by Unknown
What they were “selling” to the Dutchman was a sure thing. A foolproof way to transport those kidnapped kids out of the Miami consulate, and out of the U.S.
If they did this right, Phoebe realized, Georg Vanderzee was actually going to pay Ian to take those kids, to put them into one of Berto’s very big, very safe-looking trucks, believing that the truck would carry the children to a boat, which would then transport them to Cuba. At that point, Vanderzee or his agents would pick them up and charter a flight to Kazbekistan, where they’d be delivered to their father, in exchange for some millions of dollars in payment.
In truth, the truck would drive those children safely to their mother’s waiting arms, while Vanderzee’s men searched Cuba for them, in vain.
It was brilliant.
But it started tomorrow night, with the Dutchman seeing—up close and personal—exactly how Ian’s smuggling operation worked.
“And that,” Ian said, “brings us to the Dutchman.”
He glanced at Phoebe, and her stomach clenched. She knew he was going to tell them, now, about his past experience with Georg Vanderzee. She also knew that this was going to be bad.
“Our mark,” Ian told them, his eyes deadly serious, “is a sociopath.”
* * *
Ian felt Phoebe watching him, her eyes somber behind those glasses that he’d come to love.
“Georg Vanderzee. His father was a tulip farmer from Holland, his mother was a woman’s rights activist and the only daughter of a wealthy Kazbekistani man, who was and still is the right hand of a powerful warlord. She somehow escaped and fled to Paris, where she met his dad, who was much older, and was on some kind of midlife-crisis walkabout. Georg was their only child.
“When he was six years old, armed militants attacked a crowded marketplace in Yemen, and his parents were killed. He was with them at the time, but his life was spared.”
“Oh, God,” Phoebe breathed.
“He went to live with his maternal grandfather in Kazbekistan, which would not have been his parents’ wish. In fact, prior to that, he’d never so much as met his K-stani relatives—his mother had been hiding from them, all that time. He’s now convinced the attack in Yemen was carried out by men in the employ of his grandfather—and he seems to view the brutal murder of his parents as an acceptable expression of familial love.”
Francine spoke. “Seriously?”
“Yep,” Ian said. “He’s not a religious man, but he’s almost ridiculously superstitious. I never did figure out the cause of that, but there it is. I’ve used it in the past to my advantage. He walks the line between his country and the West—he looks European, but he’s fully embraced his grandfather’s tribal customs. By age fifteen, he was already married with two wives—and apparently, in his part of K-stan, teen grooms acquire preteen brides. However, this is something he’s continued to do, well into his forties. His most recent wife just turned twelve.”
“So in other words,” Francine said, “if something goes wrong, and we find ourselves in a firefight with this piece of shit, we’re cleared to shoot-to-kill?”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Ian said.
“How many wives does he have?” Shelly asked. “If he started getting married back in his teens? Where does he keep them all?”
“He doesn’t keep them all,” Ian told them. “By the time he was in his mid-twenties, his wives started dying mysteriously. These days it’s not so mysterious. While I was at his home, having dinner, his favorite wife—alleged favorite—knocked over a glass of wine. It didn’t touch me, I moved away, I didn’t get hit—but she did.”
Ian had to stop for a moment. God, he hated having to tell them this, but he had to. They had to know. He couldn’t look at Phoebe as he tried to focus on the facts. Just the facts.
“He backhands her, and she goes flying—she’s sixteen years old, maybe ninety pounds. Maybe. I’m trying to be a diplomat, to calm him down. My goal is to stop him from hurting her. I get him to back away and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be okay, because he finally seems calm. But it’s a little weird, because now she’s crying and cowering and I realize that she’s begging me to let him hit her and …”
“Oh, God,” Phoebe said and Ian made the mistake of looking at her.
She obviously knew where his story was going, and he had to look away.
