The Bliss Factor

by Penny McCall

  Morris cocked his gun.

  “Go ahead,” she said, “you’re going to kill me anyway.” She could see the struggle on his face. He didn’t plan on letting her out of this alive, but he needed her cooperation. And her only hope was to get out of the trailer.

  “If you promise to behave,” Morris said, “you can take a shower.”

  She cut her eyes toward the bacteria breeding ground that was the trailer’s bathroom. “In there?”

  “That or nothing.”

  Rae heaved a breath. “Unlock me.”

  “Uh-uh.” He tossed her the key.

  She unlocked the cuff around her ankle and looked up at him.

  He met her stare, moved his gun hand an inch to the right, and squeezed off a shot.

  Rae eyed the tiny spot of anemic daylight coming through the new hole in the wall and decided she wasn’t okay with dying. At least not unless she could take Morris Greenblatt with her.

  She showered in the stingy trickle of water, careful not to touch the sides, then let herself air dry, and although she nearly froze to death, she used the time to wrack her brain again. Her brain let her down, not that she blamed it; she just didn’t have the frame of reference it took to deal with an armed and desperate counterfeiter. She did, Rae thought, have the ability to adapt to circumstance and take advantage of opportunity. And she had a little desperation of her own to draw on.

  She slipped into the wench dress; she despised it, but at least it was clean. Morris, when she joined him, looked ridiculous in tunic and tights. Except for the gun he held under cover of his cape. The gun looked pretty damn serious, especially as the smell of cordite still hung on the fetid air.

  He held out a plastic tie. Rae bit down on her frustration and took it, putting it around her wrists and letting Morris tighten it.When he came at her with a gag, though, she balked.

  “I’ll behave, I promise.”

  “I can’t risk it,” Morris said.

  “Why don’t you call this off? I won’t say anything.

  Neither will my parents or anyone else. They’ll go to jail if they talk.”

  It sounded reasonable to Rae, even if it was her idea. Morris seemed to consider it, too, but just when she began to have hope, he shook his head.

  “Too late for that. It was too late when your boyfriend got involved.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “You better hope he has feelings for you, because I’m trading you for the plates.”

  “He won’t give them up.”

  “Then I’m sorry for you.”

  “Not sorry enough to overcome your greed and selfishness.”

  “I can’t go to jail.”

  “Let me loose and you won’t have to.”

  Morris studied her face for a minute, smirking at what he saw there. “You think you can kill me with your bare hands?” he asked her. “It’s not as easy as you think, killing.”

  “No,” Rae said, “it just takes a certain kind of person.” He rubbed his forehead, ashamed, and Rae attacked, leading with all her fury and fear and hopelessness. It wasn’t much of a struggle, not with her hands tied, but she got in a couple good hits. She was also gagged before it was all over, but Morris was limping. And she hadn’t gotten shot, which she took as a minor miracle since he’d never let go of the gun.

  He shoved her out the door, into a sunrise that had barely limped over the horizon only to disappear beneath an unrelieved layer of heavy, gray clouds. It was chilly and drizzling, and not much light made it through the canopy of dead leaves still on the trees.

  Morris walked her around the outside of the faire grounds. Rae kept her eyes on where she was placing her feet, until he stopped, and then she looked up—way up—and said, “You have got to be kidding.”

  CORNELIA FERDIC WAS A MAN. BETTER YET, SHE WAS a man with a past, and that past was counterfeiting. Frederick Cornelius, aka Cornelia Ferdic, had spent eighteen and a half years of a twenty-five-year sentence in federal prison for a bogus set of twenty-dollar-bill plates so good they were on display at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. He’d only gotten better in the last quarter century. He’d come out of the closet, too, but going around in drag didn’t hamper his skill with metal, and it had turned out to be a pretty good red herring.

