Footsteps

by Susan Fanetti

  Always the rebel, Luca pushed again. “He’s not a kid, Uncle.”

  “No?”

  Carlo was out of patience for this discussion and for Joey himself. He wanted to cut to the chase, figure out how badly he was fucked, and get on with his day. “How do we fix it?”

  Uncle Ben regarded him calmly. “You understand how this works. You are both helpful souls, willing to step in where you’re needed. So you’ll help us. At some point, we’ll need you to step in. You’ll do it. When we ask, what we ask, as we ask. And you will not meddle again. Am I understood?”

  “We should have let him come to you empty-handed? Uncle, I don’t understand how you would rather we turn our backs on our brother. How is that the right thing?”

  “You mix family with business, Luca. If Joey had simply been mugged on the street, then of course you should defend him. But he was working for us, and we were robbed and beaten. Our money was carelessly lost. We deal with our own problems and certainly don’t need amateurs running around like idiots.”

  Carlo and Luca had come out of that meeting with their coffers refilled and a heavy sense of foreboding. Knowing that the Uncles could call in a marker at any time was unsettling—more now than when Carlo had made a bargain to help Bina. Then, he’d gone in with his eyes open, making a choice to entangle himself and for a reason that had seemed—had been—honorable. Now, he felt swept up in Joey’s wake. He was having a lot of trouble finding patience and forgiveness for his baby brother these days.

  At least lunch with Peter had gone well. With the office back up again, and work coming in, Pete was calmer. And Carlo had offered part of his recent windfall to buy a 3D printer. He thought he’d still do models by hand as much as possible, but the technology would be, at a minimum, a good backup.

  With Pete feeling better about the company and not making more noises about leaving, they were able to focus on preparing for the Connelly meeting, and they’d enjoyed each other’s company for the first time in weeks. The meeting with Uncle Ben lingered in his mind, though. It was hard not to wonder what that future held. Funny—when he’d made a bargain for Bina, he hadn’t given much thought to the question of what price Uncle Ben would exact. He’d simply been willing to pay it.

  They’d gone from lunch straight to Connelly and had sat in a conference room, waiting for the executives, for twenty minutes—long enough for Carlo to begin to pace and fume. Pete had been chill, reminding him what a huge deal this get would be, how great his design was, how important the right attitude was in meetings like this, all the while giving him specific details to focus on so that his mind could do something more worthwhile than simply storm around hating people. Pete was managing him. Carlo knew it, but he didn’t mind. He was glad. It was what he needed, and why they worked so well together.

  By the time the chief officers and board members had filed in and sat around the table, Carlo was calm and focused, and he and Pete had their mojo back. The meeting went well—and Barrett Connelly, the CEO and President, even asked the kind of questions that Carlo loved to answer. Design questions. Visionary questions.

  The meeting went nearly half an hour over schedule as Carlo and Connelly began to speak in detail, each of Carlo’s answers spurring on a deeper question from Connelly. Carlo was getting excited. He could feel Pagano-Cabot getting their hands around this prize. He could see his building featuring in the Providence skyline.

  His phone began to vibrate in his pocket; he ignored it. When a third alert came through in quick succession while he was deep in a detailed answer, he reached in and turned the phone off completely. He’d check his voice mail after the meeting.

  ~oOo~

  Pete drove Carlo’s Porsche all the way back to Quiet Cove, to St. Gabriel’s Hospital.

  He hadn’t even allowed Carlo to get a sentence of protest out. He’d said, simply, “Let’s go. I’ll drive,” and held his hands out for Carlo’s keys. Even in the midst of his rage and panic, Carlo had seen that his friend was back as well as his partner, and he’d been grateful.

  Pete dropped him off at the ER entrance and then went off to park. Carlo tore into the hospital and, when the elevator wasn’t right there waiting for him, he ran up four flights of stairs to the surgery wing, where his family was gathered.

  Jenny had taken his son. And Bina had let her. Joey had failed to protect Trey, and Bina had turned him over.

  As he ran into the waiting room, he saw everyone—his siblings, his father, the Uncles and their wives, Nick, even Mrs. D. Everybody but Rosa. They were all in the waiting room. Waiting. He couldn’t believe that here was where everybody was. Here, at the hospital, with Joey. Joey, who wasn’t missing. Why was no one looking for his son?

  Four cops were in the room, too—two uniforms from Quiet Cove and two suited detectives, a man and a woman, from who the fuck knew. Feds, maybe, with a child abduction? They were all in a group, talking amongst themselves, which indicated to Carlo that they’d done all the interviewing of his family that they intended to do here.

