Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  He lowered his eyes for a minute, then raised them to me again.

  “I was thinking about what Esme said. About changing our names and getting as far away from here as possible. Maybe we could do that. You and me. We could go anywhere in the world. Just start over. Start our own family. Just disappear. I want to let go. I want to move on. I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life with this thing, with all the anger. It’s possible, isn’t it, just to walk away?”

  Everything inside me wanted to tell him yes, yes, it is possible, and let’s go. We could open some kind of tiki bar in the Caribbean or find an olive farm in Tuscany. I’ll shift off my lousy family and the nightmare of Max and who he might have been. We’ll have children and tell them we were both orphans, no family at all. They’d never be touched by the poison in each of our pasts. They’d have a clean slate. It sounded like a beautiful idea and for a split second I could almost believe it was possible. But we can’t do that, can we? You can cut the ties that bind but not without losing a part of yourself. You can walk away and hide from the people who made you, but you’ll always hear them calling your name. At least that’s true for me.

  I didn’t say any of these things. But I know he saw my emotions play out on my face. He released my hands and leaned back in his chair. He started working his nail against a corner of laminate that was coming off the table. I saw him abandon his fantasy with a long exhale.

  “So what now?” he asked. I didn’t hear disappointment, only resignation, in his voice, as though he’d already known it wasn’t possible for us. I hesitated only briefly before I told him about the text message, my meeting at the Cloisters. About Grant and the phone call I had to make.

  “You saw it, too,” I said. “The website. It was up on your computer. There was streaming video of a street in London. How did you log on?”

  He shook his head. “I never saw it. I told you, I didn’t go back to the studio that night.” There was something oddly still about his face and I wasn’t sure if I believed him. But I nodded. “And you didn’t send that text message?”

  He shook his head. “No, of course not.” After a beat: “Who do you think sent you this message, Ridley? Who are you expecting to find up there?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that. Did I expect to go and find Max waiting for me with answers to every question I had about him in my heart? That his answers would enable me to make peace with who he was and what he had done? Maybe part of me thought that might happen. But a larger part of me had no idea, wasn’t even convinced that this was such a good idea. I know: duh.

  We were there, Jake and I, in that place where silence is an answer, where you know each other so well that some questions don’t require a response.

  I took a sip of my coffee and kept my eyes on the door to the street, as I had done since arriving.

  “I need you to promise me something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “If he’s alive, if we find him, I need to know you won’t hurt him.”

  He gave me a flat look. “Is that what you think? That I want revenge on Max Smiley?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He didn’t say anything for a second, just lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Then: “Why are you so interested in protecting him?”

  “He’s my father,” I said.

  “He’s your biological father,” he said, shifting forward in his seat.

  “Yes. That counts for something. There are things I need from him even now, just like there are things you need from your biological parents. You get that, right?”

  He nodded slowly. “I get that.” Then: “The thing I’m most interested in is protecting you, Ridley. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s my only agenda.”

  “What do you need to protect me from?” I asked.

  “Mostly from yourself. I’m trying to keep you from getting in over your head.”

  “Are you being purposely vague? What aren’t you telling me?”

  We had a staring contest then, which he lost. He cast his eyes to the table and didn’t look up again. Jake seemed like a black box to me sometimes. I had the feeling that I wouldn’t know everything there was to know about him until our lives were in a burning wreckage all around us.

  “Call your Web guy,” suggested Jake after a minute of silence. “We might at least have a better idea of what we’re walking into.”

  He hadn’t answered my questions. He hadn’t given me the promise I’d asked for. I was starting to regret that I’d told him about the meeting at all.

  I took the phone from my pocket and noticed that the charge was dangerously low. I dialed each of the numbers Grant had given me and got voice mail. I was surprised; I imagined him waiting by the phone for my call. A dark sense of worry started to settle on me.

  “No answer?” said Jake.

