by Merry Jones
Lou grumbled and paced. Despite her anger, Harper felt sorry for him. No matter how utterly stupid and irresponsible he’d been, he was trying to make things right.
‘So how do you get him the money?’
‘I just asked Rita to make an appointment. I don’t think he’ll bother us until then. But with Wally, you never know. Wally messes with people just to show he can.’
Great. Harper’s chest tightened and her eyes darted around, half expecting a missile to come flying through another window. What was she supposed to do until Lou paid the guy? Be on permanent guard duty? Play watchdog? She closed her eyes, reminding herself that he and her mother would be gone in four – wait, it was after midnight – in just three more days. Right after Christmas.
Lou stood slouched and dejected, staring at the satchel.
‘Did you eat?’ Harper didn’t know what else to say. ‘Want a sandwich or something?’
He shook his head, lifted the bag and headed up the steps. ‘It’s been a long day. I’m just gonna go to bed.’
Harper started to follow him upstairs, then reconsidered. She was wide awake now, listening for hit men. Hyper alert. And, as long as she was near the kitchen, a sandwich seemed like a good idea.
Sty was snoring on a sofa in the sitting room.
‘I thought you said the place was empty.’ Steve looked up at the domed ceiling of the foyer, nodded toward Sty.
‘Officially.’ Evan turned up the light on the chandelier. ‘That’s just my buddy. So what will it be? Beer? Whiskey?’
‘Whoa, what’s that smell?’ Steve scrunched his nose. Went straight to the armoire.
Damn. Could he smell the kid? Or was it the air freshener?
‘What is this thing?’ He knocked on it, looked it over, up and down.
‘It’s nothing. We’re selling some old furniture.’ Evan stepped over, preventing him from opening the armoire door. The guy was out of line, asking too many questions. ‘Come on in here.’ He led him into the sitting room, wandered over to the fireplace, as if to start a fire. ‘Have a seat.’
Steve didn’t sit. He wandered around the room, looking at portraits, bookshelves. Took a volume down. ‘O’ Henry.’ He opened it, leafed through.
Evan was losing patience. This guy wasn’t cooperating, didn’t seem interested in drinking. And how could Evan slip him a rufie if he wasn’t drinking? ‘So what can I get you?’
‘You know what? I’m actually kind of wiped. Thanks, but I think I’m just going to take off.’ He replaced the book.
He’s just going to what? Evan casually picked up a poker, stoked the dying fire. ‘No, really? Let me at least show you around the house. It has fascinating architecture.’
Sty snorted, coughed, turned over.
Steve glanced at him. ‘Maybe another time.’
Evan’s hand tightened around the poker. Damn. He couldn’t let him just walk out – he’d pictured the whole thing. What he was going to do, how it would feel. How he would try things, taking his time. ‘Well, suit yourself. Thanks again for the ride.’
‘No problem. With roads this bad, you’d have had a hard time finding a cab.’ He moved toward the foyer.
Evan crossed the sitting room in three long strides. When he was behind the guy, he pulled his arm back, raised the poker and swung.
The impact sounded like the splitting of a coconut shell. The guy’s knees folded, his arms didn’t even move; he went straight down with a thud. Evan checked his pulse. Couldn’t tell, wasn’t sure. But he chortled as he pulled up the guy’s jacket, covering the wound and containing the blood, and his chest almost burst with laughter as he dragged him back into the sitting room, depositing him at Sty’s feet.
Vivian was asleep with the lamp on, sitting up in the bed, her head tilted to the side, a half-empty glass of whiskey on the nightstand. She’d been waiting up for him. Careful not to wake her, Lou put the duffel bag on the top shelf of the closet, got undressed noiselessly. Started for the bathroom, stopped and looked back at the closet, reconsidered the bag’s location, went back and moved it to the floor, behind the laundry basket. He stood at the closet a while, looking, considering whether to move it again or not. Finally, he got ready for bed.
