You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2)

by Diane Patterson

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  Untitled Document

  YOU KNOW WHO I AM

  Diane Patterson

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  Copyright © 2013 Diane Patterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  To Darin.

  Like there was any doubt.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MY FIRST CLUE that Colin was somewhat angrier than he had let on came when the Bowie knife landed next to my right ear. The Bowie was the first knife in our magic act, and it was supposed to land over my head. Colin didn’t miss a beat while he continued the patter about how the knife-throwing act was our version of couple’s therapy. I hoped it wasn’t turning into his version of divorce.

  The Bowie popped one of the small bags of red dye and corn syrup under the top sheet of the vertical wheel I was currently strapped to. As Colin spoke, my ear started “bleeding.” A couple at a table in the front row leaned forward, as if trying to see if he had really hit me, or even if he was truly throwing the knives.

  Colin outlined my left arm with stilettos. “Marriage is a bond until death do us part,” he yelled—a complete ad-lib on his part. He grabbed the edge of the wheel and started it spinning.

  Mystery solved: Colin wasn’t angry at me. Oh, no. He was furious. And I was handcuffed and legcuffed to the wheel while he worked through it.

  Colin furious was Colin unpredictable. And he was throwing knives at me.

  The wheel spun and the bloody goo ran into my ear and hair. Every single night, the stage blood found new places to leak into. I hated cleaning up from this part of our magic show, but the blood was a wonderful stage effect. As long as it was fake. I did not want to clean up the real stuff. Particularly if it was going to be mine.

  When my head reached twelve o’clock, I glared at him. “Honey! Let’s talk! Drinks?”

  The audience laughed. Colin didn’t. Without a word, he threw three more times. His throws were in perfect sync with the turning wheel. The silver knives sailed through the air, making a little whispery “snick” sound as they dug into the backboard. The cold metal outlined my arm much closer to the skin than I was prepared for. And we had prepared a lot. The audience gasped at Colin’s precision. So did I. I shouldn’t have been that surprised: he was the three-time winner of the Eastern Canada Knife Throwing Championship, and he’d thrown more knives than most toddlers have thrown fits. But still. Everyone thinks the knife-throwing act is a sham and the backboard is gaffed and the knives actually come from the back. Perhaps some magicians take that route. But not all of them. Certainly not the one in front of me.

  “I have you insured against the most horrible accidents,” he said.

  He was lying. Colin didn’t have a spare sou to spend on anything like life insurance.

  My husband’s dimples were quite pronounced as he talked. Most nights that meant he’d spotted a hottie in a sequined mini-dress somewhere in the audience. Tonight, though…he bounced his eyebrows suggestively at me. Damn, I was married to a handsome SOB, and didn’t he know it.

  He could flirt even while threatening to skewer me. Up until this moment, I hadn’t believed Colin would hurt me during the show. Being angry at me was one thing. Being angry at me with knives in his hands was quite another. This wasn’t Colin overacting; this was Colin on a dangerous mood swing. I wanted off this wheel, and I wanted off now.

  My peripheral vision is excellent, so I could see Kristin on the far side of the stage. Kristin Blake was the blonde in the show. During the knife segment, she operated the controls for the wheel. All she had to do was move the speed dial to the notch marked by a silver marker. As she watched us, she smoked, which was forbidden in this part of the casino, but no one ever said anything. She gave me a little wave of her cigarette, her way of saying everything looked good from where she was standing.

  No help from that quarter.

  I smiled, as wide as I could, especially under the circumstances. “Colin, sweetie, let’s do this somewhere else.”

  He picked up a few more daggers. “No, here and now is good. You. Are. Not. Going. Anywhere.” He punctuated each word with a throw, and a line of knives kissed the insides of my legs, including the one that made everyone gasp, the one right by my crotch. I always held my breath a little during that throw, too. If I held my breath any more tonight, I’d pass out from asphyxiation. I had no idea what he was capable of.

  Perhaps right before showtime had been the wrong moment to say I was leaving Las Vegas, the show, and him.

  I hadn’t meant I was leaving right that moment. Although that looked like a better plan all the time.

  I started to pull against the straps holding me to this wheel. Maybe I’d get lucky and one would be loose. No, they were all fastened tightly. “Colin, stop! Please!” I yelled. If the audience figured out things had gone wrong, so much the better.

  I tried getting Kristin’s attention again.

  But Vin Behar was looming over her. Usually a fate worse than death for any girl, except at the moment I could honestly say I had that one beat. Vin was the head of security for the Marrakesh Casino. Why he had his doughy, greasy arse here, watching our show, I had no idea. But because of him, Kristin was not watching the stage.

  The wheel sped up. For a second time. I looked over to see what was going on.

