Protect Me, Love

by Alice Orr

  Once again she didn’t answer. They were outside the settlement house, down Hester Street and into yet another taxi before Nick found out that they were headed back uptown.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  All Delia could think about was getting this over with. The card promised that. “Meet me tonight,” it said, “and all will be revealed. No police, or you’re the one they will be taking away.” The scrawl could be Samuel’s, or somebody trying to make her think it was Samuel. She didn’t know which it might be. Right now she wasn’t even sure she cared. She just wanted the tension to be finished, no more hiding out or being chased or running from one place to the next to keep from being found out. Her life had to settle itself, one way or the other. Either she’d be free at last or on her way to prison or maybe even dead. Whatever happened, she had to find some measure of peace. Something told her that following the instructions on this latest card would allow her that.

  She had mixed feelings about dragging Nick along for this last act. After all, she didn’t know what the ending would be. If she was on her way to inevitable defeat, she didn’t want him to suffer that fate with her. Whatever doubts she might have about a future with him, she cared very much about his safety and happiness. She cared very much about him in general. She wouldn’t want anything to hurt him ever, especially not because of her. On the other hand, she wasn’t too proud to admit she was frightened of what might lie ahead tonight, and after tonight, as well. She needed Nick, by her side and on her side, and she knew it. There was no getting rid of him anyway. He’d attached himself to her like a shadow. That was his job for now. She would have liked to think about whether or not that attachment might last beyond this bodyguard assignment, but there wasn’t time for that. She told the cabdriver to let them off at West End Avenue between Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth streets, as the note on the card had directed.

  “What are we doing here?” Nick asked.

  He’d tried to get her to answer his questions during the ride uptown, but she’d only shaken her head at him and stared out the window till he stopped asking. She felt she did owe him an answer now.

  “We’re getting to the bottom of things,” she said.

  “Could you be more specific?”

  Nick had paid the cabbie who then sped immediately away. This was not a neighborhood to hang around in after dark despite attempts to gentrify the area with an upscale high-rise apartment building and a park in the next block. The vacant lot in front of them was desolate and dark except for some spillover light from lamps in the small park. Even that light was obscured by the huge tufts of snow that had begun falling as Delia and Nick traveled from Hester Street.

  “How long is this silent treatment going to last?” Nick asked when she didn’t respond to his previous question.

  Was that what he thought she was doing? Freezing him out with silence? Maybe he was right, though she longed to fly into his arms. She’d clasp him close to whisper, “My darling, my sweet darling,” in his ear and pray for those tremulous words to convey everything-her years of loneliness, her limbo life between Rebecca Lester and Delia Barry, her desperate need to have all of that ended once and forever. What she uttered instead was much less expressive but all she could manage at the moment.

  “Everything will be revealed,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  She spoke louder. “The card from Hester Street said all would be revealed if I came to this place tonight.”

  “Here?”

  Nick looked up and down the block. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  “Here,” Delia said, and headed into the vacant lot. She’d made it only a few steps before Nick grabbed her arm.

  “Do you know how crazy this is?” he demanded.

  “Please, don’t shout at me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He sounded desperate and kept his grip on her arm. She wished she could explain her own desperation. She hadn’t the heart for that now. She had to save all of herself for whatever awaited her beyond this empty lot. She started walking again. For a moment he managed to prevent her from moving out of his arm’s reach, but she continued to strain against that.

  “You have to have your way, don’t you,” he said.

  “In this, yes.” She strained harder.

  “If I don’t let you walk into this trap now, then you’ll walk into the next one without me.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  His grip hadn’t loosened, not even from her tugging at it with all her strength. Still she had the feeling she was close to prevailing, at least for now. A few seconds later that proved true. Nick shrugged and released her arm.

  “You might as well go ahead, then,” he said. “At least I’m with you now.”

  She longed to tell him that having him with her was all she really wanted, but she only nodded. This time, as she began walking again, Nick was at her side. He still hadn’t let go of her arm.