He cleared his throat. “But he goes back to the table and sits down, and now I’m looking at her, and talking to her, like, Hey, it’s okay, when he shoots her. Just pop. Bullet in the head. It took me a second to realize what had happened—all of her noise stopped, and she hit the floor—of course, because she was dead. I was close enough so that her blood sprayed my pants. It hit the wall behind her, and … somehow it got on me. And he sees that and goes, Oops.
“I didn’t even know he was armed,” Ian continued. “And he just puts the weapon down and goes back to eating his meal. Servants come in and quickly and quietly clean up the mess. They remove the body, as if a murder in the dining room is an everyday occurrence.” He had to stop and clear his throat, before he added, “I found out later that if I’d let him beat her up, he probably wouldn’t’ve killed her. Apparently, that was his pattern. A beating or a bullet.”
“You couldn’t possibly have known that at the time,” Phoebe said, quick to defend him.
“I know it now,” Ian told her. “The bitch of it is, the day before, I’d saved his life. For real. I’d fake-saved his life, about a week before that, to get him to trust me, and he did. I got the info I needed, I’d even passed it along to the international taskforce that was … Anyway, whatever. The mission was over, and I was in that place where I was making the choice either to end or maintain the relationship. And I went for maintain and I stuck around for a few days. And I ended up killing that girl.”
Phoebe was just sitting there, looking at him with her heart in her eyes, as if they were the only ones in the room.
“So he just gets away with it?” Martell asked. “Just regularly killing his wives?”
“It’s not illegal,” Francine answered for Ian. “Not according to local law. He owns them. He can do whatever he wants with them.”
“Yeah, but you’d think he’d at least run out of girls who were willing to marry him,” Martell argued.
“The girls don’t have anything to say about it,” Francine told him. “Their fathers pick their husbands, and I’m sure Vanderzee pays well.”
“So, essentially,” Martell concluded, “we’re dealing with a pedophile serial killer. And we’re all going to play kissy face with him, and smile at him. High-five him. Shake his hand.”
“Yes,” Ian said, “we are.”
* * *
Aaron was in the kitchen, making himself a sandwich, when Shelly came in from the garage.
“What were you doing out there?” Aaron asked, his curiosity overcoming his ongoing frustration and anger at his husband.
Shel stopped. His hope was suddenly palpable—simply because Aaron had asked him a faintly hostile question. “I was putting Rory’s car seat into the surveillance van,” he said. “Making sure it was safe. If you’re going out there, I want to be in the van—not back here at the house. I figured you’d want to do the same.”
Aaron nodded. He’d figured right, angry or not. “So it’s safe?”
“It is,” Sheldon said. “As long as everything goes according to plan.”
They both just stood there, then, looking at each other, letting that statement echo in the otherwise empty room.
And then they both spoke at once. “Did you see the pictures of what Yashi did to van one?” Shel asked, as Aaron said, “When, with Ian, does anything ever go according to plan? I mean, he always gets it done, brilliantly, but this Dutchman guy sounds dangerous.…”
And then, also at the same time, Shel said, “I wonder if Yashi can find us a babysitter …” as Aaron said, “I’ll talk to Eee, tell him we need to get someone in here to watch Roar.…”
“
So we can both be out there.”
They said it in perfect unison.
Shelly smiled, with more of that hope brimming in his eyes, mixing with his unspoken plea for forgiveness. “Good to know we haven’t lost our ability to do that,” he said.
He was so beautiful—both inside and out. But Aaron’s love for this man, which always rang inside of him like a clean, clear bell now felt heavy and murky and burdensome, weighed down by his anger and hurt.
“I wish you’d put on a shirt,” Aaron said, turning back to his sandwich.
“I wish you’d take yours off and come to bed.”
“I’m taking the second shift,” Aaron informed him. “Guarding Berto.”
Ian’s policy was trust, but verify. And they were currently in the verify stage with Sheldon’s half brother. Berto had been assigned to the pullout couch in the den—a room right off the main living room that had French doors with glass panes. They were all taking turns watching him—making sure he wasn’t working some kind of secret agenda for Davio, with a plan to murder Aaron in his sleep.