  Kristin was shaking her head at Vin, who had probably made some icky, lewd proposition at her. He had also maneuvered her away from the control box. Which meant he was the one changing the speed of the wheel. And Vin Behar didn’t like me much.

  Oh, hell.

  We’d only rehearsed with one speed increase. A second increase changed the dynamic a thousand-fold. And Colin wasn’t aware anything had changed.

  He whipped around to face me and threw a knife in one seamless balletic movement. It was supposed to land near my foot. It sank into the platform by my left cheek.

  Damn it, that knife felt cold on my face. I strained away from it as much as I could.

  Colin’s eyes widened a bit as he realized that something was very, very wrong here.

  “Please, Colin!” I improvised. I should note I wasn’t hired for my acting ability.

  He glanced over at the wings, where Behar was standing, arms folded. Colin raised his hands, probably at Kristin. I didn’t try to look over because the speed wa
s beginning to make me dizzy, and it was everything I could do to avoid vomiting on myself right then and there.

  “Well, I’m glad we’ve worked all of our problems out,” Colin stammered.

  Oh, thank you, Zeus. He was cutting the rest of the act. Only three knives left—not many. Stopping now was good.

  Then Colin surprised me. And not in a good way. Despite the change in the speed and the lack of rehearsal and everything else going wrong, he threw the remaining knives. I didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  One, two, three—they came flying at me. I closed my eyes. Which was kind of foolish, because all darkness does is make you focus on the coming pain.

  From the sound of the first two knives hitting the platform, they’d landed far to the right of my right side. So he’d aimed away. Good. The last one, though…the last one ended up right against my right wrist.

  The underside of my right wrist, next to the bone.

  A second later, my wrist started to sting. And then to burn. Which meant he’d hit me.

  Colin was about to find out what furious really was.

  The wheel slowed to a crawl. Then it stopped, leaving me upside down and spread-eagled. Colin came over and rotated me right-side-up. As soon as he freed my left hand, I reached down and pulled the knife by my right wrist out. I clenched my teeth to avoid screaming. The last knife had left a clean thin line down the side of my wrist, and it was starting to bleed.

  Not that a minor thing like having stabbed me dissuaded him from finishing in character. “Darling,” he said, “are you all right? More importantly, are you going to sue?”

  I glared at him, debating whether or not to snap his neck. In return, he gave me a little grin. Colin and I may not have been married in the conventional sense—money had changed hands for a green card, to be precise—but he couldn’t help himself. He flirted with every woman he’d ever met. Even the one who wanted to leave him. Even the one he’d just cut.

  My wrist hurt.

  He put his arm around my waist and we took our bow. And on cue, I took a small step backward and slipped on some of the fake blood that had dripped off the wheel. Colin caught me and pulled me into a dip, whereupon he laid a warm kiss on my lips.

  “My lovely assistant, Drusilla Thorne,” Colin said as he pulled me upright. “Drusilla Thorne Abbott,” he said, emphasizing his own last name. And he kissed my hand. The right one. Very close to the cut.

  I looked up and down my body at all the fake blood decorating my outfit and steadfastly avoided looking at my hand.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I wailed.

  Now that the audience was in the spirit of things, with gore and violence and mayhem aplenty, they found that line hysterically funny. As usual, we got a lot of applause as Colin locked our hands and dragged me off into the wings as Sam and Q, the stagehands and guys-of-all-work, came out to mop up the blood.

  #

  Once we were off-stage, I pulled away from him. “What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.

  “Christ, I’m so sorry, love.” His Australian accent came out with a vengeance. That was a good sign. When he was upset, he couldn’t maintain the Canadian accent he used on-stage.

  “Sorry? Sorry doesn’t cut it.”

  “I lost my head.”

  “I could have lost a fuckload more than that, you idiot.”

  He clenched his lips and lifted my hand. His fingers flicked the clasp to my bracelet and the strand of blocky platinum links fell into his hand. I always had to fiddle with the thing for thirty seconds, but not Colin. No, those magic fingers of his could work any clasp. Lots of women liked what he could do with those hands.

  Whatever he was going to say, Kristin came running over with the first aid kit. “Oh, Dru, are you all right?”

  “When you’re backstage, pay attention,” Colin growled at her. Then he pulled the blue-and-white kit open and took out disinfectant, gauze, tape, and a scissors.

  She twisted her hands together, and then reached up to fiddle with her hair. How like Kristin, messing with her hair, right before she was going on. I wasn’t the professional showgirl, she was, and she still did nonsense like that. “I know,” she stammered.

  Of course she knew. Kristin screwed up all the time, which was part of the reason Colin had needed a second assistant—me—in the act. He would have gotten rid of her altogether, but she was a very young twenty-four-year old, this was her first major job, and she was also ten thousand miles away from her home back in London. He felt responsible for her. Fine. She was solely his problem now.

