A note. The fool thought he could fix this mess with a fucking note.
Trey dialed Nick. He needed to know about the very large crimp in their plan.
Peculiar. Right.
~oOo~
Nick had known all about Lara Dumas, of course. He wouldn’t have allowed anyone such intimate access to information that could bring the whole Pagano Brothers organization down unless he knew absolutely every detail of their life. Why he’d let Trey find out the way he had was a mystery, but Trey trusted him implicitly. Nick Pagano never did anything without being sure of his play. There had been a reason, a good one.
Nick had not known that Frederick Dumas would puss out on preparing his daughter for this next thing that would happen to her, and he was not at all happy, but it changed none of his plans. What he said to Trey was simply, You have your assignment. Work with the situation as it stands. Do your job.
So now Trey stood in the doorway of Lara Dumas’ childhood bedroom and studied the small, unconscious form in the bed. In the nondescript Ford downstairs, he’d loaded two bags of clothes for her, Dumas had prepared that much at least, and a hard shell case full of her meds, plus the notes he’d need to see to it she got them all, if she herself couldn’t or wouldn’t handle that. And three pre-loaded syringes, which he was supposed to use in case of emergency. And a stack of jigsaw puzzles, oddly. They’d help her stay calm, Dumas had said.
For all the time Trey had been with Nick, the don had kept him close. He’d been privy to serious, sensitive workings of this family business. He’d been present when Nick had handed out judgments, and when those judgments had been carried out. And Nick was ruthless. Fair and thorough in determining guilt, but when guilt was determined, when he’d been wronged, he was merciless.
Despite all Trey knew, all he’d seen, never had he felt less equal to a task than now. Nick had given him this huge responsibility, put his faith in him, and Trey didn’t have the slightest idea how to do the job.
He was going to terrify this poor woman. When she woke, whenever that was, she’d be in a strange place, with a strange man, little more than a day since she’d been abducted, raped, beaten, and scarred. This broken woman.
How the hell did he do this?
Only one answer, the same one as last night: just do it. He knew where he was going, and he knew he had to get Lara Dumas to that place. So he would pick her up and take her there.
He stepped into the room. She slept curled on her side in a twin bed, under a green comforter with blue dots. Her long, blonde hair had fallen over her face; strands puffed up with each breath she let out. Trey brushed the hair back and paused, leaning over her. She was pretty. Though her face was bruised, it wasn’t badly swollen. Long lashes lay on high cheekbones. A slim, straight nose, and a pink mouth that seemed pursed even in sleep, as if she expected a kiss from a handsome prince.
Only from a distance had he seen her before. Her father was half troll and half bear, so he hadn’t expected her to be so pretty. And small. God. Wrapping her up in that comforter, Trey lifted her. She hardly weighed more than one of his little cousins.
She didn’t wake at all. He tucked her head on his shoulder and carried her out of her father’s house.
Jesus Christ, what would this do to her? How could he do this?
~ 4 ~
Lara’s brain had been split open, hollowed out like an overripe cantaloupe, and filled with boiling oil. Even the vibration of her own groan was an agony. Pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, she battled back the pain and stood strong against the need to retreat into unconsciousness.
Something was wrong. Unfamiliar smells and sounds surrounded her. The bed was not her bed, not the one at her apartment, or the one at her father’s house. It wasn’t a hospital bed, either.
The creak of a door broke through her disorientation, and she went immediately still and silent. That wasn’t a door she knew. Had they taken her again? She clamped her teeth together before she could scream.
“Lara, it’s okay.”
An unfamiliar voice, a man’s voice. She lifted one hand from one eye and tried to look. A fresh wash of molten pain greeted her attempt, and she moaned between her clenched teeth. The room was morning-bright and completely foreign.
The strange man in the room saw her and smiled, lifting his hands before him and patting the air. “It’s okay, Lara. I’m a friend of your dad’s. He knows you’re with me. I have a letter from him for you.”
The pain in her head made pulsing shapes in her vision, and her mind focused on them, tracking their path and tempo. Too much pain to focus on anything else, even on this new horror. Especially not on that. Her head was breaking itself apart; there was little worse this stranger could do to her.
“Lara? Do you understand me?” The floor creaked; the stranger was moving closer.
She didn’t want him to touch her; that thought made her cringe and made the lava her brain was made of boil more. With her eyes crimped shut against the bright and all the foreign sights of this unknown room, Lara put her hands down and shoved herself farther away.
Under her hands, she felt something familiar, and she looked—the comforter from her dad’s house. She’d been there, he’d brought her there after the hospital. He’d made her a lunch of potato soup, given her her meds, and told her something. What was it?
Her head hurt too much to think, and she clamped her hands over her temples.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The strange man was so close now. Too close.
And she was already hurt.
“Your dad said the meds we gave you to keep you asleep on the ride could have some bad side effects. Like headache. I’m sorry.”
There was something sincere in his voice that dulled the threat around her. Sincerity couldn’t be faked, not really.
