“Well, how was it?”
Emma gripped the banister for support. She didn’t feel her chest tighten as the precursor to an asthma attack, but she did suddenly feel weak at the memory. “It’s hard to explain.” At the time her mind had still been so scattered, she’d felt as if she were Emma Earl and Megan Putnam, both of them afloat on the sea of confusion. Jim’s touch called to her like a siren’s song, to pull her towards him. When she came for that first time, she realized it was her—Emma—who remained, that she was the one who loved Jim. That thought she’d clung to in the hours afterwards; the touch of his body reaffirmed her love. She finally said, “It was magical.”
***
Given her disappearance after their last date, Dan figured he had better come up with something big for Emma. When he heard his godfather was to hold a rally at Robinson Tower, he thanked every Egyptian god and goddess in the pantheon. From experience he knew no girl who’d grown up in the Rampart City area could turn down a date in the ballroom—not even Emma Earl.
“I would love to go with you,” she said.
Love to go to the ballroom with you. Love. Maybe she did feel about him the way he felt for her. Maybe she’d felt the thunderbolt when they first met too and only now had the defenses started to come down. Or maybe she just couldn’t resist a trip to the magnificent ballroom, even if it was with him.
This he knew would be his last chance at her. If he still couldn’t break through, or if something else conspired to ruin their evening, that would be it for them. While he knew he could try forever, he figured she would be smart enough to finally say no. Three terrible dates would have to be enough for her, wouldn’t it?
With this in mind, he made his preparations for the night. He made sure the limousine would be available, that it would be clean and the driver sober. He went to the most expensive store on Toledo Avenue to buy a new tuxedo, one specifically tailored to fit perfectly. Then he went to the jewelry store and spent hours to find something to give her that would let her know he was serious—but not too serious. Earrings seemed too cheap while a ring would send the wrong message. A bracelet? He didn’t see her as the type of woman who wore those.
This discussion went back and forth for three hours before he decided on what to give her. He pointed to a diamond pendant in the case. “Can I see that?” he asked the salesgirl. She took it out of the case delicately and went on about how many carats it was and so forth, but he didn’t pay attention to her. He imagined how the diamond would look on Emma as it dangled from its gold chain, the stone glittering against her pale skin—
“I’ll take it,” he said. The clerk put the pendant in a black velvet box, which he hid in a seat pocket of the limousine. He decided to spring it on her when they reached Robinson Tower, before they went inside. He imagined she would gasp and say how beautiful it looked. Then he would sweep back her hair to fasten the chain and look into her eyes to tell her how beautiful she looked already, that the diamond only added to her beauty. She would thank him and they would kiss; they might never bother to go up to the ballroom.
These romantic visions bounced through his mind as he climbed up the stairs to her apartment. As he knocked on the door, he ran his free hand over his tuxedo to smooth out imaginary wrinkles and straighten his bowtie. This is it, he told himself.
The door opened and she stood there in the same dress she’d worn to the opera, though it didn’t look any worse for wear. He smiled at her and said, “Hi. Your roommate gone?”
“She went on ahead,” Emma said. She didn’t smile. From the way her bottom lip trembled, she looked ready to cry. She kept the door between them as if she was afraid he might touch her. “Want to come in for a minute?”
“We don’t really have a minute,” he said. Every minute they took now would mean one less minute for him to give her the necklace.
“Please? Just for a minute.” She motioned for him to come inside, but danced aside before he could touch her. “I just need to get my purse.”
Dan tried not to lose his cool. He was used to women playing games like this, but he could only think of how much he wanted to get her down to the car, to reenact the fantasy that had run through his mind since he left the jewelry store. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair, to look deeply into her eyes, and to feel her lips against his.
He was still immersed in these thoughts when she returned with a tiny scarlet purse on her shoulder. Now she reached out to touch him, but he couldn’t feel her skin through her opera gloves. “Before we left, I wanted to talk for a minute.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Please, it’s important.” She smiled at him, but her eyes were so sad he knew whatever she wanted to say wouldn’t be good news. “I really like you, Dan. I wanted you to know—”
“I really like you too.”
“But I think things are moving too fast.”
“What?”
“I care about you, but things are so complicated for me right now. I don’t think a relationship is what I need.”
“Then what do you need?”
“I guess I need you to understand.”
Dan stared at her for a moment; his cheek tingled as if she’d slapped him. “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “I love you.”
Her eyes widened and her skin turned so pale he thought for sure she would faint. “You love me?”
“Of course I do. You’re sweet and beautiful and the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh no? Oh no that I love you? Emma—”
“Dan, I can’t love you. Even though I want to—”
He didn’t know what possessed him at that moment, but he took her into his arms and kissed her. Maybe if words couldn’t convince her, this kiss would. Maybe she would finally understand how much he cared about her, how much he’d always cared about her.
She resisted his kiss at first; her hands grabbed his upper arms to push him away. A moment later her body relaxed and her right hand let go of him. She kissed him back, though she kept her mouth closed to hold his tongue at bay.
