Mosaic

by Gayle Lynds

  "You're surer' She trembled with hope. "It's hard to believe—"

  Julia raised her tinted glasses. "You're wearing a silver gown with the emerald earrings Grandfather Austrian gave you. Your lipstick's gone, but the rest of your makeup still looks terrific. Straight from Chanel. Here. Let me see what time it is."

  As Marguerite stared, trying to digest it all, Julia turned her wrist and checked her watch. "I don't remember this one." It was a Cartier.

  Marguerite's voice was remote, disconnected, attempting to fathom and believe. "I've had it five or six years. You never had a chance to see it." A strand of hair dangled from her backswept coif.

  "Well, it's after midnight. I'm tired. What about you?" Julia tucked her mother's loose strand into her soft French twist. Her fingers lingered. She was awed that she could now do something so elemental for her mother as fix her hair.

  Marguerite's eyes grew large. It began to sink in. "My God, child. I can't believe it's true!" She cupped Julia's face with warm hands. Her eyes were radiant.

  Julia whispered, "It's wonderful, isn't it?"

  "Don't cry, dear. Or I'll cry, too."

  They held one another as the taxi cruised along Pimlico Road. Then they sat back, grinning as they shared their secret.

  A tear slid down Marguerite's cheek. Then another.

  Julia swallowed hard. She took her mother's hand and squeezed it.

  "You could see all evening?" Her mother found a handkerchief in her shoulder bag. She dabbed her eyes. She laughed. "I can't believe you've been able to see for hours. What fun you must've had!"

  "I didn't want to say anything until I thought it was going to last."

  "Of course it's going to last." Her mother grabbed her shoulders and stared at her, transmitting determination.

  It was as if Julia were looking into her own eyes, the same gemlike blue. The same deep sense of moving forward against all odds . . . but now there was also the sweet impetus of long-awaited, impossible dreams.

  She could see!

  "Julia, it's wrong you've had to be blind all these years," her mother insisted. "There was nothing the matter with you. There's not a crazy bone in your body."

  As Marguerite spoke, Julia saw sudden movement beside the taxi. They were stopped at a traffic light in Belgravia.

  Before anyone in the taxi could understand what was happening, a gunshot blasted the door lock next to Marguerite. The bullet smashed on through the cab and out Julia's side, leaving a trail of slivered metal and fabric. A hot, metallic stench filled the air as the door yanked open.

  Everyone in the taxi froze in fear. Julia's heart pounded. She grabbed Marguerite's arm and pulled her close, because the gun was now pointing at them. Holding it was a slender man dressed completely in black, his face hidden behind a black ski mask. He swung the gun from them to the taximan and back again in silent warning for no one to move. The taximan's eyes glazed with terror.

  The gunman nodded once, approving their obedience. Then he grabbed Marguerite's Louis Vuitton shoulder bag, popped it open with one hand, and dropped it to the street. The flat brown packet Marguerite had received in the theater fell out. He pulled off Marguerite's rings, ripped off her watch, scooped up the package, and dumped everything inside her bag.

  He reached for her emerald earrings.

  Marguerite came alive. "No!" she snapped. An angry flush rose on her cheeks. "Not my earrings!"

  Behind her tinted glasses, Julia's gaze was transfixed in horror.

  "Mom! Give them to him!"

  The terrified driver croaked from the front seat, " 'And 'em over, ma'am!"

  But Marguerite's face was resolved in the way Julia remembered from her youth. Her mother wouldn't yield the earrings, a treasured gift from her father-in-law, Daniel Austrian, on her wedding day.

  The man snatched at the left earring.

  "I said no!" Marguerite gripped his wrist.

  Swiftly Julia reached to restrain Marguerite. "Mom! Do what he says!"

  The gunman knocked Julia back. Pain radiated through her shoulder, stunning her.

  Instantly, Marguerite grabbed his mask, her face twisted with outrage. With an abrupt motion he flung her away. She still held the knit mask, and it peeled off the thief's head.

