Nick pushed his hair back. “Tossed. Thoroughly.”
“Do you think they were looking for something?”
“Hard to say. Maybe, or maybe they just wanted to send a message. Maybe both.”
He stepped into the room and righted the file cabinet. His action mobilized me. I snatched up printouts, matching their corners and stacking them in neat piles on the desk. I gathered up pens and paperclips, file folders and highlighters, and reassembled everything. The process pulled me back together, too, mostly. In fifteen minutes we’d restored a semblance of order.
I said, “If anything was missing, I didn’t notice.”
“Me either. But we can’t assume this is the only room they touched. We’re going to have to search the whole house.”
“How about you take the basement and we meet in the middle?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Half an hour later, we met back in the great room, which actually functioned as a great room since contractors had finally removed the scaffolding last week. Neither of us had found anything else disturbed, but my unease still lingered. Nick stood with his hands on his hips. “That’s all we can do for now. I’m salty and I could really use a shower. Besides, I think it would help,” he gestured toward the office, “with this. Will you join me?”
I love to shower with Nick, to feel the hot water trickle around us until it runs cold, forcing us to run to bed to keep warm together. He was right, a shower together would wash the creepy away, but I told him I wanted to feed the dogs and double-check the locks first. “Go ahead and jump in. I’ll be right there.”
“I can do that for you,” he protested.
I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I know you can, but I want to. I have to have a do-better with the troops. They should have stopped this and left us a bloody corpse.”
I set out Purina and water as dusk fell. Six canines clustered around me, ignoring my lecture and lining up at the food bowls in the garage according to their pecking order. I looked up when I heard an unfamiliar car pulling into the gate. Its lights were off. Not Rashidi. Not Ruth. Not Ava or Crazy. Not even Bart. My intuition screamed a warning at me: You took something of mine, and I want it back. Maybe I wasn’t as OK as I’d thought. Maybe bad man dem coming.
For a nanosecond, I thought about running into the house and grabbing Nick out of the shower. But I didn’t, because my intuition could only be rampant paranoia, and if I ran for help I’d be leaving the ramparts unmanned. Ever since my pitiful failure on the day of the pool incident, I had started coaching myself when I was at a complete loss as to how a normal woman would handle herself. It was like the WWJD bracelet my parents made me wear in middle school, hoping it would keep me away from drugs and maternity wards. What Would Jesus Do? Lately I’d been using WWMD—What Would Mom Do. And W the hell WMD now? The answer came without thinking. She would protect her family.
I ran into the garage and grabbed the flare gun from my truck’s glove compartment. I gulped air and stepped out on the driveway. I immediately felt exposed, trapped in the light cast by the motion detector lights. I stepped back into the shadow and hid the flare gun behind me. My dogs gathered around me, warm fur pressing against my legs. Good, reinforcements.
I didn’t get a good look at the car until it turned up the driveway in front of me. It was a dark sedan of some sort. Nick would know. It parked fifteen feet down the driveway and idled. Maybe it wasn’t a bad man, after all. Maybe it was a roti delivery man gone astray.
The car stopped. The door opened. A man got out. He walked in front of his still-running car, backlit by the headlights. He was roughly my height, average for a guy, but a head shorter than Nick. He was so thin his ribs formed something like a six-pack underside of his tight tank shirt and made his muscles look bigger than they were. His olive skin was covered with elaborate tattoos of women and a Maltese cross. His dark brown hair fell straight across his brown eyes.
“Where’s Nick?” he growled. His tone spoke of long-held grudges and dreams of revenge. Definitely not the roti delivery man. Callia started growling.
“Excuse me, who may I say is asking?” But suddenly, I knew. I just knew.
“Just tell me where he is.” Five other dogs joined voice with Callia.
“Inside.”
“Get him.”
I didn’t budge. “He’s not available right now.”
The man yelled, “Nick Kovacs, you got one minute to get out here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. I saw a glint of light on a blade as I heard a faint click underneath the sound of the wind. Switchblade? How West Side Story of him.