  Mike’s call about Cornelia wound up being the high point of a week Conn spent moving a hundred miles an hour and getting nowhere fast. Greenblatt had completely dropped out of his own life, and Harry had proven to be no help whatsoever. Hans Lockner had fallen off the radar, only to reappear in a hospital psych ward. He’d been dumped at the emergency room entrance by some well-meaning friend who hadn’t stuck around long enough to offer an explanation as to how Hans had gotten comatose on a combination of alcohol and Ecstasy, leaving the doctors to suspect suicide. Conn had a feeling Greenblatt’s Stooges might have been involved.

  None of it brought him any closer to finding Rae.

  Annie and Nelson weren’t giving him hell, but he felt it every time he saw the hope and anguish in their eyes. They blamed themselves. Conn knew he was really at fault. He’d screwed up this operation from start to finish. Getting Rae hurt, a woman he . . . Getting a civilian hurt would only be the capper.

  A sleepless Friday night rolled into an overcast Saturday morning. The temperature had dropped into the forties, and all the leaves seemed to have fallen from the trees overnight. When Conn’s phone rang he was prowling the faire grounds not long after the place opened for the day at ten A.M. His gut was already talking, big-time, so he didn’t bother to check the phone’s display.

  It was no surprise to hear Morris Greenblatt’s voice. What surprised Conn was the wave of fury, so violent it hazed his vision with red and had his hands fisting. The crack of the phone he was on the verge of crushing brought him back, far enough to keep him from destroying his one connection to Rae.

  “Did you hear me?” Morris asked, sounding impatient.

  “You’re bringing Rae to the faire grounds around noon,” Conn repeated. “Where should I meet you?”

  “You’ll know. Bring the plates.” And Morris disconnected.

  Conn made a phone call, said, “Holly Grove, now,” and hung up without waiting for a response. He was halfway back to the Airstream when he ran into Nelson Bliss.

  Nelson took one look at his face and said, “Now?”

  “Greenblatt said noon. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust him.”

  “He has to get in,” Nelson pointed out needlessly.

  “There are too many ways into the place,” Conn said. “We can’t cover them all.”

  “The hell we can’t.” Nelson took off at a slow run, already on his phone and barking orders.

  He made one call after another, not stopping to let Conn in on the game plan as he went from booth to booth handing out instructions.

  “What can I do?” Conn finally asked, dragging him to a stop.

  “You can sit back and let me handle this.”

  “I can’t—”

  Nelson grasped him by the upper arms, giving him a little shake. “We got our daughter into this,” he said, on the ragged edge of control himself but doing a hell of a lot better job at handling the craziness than Conn was doing. “You’ve done everything you can. This is our place, these are our people. Let us do this, Conn.”

  By the time they got back to the Airstream an hour later, there was a crowd of re-enactors surrounding the picnic table. Annie came into the clearing, lugging a box that turned out to hold a stack of flyers depicting Rae as a damsel in distress being held by the “vyle crymynal” Morris Greenblatt. A reward was offered, a list of booths given, and Nelson handed Conn a stack of flyers.

  “Now you can help,” he said. “We passed these out to the parking attendants.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me to meet him here if he didn’t have a way in that allowed him to avoid the cops and parking attendants and the people at the entrance. Hell, maybe they’re already here.”
The thought of it, the notion that Rae was already there, right under his nose, had him fighting off a desperate stew of emotion, the urge to put his fist through something.

  “That’s why we’re offering a reward for the tourists. These flyers are already being handed out with the maps and pamphlets distributed at the entrance, and they’re being hung at every booth. He’s not getting by us.”

  Conn scrubbed his hands through his hair, swallowing back the rage, not fighting it off but shoving it down deep, to a place that was cold because rage, ice-cold fury, was a hell of a weapon and he wanted to be able to pull it out when he needed it most.

  Annie and Nelson went out into the festival: Nelson to loiter at the public entrance, Annie to stake out the participant’s gate. The crowds were thin, owing to the weather, but not as thin as they would have been if it hadn’t been the last weekend of the festival.