“You shouldn’t be guarding him at all,” Shel said.
“Believe me, while I’m on guard, I’m not going to blink—let alone fall asleep.”
“Yeah, I was more concerned about B.’s safety.”
“Ha,” Aaron said, “ha. You’re the one who shouldn’t guard him.” Shel’s ongoing mistrust of his half brother was more than evident.
Mistrust and loathing.
“Yeah, well, I’m not guarding him, am I?” Shel said.
Aaron looked up from putting the mustard back on the door of the fridge. People didn’t normally look at Sheldon and think badass, but there was something about the way he was now standing, or maybe it was the shadows being thrown across his face, which whispered of danger. Of course it was easy to forget sometimes, that his computer-nerd high school sweetheart had also been a decorated officer in the Marines.
“I volunteered,” Shel continued, “but Ian said no. He sometimes says no to me, too, you know.”
Aaron had to give him that one, and he nodded. Grudgingly. “But he’s not your brother. You have no idea what it’s like living in the constant fucking shadow of his almighty perfection. It’s even harder when—”
“No,” Shel said, interrupting him, stepping forward into Aaron’s personal space. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t know hard if it kicked you in the face. There’s nothing hard about having a brother like Ian—everything he does for you, he does out of unconditional love. Hard is having a brother who’s so fucking disgusted by you, he beats the hell out of you for months to try to turn you into something that you’re not—that you can’t be. Hard is living in fear, from his constant threats. His manipulation. His revulsion. Hard is wondering when my dear brother is going to help my fucking crazy father kill you, Aaron, because if you’re dead, I’ll look less gay, and they’ll look less related to someone gay—forget about the fact that you are everything to me. You’re the love of my life, and I’d die to protect you.”
Sheldon so rarely lost his cool, Aaron had forgotten what it was like when he did.
Shelly wasn’t done. “So tell your brother—who loves you, and who would also die to protect you—that you’re not going to guard Berto, that you’re going to keep a safe distance between him and you throughout this job. And then come the fuck to bed, so that if something goes wrong during this allegedly low-risk assignment, we don’t regret it for the rest of our pathetic lives.”
As much as Aaron complained when Ian ordered him around, he’d always really loved it when Sheldon did so.
A lot.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you,” Aaron said, even though from the sudden shine of tears in Shelly’s eyes, it was clear that he absolutely thought it did.
And truth be told, Shel was probably right.
“God, I’m so sorry that I—”
“Just stop there,” Aaron said. “Can you please just say I’m sorry, and let me pretend that you’re sorry for what I want you to be sorry for?”
“I’m sorry,” Sheldon whispered. “I love you.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said, offering Shel half of his sandwich. “I love you, too.”
* * *
Francine came into the bathroom while Martell was brushing his teeth.
Because this bathroom was family-style, with double sinks, a toilet that was in its own little closet, and an opaque curtain across the roomy shower stall, the safe house rule was to keep the door ajar so that their fellow campers could use it simultaneously. So he wasn’t surprised when she came in.
“ ’Sup?” he asked, and rinsed and spat, stashing his toothbrush in the mug he’d snagged from the kitchen. He then splashed water up and onto his face, drying off with the towel he’d looped around his neck.
He realized then that she’d closed the door behind her. She was still leaning back against it, her hand on the knob, where she’d pushed in the little button to lock it.
“Berto saw you come in here,” she told him, her voice low. “I thought I’d let him see me come in, too. And it’s occurred to me … Well, I was thinking …”
Uh-oh.
Crazy woman alert.
Without a doubt, Martell was a bona fide crazy-woman magnet. Somehow, they identified him as an easy target—or what was that word that Dunn had been throwing around earlier? Mark. He was, indeed, an easy mark.