But once he was in bed, he didn’t sleep. Couldn’t settle his mind. Couldn’t rid it of Wally, that asshole. How he was going to make him back off and leave them alone. It wouldn’t be easy. After all, he’d wounded Wally’s ego, getting the better of him, and Wally couldn’t stand that. Might want to make an example out of him, show the world how nobody should mess with him. Even when he got the money back, even when he got paid interest, he wouldn’t be satisfied. He’d want to get even. Because for Wally, it wasn’t just a matter of money; it was a matter of pride.
And that wasn’t all. There was also the matter of Ritchie. Ritchie was good people, for a dealer. He’d come up with the loan pronto, no questions asked. But now Lou had a new problem: How was he going to repay Ritchie? He wasn’t working for Wally any more, wasn’t earning. So, borrowing from Ritchie didn’t solve anything. All it did was buy some time. Truth was, he was replacing one problem with another. No, not even replacing – adding. Piling one problem on top of another. Making a skyscraper, a mountain of trouble. And it might all come crashing down.
Beside him, Vivian was snoring, her mouth open a crack. Sleeping like a baby. She looked younger when she slept. Smelled like flowers. Lou lay beside her, eyes closed, the covers pulled over his head, wide awake.
Sty was not amused. ‘What the . . .?’ He sat up, gaping at the guy on the floor. ‘Who the hell’s that?’
‘That is Steve.’ Evan sat on the arm of the sofa, striking a casual pose.
Sty’s mouth hung open. Not fully awake.
‘Surprise, Sty. He’s our next project.’
‘What? He’s who?’ Sty sputtered, got to his feet. ‘Good God, Evan. What the hell have you done?’
Evan pouted, feigned hurt feelings. ‘I brought you an early Christmas present. I thought you’d like it.’
Sty knelt beside the body, felt for a pulse. Moved the jacket aside to look at Steve’s head. ‘What did you do? His head is smashed in – he’s dead.’
Dead? Really? Damn. ‘He can’t be – I just smacked him once—’
‘Well, you killed him.’ Sty checked Steve’s throat again. ‘No pulse. He’s gone.’
‘Shit.’ It didn’t seem possible. It hadn’t felt like he’d been killing someone. The guy hadn’t even seen it coming. Hadn’t registered Evan’s power. Just poof, crack – it had been over. Like hitting a damned baseball. No chance to savor it. Zero satisfaction.
‘What were you thinking, Evan? This is completely—’
‘I was thinking that we should move on. I saw an opportunity—’
‘So you just brought someone here and killed him? What’s wrong with you? We agreed to think things through. To follow our plan—’
‘To hell with your plans, Sty. At the risk of getting into fisticuffs again, let me just say that I’m sick of being limited by you and your constant planning and thinking. The whole point is to act. To do it. To experience the kill—’
‘And to fry? Because that’s what will happen without careful thinking and planning.’
Evan stood, walked across the room, glared out the window.
‘Look, we can’t keep bickering. We have to work as a team.’
‘A team?’ Evan sneered. ‘What does that mean? That you decide everything? You decide what to do and when to do it?’
Sty crossed his arms, fuming. ‘Of course not.’
‘You decide to model your life after your heroes Leopold and Loeb. You decide we live to correct their mistakes. Oh, and you suddenly decide to deviate from your own plan and theorize with neighbors about the fate of our first victim? Well, for once, Sty, I decided something. I selected a specimen on my own, impulsively, without a plan and without Your Grace’s permission—’
‘Did you also decide to crack his skull open?’
Evan shrugged. ‘Accidents happen.’
‘That’s my point. We can’t afford accidents. We can’t risk having things “just happen”. We need to control our actions.’
‘We can’t fucking control every aspect—’
‘Yes, we can. We have to.’ He went to the window, put a hand on Evan’s shoulder. ‘Okay. The guy’s dead. No point arguing over it.’ He met Evan’s eyes, didn’t release his shoulder until he felt the tension ease. Then he turned away, watched the body. ‘We now have two bodies to dispose of. Think back, Evan. Did anyone see you two together?’
‘Just at the bar. You know, drinking.’
Sty kept asking questions: How had Evan gotten home? Had anyone seen him leaving with the guy? Where was the car now? On and on.
Finally, Sty stopped interrogating. He walked around the room, regarding the body. Then to the front of the house, peering out the window at the Jeep in the drive.
