After an excruciating wait through several commercials and the weather report—more rain on the way, apparently—the anchorwoman said, just as a picture of me that must have been taken on Thanksgiving appeared on the backdrop behind her, “In other news, Pasadena police are investigating the suspicious disappearance of Christine Daly, a twenty-three-year-old Pasadena resident and senior at USC. She has been missing since Thursday evening, November 26th, and was last seen in a red sweater and black pants. She may be driving—”
I tuned out the rest; it was just a recap of what had already been said on the radio that morning. But I turned and looked at Ennis, to see what little color he had draining from his face; his cheeks looked slack and gray, his eyes dull.
Finally he said, softly, as if to himself, “Erik, how could you?”
“So you believe me?”
He made a sad gesture toward the television. “That’s difficult to refute, isn’t it?”
I stepped closer to him and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Please—you have to help me get out of here. Erik’s busy in his office, and I know you have the codes to the keypads.”
There was a deep, almost inexpressible sadness in his dark eyes. “What will you do to him?”
Something inside me twisted. The pain in Ennis’s gaze was very real; obviously, Erik was much more to him than merely his employer. “Nothing, I promise,” I said at last, knowing the words were true, even though I hadn’t even thought that far up until that moment. “Just help me, and I promise I’ll never tell the truth about where I’ve been.”
A painful pause, as he searched my face. Apparently whatever he read there reassured him, for at length he said, “All right, Miss Daly. But hurry—I don’t know how much longer his meeting will last.”
With that he turned and led me out of the sitting room, down the long corridor that divided the ground floor of the house. At last it opened into a large foyer two stories tall that was fronted by an enormous double door. I had never been here before—up until now I had had no reason to come to this section of Erik’s home.
My heart slammed against my ribcage in a series of crescendoing beats as Ennis began to tap the code into the keypad next to the front door. Soon, so soon—
“What the hell are you doing?”
Erik’s voice lashed at us from across the room, and Ennis and I both turned to see him striding into the foyer, Jerome at his heels. The side of his face unprotected by the mask was contorted with fury.
It was as if all the blood in my body retreated from my extremities, leaving me shaking, my hands trembling. I could feel the gasps leaving my lungs, as if I couldn’t possibly pull in enough oxygen to keep my adrenaline-flooded body alert.
Beside me, Ennis pulled himself up straight. He was pale, very pale, but he fixed Erik with a steady eye and said, “I’m letting your captive go, Erik.”
Silence then, an eternity in which Erik stared at Ennis. Then, slowly, inexorably, that baleful gaze transferred itself to me. Somehow I was able to meet his eyes, eyes that were suddenly bleak, cold, a stranger’s eyes.
Jerome began to take a step forward, but Erik put out a hand, stopping him. “Tell me, Miss Daly,” he said, his tone almost impersonal. “Have you tired so soon of our hospitality? Food not to your liking? Or perhaps it was the company?”
My mouth opened—what I was going to say I wasn’t sure—but Ennis spoke first.
“You can’t kidnap a girl and expect her to stay with you! What were you thinking? My God!”
It was almost as if Ennis didn’t exist. Erik took a step toward me, then another. He was very close, intimidating in his height and strength and the anger that seemed to seep from his very pores. “Was it lies, then?” he asked. “Everything you said to me?” And with that he grasped my arm in a grip that I knew would leave bruises.
You will not cry. You will not cry, I told myself fiercely. No matter how much he hurts you....
But then Ennis reached up to pull Erik’s hand from me, his hand looking frail against the dark sleeve of Erik’s jacket.
“Enough of your interference!” Erik snarled, letting go of my arm and grabbing Ennis’s hand, pushing him away from me and to the ground.
I made some sort of shocked exclamation. Even Jerome began to move toward Ennis, but Erik appeared not to notice either one of them.
“Perhaps you were just amusing yourself with me?” he asked, and the half-masked face was very close to mine. “Was that it?”
“You can’t force someone to love you!” I flung back at him. “You can’t kidnap me and expect me to—to—”
“Erik.” Ennis’s voice sounded very weak. He still lay on the patterned marble of the floor, as if unable to regain his footing. His hoarse breathing filled the sudden silence. “Let her go. Leave her—” And his eyes closed, a sudden spasm of pain crossing his features.
Then Jerome was there, kneeling on the floor next to the fallen man. He lifted Ennis’s wrist to check his pulse, then laid his ear against his chest. Then he looked up at Erik, who had seemed barely to notice. “Sir, I think he’s having a heart attack.”
The words took a moment to penetrate. “What?”
“I need to call 911. Okay?”
Wordlessly, Erik nodded and turned away from me, dropping to his knees beside Ennis.
I moved away from the door, watching in horrified fascination as Erik knelt there, his head bowed over the broken form of his servant. He took Ennis’s hand, his whole form shaking. My God—was he weeping?
Jerome wasted no time. His iPhone was out of his pocket and into his hand in a matter of seconds. “I have a possible heart attack victim, aged seventy-four. We’re at 415 Charles Street. Hurry.” With that he hung up, shoved the phone back into his pocket, and began administering CPR in a smooth, practiced manner that showed he had obviously done this before. He said to Erik, in the same calm voice he had used with the 911 operator, “We’re five minutes from Huntington Memorial. He’ll make it.”