  “Where are we, anyway?” he asked. “Do you know?”

  “Vaguely,” she said. “We’re headed into what used to be a train yard.”

  “An abandoned rail yard. That sounds just perfect,” Nick said in a sarcastic tone.

  Delia had no defense to offer against the obvious foolhardiness of what she was doing. She simply walked on with Nick beside her and wished for two things—that her life as she’d lived it these past five alienated years would be history at last and that Nick wouldn’t be hurt in the bargain. They were well into the deserted lot now, past the back edge of the adjacent park and picking their way among snow-covered mounds of heaven knew what. A figure emerged from the snowy veil of deepening darkness. Delia couldn’t tell who it might be, or even if it was a man or a woman, until he turned on the flashlight in his hand and pointed it upward beneath his chin.

  He’d looked scary enough in the stairwell of the Waldorf with his eyes blazing crazily down at her. He’d chilled her heart again earlier today, the way he’d gritted his teeth and snarled at Nick as they’d struggled for the gun in that apartment that might or might not have been her brother’s. However frightering this man had been those other times, he was much more so now as the flashlight beam cast his sneering face in eerie shadows and ghostly light.

  Nick slipped a step backward and slightly behind Delia. She might have been surprised that he didn’t jump in front to shield her instead, but she could feel him reaching behind him for his gun while her body kept the man with the flashlight from seeing what was going on. Then the light beam was suddenly full on Nick and Delia. She blinked and raised her arm as if to ward off the blinding brightness. Actually, she intended that movement to be a distraction from what Nick was doing.

  “Drop it, Avery.”

  The female voice came from behind them. Delia had heard it before. She was almost certain of that, but she couldn’t place where. She turned to look over her shoulder.

  “Eyes front and hands up, both of you,” the voice barked. “You’ll see me soon enough.”

  “Do you want me to give you my gun or put up my hands? I can’t do both.”

  Delia guessed that Nick was stalling for time. His mind had to be spinning as fast as hers in search of a way out of this mess she’d walked them into. An armed maniac in front of them, a woman barking orders behind them and Nick about to lose his only weapon. Delia wished she’d given him time to find that second gun before she’d raced them off Riverside Drive.

  “Put up your hands, and I’ll get the gun,” the woman was saying as Delia felt Nick move ever so slightly. She readied herself to follow his lead.

  “None of that, smart guy.”

  A thud accompanied the voice this time, and Nick groaned as he fell to the ground. Delia clamped her hand over her mouth to stop her scream. The woman behind them had struck Nick with something hard enough to knock him out. Delia bent to help him.

  “Stay where you are,” the woman growled, setting off that flicker of memory in Delia’s brain once more. “I never did trust Mr. Ave
ry. He was always too much of a white knight for his own good.”

  She knew Nick. The flicker of memory grew stronger.

  “I never trusted you, either, Rebecca. Or should I call you Delia?” The woman stepped around from behind, but it was too dark to see her clearly. “Put some light on the subject, Max. Miss Delia, Rebecca, whatever her name may be, is dying to see who I am. Or pretty close to dying, that is.”

  Max, the man with the crazy eyes, moved forward a few feet and directed the flashlight beam on the face of the woman standing in front of Delia. She studied that face—attractive, even-featured, maybe too much so. Delia still couldn’t make the connection.

  “You’re not the only one who can make herself over,” the mystery woman said. “Except that I made some more extensive changes. It’s amazing what a good plastic surgeon can do.”

  She laughed then, and the memory chips clicked together for Delia at last.

  “Cassandra?” she asked.

  “Speaking of people who are close to dying. I’m supposed to have been dead for going on nine years now.”

  Delia was still having difficulty figuring out what was going on. “But you were in the helicopter with my father.”

  “Obviously, I wasn’t.”

  “They found your body in the wreckage.”