‘The roads are awfully bad tonight.’ He pulled his coat off the sofa, put it on and stood by the dead guy’s feet. ‘It would be a terrible tragedy if a car slid off the road and slammed into a tree.’
‘Sty.’ Evan shook his head. ‘You want to go out tonight?’
‘It makes sense: the guy’s been drinking and his car skids out of control.’ He smirked, shaking his head. ‘At the risk of offending you by telling you what to do: Get your damned coat on. We’re taking your drinking buddy for a ride.’
Icy tree branches sparkled in the moonlight. Harper gazed out the kitchen window, washing her plate, still chewing the last of her peanut butter sandwich. The baby was fluttering.
‘What are you doing in there, a spin cycle?’ She dried her hands. ‘It’s time for bed. Settle down.’
But Harper wasn’t ready to go to bed either. Her senses were on high alert, the way they’d been in Iraq. She watched the street for a black SUV, listened for sounds of crunching ice. She felt danger as definitely as she felt the baby’s movements, as concretely as she felt the dish towel in her hands. It was nearby, closing in, but she couldn’t see it yet. She braced for it, just the same.
Harper reached into a cabinet, took out a package of chocolate chips. Opened it, started munching, thought about her conversation with Lou again. He’d tried to convince her that he had his problems under control, but she wasn’t at all convinced, kept replaying what he’d said, one sentence in particular: ‘Wally messes with people just to show he can.’
Wally had already messed with her once. What if he wasn’t satisfied with Lou’s offer of cash? What would he do next? Harper sat vigilant, a soldier on guard duty. Wally, whoever he was, had underestimated her. He’d surprised her last time; this time, she’d been forewarned.
Not that she knew what she’d do, exactly, to defend against an unseen cowardly drive-by assault. But if he dared to send an actual person, that person would regret it. She’d been trained, knew how to defend her home—
Harper lost the thought in the middle. Someone was outside. She got up, peered through the window, saw a figure on the porch of the fraternity. Sty? He disappeared inside for a moment, but came out again, backwards this time. Carrying – a person’s legs? Yes, with Evan following, carrying the other end, holding him under the arms.
Harper stared, disbelieving. Watching them carry a man to the Jeep parked in their driveway. Loading him into the passenger’s side. The guy was limp – had he had too much to drink and passed out?
Or was he dead?
Harper recalled their dinner conversation about Sebastian Levering. Sty’s interest in the topic – had it been too avid? Had he been testing to see what she knew, what she’d seen? She thought about the moving curtain, the light flashing from an upstairs bedroom next door. The fight she’d seen in the snow. She should call Rivers.
Then again, they could just be driving a fraternity brother home, and Rivers was already tired of her calls.
Evan climbed into the back seat; Sty started the engine and the Jeep pulled away. And a heartbeat later, figuring she’d just be gone a minute, Harper was into her boots and parka, on her way to the fraternity house.
The door was wide open, the chandelier turned on in the foyer. Harper’s left leg throbbed with exertion; she’d dug her heels into the ice with each step as she’d walked over. But, looking over her shoulder, making sure no one was around, she climbed the steps to the fraternity house, dried her boots off on the mat and went inside.
Immediately, the odor triggered a reaction. She saw a faceless boy in the street, flies swarming around a lifeless insurgent. A blown-off foot beside the road. No mistake: death was there, in the house. Or it had been. Evan and Sty might have driven it away in the Jeep.
Then again, they might have been carrying a drunk friend to his car. And the smell could have been from a dead squirrel or raccoon inside the walls, might have nothing to do with the boys.
Except that Harper’s instincts told her otherwise. She sensed danger and brutality there, at that moment, as clearly as she could smell the reek of death. Someone had been killed there. Violently. Recently.
She stepped away from the door, her back to the wall, careful to make no sound. The house seemed empty, but she couldn’t be sure. The bulky armoire still stood awkwardly in the foyer. Harper gazed past it up the staircase, saw darkness and dim night lights. She peered into the sitting room, noticed embers dying in the fireplace. Stepped inside, found an open Scotch bottle, a glass. And, on the Oriental near the doorway, a poker.