  He sprayed disinfectant on the cut. I counted backwards from a thousand by thirteens. Stevie had taught me that one: give your brain a problem to focus on other than the pain. I’d worked in restaurant kitchens, and there you have to saw your own hand off before anyone might okay your seeing a doctor.

  He held a layer of gauze to my wrist. “Hold that.”

  Kristin reached forward, but I put my hand on the edge first.

  He glanced at her. “Get out there and start setting up.”

  She vanished.

  “You could have killed me, you son of a bitch,” I told him.

  He shrugged but he couldn’t look me in the eye. “Dru, listen—”

  “You listen. Our deal for four more weeks? Is off.”

  He wrapped the tape around the gauze, packing it tightly. “Drusilla, I need you.”

  He did, didn’t he? Too fucking bad. That ship had sailed. “Why in the hell would I ever go out there again with you?”

  “Because we’re good together.”

  “Colin. You kept throwing the knives. That changes a girl’s attitude.”

  He slammed the roll of tape on the counter. “You’re leaving me. Changes a man’s attitude.”

  “When a man shows up, do let me know.” I waited for him to begin to snarl and I cut him off. “You’re unpredictable and you’re unprofessional. It’s like waiting for Vesuvius to blow. I don’t love you, remember? We’ll figure out the INS thing. I will pay you your money back. And I’m sure you can talk someone else into marrying you. You’re good at talking.” I held up my left wrist. “You’d better do this one, too.”

  He shook his head.

  “Matching wristbands?” I said. “Don’t want your handiwork to be too obvious.”

  He wound tape around my other wrist too. “You’re going to finish the show?”

  “Nothing in the rest of the show can literally kill me, so yes.”

  Then he kissed me lightly on the lips. “Thank you. We’ll talk after the show, okay? It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damned right it won’t.”

  He looked at me again, all regrets and apologies and contrition. “I’m so sorry, Dru.” He kissed my cheek.

  Son of a bitch. How did I find all of these charming, handsome bastards?

  “The music’s starting. Get going.”

  It wasn’t until he was on-stage again that I realized he must have slipped my bracelet in his pocket. Not having that bracelet made me nervous. Even more nervous than an irate husband throwing sharp knives at me.

  The bracelet wasn’t valuable. Well, it was made of platinum, so it was worth something. No, the valuable part was the engraving on the inside. The words had been worn down until they were almost unreadable. The engraving said IN CASE OF EMERGENCY CALL and a phone number. A phone number I knew by heart. A phone number I would never ever call again. The last time I’d called it was eleven years ago, when I was sixteen. I’d had the kind of emergency that the word “emergency” was dreamed up to describe.

  I’d killed someone. A man whose death people were going to notice. And that death screwed up my father’s business something dreadful, to the point where I knew I needed protection from his wrath and whoever he sent after me.

  I called my mother to plead for her help, and she said no.

  The bracelet was the reminder I was truly on my own—well, on my own with Stevie, at any
rate. Which is why I kept it close at hand and on my wrist.

  I didn’t need anyone else paying too much attention to that bracelet or its owner. I had to get it back from Colin before the evening was over.

  #

  After the water cabinet trick, in which Kristin had to escape before drowning and the body switching (Colin beheaded Kristin and me and then refastened each head on the other’s body, a minor acrobatic feat involving new costumes and wigs) came my solo turn in the show. I went on-stage as he set up backstage.

  I drifted out into the audience and shaded my eyes with my hand. “We have a minute. Would anyone care for a quick psychic reading?”

  A woman raised her hand.

  Lovely, a volunteer. Without one, I’d have to scan through the tables and find the woman who appeared the most interested. And who sat in the lighted section of the audience, because I couldn’t see a damn person in the dark areas. I always aimed for having a woman as the first volunteer, because starting with a man appeared too much like a come-on.

  Of course, everything with men is a come-on. Which is one of their better traits, true, but not in the middle of a magic show.

  I sized up my volunteer. I’m not bragging when I say I have exceptional eyesight. It’s a simple statistical fact. My eyesight is off the charts. I see better at twenty feet than a normal person does at maybe five or six. One of the things it allows me to do is examine people in tight close-up, notice little things about them that normal vision would miss. This woman was in her early forties, perhaps: fine crow’s feet developing; her mouth framed by light lines starting to set in; the skin on her hands beginning to dry and wrinkle. Stocky. Nice clothing, nothing Wal-Martish—I could tell by the stitching. Quality shoes, a tad too practical. She needed them for more than holidays in Vegas. She was a trifle embarrassed but laughing, looking to have fun. Not seasoned with speaking in front of a crowd. She and her male companion both wore wedding rings that had the same style and lost their initial luster, so they’d been married a while. He had a redder face than his wife did and had crossed his arms over his chest.