Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  His back hit the closed door behind him and all the men in the room turned to look at him.

  He blinked once. Twice. He could see now. Red mist covered everything but he could see. He could think, too, and questions filled his mind as bloodlust filled his soul.

  Why had this country bumpkin West Virginia sheriff traveled all the way to Boston for a woman in the Witness Protection Program?

  What was his stake in all this?

  What had the red-haired sheriff said to that idiot, Crenshaw? Mikhailov had ignored repeated calls from Crenshaw, which likely were to warn him about this man. What had he said that so upset the sniveling fool that he wouldn’t stop calling?

  Mikhailov would find out.

  He stepped out into the light from the shadows by the door.

  “Good evening Mr. … no, it is sheriff, is it not? Sheriff Brice McGreggor?”

  Mikhailov walked around the man and stood in front of him. The room was full of shadows. He liked shadows. Things lived in shadows that licked up the blood you spilled sometimes.

  “Give it up, Mikhailov. I’ve called the federal marshals—”

  Dmitri slammed a club into the sheriff’s belly and he grunted out the rest of the air in his lungs and doubled over.

  “I speak, you listen,” Mikhailov told him. “Later, you will speak and I will listen. I am curious to know where Jessica Cunningham has been hiding all this time in the weeds, what has been her life as she waited to be Judas. How she came to make your acquaintance.” He leaned closer. “What was the nature of your relationship with her … before her death?”

  Even in his present state, the man tried to straighten, but didn’t yet have his wind back. He was a big man.

  His throat. Right there so temptingly close.

  Mikhailov almost groaned aloud with longing.

  “Take him downstairs and restrain him,” he told Dmitri. “I have not the time to deal with him now. The show I have so creatively and carefully orchestrated will start very soon and I will observe it from the best seat in the house.”

  Then he made a sound he didn’t intend to make. It burped out his lips before he could grab it back. Almost like a giggle. He coughed to cover the sound, but he saw the looks on his men’s faces. He did not like those looks, saw them more and more often and his loathing grew.

  Maybe he would rip their faces from their heads. Just the skin of their faces off the bones.

  That was for later, though. Now, he had other business to attend to.

  “I want him to see nothing when I question him, only to hear my voice.” Mikhailov turned and strode out of the room, tossing the next words over his shoulder as he left. “Gouge out his eyes, blind him.”

  Mikhailov didn’t bother to put in an appearance to prep María for her venture out into the world. A blond man the other called Emile did it for him.

  “Show me your shoes.”

  She obediently pulled up the long skirt and showed him the black high heels. She had jammed toilet paper into the toe so she wouldn’t walk out of them.

  “They are too big, but that’s no excuse for tripping. Do. Not. Trip.”

  Then he laid out the rules of engagement. Simple: no engagement of any kind with anyone. She was to speak to no one, make eye contact with no one.

  “Do not think that the crowd offers you safety, that you could enlist the help of some stranger, make a scene and draw attention to yourself. There will be a knife inches from your back every second.” He showed it to her, a vicious dagger with a sharp point and razor edges on both sides.

  “You so much as sneeze, and I will jab it between your ribs directly into your heart. Such a wound will bleed very little, with no heartbeat to pump out the blood and that small amount will not be visible on a black dress. You will merely stagger, look drunk. I will hold you upright, appear concerned that my wife is unable to drink responsibly.”

  He smiled, held up the fur wrap for her to see. It looked like Batman’s cape. As big as a tablecloth, it was mink or ermine or the fur of some other small wooly creature and she knew it must be very expensive. Then he fit it around her shoulders — her whole body disappeared beneath it.

  “This will cover a multitude of sins.”

  There were slits on the sides for her hands and when they walked out into the hallway, she was instructed to take Emile’s arm and not let go.

  “Look like you’re having a good time,” the blond man whispered down at her as they walked together through the hotel hallway.

