“Haystacks.” He nodded at his plate, which was now hers. “Will you please eat now?”
Her smile sharpened, turned puckish, and she picked up her fork and slid it into a haystack on the far edge of her plate.
He watched until she put it in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “What do you think?”
“It’s good. Thank you for making it.”
“Thank you for eating it.”
They had a few more bites in quiet. Trey found himself watching her carefully, making sure she ate some salad, drank her water. After three haystacks, about half her salad—which she also arranged into groups before she ate—a bite of bread and half the glass of water, she stopped and took her pills—two from one bottle and one each from the others. Antibiotic, anti-anxiety, and … he forgot what the third one was.
She finished her water with her pills and pushed her plate away. Almost a day and a half without nourishment, and she was finished after maybe four hundred calories—and that only because of the cream and butter in the Alfredo sauce.
“I need to know the plan. Why did you bring me here?”
Trey finished his glass of wine and poured himself another. “You don’t want more than that?”
“I don’t like to eat. I’m not hungry anymore. I had enough. What I need is to know.”
Keeping her fed would require vigilance, obviously. But he didn’t push her now.
Again, he decided that of all people, Lara Dumas, keeper of Nick’s secrets, could be told the truth. “This is Vio Marconi’s cabin. It’s in the name of his comare—his mistress. You know who Vio Marconi is.” The don of another of the New England families, one closely aligned with the Pagano Brothers.
“I do. I also know what a comare is. But this is set up as a hotel—there are hospitality soaps and shampoos in the bathroom.”
“Yes. He runs it as a rental vacation property. It’s a front.”
She nodded, understanding everything Trey didn’t say aloud. She probably understood better than he did. “And he offered it to Nick as a safe house for me.”
“It would seem so.”
“How long do we have to stay, and how hidden?”
“I’m not sure how long. A week, maybe two. I know Nick will act quickly, but I don’t know what he means to do. We need to stay hidden, but we’re far away from home and in the middle of nowhere, not at a Pagano property, with no paper trail. We have backup in town—”
“Town?”
“Yes. There’s a small town down the mountain, about twenty miles away. A couple Pagano men are in a cabin closer to town, on the only road up here. We’ve got satellite communications, so they’re a phone call away. I hope you never see them, though. They’re supposed to stay away unless there’s trouble.”
“Is my father safe? They think he’s the one who knows what they want to know. They didn’t try to get information from me.” Her eyes lost a shimmer of focus. “They just hurt me.”
His impulse was to reach out to her, but he remembered the way she’d reacted the last time he’d touched her. So he gave her comfort the way she seemed to prefer it: he answered her question. “He’s protected, too.”
“Nick would move him, too. Right? To make it look like he was protecting that asset.”
“I don’t know Nick’s plans for your father. I only know my assignment. I’m only an associate.”
Lara looked him dead in the eye and lifted a single, fair brow. “You’re an associate who wears Armani suits and sits with the don. You’re not a grunt, Trey Pagano.”
“You know so much about me, you also know I’m only half Italian.”
“True. But Nick gets what he wants.”
Trey finished his wine and considered Lara. She met his gaze unflinchingly.
“I thought you’d be different,” he said, musing aloud more than offering an observation.
“Because of all my meds, and what my father told you.”
“And because of what just happened to you, and how I had to take you. I thought you’d be much more …” He sought a word that wouldn’t offend her.
“Weak? Insane? Hysterical?”
Any of those would apply to what he’d expected, but he wouldn’t agree to their use. None of them was right, now that he’d had this time with her. She was very definitely peculiar and very definitely struggling, but she was not weak, or insane, and she certainly wasn’t hysterical. Her calm was eerie and inscrutable.
“Upset,” was the word he eventually landed on. “I thought you’d be more upset.”
“I don’t have degrees of ‘upset.’ I have okay, and not okay.” She picked up the letter she still hadn’t read. “I’d like to take a shower and read my father’s letter now.”
“I don’t think you can take a shower, Lara. Not yet.” Trying to gently indicate the bandage peeking out from the neck of her t-shirt, he nodded in the direction of her chest. He had instructions for changing the dressing, too. Of the burn wound on her breast. Where she’d been branded. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
Her head dropped, and she brushed her fingertips over the edge of the medical tape. The fingers of her other hand began to drum on the table. After a moment in which the tempo of her fingers was the only sound, she looked up again. “But I can take a bath.”
“Sure, as long as you keep that dry.” He got up. “I’ll take your bags back, and I’ll clean up in here while you’re busy. We can talk more later, if you want.”
“All right.” She stood and pushed her chair in. Before she moved, she sent him another of those busily curious looks. “Are you armed, Trey Pagano? Right now?”
“There’s at least one gun in every room of the cabin, except your bedroom. Two rifles, a shotgun, and five handguns, altogether. The rifles are M4s. Plenty of ammo for everything. But I’m not carrying right now, no. Do you know how to shoot?”
“No. But that’s your job. To keep me safe.”
“Yes, it is.”