  “They found a body. Same height, approximately the same build and age. Easy enough to find on the same streets I was wandering before your dear daddy decided to rescue me.”

  More memories slid into place. There’d been rumors all those years ago about Edward Lester’s much younger bride. Delia hadn’t paid much attention. She’d only cared that her father was happy, and devoting himself to Cassandra seemed to make him so.

  “You probably heard Tobias and Penelope talking about me,” this new version of Cassandra went on. Her voice was full and confident, even commanding, nothing like the timid young thing Delia remembered. “The Wrens didn’t approve of me. They thought I was only out for what I could get. They were right, of course.”

  Delia fought to think her way through the confusion.

  “It was a fair trade actually,” Cassandra said. “Your father got a protégé to mold into his version of the perfect woman. There was no chance of his ever being able to do that with his darling daughter. You were too headstrong. I, on the other hand, was more than willing to be molded. I was nobody going nowhere when he came along. He taught me everything I needed to know to become somebody. How to dress, what to read, what to like, even what to think.”

  A corner of the picture began to come clearer for Delia. The portraits on that living room wall this morning. The study that looked so much like her father’s.

  “That’s your apartment up on Riverside Drive, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Good for you. You’re starting to put it together.”

  More of the picture grew clear for Delia, none of it too savory.

  “Did you kill Penelope Wren?” Delia asked.

  “Good for you again.” Cassandra poked Delia in the chest with the barrel of the gun she was holding. “I took care of them all, or to be precise, I had Max do it. You’ve met Max, haven’t you? We’ve been together from way back in my street days. We’re quite a team. I do most of his talking for him. He does all of my dirty work for me.”

  “What do you mean, you took care of them all?” Delia asked as the horror of what the answer might be crept into her bones.

  “I had Max kill everybody I needed to be rid of,” Cassandra said. If her voice hadn’t been so cold, she might have sounded gleeful. “Penelope and Tobias, Morty Lancer and, of course, your father.”

  Delia sobbed once then lunged forward, grabbing Cassandra who hopped out of the way and toppled down. She must have tripped over something under the snow. Delia was on top of her in an instant.

  “You killed my father,” Delia cried. “You killed my father.”

  Her heart was breaking and exploding with rage, both at the same moment. She pounded her fists into Cassandra wherever contact could be made. Delia was oblivious of the gun. All she could think of was that her world had been destroyed, and her precious father along with it, because of this woman. Delia couldn’t keep herself from giving back some of that pain now. One of them probably would have ended up dead or at least unconscious if Max hadn’t dragged Delia away and tossed her into the snow next to Nick, who groaned and stirred then was still again. What could he do anyway? Max stood over them with a gun and the flashlight. Cassandra picked herself up and brushed the snow off her coat. Then she was standing there pointing a gun at Nick and Delia, too.

  “Why?” Delia asked. “Why have you done all of this?”

  Cassandra laughed. “The money, of course. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? A pampered little rich girl like you wouldn’t have any idea what it’s like to have nothing or how far a person might go to change that.”

  Delia could hear the hatred behind Cassandra’s taunting. Had she been this way before, when they’d lived in the same house back in Colorado? Delia wished she’d paid more than passing attention to her stepmother back then.

  “How did you find me?” Delia asked.

  “That precious ring of yours. Your daddy told me the whole touching story of your mother giving it to you on her deathbed. Your daddy told me everything, even that silly name he called you. Topsy. Isn’t that just too, too dear?”

  There was envy behind Cassandra’s sneer, along with the hatred, powerful enough emotions to fuel her murderous rage. Delia could see that now.

  “I’m surprised that my father shared those things with you,” she said.

  “I could make your daddy tell me anything. The only one easier to get to than him was Morty Lancer. Of course, he wanted his cut of the money, too. That’s how I got him to rig the will. He was siphoning off his own cut in the meantime, but I knew that and he knew I knew it.”

  “Did Morty know you weren’t in the crash?”