And what did that say about him—that he was likewise drawn to crazy? And truth be told, crazy-woman sex was beyond hot, and it was going to be hard to turn this down, because it had been a long, cold while since he’d used his penis for its primary and yet most rewarding task.
And Francine was a beautiful, healthy young woman, with a neat little body, that beautiful, silky long hair, and that perfectly shaped angel-princess face—with those pale, crazy eyes.
Her eyes weren’t crazy right now, but probably only because she was gazing down at her boots, and at the floor—anywhere but up and into his face. She actually seemed a little embarrassed by what she was about to say. It was possible she was blushing a little, which was weirdly endearing—and that was not a good thing for him to be thinking.
Martell needed to focus on the fact that if he didn’t stay strong, if he did give in and have sex with her—right up against this wall, no, that wall would be better, or hell, maybe she could perch up on the sink counter, it was the perfect height—it would be great while it was happening, but not so great after, when she, oh, say, tried to decapitate him and eat his brains.
And even if, like most of the crazy women he’d bumped into in the past, her brand of crazy didn’t include psycho-killer violence, there was still plenty to avoid when it came to figurative brain-eating.
“I was wondering,” Francine started again, chewing her lower lip a little this time. “God, I’m bad at this.”
The lip chewing made Martell want to weep because what he wanted and what he wanted were two entirely different things. And the devil on his shoulder—or maybe it was the angel, he never could quite tell them apart. But whatever it was that whispered stupid things to him was whispering If it was Deb who’d come in and locked the door, you’d’ve already said yes. But that wasn’t going to happen. Deb wasn’t crazy enough.
So he cleared his throat, and attempted to save Francine from more embarrassment, not just by stopping her before she got any further, but by letting her save face.
“I really like you,” he said—which was not untrue. “And I’m happy to help you with Berto, but, see, it just wouldn’t feel right to do more than pretend, because I’d feel like I was taking advantage. And I … I would be.” He shook his head. “So I can’t.”
She was looking at him now, and her face was completely blank. He couldn’t read her at all.
“As much as I might want to,” he added, because someone had to say something. “But … thank you?”
Francine laughed at that, and her sudden smile transformed her, eradicating the crazy. Her eyes
danced and sparkled with what looked like genuine amusement. “Did you think I …?” She laughed again. “You thought I was going to ask you to have sex with me?”
“Um,” Martell said.
“And you were saying no.” She seemed really happy about that. “God, you are ridiculously nice, aren’t you?”
“Nice isn’t really the word I’d—”
“Believe me, it’s not hard to ask for sex,” she interrupted him. “I know how to do that. It doesn’t involve much talking. I take off my shirt. I take off my bra. I take off my boots and my pants.…”
“Ah,” he said. “Yeah, I could see how that would work really well.”
“What I was wondering,” she said, back into serious mode, “is if, maybe, after this is over, you might want to, I don’t know, have dinner? Or maybe see a movie?”
“You want to go on a date?” Martell realized.
Francine nodded.
He looked at her, standing there, so sweetly uncertain, her crazy no longer her defining feature, but more of a distant vibe or a light sprinkling.
“There’s a really good Cajun restaurant on Hillside,” she said, and he realized that unlike the other crazy women he’d known, she’d listened when he spoke. Listened and remembered. He knew dozens of non-crazies, both male and female, who never did that. “Their jerk chicken is … Well, it’s really good, so I thought …”
Martell nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” She didn’t seem to believe him. It was possible he’d been a little tentative.
So he put more into it. “Yes,” he said. “I’d love to. Have dinner. With you. That … sounds kind of great.”
Her smile was a mix of relief and pleasure, and again he was struck by the way it transformed her.
“Good, then,” she said, unlocking the door. “We’ll do that, and … Thanks.”
As she slipped out of the bathroom, Martell said, “Well, all right,” and to his surprise, it actually was.
* * *
Phoebe found Ian in the living room as everyone else in the house—except Yashi and Deb, who were already hard at work procuring everything on Ian’s list—was getting ready to go to bed.
