Blood seeped through the bandages I’d wrapped around Blake’s arm.
“You’re still bleeding.” I examined the wound and noticed a faint, sickly sweet stench about it.
Blake eyed his arm and winced. “I’ll be fine.”
He lied to keep me calm. Hero of my life he was. Superman and bulletproof, he wasn’t.
“Lobby level,” I said and pointed to the sign. “Cab or ambulance to the hospital. I’m screaming for help when we get to the other side of that door.”
Blake nodded. Little beads of sweat bloomed on his forehead, and the natural tan of his skin had whitened.
We edged through the doorway into a vacant hallway that was flanked with ice and snack machine rooms. The ice machine rumbled and a load of ice dumped into its bay.
“Help! Please!” I yelled.
A bald, oversized man with a light-colored mustache and chin beard rounded the corner cautiously, then saw Blake and ran toward us.
“I’m security, what’s happened?” he asked.
“He’s been shot—we need an ambulance.”
The man tapped his earpiece and took ahold of Blake’s other arm. “Uh, yeah, we have what appears to be a shooting victim here, and we need an ambulance.”
“It’s going to be okay, Blake. We’re getting help,” I said.
“All right, an ambulance will arrive out back here.” The man looked behind him. No one else was coming. “Let’s stay out of the way of the other guests.”
“Two FBI agents were shot outside of room 325,” Blake said breathlessly.
“Jesus. Helluva first week on the job.” He tapped his earpiece again. “The shooting took place at room 325 and it sounds like a couple of others may have been shot and killed. We need the police out here right away.”
“Thank God,” I said. Blake was getting help. We’d turned the tide.
“It’s going to be okay,” Blake said and kissed me. “I’m fine.”
“Let’s hurry and get him some help.” The security guard escorted us into the stairwell we’d just exited. We walked into the same level of the garage we’d left several hours earlier. I stopped cold when I saw that the town car Thomas had driven was still parked off to the side of the building. There was no ambulance in sight.
The bald security guard grabbed Blake under the good arm and jerked him toward one of two black town cars that ran idle, one behind the other.
“No!” I yelled and lunged for him. “Blake!”
“Shut it,” said a man who appeared from behind and to the right of me. His arm grabbed me around the neck and the end of what felt like a gun pointed into my back. He dragged me toward the other car. Two drivers emerged wearing dark glasses, one from each car. As well as one goon per passenger side.
When we passed beside it, I saw Thomas in a heap between the open door and the car. His head was twisted awkwardly to the side. His spirit hovered while still connected to his body and he watched Blake and me as we passed by.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. They gave me no choice. They were going to kill me if I didn’t tell them where you were.” He ran his hands over his short hair and oversaw the irreparable damage to his body.
“Seems like they did anyway,” I said with all the hatred I’d always wanted to feel for Thomas.
Blake stared at Thomas’ body and struggled against his captor but when he was approached by a second man with yet another gun, he stopped. They handcuffed him, shoved him into the backseat, and slammed the door.
“No!” I screamed, panic-stricken and furious.
The man squeezed the upper part of my arm in his iron grip when he dragged me toward the car, hard enough to make me yip. My arm felt an inch within broken. He opened the back door to the town car and I turned to stone. Like the turning of a page in a story that began too long ago, the inevitable happened.
“Come in,” Otto said with a Cheshire cat smile, and patted the leather of the empty seat next to him. “Let’s have a chat.”
My lips went numb, along with the rest of my body. I could neither form a word nor command my body to move. We were dead, Blake and I. Just as the last time. Otto had won. He was going to kill Blake, kidnap me, and force me to live the rest of my days in service to him.
The gunman shoved my head down and into the car, forced me to sit next to Otto, then slammed the door.
I sat perfectly still in the sickly warm car as my half-coherent mind bumped around all edges of it, trying to figure a way to help Blake. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
“Wine?” Otto asked, and offered a glass in my direction.
I shook my head. A faint, musky scent rose off my body. A remembrance of the sweet pleasure Blake and I had shared just a couple of hours ago. And yet it was now as far away as if it had never happened.
Blake.
“I was disappointed you left so suddenly at our last meeting,” Otto said. “I’m sure you didn’t mean it as such, but it seemed you might not come back from wherever it was you went.”
I stared at the aristocratic lines of Otto’s face that framed his tan skin. Even in the middle of winter he managed a gentle, even tan. As if he’d just vacationed in the south of France. Every inch of his image was perfect. A perfect forgery.
In spite of the damage the trial must have done to his reputation, most would still see Otto for the image he presented, and that perfection allowed him mobility in the world. The closing of the firm must have shown at least some culpability. Only those in legitimate circles would have been concerned about that. The constraints of legitimacy were gone for Otto now.
“Where did you go?” Otto’s jaw muscle worked.
I turned away from him and caught sight of Thomas’ black shoes that peeked out from behind a pair of tires.
“I see,” he said in response to my silence. His wedding ring tapped against his wine glass three times in rapid fire. I shuddered at the sound.
“Addie, I think you’ll soon come to see me as the hero in your life. The one who has rescued you from the damnation of a life on the run and offered you the opportunity of a lifetime.”