No answer from inside, thank goodness. I shouted, “Ignore him, Nick. I’ve got the gun.” And I pulled it out and pointed it at the man I believed was Taylor’s father. I hoped he couldn’t tell it was only a flare gun in the dark.
“No need to get hostile.”
“Leave.”
He put one leg back in the car. “My boy shouldn’t be sleeping in some pink-ass crib. He needs to grow up to be a man. Bad enough that bitch gave him a girl name. I’m coming back for him. You be sure to tell him, tell Nick.”
I saw rapid movement out of my peripheral vision, on the far side of the car.
It was her. Black, beautiful, and ferocious. Her skirt billowed behind her as she lifted a large flat rock—not unlike the one I’d used to mark my burial spot—which pulled her shirt up and exposed her hard stomach. When she brought the rock down on the sedan’s front window, Derek jumped back and fell to the ground. He scrambled away from the car in a crazy crab-walk. The dogs rushed at him, snarling, but stayed well back.
“Son of a bitch. What was that?”
No more rock. No more woman.
“Fate,” I said. “Leave.”
He stood up, brushed off the seat of his pants, and glared at me. “Shooting out my window doesn’t make you tough.”
I held the gun steady. “You’re next.”
Derek climbed into the car and was already accelerating before he threw it in reverse. The engine whined and the transmission clanked, then the car shot backwards down the driveway and its back end swerved into my front yard. He jammed the gas and threw it in drive, digging a hole in my new grass before rocketing forward. His front wheels bit into the gravel lane and the back wheels lost traction. Six dogs ran after him as he fishtailed and then disappeared in the dark. I heard the car turn out of the gate and onto the road back to civilization.
I heard a sound from the house. My adrenaline surge had my heart doing wind sprints. I wheeled with my hands raised to protect my face and torso and flexed my knees. I was ready to fight off the devil himself barehanded. Me and Annalise.
“I gave up on you,” came Nick’s voice from the kitchen.
“Sorry.” I was a goddess. No, scratch that, I was an empress. “We just had a visitor.”
Chapter Twenty-six
To say that Nick was upset about Derek showing up is an understatement of gargantuan proportions. He raged, he cursed, and he paced all night long. I listened both to him and for the sound of the dark car in the drive.
By morning, his rage and fear had tempered into resolve and a punchy wryness. I rubbed the last bit of moisturizer into his droopy-eyed face as Taylor sat on the bathmat at our feet, running his dump truck back and forth over Nick’s toes. A horn honked outside. Nick and I both jumped.
“I’ll see who it is,” I said, glad the house was locked up tight. Surely Derek was a creature that didn’t come out in the daylight?
“Wait,” Nick said, his face grim. He grabbed my robe from the hook on the back of the door and slipped it on over his skivvies. When he cinched the belt, the lavender velour ended two inches below his boxers. Mrs. Doubtfire with a furrowed brow and really good legs.
“That will certainly scare off any bad guys,” I said.
Nick snatched Taylor into the air and the boy screamed with laughter.
“What if it’s—you know,” I said. I inclined my
head toward Taylor.
“If it is, one of us will have to take him back to his room. For now, I’ll just keep him out of line of sight.”
I led the way through the bedroom and great room to the kitchen window and we looked out onto the driveway. Jacoby was leaning against the bumper of a dark SUV. Another man sat in the passenger seat. I felt my eyebrows lift. I looked at Nick.
“One of the good guys,” I said, wiping the back of my hand across my forehead.
I walked out to the driveway and raised my hand. “Good morning. What brings you out before the rest of St. Marcos is even awake?”
“Good morning. Ava say you having trouble,” Jacoby said. “I swing by to check on you.”
I had left Ava a message the night before about what happened. She had never called me back, but clearly she’d gotten my message.
“You could say that. Let me get Nick and we’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’m right here,” Nick said, coming outside with Taylor on one hip. He’d exchanged my bathrobe for khaki cargo shorts and a Texas A&M t-shirt. He and Jacoby exchanged good mornings. Taylor said good morning so much like Ruth that even I understood him. Nick and I laughed.
