Evil in All Its Disguises

by Hilary Davidson

  “Do you hear any shooting out there?”

  I strained my ears. “Nothing.”

  “Good. Hopefully my man out there is earning his keep.”

  “You do have someone working for you.”

  Martin nodded. His breathing was short.

  “But I thought that Apolinar—”

  “Apolinar turned down my offers. I made quite a few, but he was firm.”

  “A man lured me into the bar late this afternoon,” I said. “I think he was planning to—”

  “Help you escape? Exactly.” Martin put one hand on his chest, pressing on it. His breathing eased a little. “If you hadn’t resisted, you’d be in New York now and we’d be toasting Gavin’s gullibility.” He shook his head. “Or maybe we’d still be here. Gavin had guards all over the grounds, so smuggling you out was going to be damn near impossible. This might be where we’d have ended up, no matter what. You’re not hurt, are you, sweetheart?”

  “No.” Dazed and confused, but not hurt. I was trembling. “Don’t think I won’t kick you when you’re down. Just keep calling me that.”

  Martin moved into a crouch and I helped him up.

  “Can you stand on your own?” I asked.

  “Yes. No. Give me a moment.” His hat was on the ground and his face was resting on my shoulder. At that moment, we were holding each other up. My eyes were fixed on Gavin, lying on the ground in a pool of blood. He looked so pathetic and forlorn, his face still registering disbelief.

  The door opened. “Mr. Sklar! Are you hit, sir?”

  “No.” Martin lifted his head and looked at me. “We need to get out of here, Lily.”

  “We can’t leave!”

  “You’re shell-shocked. Take a deep breath.” He draped his trench coat over my shoulders.

  “Martin, we can’t just leave. We’ve got to tell the police what happened.”

  “Lily, if we stay now, we could end up staying forever.”

  “You’re being melodramatic. The Mexican police are not going to detain us forever.”

  “No, but it could be months. If my doctors are to be believed, I don’t have many of those left.”

  That hit me like a slap, and I turned my head away so Martin wouldn’t see my expression.

  “Pete Dukermann is in one of the bungalows,” I said. My heart thudded in my chest, and my voice came out dry and dull. The reality of what had just happened in the room was finally sinking in. “Ruby and Roberta… I don’t know where they are. Gavin had them moved somewhere.”

  “We’ll find them.”

  I looked around the room, feeling helpless. I didn’t want to stay, but I was afraid to go, too. Someone had to stay to piece this together.

  “There’s a plane waiting. We need to go, Lily.” Martin took my hand, and we walked out together. I couldn’t look back.

  ❖

  Martin’s driver took the roads to the airport at breakneck speed. The sky was black and it was raining again. I stared out the window, more panicked than I’d been at the Hotel Cerón. I could see Martin’s reflection in the glass. He was slumped against the seat, with his head back and his eyes closed. His breathing was labored. Part of me had hoped that he wasn’t sick, that it was all a ruse for sympathy and reconciliation. But he couldn’t fake that he was wasting away and there was no point in pretending otherwise.

  When we arrived at the airport, one of his guards opened my door and immediately led me to the plane. “What about Martin?” I asked, not understanding what was happening.

  “Don’t worry,” the guard said, before lowering his voice. “He’s been up way too long. He’s gonna need some help getting on the plane. Don’t look. He’ll be embarrassed.”

  ❖

  “I’d like you to tell me when you first noticed the symptoms of the poisoning.” Dr. Revery was a tall, broad-shouldered man with copper skin and a slight Southern accent. His words crept out of his mouth at a leisurely pace, which was oddly calming in spite of everything that had happened. We were in the air, probably still over Mexico. I hadn’t seen Martin since I’d been on the plane; all I’d been told was that he was resting. I didn’t have to ask why Martin had a doctor there; that was painfully obvious.

  “I thought I was imagining things,” I admitted. “I started feeling nauseous after Skye vanished on Friday night, but I thought that was because I was worried for her. I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest, but it calmed down eventually. When I went to bed, I felt as if I were freezing. But it wasn’t until this morning—I mean, Saturday morning—that I realized something was wrong. During lunch, I threw up. My vision seemed blurry. I had an awful headache and chills. I had trouble moving. It was like having the worst case of the flu ever.”

  “Was there some specific pain you felt, anywhere at all?”

  “No, it was a sense of total exhaustion. It was hard to breathe.”

  “There are so many possibilities, and this is not my area of expertise,” Dr. Revery said.

  “What is your specialty?” I asked.

  “Oncology.”

  That went into my heart with the speed and force of a bullet. Oncology meant cancer. Just looking at Martin, that was what I’d feared.

  Dr. Revery’s voice broke through my thoughts. “When I say poison, I’m not talking about arsenic or belladonna or any of those Agatha Christie methods. I can’t perform all the tests I need to on the plane, but your blood pressure is unusually low, which is another symptom of many types of poisoning. I’m going to start treating you here, but you’re going to have to promise me you’ll cooperate when I check you into a hospital in New York. Someone will need to perform gastric lavage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My fancy-pants way of saying someone will pump your stomach.” I must have made a face, because he smiled. “Yeah, that’s the look people get when you mention stomach-pumping.”