  Julia froze. The gunman was a woman. A striking woman with arched eyebrows and wearing no lipstick or eye makeup for anyone to notice through the holes in her mask. She had short black hair and black eyes that quickly narrowed, calculated, and decided—

  And fired straight into Marguerite's chest.

  3

  In the quiet London night, Julia screamed, "Mother!"

  The black-clothed thief expertly swiveled and fired into the forehead of the driver. Blood exploded and sprayed the taxi, the ceiling, the seats, Julia, the killer, the victims. So much blood and tissue that it bathed everything, including the overhead light, and turned the taxi's interior a sickening rose-pink.

  In a frenzy, Julia hurled herself toward the thief. Her hands closed around the woman's throat, and she felt a moment of rage so pure she knew she could kill.

  But the thief was fast and unusually strong. She cut the pistol up under Julia's jaw. White-hot pain exploded through Julia's head. She fell back, dazed. She couldn't move. Frantically she watched blood river up between her mother's breasts, turning the silver gown a terrifying scarlet red. The driver had collapsed in the front seat, and with the back of his head gone from the bullet, he could only be dead.

  "Mother!" Julia pleaded. "Hold on!"

  The killer swept Julia's purse to the street, grabbed her right hand, and ripped off the alexandrite ring her grandfather had given her at her debut. In the killer's hand, the gem's brilliant green color sped out the taxi like a panicked firefly.

  Julia's gaze fixed on the ring.

  And before she could stop it, queasiness flooded her. She blinked furiously, trying to hold the sickness at bay. She had to remember the face of this monster—the arched brows, the hollow cheeks, the short ebony hair, the cool eyes—

  Dizziness rocked her. She gasped. Fought for control.

  But with appalling swiftness, a cold, ink black sea rushed toward her from all sides, erasing light in its wake. Inside her brain she smelled a strange, almost sickening scent. The scent she'd smelled in the bathroom when she'd at last gazed at her own face—

  An anguished cry strangled in her chest. She knew what was happening. She clenched her fists, trying to stop it.

  Blink. She was blind. The light—life—vanished.

  All of that happened in seconds. Her mother gasped. Tried to talk, but could only choke. And gasp again.

  "Mother!"

  As the thief's footsteps fled into the night, Julia moved swiftly. She found the sleeve of her mother's coat. And then her face. The smooth skin—

  And hot, sticky liquid.

  Frantic, her fingers inspected her mother's cheeks, mouth, chin, and throat. Blood trickled from her mother's mouth and down her neck to her shoulders. She was choking on her own blood.

  "Mother! No!" She pulled her close and cradled her like a child. She shouted into the night. "Help! Someone help! Call nine-nine-nine! Help!"

  Her mother's throat throbbed and strangled as if a small animal were trapped inside. The sounds and vibrations of her mother's battle to breathe reverberated through Julia's very bones.

  Her mother couldn't die. It was impossible. Too unbearable to even think.

  After this enchanted evening when her sight had returned and she'd been able to see her mother after so many years, enjoy the changes in her, savor her in all the minute ways of love, think about the future, want a future, watch her mother's eyes glow with the knowledge that their long battle was over and they'd won—

  Now after all that, her mother might die? "No," she moaned into her mother's blood-spattered hair. "No." She raised her head and shouted again for help.

  Her mother was weaker. Julia rocked her in the seat—

  She remembered being a small ch
ild wrapped in a soft blanket and her mother holding her so close she could hear her heart beat. She remembered pressing her ear against her mother's breasts and listening to her read aloud, the words rhythmic and musical as they carried from her mother's voice box through the river of her veins and out the lush landscape of her pores.

  She remembered sharing banana splits, the gaiety of Christmas shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue, and the thrill of running through the sprinklers together in their bathing suits on long summer afternoons in Connecticut. Her mother adored tailored clothes, expensive jewelry, and zinnias, because their rough petals seemed to come in more colors than any other flower's.

  It all made Julia think of her father, whom her mother had loved with an intensity that transcended death. Once she'd heard her mother tell a friend, "Why would I want to marry again? I loved Jonathan more than I could ever love anyone else. Why settle for less when I've had so much?"

