by Mia Marlowe
Is there a certain type that was capable of plotting another’s death? The twists and deformities in another’s soul aren’t visible to the naked eye. Murderers didn’t stalk around with big M’s tattooed on their foreheads.
Though the man in the subway came perilously close. In him, Sara had seen Death walking.
“Thank you for turning over this evidence, Ms. Kelley. If you’re right about the election fraud, there are probably some heavy hitters involved. I’m just sorry you can’t testify in this case.” Agent Griffith headed toward her door. Then he stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “You know that means the agency can’t offer you protection.”
She flashed a wry smile. “What is it they say about God protecting children and fools?”
“I don’t think you qualify as either.” Concern furrowed Agent Griffith’s brow. “Politics has always been a blood sport in Boston. Maybe you should take a vacation or go stay with family or friends for a while.”
“Don’t think that’s the answer.” Staying with Ryan produced disastrous results. Sara assured Agent Griffith she’d be fine and locked the door behind him.
Was she doing it again? Pushing people away had become second nature to her. She resolved to change.
She washed the saucepan and swiped down her kitchen counter till it sparkled. Then in a cleaning frenzy, she dusted, vacuumed and swiffered her whole apartment. Cleaning was a nice, physical occupation that let her work out her stress.
“Can he help the family he was born to?” she wondered aloud. Not any more than she could help having red hair, freckles and the Kelley ski-jump nose.
It was dark by the time she finished her cleaning spree and leashed Lulu up for her last piddle of the night. She’d meant to do it before the sun set, but she’d been distracted by the mental gymnastics of trying to figure out what to do next.
Lulu snuffled along the edge of the sidewalk, bypassing several perfectly good piddle spots. She turned circles near a clump of mums, but decided against them at the last minute.
“Come on, Lulu. One spot’s as good as another,” Sara said softly.
The little dog tugged on the leash, leading Sara closer to the river. She usually didn’t like to walk there at night and now didn’t seem like a particularly good time to change her habits.
So Sara dragged Lulu from one lurid pool of light to the next, wishing it wasn’t so far between streetlamps. She crossed the street at the corner and headed back the other way, one eye on the door to her apartment building, the other on Lulu’s wobbling gait. Each time the dog stopped to nose another clump of grass or investigate a fire hydrant, Sara held her breath. But Lulu seemed not to feel her mistress’s urgency.
An uncomfortable tickle started at the base of Sara’s spine. It inched up, past the dip of her waist, fizzed by her ribs and settled at the nape of her neck. Sara felt the weight of eyes on her. She froze like a deer who scents a wolf in the woods.
Her heart thudded against her ribs. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. Did she hear footsteps behind her or was that only her own blood pounding in her ears? Sara gave Lulu a stern tug when she dallied by a bench, but the dog set her feet and refused to budge. Her collar slipped off over her head.
Sara knelt and shifted herself around Lulu so she could look behind her without glancing over her shoulder while she put Lulu’s collar back on and cinched it tighter. A couple came out of the coffee shop next to her building and made their way to a slightly dented Volvo. There was the old man with an equally geriatric bulldog shuffling near the rhododendrons by the entrance to the river park. She scanned the cars parked along both sides of the street, but didn’t see anyone sitting in them.
No, wait. Her eye was drawn to movement in the driver’s seat of—oh, it looked like Matthew’s car.
She smiled with relief. He certainly knew his business, she’d give him that. He’d parked in such a way as to obscure his face since the streetlight was behind him. If not for the tingle of awareness and his slight movement, she’d never have suspected he was there.
For two cents, she’d go over and show him she was being careful and paying attention. She’d certainly caught him spying on her. At one time, Sara might have considered it an invasion of her privacy, but now instead of being annoyed, she found it sweet. It was something the old Matthew would have done. If she walked over and climbed in the passenger’s side, it might give her a chance to finish that conversation she’d already started with him in her head.
She took a step toward him, but Lulu strained on the leash in the opposite direction. The dog lunged forward, nearly choking herself in her urgency.
“No, Lulu. Come,” Sara ordered with sternness.
Lulu jerked the leash from Sara’s grip and bounded away.
A man stepped from the shadows of an old willow by the side of the path leading to the river. Lulu reared on her hind legs and pawed the air.
Sara couldn’t draw breath.
Chapter 30
The guy went down on one knee and petted the little dog, crooning soft endearments Sara couldn’t quite make out. Lulu nearly turned herself inside out, groveling before him with obvious joy. He looked up and Sara saw his face clearly in the yellow light of the streetlamp.
It was Ryan. Relief flooded her chest.
“Hi,” he said as she approached. “I’ve been waiting for you. I hope you don’t mind, but I knew you and Lulu would be coming out sooner or later.”
“Ryan Knight, you scared ten years off my life, skulking there in the dark.”
“First rule of recon,” he said, hitching one thumb in his pocket. “Never let ‘em see you coming. Skulking is a highly regarded art.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not the only skulker around here.” She glanced back toward Matthew’s Camry, but it was gone. He must have seen her talking to Ryan and left. She sighed. Even after everything that had happened, the last thing she wanted to do was cause Matt more pain. “I thought I saw Matthew in his car over there, but maybe you are the lone skulker, after all.”
