Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  Nothing to be done about that.

  She leaned over and splashed more water in her face from the full sink. She took a comb from the clutch purse she’d brought along for the goons to search and find the gun in it, and ran it through her hair. Then she stepped back.

  A month ago, she had worn this dress to a birthday party in this casino. She’d looked lovely. She had. She was self-aware enough to know the green dress fit in all the right places, and her face had been glowing.

  Tonight, her face looked like she’d just escaped from a concentration camp. Her eyes were black holes in her face. Like cigarette burns.

  But that was self-analysis. The woman who’d wanted to know where she’d gotten the dress hadn’t seen her that way. Bailey needed to walk out of here with that woman’s view of herself snug in her head.

  She was a beautiful black-haired woman in a stunning green dress.

  She looked at her watch.

  Showtime.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Cheese.

  Bait.

  Five minutes and the trap would snap shut.

  Bailey was coming.

  … and you know that how …?

  The maddeningly rational voice in her head that always pleaded her case before the High Court of Common Sense had put in an appearance.

  Because Bailey had said so. Had told María she was coming to rescue her.

  That’s crazy.

  Crazy? Yeah, absolutely crazy. But it was true. Bailey had told her. Just like she’d pleaded with María not to run away the morning she’d taken Bethany to the train station.

  How?

  How should I know!

  Great. Now, María was yelling at her own voice in her head. Then she felt her head swim and a wave of dizziness seized her. The pills. She shook her head, concentrated. It was true, real. It had happened. Now, she remembered! Everything that had happened in between had shoved the memory out of the spotlight into a corner of her mind.

  It stood centerstage now, spotlight glaring.

  They’d only had that one tiny snippet of conversation about it, before they’d left the subject for some other time, for the long car ride that never happened.

  “How did you know I was here?” María had asked through her tears, standing on the train platform with Bethany glued to her side.

  “I … saw the Amtrak ticket. One-way, New York Penn Station.”

  “But how …?”

  “Later, there’ll be plenty of time—”

  “I heard you! You begged me not to run away. You did, didn’t you!”

  Bailey had grinned, in a tired, sad, knowing sort of way and nodded.

  “Yeah. After all, you botched it the last time you tried, too, remember?”

  María had been nine, Bailey thirteen. They’d watched the 1998 Winter Olympics on television and the women’s figure skating had captured María’s whole imagination. For an entire rainy Sunday afternoon she’d concocted an elaborate fantasy — she and Bailey would run away, learn how to skate like that. María wouldn’t have asthma, breathing the cold, pure air of — Nagano, Japan — which was a fairyland of white snow and bright blue sky.

  Bailey, of course, had spent the day trying to convince her it wouldn’t work. None of her logic put the slightest dent in María’s determination. She even went so far as to start deciding what to take with her. To start packing. And that’s what sunk the ship.

  Snow boots.

  “Where there’s ice, there’s snow,” Bailey had told her. “You don’t have any snow boots.”

  “Well, I’ll … I could … maybe there’s …” Wheeze.

  The fantasy had collapsed in on itself then. From the weight of all the arguments, but tipped over the edge by her lack of proper footwear.

  The conversation at the station had banked left after Bailey’s revelation that she had seen the Amtrak ticket and taken a turn into their shared past. There was safety there. Pain and fear and mystery were for another day.

  The “another day” never happened. María hadn’t ever had a chance to ask Bailey about it.

  Bailey said she “saw” the ticket. She’d described it. That was impossible, but there wasn’t any other explanation for how she knew.

  Impossible didn’t matter. Not yesterday at the train station, anyway. It didn’t apply to her and Bailey. And maybe not now, either, as death exhaled its cold breath down their collars.

  Bailey had … seen what only María could see.

  Bailey had … spoken words only María could hear.

  She felt the men around her tense, was distantly aware of the stupid Christmas carol in the background clatter of plates and silverware in the restaurant.

  … Bells on bobtails ring. Making spirits bright …

  She didn’t have a watch but knew some horror clock was ticking down toward a deadline.

  Bailey had spoken to her … Maybe she could—

  … fun it is to ride …

  Trap!

  María screamed the word in her mind. Willed the words to communicate to Bailey.

  For a single frozen moment, she heard the stupid Christmas carol through someone else’s ears. Through Bailey’s!

  … in a one-horse, open sleigh …

  It’s a trap, Bailey! Run!

  The beautiful woman in the green gown glided across the casino toward the main entrance to the restaurant.

  As soon as she got to a point where she could see into the room, she saw the huge, decorated Christmas trees on both sides of the fifteen-foot-tall entrance archway. Grand as those were, they paled in comparison to what was behind them in the back center of the restaurant. The Grinch who stole Christmas. Holy moly. At least fifty feet of lime green fur wearing a red velvet jacket and a Santa hat. His back was to the doorway, but he was looking over his shoulder at it with an evil grin on his face. His left foot rested on top of a huge Christmas present with a red bow.