  She thought about her father . . . their weekly jaunts in Central Park, ice-skating at Rockefeller Center, vacations on the Sea Islands, and his patient help with homework. He'd loved chocolate-chip cookies, tennis, and his family. Lean and good-humored, he'd been an amateur musician who'd craved music as much as she. Almost every Saturday night he'd taken her to the Met. His encouragement had sent her to Juilliard, while his unexpected death had torn her in half.

  In lives accustomed to predictability and security, one unexpected disaster creates chaos. Two disasters ravage and obliterate. Her blindness and her father's death the night she'd gone blind had done that. The past became a collection of photo albums she couldn't see. The present was a dark tunnel. And the future made one question any effort to go on. But despite the horror and loneliness of it all, she and her mother had created new lives. Together.

  Julia heard a car cruise through the intersection. Otherwise, the streets were silent, while the taxicab was filled with her mother's struggle to survive. Marguerite's gasps were raw. Her chest heaved violently. Her body quaked with pain and the desperate fight for oxygen.

  "I love you, Mother. Please try to hold on. Help's on the way. It won't be long now. Really it won't."

  Suddenly her mother's hands were on Julia's eyes, as if she knew Julia was blind again.

  "Don't worry." Julia choked back her tears. "I can see you," she lied. "It's going to be all right. I'm taking you to a hospital. I can see just fine, really. You're the important one. You must hold on, Mother."

  She shouted again into the night. Screamed and demanded help come.

  And silently cursed herself for her blindness, for her inability to simply run to someone's house to ask for a phone, to drive to a street filled with traffic, to find a telephone booth, to break a street fire alarm . . . to do something, anything more than to beg and rant blindly, helplessly for an empty neighborhood to respond.

  Her mother shuddered. The gentle hands fell from Julia's face.

  Frantic, distraught, she stroked her mother's tangled hair. She kissed her forehead. She called for help again. Her throat was sore, and the seconds seemed like hours. Eternity.

  At last she heard a miracle. A voice. Shouts.

  "Help's coming, Mother! It won't be long!"

  Hope surged through her. Now she could get her mother to a hospital. Surely a doctor could save her. There had to be some specialist with quick hands and a lot of experience in emergency medicine who could save her life.

  She called to the running feet. "Hurry! Hurry!"

  Marguerite squeezed Julia's hand. Through a sea of disorienting pain, she tried to swim upwards toward her daughter. Her daughter's hand was strong. She could almost feel the muscles pulse. She thought about Jonathan and hoped she could find him quickly if she died. been born a Catholic, but she still wasn't convinced was a heaven. And she worried about Julia. About one more disaster would do to her. The night Julia gone blind, Jonathan had been killed in a fiery car while she and Julia were asleep at Arbor Knoll. tragedy on top of another. And now she knew Julia lost her sight again. It was easy to tell from the familiar way Julia's hands worked—searching, doing the job eyes couldn't.

  Suddenly new pain ricocheted through Marguerite, devouring her mind. She couldn't think. Something her wrenched and split like a tree trunk—

  Fear stabbed Julia. She touched her mother's sweaty cheek and could feel she was about to have some kind spasm. Then she heard a quiet, ominous pop.

  Quickly she moved her fingers to her mother's mouth, and a geyser of blood erupted. It rushed out hot and viscous, melding them wherever they touched. The odor of blood was like no other—metallic, earthy, the powerful scent of birth and. . . death. Her mother was hemorrhaging.

  "Hurry!" Julia screamed in a frenzy at the voices. "Hurry!"

  Marguerite's hand weakened and fell away. Utter darkness encased her. Oddly the pain was gone. In a moment complete clarity she knew her life was ended. She angry. There were so many things undone. And she wanted to tell Julia once more she loved her. She struggled to her lips move, to bring words from her heart to Julia's but—

  Without a sound, as her blood slowed to a trickle, collapsed against Julia.

  Julia gasped. Frantically she laid a hand over mother's bloody heart. She could feel no beat, not even tremor. She couldn't believe it.

  "Talk to me, Mom." Julia sobbed. "Mother! Please to me. Mother!"