  “He wasn’t smart enough to figure that out, any more than he was smart enough to steal small. That’s why I had to get rid of him finally. He was a greedy little man. Of course, I was too smart for him. Even before your darling daddy died, I’d diverted lots of money and securities into the trust fund accounts with a holding company in control. I controlled the holding company under what I’d already set up to be my new name and identity. Then he got greedy. Unfortunately we couldn’t get straight to the money even with Morty pulling the strings. We had to go the trust fund route to not be caught. You were too much of an airhead to pay attention to what was going on, your brother was too crazy to care, and Morty was the sole trustee. It was a perfect setup till good old Morty pushed his pilfering too far. If I hadn’t stopped him, he’d have bled those trust funds dry. He’d already made a dent in Samuel’s.”

  “Samuel.” Delia had been half reclining in the snow with her arm raised to keep the large flakes of snow out of her face. She shot up now into a crouch that brought Max’s gun directly to the side of her head. “What have you done to Samuel? Did you kill him, too?”

  Cassandra laughed again, even more cruelly. “Why would I need to do that? He’s too harmless to bother with. Besides, he’s been useful to me. I did have him moved to another institution, just in case you ever decided to go after him and started checking his finances too closely. Of course, you never did.”

  Delia felt a twinge of guilt more chilling than the wet gradually seeping through her jeans.

  “How did you manage moving him? Don’t papers have to be signed?”

  “A lawyer, silly girl. It’s always possible to find a crooked one of those. This time I was smart enough to buy one smarter than Morty Lancer. His partner, in fact, a natural to take over the Lester estate work. He thinks I’m a distant relative of your father’s just as Morty did. But then, neither of them ever questioned my story very closely. Morty was too busy grabbing up the money I let him embezzle, and his partner has enough brains to know he should keep his mouth shut. Anyway, everything’s
run like clockwork since Morty died. Morty was a loose end, so I snipped him off. Putting him in your bed just tied things up, nice and neat. I like things neat. Then you took off and spoiled everything. But I had a feeling you’d show up again someday.

  “Then the other day, there you were, big as life in Saks Fifth Avenue of all places, right across the counter from me. I’d call it fate. I’d told myself I’d run into you someday and get rid of you like all the rest. You might never figure out what was going on, but maybe you would. That’s a chance I wouldn’t want to take. So, fate brought you to me, fate and a little luck, good luck for me, bad for you, just like what’s going to happen to you and Avery now.”

  Cassandra stepped back. Unfortunately she didn’t trip this time.

  “Time to get on with it,” she said. “Right, Max? Now that I’ve made sure the poor little rich girl knows how the kid from the gutter outsmarted the whole Lester clan and ended up on Easy Street.”

  Nick stirred again next to Delia, then rolled over. She reached for his arm.

  “How sweet,” Cassandra said, “and better for Max, too. He likes to have his victims see what they’ve got coming to them.”

  Max’s eyes glinted, more insane than ever in the beam from the flashlight, but that wasn’t what had Delia’s attention at the moment. Forms were moving out of the darkness behind Cassandra and Max, advancing toward them without sound through the muffling snow. At first Delia thought Cassandra might have enlisted more henchmen, but that didn’t make sense. Why would she need anybody besides herself and Max and their minimum of two firearms?

  These new arrivals were decidedly bedraggled. Delia could see that more and more clearly as they entered the peripheral glow of the flashlight. Suddenly, Delia remembered where she was. This abandoned rail yard was exactly the kind of place that attracted the homeless, both good and bad, as a squatting ground. Delia’s stomach clenched. It looked like she and Nick had more than just Cassandra and her crazy sidekick to contend with.

  Delia watched the leader of the ragged band move into view behind Max and coiled herself to spring to the attack, as she was certain Nick must also be doing next to her. Then she saw the leader’s face glaring purposefully from beneath a Santa Claus hat fringed in wild, frizzy gray hair.