Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  He pulled his chair close to me and held my hand. He told me the extent of Jake’s injuries and that he was within hopping distance of my hospital room.

  “Don’t worry, Ridley. It’s all over now.”

  I looked at him and knew it wasn’t true.

  “Then why are you here, Detective Salvo?”

  He sighed and looked past me. “I should wait till you’re feeling better, Ridley, I know that. But…”

  “But?”

  “I have to know where you come down on this. The men who chased you tonight are in custody. I believe that one of those men killed Christian Luna. Remember I told you about Angelo Numbruzio, how I was able to tie him to the shooting at the diner? We have him on a surveillance tape from the gun store in Florida that sold the assault rifle that killed Christian Luna.

  “We can’t prosecute him without your testimony, not effectively. And if we move forward with it, everything about your past, about Project Rescue, is going to come out. I know you’re afraid for your family, but I have to tell you Zack and Esme Gray are making a deal with the DA. It’s all coming out, anyway.”

  I didn’t say anything, just looked past him to the hallway. Alexander Harriman was dead. Obviously, the deal I had with him was not going to be honored by the people who killed him. They’d already tried to kill me. I knew I didn’t have any power to protect anyone any longer. Maybe I never did.

  “I’ll testify, Detective Salvo. I’ll testify for Christian Luna. But I can’t testify about Project Rescue.” We looked at each other. “I can’t testify against Max or Esme.”

  He nodded. “Ridley, you were only a baby. You shouldn’t have to testify if that comes to trial. You’re the victim in that case, not a witness.”

  The fact hit home hard. Detective Salvo held my hand and let me cry. I cried for Teresa Stone. I cried for Christian Luna. I cried for Max. And, yes, I cried for all the pieces of myself that I had lost.

  Later that night, I hobbled from my room trailing my morphine drip (which was probably the reason I was able to hobble at all) to find Jake. The duty nurse was helpful rather than mean and officious. She put me in a wheelchair and took me to him herself. He was groggy but lifted his good hand to me as soon as he saw me.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said to me, his words slurring a bit. Doubtful. I could taste my own teeth.

  “You’re high,” I said, and started to giggle. I was a little high myself, but through it I was starting to feel the dull throb of my leg.

  His right leg and left arm were both in casts. His face was bruised, his muscular chest wrapped tight with bandages. I’d never seen anyone more gorgeous in my life.

  “You should go back to bed,” he said, taking my hand.

  “I will,” I said. “I just wanted you to know that you weren’t alone anymore. I’m with you.”

  I kissed his hand then and he touched my face. He smiled and I could see one tear trapped in the corner of his eye, but he blinked away at it hard.

  “I love you, Jake…or whatever your name is.”

  He started to laugh and then groaned at the pain it caused. I stayed with him until he fell asleep, which wasn’t long. And then the nurse wheeled me back to my room.

  thirty-seven

  You might remember I made a promise to Linda McNaughton. But it was more than a month before Jake and I had our legs under us again. And a bit longer after that before I was able to convince Jake to help me keep it. Jake’s leg was still in a cast when we rented a car and headed out to Jersey. The Firebird was gone; it never turned up again. The guy who’d probably taken it and then tried to kill me with it—or scare me, as Alexander Harriman had said—had a bullet in the back of his brain. There was no way to know where he had dumped it.

  “Come with me,” Jake said, looking pale when I pulled in front of the trailer.

  “You don’t want an audience,” I said. “Give yourself a few minutes alone with her and then wave me in.”

  He nodded and left me listening to “Roxanne” by the Police on the radio. I watched as he made his way on crutches up the walk, as she opened the door for him and he disappeared inside. I closed my eyes and imagined him surrounded by turtles, telling Linda McNaughton that he was Charlie, her grandson lost so many years ago. I could see her, gray hair and matching sweat suit, covering her mouth, tears springing to her eyes. I could see her throwing her arms around him and him holding her awkwardly. I wanted to be there with him. But it was their moment, alone. I wanted them both to have that.

  About a half hour later I saw him in the doorjamb waving for me. I looked for joy on his face and I didn’t really see it there. But he looked happy enough, a little flushed as I approached. It was bitterly cold outside, the ground frozen hard, the trees black and dead around the trailer park. But it was warm inside. Linda sat teary on the couch, clutching the photograph I’d taken from her and sent Jake to return. She stood and embraced me.

  “I didn’t think you’d be back,” she said. “Either of you.”

  We stayed for a while. What can I say? It was awkward. They were strangers to each other. She talked about his parents and he listened, attentive and present. She told him a bit about his early years, how he’d walked and talked early, how he’d had a plush frog that he carried with him everywhere. He smiled and made the appropriate responses. There wasn’t much he could share about his years growing up that wouldn’t have caused her pain, so he glossed over it, gave her vagaries about his life. We drank tea with her. Then:

  “Mrs. McNaughton,” he started.

  “Please call me Grandma,” she said, looking shy. “Or at least Linda.”

  I could tell he wasn’t comfortable saying it but he did. “Grandma,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh, “we have to go now.”

  We didn’t really but I stood with him and nodded.