  That part … she couldn’t pull it off. Not even if they killed her.

  “Smile!”

  The single word was slathered in threat.

  She pulled back the corners of her mouth. To keep them in that position for any length of time would require roofing nails.

  With a dark, brooding sort whose name she didn’t know walking along casually on the other side of her and Vladimir only a step behind, they proceeded into the elevator, out again, crossed the glossy floor of some sort of atrium. It was made of what looked like a single sheet of pale blue marble, shined so you appeared to be walking on water. She slipped on it once, but Emile kept her upright with his grip on her arm.

  From the atrium into a casino. Through the casino to a restaurant, where the How the Grinch Stole Christmas theme met its zenith in a gigantic figure of the Grinch, stealing the Christmas lights off the railing of the observation deck above their heads.

  The man on her arm had only to make eye contact with the maître d’ and they were shown to a table in the back corner of the room between a side entrance and the doors leading into the kitchen. They had to walk around the gigantic sack of “stolen” presents and Christmas decorations that stretched out across the floor in front of that section of tables, a lumpy sack where the monstrous Grinch had been stuffing all his stolen Christmas goodies.

  Clearly, it was a slow night. The crowd they passed through in the casino had been small, most of the slot machines sat empty and silent, and when she was seated between Emile and Vladimir at the table, she saw that the waiter had quarantined them. There was a swath of empty tables, two deep, all the way around theirs. They were completely isolated.

  No one offered to take her Batman cape — clearly, prearranged. None of the other women seated in the restaurant had worn their coats in. But when they got to the table, Emile graciously removed it from her shoulders and draped it over the back of her chair.

  He sat down beside her, picked up the carafe of water and poured some into a glass. Handing the glass to María, he held out two pills in the palm of his other hand.

  “Take these.”

  She looked at them, horrified.

  He smiled at her when he spoke so it’d look like they were just having a pleasant conversation. His words didn’t match his facial expression.

  “You need to relax … look like you’re enjoying yourself. These will help. Don’t be an idiot. If I wanted to poison you, why would I dress you up like a Barbie doll and drag you to a restaurant to do it?”

  She didn’t move.

  “Take the pills, sweetheart, or …” He casually pulled open his suit jacket to reveal an inside pocket. Sticking out the top was what appeared to be the top of a syringe. “This stuff is a nasty cocktail of chemicals you absolutely do not want in your bloodstream. It’s the pills or this. Pick.”

  She held out her hand and he dropped the pills into her palm. She popped them into her mouth, tried not to swallow them, tried to use her tongue to tuck them away behind her lip. But that was probably a skill you had to practice. The pills slid down her throat and she tensed. Nothing happened. Yet.

  He reached over and took her right hand as if he wanted to hold it. Instead he eased it down off the table and she felt cold plastic digging into her skin. A plastic zip tie, like for a garbage sack. Quickly and efficiently, she was affixed to the chrome bar that encircled the back of the chair, the whole act hidden from view by her mink Batman cape. The man sitting on the other side of her did the same
with her left arm, zip-tied to the chair back.

  She jumped when she felt the knife prick in her side, looked at Emile fearfully. He merely nodded. She bobbed her head in response: message received and understood. You can kill me right here, right now, and I won’t even fall face-first into my food because there isn’t any.

  Task accomplished. She marveled at the audacity. She’d been kidnapped and here she was in plain sight, tied to a chair in a public restaurant, with dining families making soft conversation, couples holding hands across the table, and servers — looking like Drew and Cindy Lou Who — gliding to and fro, taking orders and delivering food to tables.

  Obviously by prearrangement, the servers ignored them. They sat together in silence, three stone statues. That seemed the most egregious insult of all. Nobody noticed three stone-faced people sitting alone at a table in the back of the room, not speaking, not even looking at each other.

  Who didn’t notice a thing like that?

  Dmitri looked at his watch, then leaned past her to speak to Vladimir.