Then he felt a sharp pain in his neck as if a bee had stung him. He reached back with his hand and felt a drop of something. When he pulled his hand back, he saw a drop of something red. Blood? He sagged backwards; his body started to tingle. Then he saw her face, a mask of pain and sadness—and knowing. “Emma?”
“I’m sorry. Just relax. It’ll be over soon.” She took his bicep in her hand and he was surprised by the strength of her grip. He tried to say something, but no words came from his mouth. He could feel his entire body go numb.
It was as if he floated through the air; her face became more distant as he drifted away. He wanted to reach out to her with one hand, to hold onto her, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t fight the tide that pulled him away. She finally disappeared from view, replaced by darkness.
Then he heard a woman’s voice whisper, “I love you.” The veil of darkness parted and he found himself looking at the face of Emma’s roommate—Becky.
He realized they stood on a sidewalk in front of a restaurant. It rained around them, but his umbrella kept them dry. Her brown eyes looked into his, so full of sadness that it nearly broke his heart. She turned her eyes to the sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that—”
He thought back to when they had first met, how terrified he had been of her. She’d been so protective of her friend; she loved Emma like a sister, or perhaps even a daughter. That was the role she’d cast for herself; she thought no man would ever be interested in her. When one finally was, he was shot dead before they could seal their vows with a kiss.
She felt she was doomed in love. He knew that feeling all too well. All through high school and college he’d gone from one meaningless tryst after another, never close to true love. Then there was Emma Earl and the disasters that had plagued their relationship. She had sent him away, tried to banish him from her heart, or maybe it was the other
way around. He’d toiled in the desert for two years, until he and Isis finally came together. Except like Becky’s husband, Isis was taken away from him. He still didn’t know what had happened to her, never got a chance to bury her, to mourn her fully.
They both understood how much it hurt to love and lose someone in a way most people never could. He tipped her chin up to look into her eyes again. She thought because she wasn’t tall and skinny and a genius like her friend Emma that she didn’t deserve his love, or anyone’s love. He pressed his lips to hers, to kiss those doubts away. “I love you too.”
When he pulled away from her, he realized he was in his bedroom. Becky sat on the edge of the bed, tears in her eyes. Off to the side, he saw Emma and a man he didn’t recognize with wild hair and buckteeth. “What’s going on?” Dan asked. “How’d we get here? Why’s everyone staring at me like that?”
Becky smiled at him and then said, “No reason.”
Chapter 27
Though he’d slept for nearly two days, Dan soon fell back to sleep, though at least this time as a man and without the need to be awoken by a kiss. Becky waited until he began to snore softly before she turned to Emma and Jim. “What do we do now?” she asked.
“We should talk to your friends down in the cellar,” Emma said. “They might be able to give us a better idea what’s going on.”
“I’ll let you guys handle that. I’ve seen all I want to of them.” She picked up the copy of The Tempest from the nightstand. “Dan and I have a book to finish.”
Emma left her friend with Dan and went downstairs to the foyer. “Mekka lekka weep ninibaum,” she said. In a flash the red case appeared at her feet. Then she opened the lid and gasped. “Oh no.”
“What wrong?”
She motioned to the case, which was empty. “She stole it,” Emma said. “Somehow she’s hidden it from me.” Emma ran a hand through her hair. “I guess we’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way.”
As the Scarlet Knight, Emma had interrogated several of Don Vendetta’s lieutenants before. If the armor itself didn’t frighten them, a display of strength or the Sword of Justice would usually do the trick. She doubted sweet, awkward Dr. Emma Earl would have the same impact on hardened soldiers.
Jim must have sensed her thoughts. He put a hand on her arm. “We make them talk,” he said.
“A little of the old good cop-bad cop?’
“No, all bad.” When Jim smiled, his face took on a feral look that she imagined would be much more effective than hers.
“Just don’t be too rough,” she said. “We don’t want to kill them.”
“No kill them.”
Emma followed him down to the cellar, where Becky had tied up the half-dozen soldiers among the wine collection Dan had inherited from his father along with the rest of the house. Emma hid behind a rack of wine bottles so as not to get in Jim’s way or minimize his impact. It would be important that they believed the Sewer Rat was about to take vengeance on them for the bomb that had nearly killed him.
She saw Jim calmly approach the thugs, some of whom she recognized from her reconnaissance of TriTech. “Which one in charge?” he asked.
The goons looked at each other and then a blond man with a crew cut spoke up. “Me.”
Jim nodded at this. As fast as Emma herself, Jim yanked the man’s head back. “You die first. You blow up my home.”
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“I Sewer Rat. You attack sewers, you attack my home.” He leaned closer to the man, all the better for the prisoner to smell the stench of sewage ever-present around Jim. “You pay.”
“It wasn’t us. We didn’t do anything,” the man said. “We just came for the girls.”
“What girls?”
“A fat one and a real pretty one.”
“Why?”
“Those were our orders.”
“Who give order?”
“I don’t know.”
Jim snapped his fingers and from the shadows Pepe appeared along with a half-dozen of the largest rats. At the sight of them the man gasped. “Keep those fucking things away from me!” The man squirmed against his bonds, but couldn’t get free. Pepe and the others inched closer to glare at the thugs.