  There was only silence.

  Julia kissed her mother's bloody forehead. She sobbed and struggled to smooth her mother's matted hair. To fix it so she'd be beautiful when her rescuers arrived. She knew it was silly, but she couldn't help herself, because as she worked it seemed she could actually see her mother's face. . . the kindness and love that her mother radiated. Could hear her laughing voice.

  For a moment it seemed she was fixing her mother's hair because they were on their way out to the next concert. Now that she could see, they had so many plans . . .

  Because her mother was alive—

  She swallowed hard. It wasn't true, was it? Everyone was dead.

  Something delicate inside her shattered. Shaking, she pressed her cheek against her mother's soft hair. "Don't ever forget I love you."

  Blink. She was blind.

  Her mother was dead.

  She'd never see her mother again.

  4

  MEMOIR ENTRY

  You think you will escape. But I know where you are. I follow you everywhere, just as Austrian and Redmond followed old Maas. There was more wealth than they had ever dreamed. Still, Maas had plans for all of it. He watched over his shoulder the whole way, but they got him.

  Maas's treasures made you, but my memories will destroy you.

  EARLIER—12:14 PM, FRIDAY

  ALOFT OVER THE EASTERN UNITED STATES

  The sun was an orange fireball over the Adirondacks as the jet headed toward Kennedy International Airport after five overfull days of nonstop campaigning. The presidential candidate's eyelids were heavy and his body trembled in exhausted protest, but as the first silent ring vibrated against his chest, he snapped awake and pulled his cell phone from the holder inside his suit jacket. The familiar hum of the jet's engines hardly touched his consciousness.

  His name was Creighton Redmond, recently resigned associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he was instantly alert, focused, and wary. He'd been waiting for a report. He hoped this was it and that it was good.

  Redmond had trained in the legal trenches of American jurisprudence, battling some of the finest, most learned and devious attorneys in the world, and he'd won so often his reputation was secure on that alone. All that experience—the contacts, the victories, the reputation, the rare but necessary use of violence—were paying off now. He was in the fight of his life. The election was only four days away, and he was far behind. But he had a plan—

  He listened to his son's report. It was encouraging, thank God. He asked, "And the old man's two packets?" The rest home outside Armonk had been lax, and the arrogant old man had fooled them and sent out excerp
ts from his journals. That'd never happen again.

  From faraway Langley, Vince Redmond answered, "His packets are on schedule. We'll pick up both today before they can do any harm."

  Computerized tracking systems were a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they made following mail easy. On the other, slipping it out of the system without causing notice was difficult. The packets in London and at Langley would soon be in position to be taken. There were risks, but they were under control.

  The candidate asked, "And the old man's orderly?"

  "As we planned, his murder's being treated as the result of a drug deal that hit the dumper." The distant voice chuckled coolly. As soon as the nursing home's chief of security had listened to the hidden device that had recorded the old man and the orderly's conversation, two sentries had been sent to stop the orderly. They'd been too late. He'd already sent out the packets. At which point they'd been ordered to erase his knowledge of their existence. "We planted evidence of drugs near his body, and the sheriff's happy to have something that unpopular to wave as a flag. Justifies his hard-nosed approach to the job. He's up for election this year."

  Relieved, Creighton Redmond nodded and yawned. Energy was already coursing through him from his short nap. Only four days until the election. A sense of urgency permeated everything he said and did. "And the police records our woman got in Monaco?"

  "They were delivered this morning to our freelancer in London. He's contacted the reporter at the Sunday Times. You remember—the alcoholic we decided on." Because of his drinking, the reporter was about to lose his job.

  "The reporter was pleased?"

  "It's safe to say in all but fact he genuflected and drooled. The story's so hot, it's bought him at least another six months of employment."

  "And your man at the Company? The one who got copies of Jiřís altered data by mistake? Are you sure he's backed off? We can't let that information out until it's time!"

  The voice in far-off Virginia was suddenly hard. "Keeline's under control. You don't have to worry about him. And I've sent an encrypted uplink to Berlin that if the artist sends duplicate information to the wrong place again, she's finished."