  I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, then glanced at the clock over the counter. Just two hours to go. Jake seemed edgy suddenly, kept looking over his shoulder toward the door and around the restaurant.

  “Let’s get out of here. It’s better to keep moving.”

  WE WALKED ALONG Broadway quickly, huddling close together, our arms interlaced. I’m sure that to anyone passing us, we looked like a normal young couple, maybe headed home for the evening. But we were so far from that, each running our own agenda, each with a head full of fears, a heart full of questions, and goals we barely understood ourselves. If I could have seen into the future a few hours, we would have hopped a cab to JFK, been in Tuscany by morning.

  12

  I awoke in a milky darkness that told me morning wasn’t far off. My head pounded in a way that would seem natural only after a suicidal drinking binge or a minor car accident. The pain was so intense, I barely dared to move. Then I was aware of a bayonet of agony in my right side. I couldn’t orient myself. I held back the urge to vomit. The room around me was one I didn’t recognize. A hotel room—I could tell that much—posh and well-decorated with oatmeal walls and a rich bloodred carpet. The comforter on top of me was a bone-colored suede, the pillowcases fine cotton. Fear sat on my chest and pushed down on my lungs. I saw a dark wood bedside table where a small clock glowed 5:48 A.M. The room smelled of lavender.

  I struggled to sit up but my head and my side wouldn’t allow it. My throat was painfully sore and dry. I reached my arm out and pulled the phone to my ear with difficulty and pushed zero.

  “Good morning, Ms. Jones. How can I help you?” A brisk male voice, British.

  “Where am I?” I croaked. Was I dreaming?

  He gave a light chuckle. “Quite a night, eh? You’re at the Covent Garden Hotel. In London, ma’am.”

  Images danced in my mind then. High stone walls and strange men moving in from a glade of trees. I heard gunfire and the sound of my own screaming. I saw Jake falling. I saw blood, lots of blood. The man I’d seen on the street when Sarah Duvall was murdered moved closer, but I couldn’t see his face. Over and over he asked me, “Where’s the ghost? Where’s the ghost?” I didn’t have time to be horrified, to wonder whether these images were memories or dreams. I blacked out again.

  FORT TRYON PARK was nearly silent except for the rush of traffic on the Henry Hudson whispering off in the distance. Jake and I had been here together before, the night Christian Luna died beside me. We’d sat in Jake’s car in the parking lot so that he could comfort me while I wept hysterically in the passenger seat. That was a bad night; I hoped that tonight would be better. We cut across the lawn and made our way up toward the Cloisters. The air was moist and cool, but I felt a light sheen of perspiration on my brow as we moved through the trees.

  I kept dialing for Grant as we walked, keeping my eye on the charge. There was no answer and my low-grade dread started to escalate as we moved from the relative safety of the tree cover onto the concrete of the drive. The stone shadow of the Cloisters loomed dark and Gothic ahead, rising against the starry night. I grabbed Jake’s arm.

  “Maybe this is a bad idea,” I said a
s we approached the building.

  He looked at me. “Um, yeah,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I’m only here because I figured you’d come without me. We can leave right now.”

  I was about to take him up on it when we saw the headlights of a car pulling slowly up the drive from Broadway. As we watched, the headlights went dark but the car kept moving toward us.

  IT WAS DARK when I woke up again. The clock read 9:08. The pounding in my head had subsided some but not entirely. The sheets beneath me were damp. I reached to touch them, and when I drew my hand back, I could see that they were dark with my blood. I struggled up and turned on the light, fighting waves of nauseating pain. The blood had soaked through my shirt. I lifted the material and saw a bandage at my waist that was black with it.

  I don’t remember having any actual thoughts, just this weird calm—almost a blankness. I fought light-headedness to get to my feet. In the mirror over an ornate antique desk, I saw a girl I barely knew. She was pale, with dark smudges under her eyes, and looked shaky and unsure of her legs. Her blond spiky hair was matted and dirty. She had a nasty cut under her eye, bruising on her neck. I leaned over and puked bile into the wastepaper basket.