Jacoby said, “He make a proper island boy one day.”
“Who’s in the car?” I asked.
“My new partner. Morris. He shy.” Jacoby waved Morris out.
Morris unwound himself from the passenger seat and joined us in three strides of his stork-like legs. “Yes, sir,” he said to Jacoby. I’d seen him before.
Jacoby sighed. “Morris, we partners. Don’t call me sir.”
“No sir, I mean OK.”
“Katie and Nick, Morris. He learning the ropes. Morris, Katie and Nick.”
“Good morning,” I said to him. “Nice to meet you.” Nick echoed me.
“A pleasant good morning to you.” We shook hands. Morris’s were clammy. I’d been that scared of Jacoby once upon a time, too. Poor bastard. Morris shifted from one foot to another and crossed his arms. “I see you before,” he said to me. “At the theater.”
Yes, that was it. In the parking lot outside the theater, months ago, the first night Nick was on island. I smiled at him. He dipped his chin.
“Now, listen and learn,” Jacoby ordered him. To me, he said, “Go ahead.”
I gave Jacoby the rundown on my Derek encounter.
“Don’t sound like he have a gun,” Jacoby mused. “That good.”
Nick chimed in. “I plan to track down his parole officer and report seeing him here, as soon as Texas wakes up in a couple hours and right after I call a locksmith to come out here and change all the locks.”
Jacoby grunted. “Got a picture of him or a license plate number?”
Damn. I’d had the chance to take down his plate number, and I’d whiffed it. Nick said, “No picture, but I can try to print you something from the internet.”
“Just email the link.” Jacoby pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to Nick. “I make the call to his parole officer. Mean more, one officer to another. And I keep an eye out for him on island, see if I can get a few of my friends to do the same.”
“Thank you, Jacoby,” I said.
“Yah mon. You a freshwater West Indian now,” he said, calling me by one of the slightly derogatory names the true West Indians gave to continental transplants. But his eyes gave his good humor away.
“I’m singing with Ava tonight at Crystal’s,” I said. “We’re auditioning for that producer who just moved here. Trevor Weingart. You should come.”
Ava’s name added an inch to Jacoby’s height. “I swing by,” he said. “But I don’t like he.”
Jacoby tended not to like anyone Ava did, so to speak, although I wasn’t sure about Trevor. We shook hands all around, then Jacoby and Morris drove away.
That night, the sun was setting as Nick, Taylor, and I drove along the winding north-shore road to meet Ava at Crystal Bay for dinner. Horses grazed in the guinea grass on our right. Pelicans dove in the surf on our left. We made a sharp right turn at a thick stand of coconut palms and Crystal Bay opened up before us. The sea was dark below the half ball of orange behind it. The balmy wind blew small whitecaps across the outer reef and pushed the smell of the sea into our open windows.
We pulled into the dirt lot below the restaurant, which had a perfect view of its namesake. Close enough to feel a part of it, high enough to make it a panorama. It was perfect for a lazy Sunday morning of lobster Benedict and surf, but it was Thursday night, and we were running late enough that Ava had beat us here. Nick dropped me at the steps and he and Taylor went to park the truck.
I climbed the stairs to the restaurant, which was an immense covered deck. The stage and bar were nearest the water, a pool table and the enclosed kitchen were on the far side against the hill, and in between was a large open area crowded with wooden tables.
Dark was overcoming dusk outside, and the lights were on in the restaurant. I saw Ava as soon as I reached the top of the steps, and headed to the stage to help her set up. She was pulling at her sequined neckline, coaxing the stretchy purple fabric down to better display her girls. As I got closer, I could hear her muttering under her breath, holding both sides of an animated conversation. I felt my brows rise. She looked up and saw me, and I lifted my hand in a wave. She pointed to the back of the room, where Jacoby raised his hand in greeting to me.
“You late,” she said.
“I sorry,” I said, Local-style.
She chuptzed. I chuptzed her back.
“That almost passable,” she said.
High praise. I pitched in, and together we finished readying the equipment. When we were done, Ava went to the bar and I looked around the rapidly-filling deck for Nick.