  On the floor to his right lay a long lumpy sack, full of the Christmas presents and decorations he was stealing. The sack stretched out fifty feet behind him in front of the back corner of the room. The furry green behemoth was reaching up over his head to a string of glowing Christmas lights the size of cantaloupes that lined the railing of the observation deck stretching out over the restaurant. The glowing light string he was stealing hung down from the deck and vanished into the sack by his right foot.

  The Grinch would have been an amazing sight even if her senses hadn’t been turned up to maximum volume.

  Everything was on overdrive. She seemed to be aware of every sensation so keenly it was overload. It was like she could hear the individual notes of “Jingle Bells” piped into the room. She could smell the potpourri of perfumes and aftershaves and men’s colognes, noticed small details like the garlands and wreaths on the walls were real, not artificial greenery. The whirring sound of the spinning numbers and symbols on the slot machines buzzed in her head.

  Got louder and louder, morphed into that white noise sensation that had plagued her ever since she’d painted María’s portrait. White noise and white static in her mind, with bright sparkles and twinkling light. The sparks grew brighter. Her mind was filling up with them, like there was a welding torch just out of her view and the sparks from it were cascading down in front of her.

  There was the sensation of a voice she couldn’t quite hear. Like looking into a snowy 1950s-era television set and through the snow, there was an image. But it was almost not there.

  The stupid Christmas carol was instantly muted, like the volume had been turned way down.

  … fun it is to ride …

  Then the brilliant sparks coalesced into a single pulsing twinkle that exploded with a pop. María’s voice burst through, like it had substance and had exploded through a barrier.

  “Trap!”

  María screamed the word so loud in Bailey’s mind it knocked Bailey back a step.

  For a single frozen moment, she heard the words of the song through María’s ears.

/>   … in a one-horse open sleigh …

  “It’s a trap, Bailey! Run!”

  This time, it wasn’t Bailey talking inside someone else’s head. This time, someone was talking in hers. Screaming a warning.

  Run!

  Dobbs was pacing, which was what T.J. did when he was upset, and there’d been so much turmoil in their lives in the past six months that Dobbs had taken up the practice. Of course, it didn’t matter now, didn’t even look like he was pacing. When you were looking after a three-and-a-half-year-old child and two dogs, it was a good thing to stay on your feet.

  Gratefully, the hurricane/tsunami combination of Fletch hacking his way into the house from the garage with an axe — and the discovery that Bailey was missing — had already crashed and receded before Bethany woke up from her nap. She hadn’t cried, had just come sleepy-eyed into the living room, dragging both minion blankets behind her and announcing that she needed to pee … and she wanted her mommy.

  And she meant María, who’d been kidnapped by a madman — not Bailey, who had taken it upon herself to go to an extraordinary amount of trouble to sneak out of the house. The whole garage door unit would have to be replaced, with the lock mechanism and the release bars frozen in superglue.

  Where had she gone? And why? It had something to do with the phone call she’d received, but what could possibly have enticed her to leave Bethany behind?

  After he helped the little girl do her business, she had wondered around forlornly, asking alternately for her mommy and for the “singer lady.” That had to be Bailey, though Dobbs didn’t know why the little girl called her that. He had to tell the poor child that this other grownup she was growing to trust had vanished, too, just like her mommy.

  Dobbs had a way with kids. Like dogs, they sensed the essential gentleness of the man and responded with trust. Bethany’d been introduced to a pot load of strangers in the last twenty-four hours and Dobbs had the least history with her. But Bethany wasn’t whiny because she minded being with Dobbs. It was that she wanted her mommy and the Singer Lady, and was justifiably confused and upset by the revolving door of adults — her mother was there, said she’d be right back — and vanished. Then she’d been hauled halfway across the country in the company of strangers, to an unfamiliar environment, and another adult who’d popped up in her world like a target in one of these carnival arcades had vanished just as suddenly.

  Even with his essential charm, Dobbs would have had “a hard row to hoe” with the little girl if it hadn’t been for the dogs — one so intuitive and smart it was downright spooky, and the other exuding such “adorable-fluffy-puppyness” he was irresistible.

  A game of sorts had evolved around Dobbs’s pacing and the “run-away-and-a-dog’ll chase-you” line T.J. had explained to the child earlier.

  Bethany took off down the track they’d made in the morning — from the den across the living room, down the hallway, through the studio, back down the hallway — in the doorway at the front of the kitchen and back out the one on the back by the breakfast nook. Bundy bounded after her but Dobbs kept Sparky at his side. Bethany would stop at whatever corner where she was about to go out of sight, turn and look, and Dobbs would release Sparky to follow her. As soon as Sparky disappeared from view, Dobbs lumbered along behind. When he caught up to Bethany, he’d motion for Sparky to sit until Bethany turned to look, then he’d release him. It only took a couple of rounds before Sparky knew the rules. He stopped, sat beside Dobbs, then raced to the next corner, where he’d sit again and wait for Dobbs to catch up.

  The game got Dobbs up and moving, gave him an excuse for his pacing, and was so mindless he could allow his mind to wander — ticking through one unanswered question to another.

  Where was Bailey?

  Why had she left?

  Why was Brice not answering his phone?