  I managed to support myself with various pieces of furniture—an overstuffed chair, a dresser, a bookshelf—and made my way to the bathroom. I watched myself in the mirror and gingerly removed the bandage. A gaping red hole oozed blood. I had a slow leak. The sight of it made me swoon, but I fought not to pass out on the cold marble beneath my feet. I had to imagine that whoever had bandaged me had also removed the bullet that caused the wound. I pressed gently around the edges and didn’t feel anything hard or foreign beneath my skin. But the pain caused me to puke more yellow bile into the sink.

  I ran warm water over a washcloth, then sat down on the toilet. I put the washcloth to my side—I didn’t really know what else to do. The idea of calling the police or an ambulance never even occurred to me. I must have been in shock. Anyway, the pain was too much. Everything went black again.

  THE CAR CAME to a stop and I stood rooted, feeling Jake behind me. I guess if I’d obeyed my instincts, we could have run at that point, but something kept me still, watching. My heart and stomach were in a weird chaos of excitement and fear, dread and hope. Was he there? Was he as close as that car? Had he seen me standing there? Jake started pulling on my arm. We moved back closer to the trees. I felt the phone vibrate in my pocket and withdrew it quickly; Grant’s number glowed on the screen.

  I answered it as Jake’s tugging became more insistent. I started moving backward, away from the car. “This is not the time to be taking calls, Ridley,” said Jake. He hated cell phones more than I did.

  “Grant?” I said, ignoring Jake.

  “Ridley,” he said, his voice sounding funny and tight. “Don’t go there. Don’t go to the Cloisters. You’re fucked.”

  “What?” I struggled to remember if I’d told him about the Cloisters. I couldn’t.

  “They think you know where he is. They think you can lead them to him.” His voice ended in a horrible strangle. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Grant!” I yelled into the phone. I heard a terrible gurgle. “Grant,” I said again. This time it felt more like a plea.

  Before the line went dead he managed to say one more thing. He said, “Run, Ridley. Run.”

  I WOKE UP back in the hotel room bed. I felt better. Or number, rather, as if someone had given me drugs. I had company. In the neat, comfortable sitting area beside my bed sat Dylan Grace on a sofa. His eyes were closed and he leaned his head against a closed fist, had his feet up on the coffee table. I couldn’t tell if he was asleep. He looked pale and unwell. I didn’t have enough energy to be afraid of him; I was too out of it. Definitely doped up, my whole being floaty and calm.

  “Who are you?” I asked him. It was a philosophical question, really. He opened his eyes and sat up.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” He frowned a little, as if he wasn’t sure.

  “I know who you’ve told me you are. I also know you’re a liar,” I said, my words thick and slurred.

  “You’re surrounded by liars,” he answered. “I’m the least of your problems.”

  I thought this was a somewhat insensitive thing to say. I also wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Where’s Jake?” I asked him.

  He rubbed his eyes, didn’t answer.

  “Where is he?” I asked again, louder. I struggled to sit up and he got up quickly off the couch, sat beside me.

  “Easy, easy. You’re going to fuck yourself up again,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me back gently. “I don’t know where Jake is. We’ll find him. I promise.”

  “What happened to me? How did I get here?”

  “There’s time for all of that. Now you need to rest.”

  He reached for something on the bedside table. He came back with a syringe.

  “No,” I said, a sob rising in my chest. My voice sounded weak and insubstantial, like a child’s; the hand I lifted to push him away had no strength. He didn’t meet my eyes, tapped on the plastic tube.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and jabbed the needle into my arm.

  The pain was brief but intense, the darkness that followed total.

  “WHAT DID HE say?” Jake asked. He’d let go of my arm and was watching me with concern.

  “He said to run,” I answered, still looking at the phone in horror.

  Jake took hold of my hand. “Sounds like good advice. Let’s get out of here. This was a mistake.”