“And Nick has faith in you to do your job.”
“Yes, he does.”
The answer seemed to satisfy her. She turned and left the room.
Trey followed, feeling rather stupefied by Ms. Lara Dumas.
~ 6 ~
After her bath, during which she’d been unable to determine how to wash her hair, Lara dressed and closed herself into the room which was ‘hers’ in this cabin. Trey Pagano had given her several things to think about. He’d verified most of her deductions and had added in details she needed to sort through.
And she had the letter from her father.
Once she’d had it in her hand, she’d felt a fresh anxiety about reading it. Unable to make sense of the feeling, she’d been pushing it off. But there were too many new things to think about already, too many alien circumstances to decipher. Even as her meds spread through her and quieted her, mind and body, there were too many things pressing against their created calm. She could contend with this particular anxiety, contend with it and put it away, simply by opening the envelope and reading the letter.
So she sat on the bed and did exactly that.
My dearest Lara,
First, you should know that Trey has insisted that he read this before I close the envelope. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for all of this, especially for the way you learned of it, but I had to think quickly, and could think of nothing better. You were very close to a breakdown, sweetheart, and I worried that you wouldn’t be able to process the changes coming so quickly. With so little time to spare, and no choice about what was going to happen, I did the only thing I could and made the trip as easy for you as possible.
I can only imagine what you thought when you woke. I gave Trey as many instructions as I could, and I hope he took me at my word. For you, there are three pieces of information I have:
1) Trey comes on Nick’s orders. You know Nick knows your history; now Trey does, too, at least the main points. They intend to keep you safe, and I trust them to do it. If I haven’t lost your trust today, or ev
en if I have, I hope you’ll trust them as I do, sweetheart.
2) I’ll be safe as well. I’m waiting to hear from Nick, but you can be sure that I’m well.
3) I sent 5 puzzles with you, including the marble one you started today.
There is sense and order all around you, Lara. This is all part of a plan.
It will be over soon, and we’ll return to the order of our lives.
I love you,
Dad
xn = xn-1 + xn-2
Lara read the letter twice, then folded it and slid it back into its envelope. She set it aside on the nightstand, and noticed that the natural light had dwindled to near dusk. Outside the window, lush foliage—the deep evergreen of pine trees and the bright spring green of freshly budded deciduous trees—crowded the cabin, standing in a bed of russet fallen needles and dusky crisp leaves. The mountain had blocked the setting sun, and all that lit the forest was the lingering glow of its wake.
Despite her meds, despite the letter, despite the sense she’d made talking with Trey Pagano, Lara felt a thrum of disquiet, tiny hands of anxiety beating at the wall her medications erected. This place was unknown to her. She’d studied the cabin; she understood it. She understood the why of this circumstance. But beyond the walls was a world she didn’t know, where all manner of horrors might lurk.
A knock on the door. “Lara?”
In this strange place, Trey Pagano’s voice was the most familiar thing. She turned from the window. “Yes.”
The knob turned, and the door creaked open an inch. “Can I come in?”
“Yes.”
The door swung in, and Trey Pagano came into the room. “It’s dark in here. Are you okay?”
The room had grown dim with the twilight. Her eyes had adjusted with the dying light, and she hadn’t yet noticed. She reached for the lamp on the nightstand and switched it on. “I’m okay.”
“If you feel not-okay, will you tell me?”
He’d heard and accepted what she’d told him earlier, that she was either okay or not okay, without gradations between them. That wasn’t true on the inside, but it was as true as anything for how she presented herself to the world. She was either okay—able to function, able to understand and find order—or she was not.
“If I’m not okay, I won’t be able to tell you.”
“Will I be able to see it coming?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t happen often. My father sees it coming. That’s why he did what he did to get me here. He said I was close.”
“You read the letter.” He nodded at the nightstand.
“Yes. So did you.”
“Sorry about that. I had to know what he told you. But I told him up front that I would.”
She nodded. There was honor in that.
He came all the way into the room and stood beside the bed. “What’s the equation on the bottom? Your father said it was something to give you calm.”
“The Fibonacci sequence.”
“I thought that was a series of numbers—or a diagram like a seashell. It’s the Golden Ratio, right?” When he sat on the bed, a foot or so away, Lara didn’t object—or mind.
“The equation represents the series of numbers, and the seashell. The Fibonacci sequence is an example of the Golden Ratio. They’re not the same thing, but closely related. They demonstrate the inclination of nature toward order and aesthetics.”
“Two things that give you comfort.”
“Yes.” Lara examined the planes of his face. It was strongly symmetrical—forehead, brows, eyes, nose, cheekbones, mouth, jaw, all neatly balanced, and, yes, highly attractive because of it. The symmetry faltered at his ears; his left was slightly smaller and at a slightly more obtuse angle from his head. A tiny flaw on an otherwise perfect head. But his hair was styled as if he knew that and worked to camouflage it. Nothing more than the kind of normal nonconformity every body had. Such features had their order, too; they served to determine the limits of conformity.