He had taken a seat with Jacoby, and Rashidi had joined them, too. Jacoby had Taylor on his knee facing Nick. Nick was opening his mouth when Taylor would pull his right ear and closing it when he pulled the left one. Taylor loved this game. He really was adorable. I knew I would miss him when he went back to Teresa. Still, I was ready to have Nick all to myself. I wasn’t afraid to admit it. In two days I would be a bride, and I wanted to be the princess, too.
“No Trevor yet,” Ava said in my ear. “He off island all summer and now he late.”
I reached down and behind me and caught her hand in mine. She spun me around and tried to adjust my neckline downward. “I don’t need a breeze,” I said, hauling my turquoise V-neck back up. The front and back plunge of the sleeveless fitted cotton dress made it skimpy enough already.
Ava and I stepped back onto the stage. I looked above the heads of the packed house rumbling with conversation, beyond the lights on the deck and into the dark, into the snaking vines and gnarled and twisted trees of the forest. I listened through the conversations and clinking dishes for the night sounds of the island—frogs, birds, crashing waves. I felt Nick’s gaze, and at the touch of his eyes on my skin, I swallowed. Magic.
We kicked off our set with “Rhiannon,” a song I love that always makes me wish I had a deeper voice so I could sing the Stevie Nicks part. As the applause died down, we picked up the tempo with Ava’s new favorite, “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It.” I didn’t like it so much myself, but it usually got the crowd going, which was what I thought was happening at first.
The bouncer was arguing with someone, and that someone wasn’t backing down. Ava and I kept singing but I stretched to get a better view. The owner, a burly Local who could have worked the door himself, left his post behind the bar and moved toward the melee. The heads of every patron swiveled to follow him. Ava and I looked at each other and shrugged but kept going. Moments later, the bouncer folded his arms.
The owner pulled a wad of cash out of his bar apron and approached the primo table in the center of the floor. He held it out to one of the men seated there and pointed to the bar. The guy pocketed the money and his whole party strolled over to the bar, laughing and slapping each other high fives.
Then Trev
or stepped out of the shadows with his latest delivery from the woman-of-the-week club catwalking behind him in a vinyl outfit that screamed whips and chains. Actually, with hips as thin as hers, it wasn’t out of the question that she was a he. Slither and Trevor’s date’s apparent twin followed them to the vacated table and they all sat down.
I stopped singing. No one noticed, because they were gaping at a rock star so bona fide he’d graced the cover of the Rolling Stone. He wasn’t the reason I stopped, though. The final member of Trevor’s circus troupe was.
Bart.
Ava elbowed me. “Close you jaw. Time to sing.”
Luckily, she sang the first verse of “Underneath It All” alone, so I had time to regroup before the chorus. It didn’t matter much anyway. Slither was pretending not to play to the crowd, and they were following his every studied sip of his drink and examination of his phone.
But the chorus was as far as I got before Bart walked over to Nick, who was standing at a table towards the back with Taylor perched on his hip. I cringed, waiting for Nick to crash a chair over Bart’s head. He didn’t. But Jacoby stood up and leaned toward Bart, throwing a shadow over him. Bart took a step back, then turned and walked away quickly.
The crowd was applauding again. I didn’t dare look at Ava, because I was pretty sure she’d turn me to stone if I did. Bart had returned to Trevor’s table. He leaned in to Trevor and said something, then headed down the stairs to the parking lot.
“If you don’t mind, could you not screw up the rest of my life?” Ava said, pinching the back of my waist with considerable strength. “Sing, dammit.”
I grabbed the microphone and gave it everything I had in “Travelin’ Soldier,” which was a good thing since it was my lead. It must have been enough, because Ava didn’t pinch me again. After our set, Trevor introduced me to a very bored and distracted Slither—“Nice to meet you, charming show”—and congratulated us on a great performance. I barely registered the words. I nodded and smiled enough to satisfy Ava, but I got the heck away as fast as I could. Nick was already pulling the truck around to pick me up when I got outside.
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 14