  But as he pulled me toward the trees, we could see the beams of flashlights cutting through the night. We stopped dead. There were five bouncing white points of light, maybe more, moving toward us, making their way through the woods we had come through just moments before. My heart started to thump. I saw Jake get that look he always got when we were in trouble, a dark intensity, a strategist’s concentration.

  Two men had exited the car, blocking our route back toward the street. The slamming of their doors sounded like gunfire in the quiet of the park. I stared at their forms, both of them tall and thin, moving with long gaits toward us. Neither of them were Max; I could see that much even in the dark, even though I couldn’t see their faces. Of course it wasn’t Max. How foolish I had been to come, to bring Jake with me. I’d let myself be led here by some stupid fantasy. They think you know where he is. They think you can lead them to him. What did Grant mean? Who were these people? My feet felt rooted; something kept me staring, paralyzed. I barely felt Jake pulling at me.

  “Ridley, snap out of it. Let’s go,” said Jake, moving me by placing both his hands on my shoulders and pushing me.

  We turned and ran around the side of the museum, our footfalls echoing on the concrete. We had no choice; there was no way back to the street. On our way around the building, we tried a couple of the heavy wood and wrought-iron doors, the latched gabled windows. They were locked, of course. The museum was long closed. Inside were French medieval courtyards, labyrinthine hallways leading to high-ceiling rooms, a hundred places to hide. Outside we were exposed. The stone wall that edged the property was not far. I heard the sound of people running. I wasn’t sure what our options were. It didn’t seem as if we had many.

  “Where do we go?” I asked Jake as we moved quickly toward the wall.

  He took a gun I hadn’t seen from beneath his jacket. “We get into the trees and just keep moving south along the wall, hope that they’re not very motivated. Maybe they’ll go away.” I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny. It was then that we heard the blades of a helicopter.

  It rose as if it came from the highway below us. And soon we were deafened by the sound and the wind, blinded by the spotlight that shown from its nose. The men we had seen moving through the trees were suddenly approaching fast. We ran.

  I WOKE UP calling for Jake. In my mind’s eye, I could see him falling. I woke up reaching for him but knowing he was far gone
. I kept hearing that question: Where’s the ghost? I hated my foggy head and my weak, strange body, which felt full of sand. Something awful had happened to me and to Jake, and I had no idea what it was.

  The room was empty and I wondered if Dylan Grace had ever been here at all. Either way, I had to get moving. I couldn’t be here anymore. I got up from the bed more easily than I had before. The bandage at my waist was dry and clean. I saw my jeans, shoes, and jacket on the floor by the door and, with a lot of pain, struggled into them. I looked around the room for any other belongings and saw nothing.

  The hallway was deserted and the elevator came quickly. I didn’t have anything—a bag, money, a passport, any identification at all. How did I get to London? Was I really in London? How would I get home? I was too confused and scattered to even be afraid.

  In the posh lobby—dark wood floors covered with Oriental area rugs, dark red walls, plush velvet furniture—there was no one. I could hear the street noise outside; the restaurant and concierge desk were both closed. It must have been the small hours of the morning. I looked around for a clock and found one on the reception desk—2:01 A.M. I rang the little bell. A man stepped out from a doorway off to the side of the counter. He was young and slight, with ash-blond hair and dark, dark eyes. He had an aquiline nose and thin lips. He was very pale and British-looking.

  “Oh, Ms. Jones. You must want your things,” he said. “Do you have your claim check?”

  I reached into my pocket and (how about that?) retrieved a small ticket stub. I handed it to him without saying anything. I was afraid I might throw up on the gleaming wood. He nodded cordially and moved into the cloakroom, came back with the beat-up messenger bag I’d been carrying before all this (whatever it was) had happened. I took it from him and flipped it open. My wallet, notebook, passport, keys, makeup, cell phone were all inside. Somehow the sight of my stuff, benign and familiar, made me feel sicker and more afraid.