My head swiveled toward him and I scoffed.
Otto raised his wine glass in a toast. “I have to take care of a little something first. I’ll be back. And then we’ll begin.”
He placed his wine glass in the holder and turned toward the door.
“No!” I yelled, assuming that his “little something” was killing Blake.
Otto turned back to me, darkness brewing from behind his eyes.
“If you don’t get him the help he needs, if you kill him, I’ll never help you.” I felt the light within me vanish, as if the sheer possibility that I would help Otto meant the offering of my soul. Blake and Grace had been right. Bargaining with Otto was a dance with the devil. No matter how important the reward, even when it was someone else’s life, there would be a high price to pay for it.
Otto moved toward me with all the slowness and surety that evil embodied.
“You’ll help me, Addie,” he said, and placed his hand on my knee. His thumb rubbed the outside of my leg in a slow stroke, as if he were appraising the form of an object. I moved my leg just out of his reach.
“Or I will kill him,” he said.
Chapter 43
After a silent trip across town, Blake and Otto arrived at the office. Otto’s son, Nicholas, parked the car at the rear entrance of the firm.
“This is going to be an interesting day for you,” Otto said. “Can’t say I planned it this way, but it may be the best idea I’ve had in years. It’s definitely the best solution when you need someone out of your life once and for all.”
Otto’s tone was grim and Blake had a sudden vision of bleeding out in the basement of the firm. He struggled quietly in the handcuffs, only to send the pain of a hundred knives into his arm.
Otto’s other son, Philippe, walked beside Blake when they entered the firm and kept the end of the gun flush against Blake’s ribs. Just for good measu
re, he jabbed the gun against Blake’s side whenever he thought Blake wasn’t moving fast enough.
The four of them walked down the sloping walkway to the service elevators, the air inside nearly as chilled as the wind outside, and Blake thought about the uncomfortable connection between the four men. Three brothers with their subhuman patriarch leading the way, three of the four completely unaware of the fact that Blake was family.
Blake could have told Otto that he was Otto’s son, and Otto wouldn’t have valued his life any more, though he would see that information as a link to finding Carolena. And Blake wasn’t going to sell her out. There had to be another way. He scanned the hallways for something—anything—he could use to turn things in his favor.
When they finally entered the vault area, Otto headed down the long hallway to the one vault in the back that had been sealed for as long as Blake had interacted with the firm.
Otto twisted the dial but the combination didn’t open the door. He pressed his lips together and headed back the way they’d just come. “Bring him this way,” he said. “I have to make a stop by the safe in my office.”
They passed the nondescript door at the end of the hallway and Otto stopped abruptly, rage building just beneath his polished surface. “What’s this doing open?”
They entered the warehouse area just as a delivery truck rumbled by and rattled the darkened windows at the top of the room. A faint scent of exhaust traveled through the air. Otto stalked alongside the brick wall that cornered off one quarter of the room until he came to a hole in the far side of it.
“What the hell?” Otto exclaimed. He bowed to enter the small room, and went straight for the couch. The three brothers followed and watched Otto lift both cushions to reveal the top side of a safe. One twist to the right, one to the left, two more to the right, and the lock released. Otto lifted the heavy door and sighed his relief at the sight of it.
He took the painting from its crypt and ceremoniously propped it against the fireplace.
“Well, at least they didn’t get this,” he said sternly while admiring the painting.
Blake eyed the artist’s signature and his realization of what was about to happen drained his strength.
Otto leaned forward and touched an edge of the painting gently. His finger sank into it as if he’d dabbed it into a bowl of pudding. A swirl of scenery stayed attached to his finger when he took it away, then it returned to the canvas.
Without straightening, Otto eyed Blake.
“I’m going to take you on a little trip,” Otto said.
Blake thought of John, Campbell, Frank, and how they all lost their lives at Otto’s hand in one way or another. He sat in the nearest chair and felt blood trickle beneath the makeshift bandage and down his arm.
He watched Otto take two hanging suits from the closet at the back of the room. He laid one over his arm and placed the other one on the chair in front of Blake.
“Nicholas is going to take your handcuffs so you can put this suit on,” Otto said, and he dropped a pair of shoes in front of the suit with a clatter. “Both boys will have guns on you, so you won’t get any ideas about leaving.” Otto scowled with exasperation. “Put a fresh bandage on there, Nicholas. I can’t drag him around town with blood running everywhere.”
“Me? I’m not touching that.” Nicholas sneered at Blake’s wound.
“Philippe.” Otto gestured to Blake’s arm and Philippe left the room.
“You should remember that we don’t actually need you alive. Not now that I have Addie,” Otto said over his shoulder and headed toward the bathroom to change.
“Why don’t we just shoot him?” Nicholas asked.
“Well, he has already been shot once today,” Otto said as if he ticked items off a to-do list. “And I rather like the idea of him having to live with the separation and loss of someone he loves. I want him to suffer.”
When Otto returned to the main room he looked all the rage in his gray vested suit, starched white shirt, and slender tie. He carried a matching gray hat and umbrella.
“Wouldn’t want to travel without this, remember, boys?” Otto waved the umbrella.