She finally got enough control over her pain to look up. The man was young, mid-twenties or so. Dark blonde hair, stylishly cut, and a fashionably short skim of dark blonde beard. Green eyes under a strong brow. Wearing a crisp green plaid shirt—Tattersall pattern, with yellow and blue bands—and faded jeans, he was the picture of wealthy leisure.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“My name is Trey Pagano. I work for my Uncle Nick.”
Nick Pagano. Though thumping shapes of overwhelming pain still obscured her vision and dulled her mind, Lara understood. She’d been taken away, hidden away, because of what had happened.
The man with her had identified himself as Trey Pagano. She knew the name and could call up the data she knew. “Carlo Francesco Pagano III. You’ve worked for the Pagano Brothers for two years and eight months. Nick is not your uncle.”
He cocked his head. “No, he’s my cousin, but he’s forty years older than I am. I’ve always called him Uncle.” He made another move toward her, and she shrank back, twisting her fingers in the green comforter from her childhood bed. “I won’t touch you. Are you okay?”
“My head hurts very much. I don’t know where I am. Is it a safe house? Or does the don want me dead?” No, if he wanted her dead, she wouldn’t have woken in ostensible comfort. Nick knew his secrets hadn’t been compromised. She hadn’t given up his information and never would, but the men who’d taken her off the street had never asked her any questions, or spoken more than a few words to her. They’d hurt her as leverage against her father, who knew only a fraction of what she knew.
“It’s a safe house, Lara. The don is furious about what happened to you, and he means to get justice for you. Until then, he’s sent me to keep you safe. Your dad knows—he gave me a letter for you.”
The constant thrum of pain was climbing up over the barrier of sense she’d tried to erect, and she closed her hands over her head again, moaning as a sharp spike shot up from the molten cauldron in her skull and split her apart. “Where am I?” she asked, gritting the words out past her tightening jaw.
“Safe. I can’t say more yet. But you’re safe, and away. What can I do to help you? Do you wa
nt to read your father’s letter?”
She did not, not now. All of this was confusing and wrong, and the fact of the letter made no sense, and she hurt too much to look for the patterns and make order. “My head hurts.”
“I have all your meds. Do you want a painkiller?”
She was not about to take pills from this man, not until she had all her wits about her. Moving carefully, she shook her head.
“Do you need to rest more? Or food? The kitchen’s fully stocked. Heating pad? Ice bag?”
Too many options, too much confusion. Lara lay back on the bed and turned from the man. Trey Pagano. She pulled the green comforter up over her head. “Go away. Please go away.”
“Okay. I’m really sorry about this. I’m on the other side of the door if you need anything.”
She needed her life to make sense again. That was all she needed.
~oOo~
When she next woke, the lava in her skull had cooled, and all that was left of that fantastic pain was the lingering ache of ill use. The light in the room had deepened and shifted, and the temperature was noticeably warmer. Under all the covers, she’d been sweating a little. Afternoon. Southwest-facing window beside the bed. Lara sat up carefully and reached to pull back the white eyelet curtains.
They weren’t in Providence. Not even Rhode Island. Outside the window was nothing but trees and blue sky and piney mountains in the near distance. Needing to process what she’d seen, she turned from the view and stared down at the wood floor—wide peg-and-plank, made of oak, covered with a faded Persian rug. Too much information still. She closed her eyes. Where might she be, with pine trees and mountains like that? Maine? Vermont? Upstate New York? Pennsylvania?
Maybe Pennsylvania. Appalachia. She looked out the window again. Maybe that. It was unfamiliar terrain, except for what she’d seen in movies and online, but she thought she’d made a fair guess. How far from home were they? Three hundred miles? Five hundred? Why so far? Who had hurt her?
She turned and sat all the way up, careful not to make the bed squeak. Trey Pagano could stay on the other side of that door; Lara wanted some time to make sense of things. Her meds were off schedule; she could feel the good and bad effects of her natural, unmedicated psyche—the extra layer of acuity, like her eyes and ears and mind were all open wider, good, and the vibration in her spine that was her fight-or-flight response, going to Level Orange. Bad.
She was hungry, too, and that was unusual. Her relationship with food was complicated at best. It was unlikely there would be food she’d eat here in this place.
Food could wait. She wanted to know this place, and she’d start with the room she was in. Had Trey Pagano carried her in and laid her in the bed? Tucked her in? He must have. He’d brought the comforter from home, a familiar thing, a touchstone. Had her father suggested it?
What was she wearing? For the first time, she considered that question and looked. Leggings and a t-shirt. No bra—and no underwear.
She’d dressed herself, she remembered. This was what her father had brought her from her apartment. To the hospital. The clothes he’d brought because she’d been turned out naked in the street.
No, not yet. She wasn’t ready to make sense of that part of her life yet. She wasn’t safe enough yet. Too many other nonsensical things demanded her attention. So she would start with the room she was in, understand this event as fully as she could, and set greater horrors aside for another time.
A square room, twelve-by-twelve, she thought. Typical bedroom dimensions. On each side of the bed, an identical window—paned, trimmed with white paint that was beginning to crack, covered with white eyelet curtains. Closet with white bi-fold doors, open, and empty. The furniture was a matched set, heavy pine in a honey finish, with a rustic style. Queen bed with headboard and footboard. Under her own comforter, a white chenille bedspread and white sheets.