  “Oh, of course,” she said, and I detected a little relief there. “Perhaps you two could come this Sunday for dinner. We don’t have much family, but I have a sister who’d love to see you.”

  “I’d like that,” he said. He hugged her and I saw her tear up again as she held on to him. She stood in the door and watched us leave, the same way she’d watched me when I left her the first time, her arm suspended in the air in a wave. Back in the car, he was quiet as we pulled away toward the highway. I placed a hand on his thigh. “How was that for you?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. Not like I expected. I guess I hoped to feel more connected to her.”

  “You will,” I said. “Give it time.”

  I’ve come to believe, as I said, that it’s not blood that connects us but experience. For everything we’d been through, for all the lies, for all the wrongs done by my family, they were still my family. I never once stopped thinking about them that way; they never became strangers to my heart. And even though the ideal I had held in my imagination proved to be completely false, it didn’t change the way I felt about them. They could be only what they were. That had to be enough.

  We pulled to a stop in front of my parents’ house and sat for a minute. There it was, that picture postcard of my childhood. The house was decorated for Christmas with pretty wreaths in each window, those plug-in candles glowing. I could see the tree with its white lights and tiny red ribbons glinting through the bay window. I didn’t want it to seem like a false front. But it did. I hoped it was a feeling that would pass.

  “They don’t want to see me, I’m sure,” said Jake.

  “Why would you say that?”

  He gave me a look. “I blew the roof off of your life. And theirs.”

  “I don’t see it that way,” I said, opening the door and stepping outside.

  We made our way carefully up the front walk, worried for the icy patches and Jake’s crutches. My father came out to help; my mother waited, arms folded at the door. We all went inside, had hot chocolate by the tree.

  I’d stripped away the script of our lives. Doesn’t it feel that way in your family? Everyone has his role, and as lon
g as everyone keeps true to the part that has been cast for him, things go on as they always have. You laugh about the same things, fight about the same things, harbor all the same old resentments, share the same memories, good and bad. But when one person starts to improvise, starts to write her own lines, the whole script has to be thrown out. Everyone else misses cues, there’s an awkward silence, then chaos. Then, if you’re lucky, you all create a new production together. One based in the present, based on honesty, one that’s fluid and malleable to change. We were in the awkward-silence stage. Lots of uncomfortable pauses. Lots of shared memories, especially those involving Max, that didn’t seem appropriate to mention any longer.

  “I want you to know, Jake and Ridley,” my father said during one of those silences that had been precipitated by my noticing an ornament given to my mother by Max. It was a silver ballerina with a delicate crystal tutu, inspired I think by the Degas painting. “I want you to know that I never suspected for a moment the true nature of Project Rescue.” He was silent for a second, not looking at either of us but down at the cup in his hand. “What we did with you, Ridley, was wrong. We’re guilty of a lot of failures with you even beyond that, but I can never be sorry for taking you that night. I can never regret having the chance to be your father. Still, it’s important for me to let you both know that I never would have been a part of the abduction and selling of children. Not for any reason.”

  Jake nodded politely, but I knew he wasn’t convinced. I chose to believe my father. I knew him well and really couldn’t see him being a part of it. Jake didn’t know him as well and was having a hard time swallowing it.

  “It was Esme Gray, then?” asked Jake. “She flagged the kids she thought were in danger? She was the one who told Max about Jessie?”

  That was one of the big unanswered questions for me. Alexander Harriman said that the murder of Teresa Stone was an accident, the point at which Max realized he’d lost control of Project Rescue. But who had arranged for Jessie’s abduction that night? And how had Max wound up with her? There was a big piece missing here. And Esme, the only person who might have answers, wasn’t talking about any of it.

  “I don’t know,” my father said after a long pause. “I really don’t know, Jake.”

  “And you don’t want to know,” said Jake, holding his eyes.

  My father sighed and looked away. “I’m sure there are more answers coming. An investigation is under way, as you well know.”

  I heard the resentment in his voice then. And I saw it in my mother, who sat quietly on the far corner of the couch, present but distant, a fake half-smile on her lips. She was enduring this visit, not participating. Jake was the truth they didn’t want to face, the spotlight they couldn’t extinguish. And he was here to stay. They both wished that none of this had ever happened. If they could turn back the clock and keep me from stepping in front of that van, they would. They would choose to go dark again.

  You’re probably wondering, What about me? What was my wish? Would I turn back the clock? I can’t answer that. Like I told you, I don’t believe in mistakes or in regret. We don’t know the other road, the one we didn’t take, or where it leads.

  Epilogue

  Quidam, the stranger, the anonymous passerby. The man walking in the rain on the street after midnight. The sound of a violin through your apartment wall. The homeless man asking for change on the steps of a church. The old woman next to you on the bus. Disconnected from your life but joined to you by a moment in time. All the choices and events of his life and the choices and events of yours have led you to be in the exact same place at the exact same time. Think about it.

  I am writing this from my new apartment on Park Avenue South, across from the 4/5-train station. It’s an artist’s loft, big and breezy, washed with light, overlooking downtown Manhattan. The floors don’t sag and there’s no aroma of pastry or pizza, which I really miss. Those little quirks of East Village living. There’s enough room for both our offices, though Jake still keeps his studio downtown. I actually have a room where I write now, not just a corner divided by a screen from the rest of my bedroom. We wanted a new place, where we could start all over again together. New life, new apartment. Makes sense, right?