  “Five minutes. You ready?”

  Vladimir nodded, and cocked his head toward the observation deck in front of the gigantic Grinch. Mikhailov stood at the railing. But he was smiling. Yes sir, he was positively grinning his gums dry.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  No one was in the restroom, so Bailey selected the stall on the end.

  These were complete restrooms. The toilets were concealed inside actual rooms with actual doors, the floor-to-ceiling variety, that locked with a knob lock, which popped up a dainty red flag on the other side that said “occupied” when you engaged it. This was not a place where you looked beneath the stall walls, searching for feet. Bailey would have total privacy.

  She took off her jacket, shirt and jeans, stripped to her underwear and then pulled on the black tights she’d put in the sack with the dress and shoes. She’d worn pantyhose under the dress at her birthday celebration. But tonight she’d be wearing the floor-length version of the gown and nobody could see her legs. Tights were warmer.

  The dress was jade green, what María would have called “slinky” but which Bailey preferred to call “form-fitting” — down to the knee. From the knee to the floor were rows of big poofy ruffles. Like the train on a bride’s dress, you could remove the ruffles if you preferred the short version of the dress. Bailey’d picked short for her birthday because the all-the-way-to-the-floor ruffles completely hid the high heels and she’d definitely wanted them to show.

  She’d picked the long version for tonight because she definitely did not want the shoes to show. The perfect coup de grâce that sealed the enchantment of the outfit, the shoes were an exact match to the distinctive green of the dress, and featured six-inch stiletto heels, thin as an icepick, made out of shiny chrome with a green rubber tip.

  The sales lady had admitted she’d never sold a pair of the shoes because most women couldn’t walk in heels that high. Maybe it was being a runner with strong calf muscles, but Bailey had no trouble at all.

  Ping-ponging again, her mind getting up too close to the white-hot stove of her intent, the reality of what was going to happen in the next half hour, and her mind skittered away to dresses and shoes and keeping her legs warm with tights. Shoot, she’d be dead in under half an hour. Her legs wouldn’t have time to get cold.

  That stopped her. Washed the random thoughts away that’d crowded into her mind to keep reality at bay.

  Yes, it was very likely that she would not be alive an hour from now. She tried to think that, but it was hard to conceive of not existing. She had come very close to dying in a flooded coal mine with some Eastern European teenagers and she remembered how badly she had wanted to live then. How hard she struggled to survive.

  Well, she would struggle with no less determination and strength now. Recognizing that it wouldn’t likely do any good wasn’t the point. It was the struggle that mattered.

  Gratefully, Mikhailov had backed himself into a corner with this public place. He had to keep both of them alive, each to silence the other, while he made the exchange. He couldn’t chance that the two of them would start screaming about kidnapping and murder in the middle of the soup and salad course of the salmon special on the menu.

  She would walk through the main doors of the restaurant at six o’clock just like she’d agreed. He would be there. He wouldn’t stand her up. He wanted her too badly to renege on that part of the deal. She would walk to the table in the back of the room between the south entrance and the kitchen. María would be there, accompanied by men who would kill her at the whim of their boss. María would stand up; Bailey would sit down. María would walk back out the way Bailey had walked in. And then …

  Then the men seated at the table might pretend to eat. Or they might give her the bum’s rush out of the room at once. They surely would search her purse as soon as she stepped up to the table. They’d find the gun. They’d assume they’d taken the sting out of the wasp.

  After that, she’d be taken to Mikhailov. She believed with the strength of all her intuition that he would confront her up close. That he would want to get in her face. He was not the kind of man who would allow others to perform this task.

  Not since he’d gone crazy and developed a lust for blood.

  He would get close to her …

  Then somehow, somehow, she’d find a way to plunge the pointed stiletto heel of one of her shoes into his neck.

  That was all she had going for her. An unlikely weapon and the element of surprise.