Two nightstands, each with a lamp, a matched set as well, with red plaid shades. Tartan plaid. Nothing else on the nightstands. A tall chest of drawers, its surface bare. Six drawers: four of equal size topped with two smaller drawers.
The walls of the room were paneled. Real pine boards. Three different widths, arranged in a simple pattern: widest, narrowest, widest, middle, widest, narrowest, widest, middle. Across from the bed, a set of three framed prints, old fashioned. Though similar in style and obviously a set, each one had a different image: a tree, a flower, and a bird. The bird was a cardinal; Lara could tell that from where she sat. The tree was the one that flamed bright red in fall, and the image showed it in its full autumn blaze. Sugar maple. The flower, she didn’t recognize. It was purple.
Bird, tree, flower. State symbols?
Lara turned back the covers and eased from the bed. As she stood, her body remembered the abuses of its recent past, and their matched set of memories tried to come forward again, but she went to the wall and studied the prints. There was a legend at the bottom of each one, rendered in grey ink and a subtle, elegant font: Northern Cardinal, State Bird of West Virginia. Sugar Maple, State Tree of West Virginia. Rhododendron, State Flower of West Virginia.
West Virginia.
They were in Appalachia. And so many miles from home. Her home. Her ordered life. The things she knew. The one person in the world she trusted, who knew her, who understood her.
He’d sent her here.
Lara had two simple choices that would change nothing about the immediate circumstances of her life but would dramatically shape how she ordered them: she could trust her father and believe that she was safe because he’d sent her here, to West Virginia, which was approximately five hundred miles from home, with Trey Pagano, an associate and family member of Don Nick Pagano; or she could believe herself betrayed by the one person who had her faith and trust.
A letter. Trey Pagano said that he had a letter from her father.
Now that her head worked again, she needed to read that letter.
She went to the door and opened it into the next thing she didn’t know.
~oOo~
The door opened into a short hallway, also paneled in pine. Trey Pagano stood at the end, backlit with bright sunshine. He watched quietly as she stepped through the doorway.
There were two other doors on the hallway, both open. As Lara went down the hall, she stopped at the first door: another bedroom, the furniture, layout, and décor almost identical to the one she’d been in, but this one was more obviously in use. The bed was made but mussed; someone had lain on the made bed to rest. A golden-brown leather duffel bag sat atop the chest of drawers, its zipper open. The sleeve of a royal blue cotton shirt snaked from the opening. In this room, the only wall décor was another matched set of prints—this a pair, with mountain scenes.
The floor creaked, and Lara turned to see Trey Pagano standing in the open doorway. He was tall and broad-shouldered, taking up most of the space. He looked worried—and perhaps a little scared, too.
Freaked out. He was freaked out. He could join that club, of which she was president.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“My head is better. I need to understand.”
“Do you remember what I told you earlier?”
She remembered everything and had taken all his words apart to understand their secrets. “Don Pagano sent you to take me away. Because of what happened to me. My father helped you. You said you want to keep me safe. But I know Nick wants to keep what I know safe, too. My father has a letter for me. He helped you drug me and gave you a letter.”
“Yes. Would you like to read it?”
Absolutely, she wanted to read it, but not yet. “Are we in West Virginia?”
Trey Pagano blinked and took a step back, and Lara felt another breath of calm and sense move through her. She liked that this man who’d taken her away without her knowing was not comfortable with the situation, either. It made a balance between them that gave her some focus.
“Why do you think that?” he asked. A cool question that didn’t gi
ve too much away. But the studied nonchalance in his tone, and that flinch when she’d asked, told her that she’d struck true.
“In the bedroom I was in, the prints on the wall. State symbols of West Virginia. Here, these are Spruce Mountain and Mount Porte Crayon, mountains in West Virginia. If this is a Pagano property, it’s not one normally used to keep people prisoner.”
If it was a Pagano property, part of Nick’s business, then she had probably encrypted information about it. Somewhere in her own mind might be the answers she needed.
Trey Pagano smiled a wide, gleaming white smile. “Nick told me you were the most brilliant mind he’d ever known, and that you notice everything.”
She was highly intelligent, yes. But that simple deduction hadn’t proved it. “The words are on the prints. I can read, yes. How far from Providence are we?”
He didn’t know how much to tell her; she watched him wrestle with the question for a few seconds before finally stepping back into the hallway. “Come out here with me. We’ll talk, and I’ll make some food. I’m not a bad cook.”
“I only eat a few things.”
“White foods. Only fresh fruits and vegetables. I know. Your father told me. How about fettuccine Alfredo and French bread with a salad?” He held out his hand. “You need to eat, Lara. It’s been more than a day since you have.”
More than a day since the lunch her father made? How many times had Trey Pagano drugged her to keep her asleep so long? No wonder her head had been such agony.
Lara didn’t take his hand, but she went out of his bedroom and turned with him down the hall.
The next door led to a bathroom, and as soon as she saw the toilet, her body remembered that it hadn’t relieved itself since she was at her father’s house. Apparently, more than a day ago.
Simple Faith Page 5
