At least three, anyway.
“He said I was hot?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Matilda. What the fuck are you thinking?”
I pushed the pedal to the floor and lurched around a minivan lollygagging along at 75 miles per hour in the fast lane. “I’m thinking I’m tired of waiting for things to happen. I’m thinking it’s time I started making them happen.”
“What was your plan for making things happen, exactly?”
“Take the blackmailer somewhere secluded and hurt him until he tells me where my mother is?” It had sounded so much more plausible in my head than it did spoken aloud.
Liam’s bark of laughter left me feeling like a cat petted tail to head. “Torture wasn’t your specialty, last time I checked.”
“I’m a quick study.”
“I intend to test that theory thoroughly next time I see you.” The dark promise in this statement set off a flurry of moths in my stomach.
“I haven’t decided if there is a next time,” I said. “I’m not sure I want your help anymore.”
“Like it or not, you need my help. You may be a great psychologist, but you’re a lousy criminal. You don’t speak their language.”
“And you do? It’s been over a week since I found out they had my mother.”
“Part of what makes me the best at what I do is knowing when and where to apply pressure.” My body shuddered its own witness to the veracity of this statement.
“I told you I was working on it,” he continued. “My guy was onto him. A couple more days, and he would have led us straight to your mother.”
“You’ve told me a lot of things. How do I know which of them to believe?”
The bubble of silence held us for a moment.
“The blackmailer doesn’t have your mother,” he said. “Not physically.”
My shoulders dropped an inch from my ears as a small knot of tension in the center of my back released. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. What I do know is that until a year ago, she was living in a state-run institution under the name Elizabeth Briggs. Someone withdrew her, but didn’t list the facility they would be transferring her to.”
“Elizabeth Briggs? But that’s not her name.”
“I know,” Liam said. “But that’s the name someone filed paperwork to associate with her social security number two years ago.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone do that?”
“So they could hide her from you, I imagine.”
Gooseflesh rose on the back of my neck. “But they wouldn’t have to hide her from me. She had already disappeared.”
“That’s the other thing.” Liam’s voice dropped into a hushed whisper. “The institution has records of her disappearance, but none of my sources can find any documentation with the local police. No investigation, nothing. Didn’t you file a missing persons report?”
Sprawling fields became a wash of endless green in my peripheral vision. I felt my heartbeat through the thin skin of my eyelids, in my sinuses, beneath my tongue. “No.”
This one, small word stained my hands a bloody crimson. I remembered looking down at them while I sat in the hospital administrator’s office, urine and antiseptic heavy in my nose. She was better off. Anywhere but here.
But I was better off too. The guilty knowledge thumped beneath the floorboards of my subconscious while the administrator made his apologies and promises.
For me, she was already over.
The rumble strips on the road’s edge shook me into the present.
“I don’t want to get into this right now,” I said.
“Look, I understand—”
“One more word about it and I hang up,” I warned.
“Fine,” Liam said. “Where’s the blackmailer?”
“In my trunk.”
A vivid string of curses blossomed on the other end of the phone. I held it away from my ear until the roaring died down.
“There is a reason these kinds of things should only be done by professionals. You never put the guy in the trunk. Especially not in a newer car like yours. Tail lights can get kicked out, interior emergency release handles are almost standard these days, and that’s not even—”
“It’s my first kidnapping, okay? I did the best I could with what I had on hand.”
“You at least handcuffed him, right?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly?’”
“I had some zip ties left over from my recycling.”
“Zip ties?” Liam repeated in an octave not far off the register the blackmailer had achieved when Billy smashed his nuggets. “You restrained him with zip ties?”
“And some pantyhose. I had a couple pairs with runs in them that I was going to throw out anyway. Plus, Billy’s back there with him.”
“Who the fuck is Billy?”
“The egg.”
Judging by the rushing sounds on the other end of the phone, Liam was performing some deep breathing exercises.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” he said, his voice calmer than it had been in the past moments. “In about two miles, you’re going to get off on Hobbs road and pull into the gravel lot by the granary.”
“How do you know where I am?”
“Because my guy is following you.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror to see a black sedan a couple car lengths behind me.
“Charming,” I said. “Does he do this often?”
“I don’t want to get into this right now.” Liam’s parroting my own words back at me did nothing to improve my darkening mood.
“So I pull into the parking, and then what?”
“You’re going to turn your unfortunate guest over to my associate so he can extract the information we need.” Visions of the blackmailer strapped into a dental chair while Liam’s associate yanked the information from his mouth with wicked-looking silver tools took the bottom out of my stomach.
Had I really been prepared to go to those lengths?
“And then we go get my mother?” My stomach fluttered at the prospect.
“No,” he said. “Once we have the blackmailer, you go home. That’s the end of your involvement. We’ll act on the information once we have it.”
“Absolutely not. She’s my mother.” The green rectangle marking Hobbs Road emerged on my right. I let off the gas and the car slowed.