  Jake and I are getting to know Linda better. She’s starting to feel like family. Little by little, Jake is getting to know his parents, too, or at least Linda’s memory of them. They were flawed people to be sure, but aren’t we all? In learning about them, Jake is learning about himself. For the first time in his life he says he doesn’t feel quidam, like a stranger in his skin, disconnected from the world around him. And I like to think I have something to do with that.

  Ace is still in rehab, nearly three months now. I see him on Thursdays. I am really getting to know him for the first time. As a child, he was my hero; as an adult, he was the part of me I was always trying to save. Now he’s just Ace, my brother who I’ve known all of my remembered life but who has been a stranger to me, partly because of his addiction and partly because of my addiction to an idea of him. We’re in counseling together. He has told me that he believed I had always loved an idea of him and that I’d never really seen the true person there. Just my memories and my dream of him. I suppose he’s right. Isn’t that so often true with family, that we see them through the filters of our own fears, expectations, and desire to control? He’s struggling with this thing. I don’t know if he’ll succeed, but I know now that I can’t help him. Only be present for him, be honest with him, and love him for who he is rather than who I want him to be.

  He never had anything to do with what happened to me. He’s guilty only of never telling me the truth that he knew. And he kept it from me only because he knew the pain it would cause. He did love me, after all. He did want to protect me from the bad guys.

  Ace and my parents have begun to tentatively negotiate a new relationship. It’s a series of fits and starts. There’s so much anger there, so many years of hurt. Each meeting so far has ended in yelling and tears, or so I’m told. But at least they keep meeting. That’s something, isn’t it?

  Ruby’s gone. She came to see Ace once a few weeks after he’d been in rehab when visitors were allowed. He tried to convince her to try to get clean. I offered to pay for the private facility where Ace is being treated, but she refused. And Ace was smart enough to know you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. We haven’t seen her since. At Ace’s request, I went to the Lower East Side one Sunday with Jake to look in on her, to tell her that Ace was asking after her. But she had gone, packed her things and moved on. Ace is hopeful that he’ll see her again.

  Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s this: We don’t have control, we have choices. The little ones, the big ones, these are the points on which our lives pitch and pivot. All we can do is make the best choices we can with what we know, and hope that things turn out the way we want.

  My parents and I are muddling through in our new relationship. There have been a few screaming matches; all that rage and sadness I didn’t feel during our first confrontation have come to the surface more than once. But no one’s walked away or severed ties, no one has given up. The big stuff hangs between us. But we love each other, and we’re learning how to be together in this new life where there are no secrets and no lies between us. I have faith that when the hurt fades, our relationship will be stronger for being based on honesty. And I hope that my parents can find a way to love Jake, too, though I know in their hearts they blame him for all of this.

  Christian Luna’s murder trial still looms. I will testify to what he told me and how I watched him die. The prosecutors will use that to prove motive for Angelo Numbruzio and the people from whom he takes his orders. Depending on the outcome of the trial, state prosecutors will decide how to proceed with the Project Rescue case. And that will determine Zack and Esme’s fate
. My father will probably have some questions to answer. I know he’s frightened and so am I.

  I haven’t spoken to Zack or Esme. Zack is in custody, charged with attempted murder. I try not to think about him the way I last saw him, about the fact that he tried to kill me and Jake. I try not to think about what has happened to his life. He and Esme have been advised by their lawyers not to speak to any of us. The deal they’ve made with prosecutors in the Project Rescue case prohibits it. Not that they’d want to talk to us. But I’d like to talk to Esme. I’d like to know who she was then and what she knows about the night that Teresa Stone died and about the other children who passed through the Little Angels clinic and disappeared. I think she’s the link, that she has the answers Jake and I still need. What do you think? Anyway, we may get those answers yet, as the investigation unfolds.

  The media has already begun to feed. A show about Max and his alleged involvement in Project Rescue has already aired on Dateline. They made him seem like a monster. And to some people, I’m sure he is. But not to me. Project Rescue was ill conceived and the ramifications unspeakable. But he’s still Max. And more than that, he was my father. I’ve tried to recast him in my memory as that. But I can’t; not really. Not yet. As my father, he was flawed, guilty of some terrible errors in judgment at best. As my uncle Max, he was perfect, this bright star in the memory of my life. Is it wrong to want to keep that?

  I don’t know what happened that night when he brought Jessie to my parents. I don’t know what his involvement was, if Teresa Stone’s murder was an accident. I may never know if my father was responsible for the murder of my mother. Whether the terrible legacy of abuse and murder Max spent his whole life trying to flee had caught up with him just the same. I remember often what he said to me that last night. Ridley, you might be the only good I’ve ever done. He was in so much pain. The demons he’d battled all his life had come for him. Later that night, they took him home.

  The Dateline people called me, too, but I, of course, don’t do interviews. Not anymore. It will take all my courage and all my strength to talk about the things that have happened during Christian Luna’s murder trial when the time comes.