They nodded in return and Nicholas grinned at an apparent memory.
Philippe finished bandaging Blake’s arm with fresh gauze from the firm’s first-aid kit and torn strips of white fabric that were once part of a shirt. When he turned away Blake fished several packets of ibuprofen out of the kit and hid them in his pocket. Then Philippe buttoned Blake’s shirt and knotted his tie. Blake examined his image in the full-length mirror. The dark gray suit had a close fit, as was the style in the early 1920s. He didn’t want to know how it was that Otto got the sizing right. He assumed Thomas had given Otto or his sons the information they needed.
Thomas. Blake shook his head as Thomas’ betrayal came back to him.
Otto pushed open the lid on the mahogany roll top desk and lifted a small cash box from the middle compartment. Blake watched in the mirror while Otto took out a stack of bills and transferred half of the money to a different wallet. Then he placed the other half to the side. Blake noticed with regret that their builds appeared nearly identical in their suits.
Blake eyed the antique wedding photo of his mother and father without visible response, picked up the bills with blue ink on them, and put them in his wallet.
Otto gestured for Nicholas to reattach the handcuffs. Once they were on again, Otto looped his arm around Blake’s good arm.
“You should know that they are under strict orders to kill Addie if I don’t come back alive,” Otto said and searched Blake’s face for reaction. “If you try anything while we’re in there, I’ll drop you. You don’t know yet what that means, but suffice to say you wouldn’t like it. I don’t think you would survive it.”
Blake thought of how the Monet tried to take possession of Addie with its grief and honestly didn’t know if he would survive it, either. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Otto reached into the painting as if he were searching for something, and Blake watched in horror when the pale impressionist colors climbed Otto’s arm. There was no avoiding this, no way out, and no guarantee that he would every make it back, much less survive the trip.
Once Otto found what he searched for, he said to Blake, “Hang on.”
Blake reluctantly grabbed ahold of Otto’s coattails just before paint colors coated them completely. His arm ached and he groaned in agony when the painting took control of him and added him to its world. When they were completely inside, Blake scanned the area behind them. Oddly, he could see the room they had just left. Philippe and Nicholas stood and watched them, their guns hung at their sides.
Otto walked carefully forward, step by step, hanging on to a thick, red cord which seemed to be tied both to where they had been, as well as where they were going.
Blake squinted against the windy emotional currents, which burned his eyes and left him feeling half-mad. It was impossible to tell which feelings were an artist’s emotion embedded into the painting, and which were his own. What he could see of his surroundings showed exactly like the painting. And anything he focused on offered a path in that direction.
Otto headed straight toward a gathering along the river and toward one man, in particular. The red cord was tied to a post next to where the man stood. Once there, Otto stopped and appeared to focus, as though he braced himself for what was next.
The pain of Wentworth’s loss seared through Blake, brought him back to his childhood when he learned that fathers weren’t always the protectors and the defenders that they were supposed to be. Sometimes, no matter how much you loved and needed someone, they couldn’t have a place in your life.
Otto placed hand over hand on the cord and moved the both of them forward. The scenery morphed from an outdoor gathering by the river to a quiet dirt road through the forest. Blake couldn’t rise above the sadness and loss that surrounded him, owned him. Several times he stumbled and fell out of sheer emotional exhaustion, and l
ay in the fetal position on the dirt path. Each time Otto yanked him up and laughed at him. Finally, he closed his eyes, followed Otto’s steps. And prayed for an end.
At one point Otto took Blake’s arm and wrapped it around a small tree, then Otto left. Blake watched while Otto took the last twenty feet or so of the red cord and tied it off in the bushes. It was now unseen from the path. When Otto finished, Blake turned away and closed his eyes again. He assumed Otto wouldn’t want anyone to know what he did.
Otto guided Blake several steps in what felt like a half circle. “Open your eyes,” Otto barked.
Blake did so slowly and admired the painter’s atelier laid out before him. There were burgundy walls with wainscoting, easels with half-finished portraits, and bright sunshine that highlighted blotches of paint on the faded wooden floors. He saw the room just as he had seen the room they had left—as if it were on the other side of a foggy window. The closer they came to it, the clearer the room came into focus.
Otto parked Blake in a heap near the edge, untied the end of the red cord, and disappeared. When he returned, Otto pressed close to the surface and scanned the room. Then, he reached through a filmy screen and they poured out of the painting and tumbled onto the artist’s floor.
Blake groaned while he lay on the cold floor, still in handcuffs. Nausea, dizziness, and extreme weakness made it impossible to move. He watched from the ground while Otto rolled to all fours, crawled to the slightly open window, and took in a deep breath of cold air. He dabbed his forehead with a white handkerchief.
Their coats, hats and umbrellas lay on the floor, as though they’d been tossed without care. Blake imagined what he and Otto must have looked like when the painting birthed them into this world. The painting in question hung in innocence among a wall full of other paintings by the same artist, it showed as it did when it hung in the small room outside of Otto’s firm.
“Not something someone can describe, is it?” Otto said and pointed toward the window. “See for yourself.”
Somewhere in Time Page 21