“Yes, she’s your mother. Which is exactly why you need to keep your distance from this. If your name is connected with her in any way, they’ll find her again and we’ll be back where we started.”
The weight of his logic was cold and undeniable. “So what are you going to do?”
“Find her, get her set up with a new name and move her to a private facility.” He pronounced all of this with the ease I might describe a trip to the supermarket.
“You can do all that?”
“And more. It would have been safer to let the blackmailer lead us to her and nab her on the sly, but I can make it work this way.”
“How do I know she’ll be okay?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. On paper, turning my mother’s fate over to the care of a hit man read like the worst possible choice. Yet I couldn’t deny that every time I allowed myself to imagine Liam watching over her, a dram of fear evaporated from my heart. “What do you need from me?” I asked.
“A promise that you’ll never try anything like this again.”
Gravel crunched under my tires as I pulled off the road and parked in the shadows cast by grain silos stretching like giant blunted silver bullets toward the sky. “No promises,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Lots of things,” he said. “But they’ll have to wait until I can get you alone.”
I dialed the air conditioner up a couple notches to dispel the sudden heat radiating from my face. “Call me when you know something.”
“
I will.”
“Liam?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Anything for my wife.” His voice held just enough humor to make it impossible for me to know how he meant it.
I disconnected and held the warm phone in my hand long enough to be startled when a man leaned into view in the driver’s side window and pointed toward the trunk. Rather than popping it from inside the car, I got out and walked around, not wanting Billy to be thrown off by the change in plans.
The man who followed was about as wide as the barn in the adjacent field and dressed from head to toe in Liam’s standard black. His head had been shaved to the skin—a forbidding complement to the dark sunglasses obscuring his eyes. Mr. Clean moonlights as an assassin.
“I’m just going to open this now,” I announced a little louder than necessary.
The trunk opened on the pale, sweaty man whom we had folded into a Z shape to fit him in the Prius’s less than generous storage area. His eyes bulged above the organic apple I had shoved into his mouth by way of a gag and tied in place with panty hose. He whimpered behind the fruit.
One dark eyebrow rose above Mr. Clean’s sunglasses.
Seeing the fear widen the blackmailer’s eyes, I reached up and patted the ham-sized bicep of the man standing next to me. “He’s all yours.”
The brute’s placid face broke into a broad grin as he hauled the crumpled man out of the trunk with one hand and carried him back to the sedan.
“Coast is clear,” I whispered.
Billy stretched out his arms and legs from beneath the emergency blanket I kept in the trunk. “Where’s that giant chap taking our man?”
Mr. Clean tossed the squirming black bundle across the sedan’s back seat like a sack of dry cleaning.
“There was a change in plans.”
“A shame,” Billy said. “I would rather have liked to batty-fang that boffer.”
“I know you would,” I said, helping him hop down from the bumper. “And I appreciate that you were willing to do it.”
“My pleasure, you know. It’s not every day I meet a bricky lady like yourself. I can certainly see why that Crixus is so besotted.”
“’Besotted,’ my butt.” I slammed the trunk closed and walked around to open the passenger’s side door for Billy.
“He is, you know. Not every human in peril gets her own bodyguard.” He winked at me and climbed into the car.
Back in the driver’s seat, I buckled myself in and helped Billy do the same. “Crixus should be less time being besotted and more time being sensible.”
“Quite right,” he agreed. “Quite right as usual.”
“At least one man around here sees it.” I pulled out of the lot and let the cloud of dust obscure whatever happened behind me.
“Where shall we go next?” Billy asked.
“Home,” I said. “To wait.”
*****
“Oh yes, baby. Yes. Slower. I want to feel you.”
I stared at the phone glowing in my hand, Crixus’s number on the screen and a woman’s ecstatic cries breathing from the speaker.
Goldilocks.
I recognized her throaty contralto from the few words I heard her speak earlier.
“God, you’re huge!” the phone moaned into my bedroom’s sacred darkness. Another night’s sleep interrupted.
And this one had started with such promise.
Returning home earlier this evening, Billy and I had found my apartment blessedly bear-free. Crixus was as good as the word I wouldn’t accept, and the space greeting us was clean, cozy, and completely restored to order.
Someone had even left a variety of bear traps on my dining room table.
News from Liam would have been a welcome interruption to the hours of sleep that left me groggy and disoriented. But being ass-dialed by a demigod on the make?
Disgusted, I hung up and flopped back on my pillow. The black velvet well of oblivion had just rushed to meet me when the phone shrieked anew.
Crixus. Again.
I ignored the call and shoved the phone under the pillow, only to have it light up the bleached linen like a lantern and buzz a third time.
“Crixus!” I barked. “So help me—”
“God! Fuck me!” Goldilocks wailed.
“He’s only half!” I shouted to my empty room.
Lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling, I chased sleep like a thief. Streetlights glared in upon my bed from between the shutters. Sheets tangled themselves around my limbs, binding me to my restlessness and irritation. The pillow clotted into awkward lumps beneath my cheek.
When the phone rang a fourth time, I was seconds away from breaking my water glass against the headboard and threatening someone with the shards when I saw the name on the screen.
Liam.
“Do you have her? Is she okay?” The words came out in an unfiltered rush.
“Hello to you too,” he said. His voice was a cool hand pressed to my burning forehead. “Not yet. But we have an address. Someone is checking it out now.”
“Where?” I asked. “Is she close?”
“Nice try,” he said.
“You’re really not going to tell me where my mother is?”
“Nope. It’s better for everyone involved if you don’t have that information.”
“Ugh,” I grunted. “You sound just like Crixus.”
“Only if I lost about twenty I.Q. points. What’s old Crickets up to these days anyway? Who’s the egg? Another project he’s dumped at your door, no doubt.”
This was casual Liam. Business dispensed and feeling playful enough to bat around a few insults.
“Ever heard of a universal egg that broke open and gave life to a race of gods?”
“You mean the Orphic Egg,” he said.
“You’ve read the Orphic Hymns?” Only after the question was asked did I realize how insulting my incredulity might sound.
“Shocking as it may be, I like to take a break from stabbing puppies and exploiting orphans every now and then to settle in with a good book. That okay with you, Doctor?”
On second thought, I might have to use that water glass to put my panties out when they caught fire.
“So long as it’s your own finger you put between the pages to keep your place,” I said.
“Did I just hear you make a joke about illegal activity?”
“Reads and listens,” I volleyed back. “It’s a wonder you’re not already married. Oh, wait…”
“You are so lucky I’m not there right now.” All levity had vanished from his voice, replaced by something sharper, something dangerous.
“And what would you do if you were?” My question shocked us both into a stretch of silence.
“Everything,” he said. “Twice.”
Heat slid up my thighs and danced a twisted tango through my middle. This was the part of me that wanted him to describe every act huddled beneath the umbrella of that one word. The part that wanted to hear every delicious detail caressed by the tongue that had coaxed me into maddening bliss.
But it was only part, and one I couldn’t yet follow with abandon.
“Unrelated question?” I asked.
“Chicken,” he accused.
“I’m vegan, remember?”
“Mostly.” A dig at the illicit love affair with dairy he himself had incited. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you know how to locate someone based on a cell phone signal?”
“I have people for that,” he said.
“Any chance I could borrow one?”
“That depends.”
“On?” I considered the sexual favors I might be willing to trade for my request, expecting that these might be Liam’s terms. The list was long.
“On whom you’re trying to locate.”
“Crixus,” I said. “He’s shacked up with Goldilocks somewhere and he keeps ass dialing me. I think I actually heard an STD happen just now.”
“Goldy Locks?” he a
sked, placing an odd pause in the name. “Like Goldy Locks the porn star, Goldy Locks?”
“There’s a porn star named Goldy Locks?”
“Oh yeah,” he said with a little more enthusiasm than I found professional. “She has an impressive…oeuvre. Mounted Olympus, Pandora’s Box, The Naughty Nymphs of Delphi—”
“Enough,” I said. “I get it. Glad to know you’re such an enthusiast.”
Liam cleared his throat. “I’ve always been fascinated by mythology.”
“I’ll bet.” Crixus, Goldy Locks the porn star, and Zeus. As much as I wanted it not to be true, the puzzle pieces fit too neatly. If Zeus was half as jealous as his legendary mate, Crixus could be in for some pretty hideous punishment.
The least I could do was talk some sense into him.
Or drag him behind my car.
“If I give you his coordinates, what are the chances your going there will end in his life becoming a living hell?” Liam asked.
“Good to Very Good.”
“Give me five minutes.”
*****
Claustrophobic silence pressed in on the car windows beneath a vault of dying stars. Morning still hid below the stands of towering evergreens, but would bleach the sky gray in a few short hours.
I cut the headlights as my car crept the final yards toward the cabin and killed the engine while we were still out of earshot. This far out of the city, even the chirring of crickets could be deafening.
If only they could drown out the thoughts crashing around my head.
The clean-burning fuel of righteous indignation had driven me two hours from Plattsburgh into the Adirondack Mountains, but the remaining distance between the car and the front door felt insurmountable.
A single rectangle of glowing light spilled from the window onto the rustic planks of the cabin’s porch.
“Do you think they’re still awake?” I whispered.
Billy held up his monocle like a magnifying glass and studied me through it. “Well, if they’ve been up to anything like you described, I wouldn’t be surprised if they popped off for a spell.”
An image of Goldy Locks curled into Crixus’s naked chest after they had spent the last of passion’s frenzied currency scooped my chest hollow. “Maybe we should just go back.”
Unbearable Page 6