  One of the uniforms was Irv Lumley, Quiet Cove Chief of Police. Irv and Carlo’s father had a long, friendly history. They’d gone to school together. He got along with the Uncles, too. The other uniform was an officer Carlo didn’t recognize.

  Bina saw him first and began to come to him. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at her or touch her or anything, not now, not yet. He couldn’t think for the klaxon going off in his head, and he must have sent her a look that conveyed his state of mind, because she stopped suddenly, halfway to him, and he saw pain and guilt in her swollen eyes. She’d been crying heavily.

  Luca and Carmen, too, both looked like they’d intended to come over, but Carlo shook his head. He wasn’t ready for his family.

  He went instead to Chief Lumley and his law enforcement buddies. “Irv—what’s going on?”

  Irv put his hand on Carlo’s shoulder. “Hey, Carlo. We don’t know much yet.” He turned to the Feds. “This is the boy’s father, Carlo Pagano Jr. Carlo, these are Agents Darby and Kohl from the FBI. And this is a new officer of mine, Trent Lincoln.”

  Carlo made a show of giving a shit about any of the people’s names and turned back to Irv. “What’s going on?”

  Agent Darby, the female Fed, spoke up, cutting Irv from his answer. “How much do you know?” She was tall and blonde, probably decent-looking when she wasn’t trying so hard to look like a Fed. But her hair was pulled back into a severe bun, and her blue suit was cut to show nothing of her body.

  “That my ex-wife ran off with my son. And shot my brother. That’s it. I want to know more.”

  “You’re divorced?”

  “Yes. Annulled. What’s going on?”

  “When was the marriage officially ended?”

  “It was all finalized about five months ago. Almost six, now. Are you going to answer me at all?”

  “At this point, Mr. Pagano, we have no answers. Our questions will help us get some. What is the custody and visitation arrangement between you and your ex-wife?”

  “There is none. She has no custody at all. No visitation at all. She has no right to him at all. Nothing.”

  Agent Darby’s eyes went wide. “Must have been a nasty battle.”

  “No. She didn’t want him. It was her idea.”

  The agents glanced at each other. Darby looked across the room, where Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie were standing with Aunt Angie and Aunt Betty and his father. When Darby looked back at Carlo, there was a skeptical glint in her eye. “She gave her son up of her own free will?”

  “Yes. She did. She ran off in the night. She left a note saying she wanted nothing except to be away from us both.”

  “And Sabina Auberon. She was with your son at the time of the abduction. How does she fit into this equation?” That question came from the other Fed…Kohl, Carlo remembered. He was short and stocky, salt and pepper hair going thin in the usual way. He looked like an asshole. Both agents did, frankly.

  “She’s my…g
irlfriend, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I know. Just a weird word at my age. But that’s what she is.”

  “Her husband passed not long ago. Nasty death. She seems to have gotten past her grief pretty fast.”

  Carlo didn’t answer. He stared at the little asshole and waited for him to ask a fucking question.

  “Any chance there’s some connection here?”

  With a slow shake of his head, Carlo indicated that no, there was no chance the incidents were connected.

  Darby took the interview back. “What can you tell us about your ex-wife’s circumstances, anything that might give us some insight into where she could have gone, or why she took your son?”

  “As far as I know, she’s lived in New York City since she left us. She had a place in the Village—I have her address on some of the legal stuff somewhere. She lives with a guy, or she did six months ago. Somebody she met here.”

  “We’ve got that. Had agents at their place already. Neighbors haven’t seen them for three days, but the place looks occupied—just like they went on vacation or something. We’ve got eyes on the building. Your…girlfriend got the plate on the car they were in. A rental.”

  “Then you know more than I do.”

  “Your brothers say that she tried to see Trey over the weekend. For his birthday. And you wouldn’t let her.” Kohl again. His tone was confrontational.

  Carlo narrowed his eyes. “You have kids, Agent Kohl?”

  “Yeah. Two girls.”

  “If somebody hurt them, turned their whole world upside down. Made them cry for weeks—gave them night terrors so bad you were afraid to sleep at night—would you ever let that person near your kids again? Would you ever give that person another chance to do that kind of damage, especially after your kids were better, after they were happy again?”

  Agent Darby cleared her throat. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

  “Jenny is bipolar. She was on meds, but I don’t know if she still is. Her manic phases never were euphoric. She just got wound up and very easily angry. She got hyper-obsessive about everything and really unpredictable. And needy. Needy and jealous.” As he described her, Carlo remembered the life he’d led with her. Since she’d left, it seemed that the lens through which he looked back on their marriage changed and sharpened each time he recalled any part of it. Until she’d been medicated, and whenever she’d felt good enough that she went off her meds to ‘try to do it on my own now,’ she’d actually been nearly impossible to manage. All those quirks and foibles that he’d found endearing at first—all of it was madness. He’d navigated through a lot of landmines to love her.