  Her mind flashed to the night of her birthday celebration, Brice standing in her living room all dressed up in a suit and tie. Six feet six inches of muscle, topped with a face that only missed Pierce Brosnan perfection because the features were stronger than that, the bone structure of his face more angular.

  He’d looked her up and down until his gaze landed on the shiny stiletto heels.

  “How on earth do you walk—?”

  “Balance,” she’d told him confidently. “It’s all about balance.”

  “You know, those shoes would be considered a deadly weapon in some states.”

  Deadly weapon. Exactly what Bailey needed.

  She’d pop off the cap and plunge the icepick sharp shoe heel into his neck under his right ear, right into his jugular vein, the place she’d be most likely to inflict a lethal wound. The heel point would not have to pass through the fabric of a suit coat, maybe even a vest, a shirt and an undershirt. Directly into his skin the full six inches. The point might even come out the other side of his neck.

  And afterward? She might draw another breath. Maybe even two. Then Jessie Cunningham aka Bailey Donahue would be dead.

  But María and Bethany would live on.

  She pulled the gun in its holster out of her Walmart sack and slid it snug into her pearl-studded purse with the little silver strap that fit around her neck, allowing the purse to swing stylishly low on her hip. She snapped it shut. Then she picked up the green shoes with the silver icepick heels, popped off the plastic caps, then gently snapped them back on … loose.

  That cap comes off, you gonna poke a hole in the bottom of the boat, T.J.’d said the night of her birthday party.

  She studied the wickedly sharp heel, pricked a small hole in her thumb … enough to draw blood, so she put it in her mouth and sucked on it.

  The image of Bethany sucking her thumb blazed across Bailey’s mind like a giant meteor, flames behind it like the tail on a kite.

  Suddenly, the iron fingers of fear grabbed her belly and squeezed.

  This wasn’t going to work!

  It was a fool’s errand. No way could she plunge the stiletto heel into him fast enough … before one of his bodyguards stopped her.

  What was she thinking?

  This was insanity.

  Stop it!

  The panicked thoughts screeched to a halt on the track. All her other thoughts slammed into the back of them and then fell over on their sides.

&nb
sp; Yeah, maybe it was a fool’s errand, and if it was, they’d picked the right girl for the job. It was insane, but so was everything else in her life. Painting pictures of things that hadn’t happened yet. Now, that was insanity!

  It occurred to her then, as it had when she’d come up with the plan, that Jessica Cunningham could never pull this off. Would never have tried. But she was Bailey Donahue now and Bailey could and would attempt it. She’d sacrifice her life to make it work.

  Bailey leaned over the little sink-ette in the toilet stall, ran some cold water and splashed it into her face. Then she slipped into the slinky dress, put her feet into the ridiculously high-heeled shoes. She’d have blisters in … no, she wouldn’t live long enough to form blisters. Then she stepped out of the stall into the bathroom. A woman was standing at the sink washing her hands. She turned to Bailey and stopped.

  “Oh my,” she gasped.

  Well, that screwed the pooch.

  The first person who got a look at her had noticed the stiletto heels the dress was supposed to hide.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to gawk,” the woman gushed. “It’s just … that is the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen. The color green. It’s the same color as your eyes. Would you mind if I asked where you got it?”

  So Bailey stood there for a few moments chitchatting!

  It was surreal.

  Bailey told the woman about the little dress store. The woman said she’d seen the place but had never shopped there. Bailey suggested she give it a try. She said she might just do that. Then she left the room.

  Well, if the woman noticed the dress but not the shoes, Bailey had leapt the first hurdle.

  She went into the bathroom stall and stuffed her clothes and running shoes into the bag that had contained the green dress, shoes and gun.

  Back in the bathroom, she shoved the sack down into the trash receptacle on the wall. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. What was it T.J. said? Yeah, her face looked like death on a cracker. Shoot, she never had taken that shower! With fear sweat added to her aroma now, she likely smelled pretty gamey.