A poker? She stooped, looked at it more closely. Saw something clumped on its tip. Blood? Not just blood. Some hair, still attached to a patch of skin.
Harper stopped breathing. In the distance, guns fired; men shouted. She smelled burning rubber, felt the itch of swirling flies and clinging sand. A car sped up to a checkpoint, and then a flash of light—
No. She strained to resist the flashback, biting hard on her lip. She couldn’t afford a flashback now, had to get her phone and call Rivers, had to tell her about the poker. About the body she’d seen Evan and Sty carrying. But the checkpoint kept returning, the car speeding toward it – no. The car wasn’t there, wasn’t about to explode. The checkpoint had been in Iraq – not Ithaca. Pain pierced her lip and she tasted blood. The sand dropped away from her skin; the gunfire faded.
But the sound of the car didn’t. Tires crunched snow. A car door slammed.
Oh God. Evan and Sty were back? Already? Harper looked around the sitting room for a hiding place. Nothing – even if she squatted behind a sofa, she’d be in the open.
‘I’ll drive the pickup; you take the jeep.’
‘Why? Are you afraid of—?’
‘No. You killed him; you drive him. I’m driving Phil’s truck – I’m the one he lent it to.’
Snow crunched. Footsteps. ‘Hey. The door’s wide open. Didn’t you close it?’
‘I thought you did.’
Harper dashed into the foyer; if her weak leg hadn’t slowed her down, she might have had time to run upstairs, hide in a dark bedroom. But – no time.
‘Sty. Look. Footprints – they go into the house. From . . . next door?’
‘Shit.’ Another car door opened and slammed.
Oh God. They were right outside. In front. No time to make it to the stairs. She should have taken the poker. Could have used it to fend them off. Maybe she could take them both on anyway. Or make up an excuse for being there . . .
‘And look – they only go one way.’
Harper hunkered behind the armoire. In seconds, they’d be inside. Damn. She looked around.
‘Yes, they go in but not back out. So. It seems that we have a guest.’
Harper dashed around the armoire. It wasn’t an escape, but it was her only choice. Opening the door, she hopped inside, stood beside the vertical wooden bar in the middle of the wardrobe, pulled the latch until it clicked shut.
Instantly, even in the pitch darkness, she knew that she wasn’t alone. The stench made that clear. And when she moved,
trying to get comfortable in the narrow space, she bumped an arm. Recoiled. Reached her hand up and around the wooden bar, tentatively. Felt an ear. Oh God. A cool, stubbly cheek. A clammy nose. Harper froze, struggling to stifle her gag reflex, her urge to scream, her impulse to bolt out and face Sty and Evan. She tasted bile. Covered her mouth.
‘Well, to hell with her. Let’s get this hideous thing out of here and she can stay as long as she wants.’
Something banged the back of the armoire.
‘You got it?’ Sty’s voice.
‘Yup.’ It was a grunt.
The armoire jostled and tilted; Harper slid against the rotting corpse. Couldn’t breathe. Needed to get out. She pushed the door, but it wouldn’t open. The latch, she thought. Undo the latch. But then the armoire lurched the other way; the body and its dead weight slid onto her, pinning her so that she couldn’t move. More bumps. More tilts. Loud grunting and scraping sounds. Then a harsh bouncing collision. Harper landed flat on her side, pressed against the hard wooden wall. The armoire twisted, jostling her until she lay flat on her back, and then she had the sense of rolling, as if the armoire had suddenly grown wheels.
When the bedroom door opened, Lou instinctively threw himself over Vivian, covering her with his body. Protecting her from Wally’s thug. Closing his eyes, awaiting bullets.
‘Hoppa?’
Lou ventured a gaze over his shoulder, saw huge shoulders, a hulking frame silhouetted in the doorway.
‘Hoppa in here?’
Vivian pushed Lou aside, sputtering, eyes wide. Terrified and not yet awake. ‘What? What?’ It seemed to be all she could say.
The stranger now stood at the foot of the bed and pointed out the door. ‘Not here? Where’s Hoppa?’
‘Hank?’ Vivian managed. She rubbed her eyes.