  And he knew that Trey was really in danger. “When she’s up, she loses control of her anger and gets destructive. When she’s down, she wants everything to end and gets destructive. Either way, she’s got my kid, and she’s got a gun. She’s already threatened to kill him. We need to stop fucking talking and find her before she fucking does it!”

  ~oOo~

  When the law left, Uncle Ben caught Carlo’s eye and beckoned him with the crook of a hand. But Carlo had something else to do first. Talking to the Feds had not calmed him down in the slightest. If anything, he was angrier and more scared. Now reality had set in. Trey was really gone. Jenny had him, and he knew she knew that disappearing was the only way she could expect to live. She was crazy, not stupid. Whether she intended to keep Trey or whether she’d kill him, she knew she had to vanish.

  His son was gone.

  He turned and found Bina, sitting between Carmen and John. Carmen was holding her hand.

  When he’d come out of the Connelly meeting, he’d had several texts and two voice mails. All the texts, two from Bina and three from Luca, had directed him to check his voice mail. Bina’s message had been nearly incomprehensible. She’d been sobbing, and all he’d gotten from that had been “Trey—Joey—come home—come now.” Luca, though, had been furiously, coldly calm and had given him some detail. And more detail when Carlo called him while Pete drove him home.

  Luca had the story from Bina and had shared it with Carlo, so he knew, or he had a solid image, of how it had happened. He knew that Jenny had forced Bina to give Trey up—had put a gun to his little boy’s head and threatened to kill him on the spot if she hadn’t. He knew that Joey had put himself between Jenny and Trey and Bina and tried to protect them.

  He knew these things, and the rational part of his head, the part that was an architect and a lover and a reasonable, good person told him that Bina had had no choice. That she had protected Trey by letting him go.

  The father who’d lain awake night after night watching his son, guarding him against the terrors of the dark, the father who’d stood in his kitchen with his son on his shoulder and read the note that said his mother didn’t want him, the man who’d lifted Jenny up by her neck and promised to kill her if she came near his child—that man only knew that Bina had opened her arms and let Jenny have his son.

  And that man was driving the bus.

  Ignoring his Uncles, heedless of all the other eyes in the room, Carlo stalked across the waiting room toward Bina. Seeing him, she stood and took a couple of steps toward him. He could see it in her hazel eyes—guilt and fear and sorrow and worry and love, everything he, too, was feeling. But he also had rage, and it was her hands that had let Trey go.

  His hands got around her arms, and her fear flared in her eyes as she understood. But she didn’t try to flee his grip. Instead she whispered, pleading, “Carlo.”

  “You let her take him.”

  “Carlo, please. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t—I didn’t—the gun. It was on his head.” She was sobbing freely, her body trembling. “It was on his head and he was so scared, and I couldn’t think how to save him but to let him go. She was going to…she shot Joey, and she said she would shoot Trey.”

  He knew all of that. He believed it all. But he kept imagining her letting his son go. He had so much fury, and all he could see was that. Bina giving Trey away. “You let her take him. You let her take him. You let her take him. YOU LET HER TAKE HIM.”

  Suddenly all but deaf and blind with rage, he had a vague sense of her having become somehow blurry, and then Luca and John were dragging him across the room. His vision cleared some. Bina was on the floor. Carmen was helping her up.

  Then Luca punched him in the face.

  ~ 22 ~

  He’d shaken her so hard that her brain had seemed to bounce in her skull and her neck shrieked with pain. When Luca freed her, and he and John hauled Carlo back, Sabina couldn’t keep her feet. Dizzy, sick, and distraught, she crumpled to the floor.

  Nothing that had happened to her in her life could compare to the devastation she felt now, that she had felt since Jenny had taken Trey out of her arms. This, she was not strong enough to withstand. Trey’s fear when she’d pried him loose, the way he’d looked at her over Jenny’s shoulder as she’d run to the car, Joey lying bleeding on the ground—those moments and everything since had been beyond her capacity, beyond even her comprehension.

  And Carlo blamed her. Of course he blamed her. She had had charge of Trey. He had been her responsibility, and she had pried his terrified arms from around her neck and handed him to a woman with a gun.

  There had to have been something she could have done differently. If she’d run back to Carmen’s cottage while she had Trey in her arms? Or if she had been more alert, perhaps she would have noticed an opportunity to get to the scant shelter of Joey’s Jeep? Something, anything that would have stopped Jenny.

  Carmen squatted at her side and took her arm. “Sabina. Hon, can you get up?”

  Still wracked with sobs, Sabina didn’t answer. Carmen grabbed her chin and made her look up. The movement made her neck ache. “Did he hurt you?”