His mouth compressed into a tight line at the mention of her ex. “Are you still mad at me?”
She shook her head. “Grateful. I’m glad you cared enough to skulk.”
The look in his eyes said he cared enough to do a great deal more, but he simply signed, ‘Can I walk with you?’
She nodded. With Ryan beside her, she felt safe enough to allow Lulu to wander down to the river’s edge where she’d been trying to go since their ‘last-piddle-before-bed’ walk began.
‘I saw you leave and return in a taxi,’ he signed. When she arched a brow at him, he shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’ve been here awhile. Where did you go this afternoon?’
She told him about her visit to Harold Fortis’s office and he listened without comment until she was finished.
“Then you turned Valenti’s computer over to the FBI?”
“Yes, how did you know?“
“They cultivate a certain look. I figured that fellow in the suit for an agent. Plus he was carrying the backpack when he left. I’m glad you unloaded it. It was a dangerous thing to have lying around,” Ryan said. “So why haven’t they posted a detail for you?”
When she explained that since she couldn’t testify, she didn’t qualify for witness protection, his mouth shaped an obscenity she didn’t have to hear to understand.
“Agent Griffith did advise me to take a vacation,” she said.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Ryan said. “We could take the WaveDancer and sail down the coast to Florida or the Keys.”
She shook her head as they neared the river. “This is my home. It would feel like running away.”
“Sometimes, running away is the right thing to do.”
“So you think I was right to run away from you this morning,” she said.
“Maybe you needed to at the time,” he admitted. “But I hope it’s not forever.”
Sara looked out over the river. The Mystic snaked into the night, shimmer
ing silver where the dark water caught lights from the encroaching buildings. The full moon cut a wide swath down the water, a glimmering blade of liquid light reflecting back to the night sky.
Sara and Ryan stopped at the water’s edge. A cool night breeze washed over her, reminding her that summer was not forever.
She wondered if anything was.
“‘You cannot step twice into the same river,’” Sara quoted. Everything changes. She’d been thinking that very thing the first time Ryan tapped her on the shoulder.
“Got that right,” he agreed. “Life is always in a state of flux. Who said that? Aristotle?”
“Heraclites,” she corrected. “Philosophy was my undergrad minor. Don’t mess with me on Greek philosophers.”
“I don’t think I’d mess with you on anything,” he said with an infectious grin. Then his smile faded. “Except maybe your safety. So was that your highly educated way of telling me that you don’t want anything to do with me?”
She shook her head.
Encouraged, he caught her free hand and pressed it between both of his. “I know you don’t trust me and I can’t blame you. I should have leveled with you about my family.”
“Yes, you should have,” she said. “Why didn’t you?”
“To be honest, I was afraid.”
Her first impulse was to pull her hand away, but she forced herself not to. She needed him and it was necessary for her to admit it or she’d just shove him away like she had Matthew.
“Guys who specialize in skulking aren’t supposed to be afraid,” she teased.
“Only fools are never afraid, though I guess you could argue I’ve been a fool,” he said. “Do you remember when I told you about my broken engagement?”
“Yeah, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Sara said, relaxing into the warmth of his hands. “You said you and your fiancée couldn’t agree on having a family.”
“No, not exactly. She couldn’t accept the family I already had. As soon as Lisa learned about Uncle Nick and the whole Garibaldi connection, we were finished.” Ryan released her hand, knelt down and picked up a flat stone. He sent it skipping across the surface of the water, leaving concentric ripples in its wake. “I was afraid if I told you the truth, we’d be done before we started.”
The light breeze lifted his hair and she smoothed it down. “I’m not Lisa. I’m not done with you yet.”
“And I’m not Matthew.” He stood, his gaze intense. “Are you done with him?”
“Almost,” she said. Matthew was a river gone by. There was no going back, but she still needed to ask him to forgive her for her part in the erosion of their marriage.
“Almost,” he repeated. “Well, I guess I can live with that.”
He gathered her into his arms and she went willingly. She tipped her face up to kiss him, her lips softly parted in welcome. He accepted her invitation with eagerness, thrusting his tongue in to claim her mouth. When he finally released her, he bent his head to touch his forehead to hers, as if needing to maintain a connection with her even though their lips parted.
“Now, tell me what I have to do to convince you to come back to my place,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of you staying here alone.”
“How about if I don’t stay here alone?” she asked. “My home isn’t as fancy as yours, but…”
“You had me at ‘how about’,” he said. “I love your apartment. It has the one amenity mine lacks. You.”
“But—don’t be angry—but I think maybe we should back up a little. Everything is moving so fast. I want to be sure and—“
“And you can’t step into the same river twice,” he finished for her.
“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, pleased he seemed to understand. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to dangle my toes in the water.”
His laughter echoed on the river.