Erik nodded, but said nothing. His back was to me; I might not have even existed.
All I could think, stupid as it might have been, was that if we were only five minutes from Huntington Memorial, then we were still in Pasadena. Not only that, but we weren’t far at all from my own home. All this time, and I had never left my own city—
The minutes dragged on. In my own head I could only hear a little voice saying, Please, please, please. Please, God, don’t let him die.
Finally the sound of sirens, coming closer, then stopping. Jerome swore under his breath. “Goddamn front gate.” He got to his feet, punched a code into the keypad, then turned and looked down at Erik. “You’d better go. You don’t want to be here when they come in. And take her with you.”
For the first time in what seemed like hours Erik turned and looked at me. There was no expression on his face. As the windows to either side of the front door began to flash with blue and red light from the emergency vehicles, he slowly got to his feet and came toward me. Without speaking, he grasped my arm and pulled me out of the entryway, just as I heard Jerome open the front door for the paramedics.
Perhaps I could have fought him. Perhaps I could have turned and screamed for the paramedics to help me. But in the end I did neither of those things, although whether it was because I simply lacked the strength or because I just couldn’t bear to subject Erik to any more anguish, I didn’t know.
His silence unnerved me. On some level I would have preferred threats or verbal abuse. At least I could have defended myself against that. But he remained quiet as he dragged me back through the house and up the stairs, his grip a constant bruising force on my arm.
Only when we stopped outside my door and he began to turn the key in the lock did I finally speak. I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Erik, please—”
At that he did release my arm, but only to smother my mouth with his hand. “Don’t speak,” he said, the words dangerously soft. “Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie.”
I tried to meet his eyes, tried to show something of the shame I felt at how things had turned out, but he only looked away. Then he opened my door and, without warning, pushed me inside with so much force that I slammed into the little decorative table, knocking the orchid in its oriental pot to the ground with a crash. I fell to my knees, the tears starting to my eyes at the sudden pain in my hip, where I had connected with the edge of the table. Behind me I could hear the inevitable snick of the key in the lock.
With that sound, final as it was, I finally began to cry, hopelessly, the sobs tearing out of my chest with such force I began to cough. I stared at the pitiful remains of the orchid on the floor, tried to gather it up as best I could, then wept even harder as a broken piece of porcelain cut the palm of my hand. At last I crawled out of the antechamber like a wounded animal, not bothering to turn on the light in my bedroom, barely pausing to kick the shoes off my feet as I crept into bed. My hip throbbed, but the pain was nothing compared to the ache inside. What had I done? God, what had I done?
What made it even worse was the fact that my fear over Ennis’s condition was secondary to the pain I had caused Erik. I knew I would never forget the look on his face as he entered the entryway and saw me there, not if I lived to be a hundred. So much anger, to be followed by that cold remoteness—my betrayal apparently had made him retreat to a place far within himself where he wouldn’t let himself be hurt again. Whether he would ever willingly come out again, I didn’t know.
Dully I realized that I was fully a prisoner once more. He would never trust me again. Would I spend the rest of my life in these rooms, shut away from the world, shut away from him?
Eyes closed against the darkness, I huddled in bed as the tears came again, this time soaking my pillow. I’d keep my eyes shut forever, if it meant I wouldn’t have to see his pain ever again.
Chapter 20
He had to get out. The empty house around him suddenly seemed suffocating, oppressive. Jerome had ridden off in the ambulance with Ennis, and not fifteen minutes ago Erik had gotten a call from his assistant, who told him that it looked as if Ennis was going to make it, even though he’d probably be in intensive care for several days. The wave of relief that washed over Erik was only temporary. Ennis would be fine—his malady of the heart had a purely physical cause. But what of the damage Christine’s escape attempt had done to Erik’s heart?
The downpour of earlier that evening had diminished to a light drizzle. It felt cool and friendly against the exposed side of his face, which seemed to burn with the roiling emotions he tried so desperately to suppress. Tonight he was glad of the walk from the house to the garage, glad of the chance to feel the wind and rain in his hair.
The many-bayed garage had been built by his father in the late ’40s, after the war. Once it had been filled with a collection of classic and performance cars, but Erik had donated all of them to charity except for his grandfather’s ’33 Rolls Royce Phantom II, which he couldn’t bear to part with. The car now sat in lonely splendor in the garage, accompanied only by Erik’s S600 and the Range Rover he had provided for Jerome’s use. Each month, Jerome took the Phantom out for a spin to make sure everything was still working properly. As much as he loved the car, Erik would never drive it. It attracted far too much attention, even in a neighborhood such as his.
The S600 was another matter. Oh, possibly it merited a second look, but the casual observer would only note it as yet another S-Class, since it was the engine that made the biggest difference between the 600 and lesser models in that same class. Now he slid into the welcoming leather seats and punched the button to open the garage door, feeling the powerful thrum of the V-12 as he turned the key over in the ignition. With a silky rumble, the car moved out into the night, down the long curved driveway, past the wrought-iron gates that protected the entrance to the property.