“They no like you,” Jim said. “You blow up their home too.”
The man stared at Pepe as the rat began to climb up his leg. “I told you, we didn’t do that. He did that on his own.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you or he’ll kill me.”
Jim reached down to stroke Pepe’s head. “He kill you first.” To illustrate this point, Pepe bared his sharp, yellow teeth.
The man’s scream echoed through the cellar. This prompted his companions to back away from him as much as they could. Though not an expert on interrogation, Emma knew they were ready to crack. “All right,” the man said. “I’ll tell you if you call that motherfucking thing off!”
Jim hissed a command in ratspeak and Pepe hopped off the man, but remained a few inches away to remind the man what would happen if he lied. “Now you tell me,” Jim said.
“Ward. Harry Ward. He’s the one you want. He runs TriTech. He blew up your damned sewer. Now let us go!”
“You stay here until police come.”
“But—”
“I let you live. That all.”
“Wait—”
Emma stepped out from behind the wine rack to stand beside Jim. She looked down at the man’s tear-streaked face, the smell of urine far more potent here than from her hiding place. “I think we can make a deal,” she said and put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “If you help us get into TriTech, we’ll let you go.”
“You will?” the man asked.
“Yes.” She leaned down then to pat Pepe’s head. “Just remember that the Sewer Rat’s friends are everywhere in this city. If they catch you here again, they might not take too kindly to it. I’m sure you catch my drift.”
“Sure, lady, no problem. None of us want to come back here anyway.”
“Good.” She nodded to the man. “Start with guard positions and shift changes.”
***
Before she let Ward’s goons leave, Emma had one final task for their leader. She rummaged through Dan’s study until she found a tape recorder and then had him repeat everything he’d told her about Ward and TriTech. He did this willingly under Pepe’s watchful gaze.
Once she had the confession on tape, she went over to the corner to add a personal message to it. Then she slipped the tape into an envelope, which she then tied to the rat deemed the fastest, Pepe’s youngest grandson. She did her best to relay directions on how to find Captain Donovan, who in the midst of this crisis Emma hoped would be in her office. If not someone there would be able to find her. “She smells like mint-flavored gum and stale cigarettes,” she told Jim, who helped translate that for the rat to understand. The rat skittered off with the envelope tied to his back.
“How the fuck do you do that?” the man asked.
“Practice,” Jim said. Emma put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.
“You two are fucking nuts,” the man said. “You really think you’ll be able to stop him? He’s got a fucking army in there. Even if you get the cops to help, it ain’t going to be enough.”
“Let us worry about that,” Emma said. She untied the ropes around his wrist. “You just worry about finding a way out of this town by sunrise.” This line would have sounded much harsher in the Scarlet Knight’s voice—and with the Scarlet Knight’s armor to back it up, though Jim and Pepe helped add sufficient weight to it.
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” The man ran from the library nearly as fast as the rat with the message for Captain Donovan.
“Looks like you really worked him over,” Becky said from the doorway.
Emma bent down to scratch behind Pepe’s ears. “He did most of the work. Him and Jim put the fear of God into those men.”
“Fear of rats,” Jim said.
Becky nodded to Jim but remained just inside the doorway. Despite that Pepe had been a frequent visitor to her house for the last year, she still hadn’t overcome her fear of him—or Jim. Emma knew it would take a while for that to happen, but she hoped it would someday.
“So what sort of crazy plan do you have to get in there?”
“We go up through the sewers and try to reach Ward’s office.”
“That’s it? No disguising yourself as someone else or setting a trap for them?”
“There’s not much we can do. Not if Sylvia’s helping him.” That was one point where none of the captives had been entirely clear. They knew that Sylvia had been there, but none of them were of sufficient importance to have seen her or Ward personally. “Jim’s going to round up some of his friends and I’m going to get some weapons from Aggie’s house. And one of Pepe’s grandsons is taking a message to Captain Donovan.”
“His grandsons?”
“Rats have a lot shorter life spans,” Emma said.
“I wish I could help you guys.” She pointed to a thick bracelet around her ankle. “Sylvia said it’d go off if I stepped outside this house.”
Emma went over to her friend to study the bracelet. She couldn’t see the explosives, which meant they were probably on the inside, protected by Becky’s flesh. Unless they cut off Becky’s leg, Emma didn’t see any way to get it off without consulting Sylvia on how to disarm it. She stood up and patted Becky’s shoulder. “That’s all right. Someone should stay here with Dan anyway.”
Becky’s hug took her by surprise and for the first time since she’d become herself again, Emma found she couldn’t breathe. “Be careful, kid. Don’t do anything stupid. You haven’t got that armor to save your butt.”
“I no let her die,” Jim said.
Becky waved a finger at him to revert to the mother hen mode she had displayed so long ago when Dan first came over. “You’d better not, buddy. If anything happens to her, I’ll take it out of your ass.”
Again Emma had to put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle at the way Jim stared at Becky, as terrified as the man he’d interrogated. At least she hasn’t lost her touch, Emma thought.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 59