“We’ll take it slow, Sara. Actually, I was thinking I’d sleep in front of your door anyway.”
Lulu had wound her leash around their legs, binding them together. Ryan untangled her and picked the little dog up, tucking her next to his body.
“I think we can do better than that,” Sara said, touched that he was more interested in protecting her than bedding her. It made her want him to do both. “My couch folds out.”
“Good enough,” Ryan said as they walked back toward Sara’s building. “Maybe this will give me time to convince you a little run down the coast is not the same as running away. After all, the boat’s still equipped with a puppy potty.”
“We’ll see.” Sara slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and decided she might like the way he’d try to convince her. “Maybe as far as the Carolinas.”
She led him to her third story walk-up with the best of intentions. They’d do it right this time. At the very least, she’d wait till he proposed.
But once she closed the door behind them and threw the deadbolt, she caught a whiff of his distinctly masculine scent and her knees weakened.
Along with her resolve.
He filled the empty space in her apartment and in her heart. Before she knew she what she was doing, she’d thrown her arms around him. His mouth was on hers, hungry and insistent and she answered his heat with her own. His hands slipped under her blouse, warm and possessive on her midriff. Buttons and hooks proved no obstacle at all.
“I haven’t shaved my legs,” she said. His mouth dipped to the hollow between her breasts.
“I don’t care,” he said hoarsely as he scooped her up and carried her to her bedroom.
Much later, a sound penetrated Sara’s silence even without help from her hearing aids. Half-remembered, half-imagined, it was no less real. It was the sound of another human heart sharing her space.
This time, she wouldn’t push it away.
~
“I’m going to wring that damn dog’s neck,” Neville growled to himself as he wiped down the Camry he’d liberated for the evening. It would take the authorities a few days to find the car he’d borrowed without permission, and he planned to be out of the country by then, but Neville was a professional. And a professional left no prints.
After he satisfied himself that Harold Fortis had wired the money to his account to pay for Sara Kelley’s removal, Neville devised a brilliant plan. He went to all the trouble to find the exact make and model her ex-husband drove. He parked strategically on the side street by her building. Then all he had to do was wait until she took the dog out last thing at night.
It was so elegantly simple. If she didn’t come over to the car on her own, he’d flash his lights at her and she’d think her ex wanted to talk to her. Once she had the door open, Neville could haul her in and be off before she knew what was happening. He even had a syringe filled with ketamine to keep her from struggling till they reached their destination.
Then he’d have all frickin’ night to do whatever he wanted with the lovely Sara Kelley.
And he wanted quite a lot.
She was actually headed his way until the stupid dog decided to yank her in the opposite direction.
When Neville saw the boyfriend step from the shadows, he realized his window of opportunity had slammed shut. He cranked up the little rice-rocket engine, slid out of his parking space and into the night.
One way or another, Sara Kelley had to be dead before he boarded the plane for Nassau tomorrow evening. With a little luck, so would her meddling ex-husband. And since Neville intended to assume Sol’s identity after this job, Neville would definitely tweak Nicholas Garibaldi by adding his nephew to the list of the missing and unaccounted for.
It wouldn’t be as much fun without the night he’d planned with Sara Kelley. But in the end, the outcome would be the same.
Neville would start his new life with plenty of money, total anonymity and the satisfaction of having left a lasting body of work. He could already imagine the expressions of wonder when his cache of paintings was discovered in his abandoned apartment. Then and onl
y then, would the authorities connect the dots and recognize Neville Rede for the artistic genius he was.
The art world would fall all over itself in ecstasy at the boldness of his vision. Perhaps, they’d insist the collection be kept together instead of frittering it away at Sotheby’s. Neville would hate to see his work sold off a piece at a time to people with more money than brains who had no idea the depth of what filthy bits of paper had bought. Neville imagined an entire wing of the New England Museum of Fine Arts devoted to his work.
What would they title it?
“Art Imitates Death, maybe?” he wondered aloud, pleased by the play on the ‘art imitates life’ cliché. Perhaps someday, he’d come back and visit it, just stroll around the museum and listen to what the masses were saying about his genius.
And maybe someday, he’d even be able to acknowledge the work and publicly enjoy the adulation that was his due.
After all, look at Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, Neville thought as he ducked down into the T to make his way home. Those guys are frickin’ child molesters and people still watch their movies. The world forgives a lot in its geniuses. What’s a little accidental death here and there when compared to the gifts I’ve given the world on canvas?
But he couldn’t rest on his laurels yet. Better to postpone his celebration until he had sand between his toes. For now, he had work to do and only one night to do it in.
Time for plan B.
Chapter 31
In the end, they compromised. Ryan slept in bed with her instead of on the couch and he propped the back of one of her dining room chairs under the doorknob as an added precaution. But they’d made love with such singleness of heart, if a whole gang of bad actors had come through the door they might not have noticed.
Lying beside him, watching the rise and fall of his chest as the early morning light fingered through the slats of her blinds, Sara couldn’t imagine a place where she’d feel more secure.
Unless maybe it was on the WaveDancer with him.