  He was considering possibilities when he became aware that he was merely lumbering along behind Sparky, who ran to each corner, sat, and as soon as Dobbs joined him, he ran to the next corner.

  Bethany was not up ahead at the corner, looking back. When he got to the corner, she wasn’t at the next corner, either.

  “Bethany!” he called out.

  The name echoed in the sudden silence in the big house.

  “Bethany, where are you?”

  Nothing. Not a sound.

  Reality hit Dobbs in the chest so hard it stole his breath.

  Bethany was gone.

  Chapter Fifty

  Bailey didn’t trust Sergei Mikhailov, knew he wouldn’t keep his end of the bargain. He would go after María and Bethany as soon as he’d killed her even though he’d sworn they’d be safe. Bailey had come to the rendezvous at the Nautilus restaurant — not because she believed the monster would keep his word but because it was her only chance to get close enough to Mikhailov to kill him.

  That was the only thing that would keep her family safe.

  But she’d walked into a trap. He’d lured her to the restaurant to kill her there, on the spot. There would be no exchange. No freedom for María. He intended to kill them both here, now, tonight.

  Then he would kill Bethany.

  A trap.

  The words reverberated in her head with individual booms, like the pimply-faced kid in the marching band hammering the padded sticks on a kettle drum.

  What kind of trap?

  What was his plan?

  Think!

  She felt a little like scales had fallen off her eyes and she could see reality clearly. Everything he’d said to her on the phone was an elaborate ruse to gain her trust and compliance. He’d picked a public place because she’d never have trusted a private exchange, would never have agreed to one. But the whole elaborate exchange plan was all smoke and mirrors. Details to grant the lie credibility. And the fry-your-brains drug cocktail — was that real or a con? What difference did it make? He would kill María, using some method or another — that was the point. He’d never for a millisecond intended to let her walk out of the restaurant alive.

  Duh! María was as dangerous to him now as Bailey was! What had Bailey been thinking? He’d kidnapped María. He’d couldn’t let her live to tell police that tale.

  He’d selected the restaurant to give Bailey a sense of safety — a big crowd, people all around her. He knew she’d believe he wouldn’t dare kill her there, couldn’t just gun her down the minute he saw her.

  But why not? Public shootings happened all the time. Mikhailov wouldn’t be the one taking the fall for it. Some flunky would do the deed and he’d never have to get his hands dirty.

  Mikhailov was here, though. She believed that much of his elaborate deceit was true. He was somewhere in that restaurant right now because he wanted to watch it happen.

  He hadn’t been faking his pleasure when she’d demanded he be present as part of the agreement.

  You may wait until we make eye contact if you wish — before you proceed.

  The impact of the words rocked her.

  Stand beneath the archway and look around.

  That was it, wasn’t it?

  Can you say “sitting duck?”

  Out in the open. A clear shot. The target even standing obligingly still between the lighted Christmas trees. A single headshot would leave almost no blood at all. She could testify to that from personal experience.

  There’d be a sound — how loud? Depended on the weapon, she supposed. She’d fold up in a heap. If he played it right, it would be awhile before somebody noticed and figured out what’d happened. For her, it would be game over.

  The only thing that didn’t ring true in her new interpretation of reality was that Mikhailov was granting her what he’d call a merciful death. That was out of character.

  Ah, but María would be watching. Perhaps that was part of the juice he got out of the squeeze — that María would see her sister die.

  He’d kill María, too, of course. Maybe tonight, right here in the restaurant. No, not likely. He’d save her for later,
in private, where he could take out his rage on her.

  Bethany, too. He would take his time killing Bethany.

  The thought ripped Bailey’s beating heart out of her chest.

  Nooooooo!

  But how could she stop him? What could she do?

  María and Mikhailov were both here, within rock-throwing distance from where she was standing.

  She had to save one and kill the other.

  How?

  She looked at her watch. She had only ninety seconds to figure it out or she’d be late for Mikhailov’s party.

  Sergei Mikhailov strode with delighted anticipation through the winding hallways from the room in which the sheriff had been brought to him to the observation deck overlooking the restaurant from which he would watch the show.

  He neither knew nor cared how the devices that would create the show worked. He did not understand the structure and function of an internal combustion engine, either, and he could still get into a car and go where he wanted to go.

  Abi-Nadir had tried to explain it all to him when they were loading the supplies onto the plane but he had brushed him off.

  “I told you what I want to happen and you have assembled a proper device to make it happen, yes?” he had asked.

  “Yes. But I have never worked before to the particular specifications you require and—”

  “Do not angle for a higher fee!”

  The Arab gunrunner retreated like a mouse back into its hole from the edge of menace in Mikhailov’s voice.

  “Oh, I am not. I would never. I just want you to know that I am not certain what the result will be.” Before Mikhailov could protest he hurried on. “It will be at minimum what you specified. But it is possible there will be much more … damage than you are perhaps expecting.”

  Mikhailov didn’t give a fig how much damage there would be because damage was not his objective. The devices he had demanded from the Arab were not WMDs — weapons of mass destruction. They were weapons he intended to use for a specific task. All that was required was that they kill the people he wanted to kill. Anything beyond that, well, that was icing on the cake.