  Conn the Armorer walked the faire, systematically, covering every inch of ground, even looking into the back rooms of the booths, as he worked his way from the front grounds to the back. He wore his buff-colored leather pants, the boots—with knives in either one, and a brown leather vest, and a sword—a real one, and to hell with the rules that stated no one could carry a real weapon. Morris Greenblatt would sure as hell be armed. Not that it was going to matter.

  He carried the plates in a leather bag slung crosswise over his shoulder, hiding the gun stuffed into his waistband. He drew a lot of looks from the paying guests, most of them female. Everything seemed normal, including his rising frustration level, and then he noticed a steady stream of foot traffic heading toward the back of the place. Not that unusual, since that was where the joust took place, and the joust was a big draw for the crowds. Except the joust wasn’t for another two hours.

  “What’s going on?” Conn asked one of the tourists passing by.

  “There’s a medieval weapons demonstration at noon.”

  “Right.” He was supposed to be demonstrating the longsword. His heart began to race, his gut telling him he was in the right place at the right time.

  He kept to a walk, a fast one, his long legs taking him in the direction of the crowd. Behind the last line of food booths at the far end of the jousting grounds a gate led to an open area surrounded by sparse woods.

  Conn rounded the corner and stopped dead. Racks set up along the back of the row of booths held swords and crossbows, maces, war hammers, battle axes, and the first primitive bombs that were hand-worked metal shells filled with dynamite that had to be placed by hand at the base of a castle wall in order to be effective.

  What caught Conn, what everyone stared at, was a catapult, a siege engine used to throw really big rocks at castle walls. In more recent years they’d been used by performance artists to toss everything from washing machines to cows. He had the feeling, though, that the living thing struggling in the catapult’s basket wasn’t bovine. His blood ran cold when he spotted Morris Greenblatt by the trigger. Harry Mosconi stood behind Morris.

  Conn made eye contact with Harry. Harry looked away. No help there.

  Rae popped up in the basket, gagged, hands secured behind her.

  “Hand over the plates, and I’ll let her go,” Morris said.

  Conn dragged his gaze off Rae, met Greenblatt’s eyes. “We both know that’s a lie.”

  Greenblatt took a step back, but he didn’t get far enough from the catapult for Conn to feel like he could get there first.

  “Hey,” someone in the crowd shouted, “that the guy from the wanted poster?” The rest of the onlookers started to mutter about the reward.

  Greenblatt edged closer to the trigger, looking like he thought a distraction might be in order before the crowd got any more unruly. “I want the plates.”

  “No.”

  “Just give me the plates,” Morris said, almost blubbering in desperation. “I’ll disappear, everyone will be safe, I promise.”

  Conn looked up at Rae. She shook her head. They’d always been in accord, but he didn’t know if she was telling him not to give up the plates, or if she was saying she knew he couldn’t give them up, and she wanted him to think again. Bottom line, it was his decision, and the choice was between her and the job, which meant there was no winning this one. If he chose the operation, he’d lose Rae, and if he chose her, he lost Greenblatt and the plates.

  “Don’t make me do this,” Morris said, dragging Conn back to the only choice that really mattered. Keeping Rae alive and unhurt.

  “Nobody’s making you do this but you,” he said.

  “I can’t go to jail.”

  “Whatever happens here today, Morris, you’re going to jail. If I don’t put you there, someone else will, and they won’t need the plates to do it. We have all the players rounded up, and they’re all going to testify against you.”

  “Do it,” someone in the crowd yelled, sounding a little worse for a visit to the beer tent, which didn’t stop the rest of the tourists from picking up the chant.

  It was all Morris Greenblatt needed to hear.

  chapter 31

  MORRIS’S EYES WERE WHEELING, FROM CONN TO the crowd, dozens of voices shouting some variation of “Let ’er rip.” His hand edged toward the trigger, just as Conn raced for the catapult and leaped. The first jump took him onto the six-foot-tall wheel, the second put him on the long arm. From there he scrambled into the basket, scooping Rae into his arms and tearing off her gag.