She was staring, and he’d noticed. His symmetrical forehead creased, and he tipped his head. “Do you see something interesting?”
“You’re very good looking. Your face is an example of the Golden Ratio, I think.”
The creases deepened, but he smiled, showing nearly perfect white teeth, no doubt made so close to perfect with professional intervention. “Thank you. You’re very beautiful.”
Lara had examined herself closely in the mirror many times. She understood the ways her face was and was not symmetrical, did and did not conform to a common aesthetic of beauty. She liked her face, and knew it was attractive by most standards, though it diverged from the Ratio. But she was not often in the position of hearing someone else tell her so.
She blushed. It was such a surprising reaction that she dropped her head and set her hand on her cheek, feeling the warmth of it.
Her hair fell forward. He brushed it back, over her shoulder, and, not expecting the touch, Lara flinched away.
He yanked his hand away from her, and it hovered for a moment in the space between them, then dropped to his thigh. “I’m sorry. You don’t like to be touched.”
Though it hadn’t been a question, it was an incorrect statement, so she gave him the correct answer. “I don’t mind being touched. But I don’t like anything I’m not expecting. I need to see things coming.” She met his eyes and studied them. Green, with gold rays from the pupil. One eye had slightly more gold than the other. “If you want me to be okay, don’t ever surprise me, Trey Pagano. Not again.”
“You always say my name like that, first and last. Why?”
“Because Pagano is who you are. It’s good I remember that.”
“Then why not just use my last name?”
“You’re not Nick or any other Pagano. You’re Trey Pagano.” She understood the reason for his questions. “You don’t like it.”
“No. Sister Doris used to call everybody by both names in fifth grade. She was a snarly old hag. Every time you do it, I get a little hit of nun.”
Lara laughed.
“Well, that’s a beautiful sound,” he said softly.
“What would you like me to call you?”
“My name. I’m Trey.”
“Okay … Trey. Don’t surprise me.”
He chuckled. His voice was deep, a low baritone, and clear, without rasp or grit, and the chuckle went down into bass territory. “I’ll do everything I can not to. But you surprise the hell out of me.”
~oOo~
Back in the living room, Lara saw that Trey had drawn all the curtains and made a fire in the stone fireplace. With him behind her, she stood at the end of the hallway, balanced between the living room and the dining room, and scanned the room in this new light. The furniture was plaid and pine, and the décor was minimal—a few more prints highlighting their location. A fluffy sheepskin rug was spread before the fireplace, and a large woven wood basket held kindling and small logs. A television hung above the mantel, like a piece of art.
On the pine coffee table sat her jigsaw puzzles, in a stack. She went to them, noticing the pleasant caress of the rug on her bare feet, and the cozy warmth of the fire on her skin, and picked up the puzzle she’d started at her father’s. The day before?
“Today is Monday, yes?”
“Yes. We left Providence yesterday afternoon.”
“Okay.” She carried the puzzle to the dining room and sat in the same seat she’d occupied at dinner. While she’d bathed, Trey had cleared the table and wiped it down. He’d loaded and run the dishwasher, too; the low hum was the dominant sound in the cabin.
As she opened the box and smiled at the baggies her father had filled with the fruits of her sorting yesterday, she sensed Trey standing at the end of the table. She looked up. “What?”
“Can I … help?”
“No.”
He took the rejection in stride. “Can I watch?”
“You want to watch me put together a puzzle? It’s not very interesting.”
His eyes settled on hers and looked deep. Lara tried to understand what he was thinking, but his expression was too quiet to show anything behind it. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
She thought about that. “You can watch if you’d like.”
He smiled. “I’m going to have another glass of wine. Would you like something? Something more to eat? There’s vanilla ice cream and shortbread cookies, if you want something sweet.”
Her favorites, but she wasn’t interested in food. “Is there tea?”
“Yes. Chamomile and English Breakfast.”
Also her favorites. “Chamomile, please.”
He went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, and Lara began opening the baggies and sorting the pieces.
When he had the kettle on the stove, he came back to the table and sat at the far end, facing her. “You’re really not going to eat more than what you had at dinner?”
Looking up from her survey of the edge pieces, Lara leveled a look that she hoped showed her impatience. “I don’t like to talk about the way I eat. I eat enough.”
“I think that is a very arguable point.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Right now, it is. You’re my responsibility. If you get sick because you’re not eating, that’s my fault. You are my only business.”
And it was Nick Pagano who’d call him to account. “How old are you?”
“You know my full legal name. You probably know that, too.”
She closed her eyes and imagined the house of her memory. In the large room where she kept the Pagano Brothers files, she found Trey’s. “Twenty-five. Your birthday’s in August. Mine is, too.”
He smiled. It went up one side of his face; his other smiles had been balanced. “And how old are you, Lara Dumas?”
“Thirty-three.”
The smile slid back down his cheek and faded away. “I thought you were younger.”
“No.” When his eyes turned down to study his glass, she asked, “Is my age a problem?” What problem could it be?
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