’t carry around one of your big poster boards.”

“Just recreate the image I showed you the other day? But smaller?”

I nodded. “I’ll print up some copies and show them around. You never know what might turn up. People see things they aren’t even aware they’ve seen. Someone might recognize the picture and…”

“You’re an incredible man,” she whispered.

I didn’t argue the beauty’s point.