  She worked her jaw, but what came out of her mouth shocked the hell out of him, because what came out of her mouth was “I love you,” not “What took you so long,” or “I don’t need to be rescued,” but “I love you.” And then she added, “I just wanted you to know. In case we die,” so when Morris hit the trigger, and they flew into the air, momentum pushing them back for a split second until the arc was completed and the arm slammed against the crossbar, vaulting them over the heads of the crowd in a roar of sound and swirl of color, Conn should have been estimating their trajectory, judging their landing site, and working out a way to live through it. Instead he was thinking about her, loving him, so that when they skimmed over a row of trees and the ground started rushing up at them he had no more than a split second to twist around so he hit first, to provide whatever cushion he could. And to thank God when he saw the pretty little pond beneath them.

  He let Rae go at the last minute, splashing down a couple feet away, into brackish, weed-choked, frigid water. Conn fought his way toward the light above his head, broke the surface, and sucked in air as he spun in a circle. Rae didn’t come back up.

  He floundered over to the spot he’d seen her go under, a swirl of mud on the surface telling him he had the right place as he dove down, reaching around blind in the murk until his fingers encountered something soft. Lungs screaming, he dove deeper, buried his hand in that softness and pulled, kicking for the surface and the air that was cold enough to cut his lungs like a knife but was still far better than drowning. Rae broke the surface a second later, clutching at him and coughing up half the pond.

  Conn wrapped his arm around her and struck out for the shore. It wasn’t the best way to conduct a rescue, but he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. He dragged her up the muddy bank, but she was far from rescued, shivering, bone white, probably close to hypothermia. He took a knife out of his boot and cut the bonds on her wrists, chafing them between his hands to get the blood flowing.

  She looked up at him, smiling through tears. “You chose me over the operation.”

  “I talked to Harry when you went missing. He’s a decent guy, despite everything. I’m pretty sure he dealt with Morris. It’s his only chance to help himself out. He’ll still get arrested, but I promised I’d go to bat for him.”

  He held out a hand. She ignored it, trying to struggle to her feet without his help. She made it as far as her knees before she gave up, and still she didn’t turn to him for assistance.

  Conn began to get an inkling he’d done something wrong.

  “Why are you jus
t standing there?” she said. “Go get Morris. I’m sure Harry has him all tied up for you.”

  And there it was, Conn thought. She wanted him to put her before the operation and he had . . . Okay, so he’d hedged his bets. “I saved your life,” he reminded her, “at risk to my own.”

  “The water did that.”

  “Without my extra weight in that basket you’d have overshot the water. Not to mention the part where you were sinking instead of swimming.”

  “This dress weighs twenty pounds when it’s dry. I was tied up in that damn basket for half the day in a soaking drizzle, bound and gagged. And then there’s the part where I went into the pond.”

  “You’re welcome,” Conn said.

  Rae fought the rest of the way upright, bunching up her sodden skirts.

  “Your feet are bare.”

  “Greenblatt took my shoes.”

  “If you ask nice, I could carry you back to the faire.”

  “That’ll be the day.” She set off, picking her way carefully, sucking in a breath every other step because it was impossible not to land on a tree branch or rock hidden by the dead undergrowth.

  “Offer still stands,” he called after her. “You don’t even have to say pretty please.”

  She looked back at him, eyes narrowed.

  Conn crossed his arms, but he didn’t grin until she turned forward again, laughing outright when he heard her mutter, “Jackass.”

  In three strides he swept her off her feet, slung her belly down over his shoulder, and carried her back to the open ground around the catapult. The crowd cheered, women sighed, and best of all, Morris was being held by Harry Mosconi and several men, an unexpected side benefit of their wanted poster. Conn hadn’t expected the tourists to actually apprehend Greenblatt, just report the sighting. But he’d take it.

  He set Rae on her feet, stepping back so the swing she took at him whiffed by and threw her off balance. The onlookers laughed, thinking it was part of the show. One look at Rae’s face would have told them differently, but she directed all her fury at Conn. He understood why she might be irritated, but the murderous depth of her rage baffled him.