  “But I’m still up and walking around,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean I’ll be all right?”

  “It means you’re tough as old leather, but it’s no guarantee. You were poisoned more than once. You probably had just a drop the first night. I’d say you were hit with at least two doses the next day. There may have been more than one poison involved. It’s possible that they tried one poison, which only hit you slightly, then got you with something stronger.”

  “I thought I was being paranoid. It seemed crazy.” I closed my eyes. The conversation I’d had with Gavin in the Urdaneta Room played through my mind again.

  How thoughtful, Gavin, I’d said. Is this so you can poison me again?

  Clever, clever girl. I’m rather surprised you figured that out.

  “Is there any way of proving I’ve been poisoned?” I asked Dr. Revery.

  He shook his head. “It’s tough to prove with a live patient. Your body is moving the poison out of your system right now. The evidence is disappearing, and that’s a good thing. Now we need to focus on keeping you alive.”

  CHAPTER 47

  After dr. revery gave me a handful of pills—expensive versions of the charcoal pills Ruby had given me, I was sure—I sat staring out the window. He’d asked if I wanted to lie down, and I’d told him I was too keyed up to rest, but that wasn’t true. I was so bone-weary and emptied out that I could have fallen asleep on a bed of nails at that point. But, in the back of my mind was a worry that, if I drifted off, I wouldn’t wake up again. Part of me knew that, when I dreamed, at some point I would see Skye and Apolinar and Gavin again, and I didn’t want to chance that. I was busy wrestling my own fears and demons.

  “I don’t want to bother you, but I needed to see how you are.” Martin’s voice caught me by surprise. He’d slipped into the seat across from me, without my noticing. Even in my hazy state, it was impossible to miss how frail and haggard he looked.

  “I’m fine. Did your doctor give you a report?”

  Martin hesitated. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t. I’m just not looking forward
to having my stomach pumped.” It wasn’t the physical discomfort that unnerved me. My mother had had her stomach pumped on several occasions because of her suicide attempts. I’d spent most of my life avoiding the long, ominous shadow she cast. However inadvertently, I seemed to be following in her footsteps.

  “I owe you an apology, Lily. I know, I owe you much more than that, too, but I…”

  “An apology for what, Martin?”

  “For your being dragged into this mess. For putting your life in danger. Gavin knew that if he lured you to Mexico, he could lure me, too. I’d told him so much about you, and about us. I made it easy for him.”

  “That’s funny. I thought you might want to apologize for wanting to kill my sister.”

  The look on his face was both painful and priceless. Back in January, when I’d confronted him, he’d never actually admitted what he’d done. He’d danced around it. He’d equivocated. He’d flat-out lied. I’d been able to force certain admissions from him, but never that he’d planned to kill Claudia.

  Martin stared at me. I watched him without saying a word. We stayed locked in battle for some time, until Martin said. “If I could go back in time and change one thing I’ve done, that would be it.”

  “You don’t get to go back and fix it, Martin. No one does.”

  “I know that. But it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could.”

  I nodded. “I wish you could, too.”

  We sat quietly; I was staring into space, trying to keep my composure. For some reason, seeing Martin turned my internal clock back by months, while I was still raw with loss and guilt.

  “Do you know what the worst part is?” Martin asked. “I’d gotten used to the idea that your sister was always going to be in the picture. I knew she’d always be making you miserable, and I was going to live with that because there was no other way to have you in my life. I’d made peace with it, as much as I could. It was only because I thought she was threatening Ridley…”

  “I know, Martin. I understand that part.”

  “You do?”

  For a moment, I didn’t see how thin and aged Martin had become. I only noticed his eyes, which were as vividly green as ever. They didn’t make my heart do its shivery little rhumba anymore, but the light behind them made it warm up in my chest.

  “Thank you, Lily. You have no idea what that means to me.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  He shrugged. “Given that I could just as easily be a corpse right now, I’m feeling pretty damn good.” He gave me a shy wraith of a smile. “You have no idea how sorry I am about all of this.”

  “I don’t blame you for what Gavin did, Martin.”

  “I didn’t have a clue what Gavin was doing until you were already in Acapulco.” His mouth puckered slightly, as if he’d tasted something sour. “I gave Gavin too much freedom. It was only when the board made him head of the Latin American division that I started looking closely at his operation. You know that saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth? I almost wished I hadn’t.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A giant mess that could potentially destroy the company. I had trouble believing it, and I was still working out what to do about it. Once I realized you were in Acapulco, I knew what Gavin was up to. I have to admit, it was an inspired move on his part. He knew there was nothing I could do to get you out of there safely, and I would have to come to him eventually.”

  “You tried to get me out. I didn’t cooperate.”

  “It was a stupid idea. I should have flown down immediately.” Martin stared into the distance again, his expression disbelieving. “I’m to blame in all of this. I just don’t understand how everything went so bad so fast. I’m an idiot for having faith in Gavin.”

  “I was surprised just how much you trusted him. Gavin tried to turn me against you by telling me about Gregory Robinson.”