He had no idea of where he was going. It was enough to be away, to let the powerful car sweep him into the night, down the curving streets that hugged the arroyo. If he only thought of driving, feeling the slick roads beneath the tires, listening to the intermittent hiss of the wipers as they slicked away the light drizzle, then perhaps he wouldn’t have to think of Christine, of what she had just done. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to think of Ennis in an intensive care unit, with no one to visit him but Jerome. Of course Erik would never be able to go see him.
Viciously he swung the car around a hard right, hearing a slight chirp from the tires, a small tug before the traction-control device asserted itself. The car handled beautifully in the rain, of course…too well, perhaps. Possibly the best way to end all this would be to lose control, to let the Mercedes crash down into some forgotten ravine or hit a tree with such force that no one would be able to tell that the driver had only half the face of a man.
But he knew he would never do that. Thoughts of suicide had briefly crossed his mind now and then over the years, but he’d always considered that the coward’s way out. No matter what agonies he might be suffering now, he knew that he would never seek to consciously end his life.
He was driving recklessly, though, taking corners much too quickly, speeding through quiet residential streets. There wasn’t much chance of being pulled over; the diplomatic plates had been Jerome’s idea, and they had served very well as a shield between Erik and the police over the years. The plates also saved him from the nuisance of a rash of fix-it tickets for his illegally tinted windows, windows that he’d insisted on since he was old enough to drive. They provided yet another barrier between him and the world.
How foolish of him to think he could ever let someone inside that barrier. How stupid to believe that her smiles and her laughter were genuine, were anything but a ruse intended to make him let down his guard. He thought of her pale face, the fear in her eyes as he had advanced on her. If she’d only known how close he had come to wrapping his fingers around her slender throat, ending it all then...ending the pain and the betrayal. It was only the crisis with Ennis that had stopped him from giving in to his rage.
You can’t force someone to love you! she had cried. Ah, but he’d thought he could. He’d thought if he could only have her to himself for a time, let her begin to know who he was, that she would come to care for him. There were so many small things he’d noted as the days passed, little tells which had continued to reinforce his belief that she was coming to care for him. The sudden surprised laugh she gave when he said something that amused her, the warm smile with which she would greet him whenever they met for the first time during the day, her obvious admiration for his musical ability—all these had made him think that she did love him, or at least would very soon. It wasn’t until now, when he had lost Christine, that he realized how much he had come to love her.
The pain rose up again, and his vision blurred, though from tears or the light mist that coated the windshield he didn’t want to know. In the first throes of his anguish, as he paced the floors of his study while waiting to hear some news—any news—he had thought, Then I’m done with her. I can always find someone else. But the truth was, he didn’t want to find anyone else. Even if he found another girl with her physical attributes, she wouldn’t be Christine. No one else would have that quick uplift to her chin, the deft sense of humor that seemed to assert itself when he least expected it, the quiet acceptance of the losses she had suffered in her life. He loved her strength now as much as he had admired her beauty or her voice. And now, when he had finally understood what it was to love a woman instead of merely desire her, she had taken that love and shattered it as she had shattered the porcelain orchid pot in her room.
He had stood outside her door for a long time, listening to her wracking sobs. Part of him had wanted to go inside and take her in his arms, for she had wept for so long and so tragically that he had grown a little alarmed. But he had not allowed her tears to move him. It was her fault anyway, that Ennis was in the hospital and Erik now knew the depths of her duplicity. Finally he had forced himself to walk away, leavin
g her to her anguished sobbing. At some point she would cry herself to sleep—better to leave her alone to contemplate the enormity of what she had just done. That oblivion had been denied him, however, as he haunted the dark hallways of his home, waiting for the call from Jerome. When at last he had received the news, of course he felt relief, but it was overlaid with anger. Damn Ennis, anyway—what could have possibly made him side with Christine? How could he have thrown aside an entire lifetime’s worth of trust, merely to help that lying girl?
She wasn’t lying about the kidnapping, came a cold, still voice in his mind. And she must have had some way of proving that to Ennis, or he would not have believed her. Once Ennis had been convinced of the circumstances surrounding Christine’s presence in the house, he would have had no choice but to help her. The man was too forthright and honorable to do anything less.
At that thought, Erik felt a strange emotion dawning in him, one that took him a moment to recognize because it was so foreign. After a pause, he realized it was shame. Yes, he actually felt shamed by what he had done to Ennis, using physical force against the man who had never shown him anything but affection and kindness. The fact that Ennis was apparently going to survive the attack did not make him Erik feel better. Instead, paradoxically, it made him feel worse. Sooner or later he would have to face Ennis and make amends for what he had done.
And Christine—God, Christine. How could he have expected her to love him, when he had just proved himself the lowest of the low—a man who, when he found he could no longer purchase love, decided to steal it instead? Perhaps she had shattered his trust in her, but how could he have ever thought she could trust him, when the foundation of their relationship was built on the quicksand of a crime? If he went to her now and begged her forgiveness, it would be too late. He had seen fear in her eyes earlier this evening, a fear that had never been there before. What could he possibly do now to show her that it had all been a terrible accident?
No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale Page 21