  Martin’s face contorted; for a second, I thought he was having a heart attack. “He what? I never told him—” His voice cracked and whatever else he’d been about to say was buried under silence. I didn’t say anything. On some level, I didn’t think Martin understood how much Gavin truly hated him, or how far he would have gone to destroy him.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” He touched the back of my hand with his dry, dusty fingertips. “If you’d died, it would have been my fault.” Martin’s voice was a dry croak. He stared at me, and there were tears in his green eyes.

  I didn’t want to talk about how close we’d both just come to dying. “What will you do about the Mexican police?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they find Gavin’s body. And Apolinar’s.”

  “They’re not going to find their bodies.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. “You really think you can bury this?”

  “I do.”

  I stared at him. It was impossible not to think of what Gavin had said. Martin’s always got someone working for him on the inside. He hadn’t been wrong about that. In fact, Gavin was more right than he knew.

  “Do you think you can bury the fraud at Pantheon, too?” I asked him.

  He gave me a long, dark look. “Yes.” A moment later, he got to his feet and shuffled away without another word. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the flight.

  CHAPTER 48

  In typical dramatic style, Martin had an ambulance waiting for me at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. That might have seemed like a luxury, but after a doctor administered a numbing gel to suppress my gag reflex and made me swallow a plastic tube, I was desperately wishing I were back at the airport, waiting in the customs and immigration line.

  “It’s been more than twenty-four hours since your last dose of poison, if Dr. Revery’s estimates are correct,” the gastroenterologist told me. “My guess is you’ll be okay, but I’d like you to keep checking in over the next three days.”

  “Does that mean I have to come back to the hospital and have my stomach pumped again?” I asked. “Because my answer to that is no.”

  “Just call in every four hours. This is my direct line.” She handed me an embossed card with a number scrawled in ink. Doctors had such lousy handwriting that I wondered if it was a med school requirement. “If you have any recurrence of symptoms—nausea, chills, headaches, vomiting—or anything at all feels off, call me immediately.”

  “Sure.”

  “And just in case you don’t, I’ve instructed your brother in what to watch out for. I’ve also told him what you can and can’t eat. Be sure to drink plenty of water, and stick with yogurt and plain crackers today. A light broth is fine, but nothing heavy or greasy or spicy.”

  “My brother?”

  “He’s waiting for you in the lobby. You can go home with him now. Get plenty of rest.”

  When I finally emerged from the hospital, I was cranky, sore, and in need of a serious toothbrushing. The only thing that lightened my spirits was the sight of my best friend waiting for me on a vinyl couch in the visitors’ lounge.

  “Well, dear sister, it’s good to see you again,” Jesse said, without a hint of his Oklahoma accent. He sounded like an actor on Masterpiece Theater.

  “Jesse! How did you get in here?”

  “I got a call from someone I ain’t too fond of, but who was tryin’ to do the right thing,” he drawled, sounding like himself again and pulling me into a giant hug. Jesse detested Martin, so that was as far as he’d go in giving him credit.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” I admitted.

  “You only left on Friday morning.”

  He was right. It was Sunday afternoon, but it felt as if a lifetime had elapsed since I’d last set eyes on him.

  “I know, but it’s good to be home.”

  “You hear that?” Jesse called over his shoulder. “I told you New York is always home to her.”

  Pulling back a little, I turned to see who he was talking to. Bruxton was standing there, wearing jeans and a bla
ck T-shirt that showed off both his muscles and his tattoos, which started at his wrists and crept up from there. If you looked closely, there was a bulldog and an eagle—both beautiful, intricate designs—but the cumulative effect of all that ink was thuglike. His blond hair was cut to a length that would’ve been approved by the military. His face was arranged in its usual fierce expression, as if the snarl he’d perfected on perps had seeped into his everyday life until it was normal for him. A muscle in his jaw tensed and I realized he was biting down on nicotine gum.

  “Hi.” To my own ears, I sounded like a shy, and probably slow, child. I wanted to exude glamour and mystery, but proximity to Bruxton short-circuited that. Suddenly embarrassed, I realized what a mess I looked like.

  “Hey.” Bruxton’s expression seemed to soften a bit, and he took a step forward, but then he stopped.

  There was an awkward pause, before Jesse said, “What’s wrong with you two crazy kids? Y’all know it’s legal to hug each other, right?”

  He gave me a little shove and nudged me into Bruxton, who put his arms around me. My face rested against his neck, and the scent of him—a mix of soap and shaving gel tinged with tobacco—was intoxicating. I would’ve stayed there a while if Jesse’s heckling hadn’t continued.

  “Don’t you two look cute. Guess I’m your fairy godmother.”

  “Thanks for meeting me,” I said, pulling away with reluctance.

  “Oklahoma Boy told me you’d be here. I was getting worried about you.” There was something wary in his voice. I felt like a jerk. Whatever madness had happened at the Hotel Cerón, I’d sought out Bruxton’s help and then dropped him. It was true that Gavin had cut me off from the rest of the world, but I hadn’t been completely honest with Bruxton before that happened.

  “I’m glad to see you. Both of you,” I said.

  Jesse arched an eyebrow at me. “You better be happy to see me. You had me worried there for a while.”

  “It was insane at the hotel. You can’t even imagine…”