The hunter stood very still, unable to take his eyes off her.
Beautiful. But not nearly as beautiful as his Tatyana had been so many years ago.
Before the ultimate betrayal.
He reached for a sharpened arrow in the quiver on his back and took a step forward.
* * * *
Alexandra saw Juliet, standing stage left near the great gold curtain. Warming up in the first position, holding the barre, heels together, toes pointed in opposite directions, slowly, slowly the girl began to move to her own interior music.
Safe. Thank you, God.
As Alexandra moved toward her, a flash of silver caught her eye. And she saw Ivan, standing just steps behind Juliet.
She ran toward him, caught at his shirt.
The hunter turned. “Alexandra!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Juliet turning toward them. She raised her hands toward her niece with a ‘stay away’ gesture.
Alexandra was jerked around as Ivan caught her hands in his. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t do this, Rens!” she pleaded.
“I have no choice.”
“You do. Don’t make me turn you in!” Her voice was low, frantic.
“It’s too late. You won’t stop me, Alexandra. I know the whole truth now. I know how your sister died.”
She caught her breath sharply and stared at him.
Waiting for her sister’s last matryoska doll to open...
Ivan raised his head, listening. The violins were soaring toward a climax.
She pulled him toward her. “Tell me, damn you!”
For a brief moment, in the pulsing darkness of the vast backstage, the old Russian spy stared down at her.
The violins and percussions reached the crashing crescendo.
Ivan pulled away from her and stepped out onto the great stage. The long steel arrow glinted like a shard of glass in his hand. Oblivious to the dancers around him, he squinted against the spotlight and raised his bow.
She heard a gasp from the audience. The music seemed to fade away as she ran toward him through the shadows.
“Ivan, no!”
He turned. For one cosmic second, their eyes met.
She heard his words, murmured in Russian. “For you, my Firebird.”
Then he spun around and aimed his arrow toward the audience.
* * * *
In the seventh row aisle seat, Anthony Rhodes raised his head.
It all happened at once. Shouts in Russian and English, a blur of silver.
Something hard punched him above the heart. Hot searing fire in his chest.
He rose to his feet, staggered, fell into the aisle. Dimly he was aware that he clutched the steel shaft of an arrow in his fingers. Blood ran down his hand.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he thought dazedly.
He heard the screams, felt the crowd closing around him like shadows. He felt himself spinning down into a long dark tunnel.
Eve was riding toward him across emerald fields on Lady Falcon. Her hair flew like a banner behind her, red-gold and shining in the dazzling white light of morning. He reached toward the light as he called her name one last time.
Evangeline!
* * * *
“Please, no.” Alexandra froze in disbelief as screams erupted in the audience. Chaos. Dancers fled across the stage in every direction. Where was Juliet?
“Jules!” She spun around wildly.
Madness. For an instant, the crowd parted. Bright orange hair. There, by the curtain.
She ran toward her niece.
The leopard-masked man stepped from the shadows. He tore the mask from his face, and she saw the flash of silver metal. Aiming at her chest.
As she spun to her left, a slight figure lunged across the floorboards, crashing into the leopard with a cry. The thunder of a gunshot reverberated in her head.
Stunned, Alexandra tried to focus. Saw her niece and the man tangled on the floor. God, God. “Juliet!”
“You damned monster,” cried Juliet, pounding his back with her fists. “No way you’ll ever hurt us again!”
He flung her off easily and rose up to smile into Alexandra’s eyes as she stumbled toward her niece.
“You won’t stop me,” he told her.
The last thing she saw before he disappeared was the pale blue shine of his eyes.
* * * *
In the shadows of the stage, Ivan watched as the crowd gathered around the fallen man.
“Prince Ivan!”
Ivan turned to see Panov appear from the depths of the painted forest.
He stood tall, squared his shoulders, lifted his chin. Not Ivan. Never again. He took a step forward.
“My name is Sergei.”
“You have failed us,” said Panov.
“But I have not failed myself.” Standing very still, he watched Panov raise the gun. It was time to go home.
From the left, a sound. Jon Garcia ran toward him from the shadows.
There was a bright flash, another!
Pain. He felt himself falling.
Tatyana spun toward him across the stage, her young face pure and unmarked, her feathers a swirl of crimson light as she flew above the earth. He held out his arms to catch her.
She came into his arms, and he felt peace blanket his heart like a soft Russian snow.
Only in death is one truly free.
“Firebird,” he whispered, clasping her close at last.
CHAPTER 61
“…answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
Tennyson, The Splendor Falls
Red lights flashing in the cold darkness.
Alexandra stood next to the ambulance parked just outside the stage door.
Anthony Rhodes lay on the stretcher, covered in a blanket, his carved face white and still beneath the fogged oxygen mask.
Steps away, the EMT was murmuring into a phone, scribbling on a chart.
She bent down until her face was just above his. “Anthony!”
His eyes opened.
“Eve...” he whispered. His voice was weak, breath shallow.
“No, Anthony. Eve is dead. It’s Alexandra.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Anthony? For almost killing me? Juliet? What did you do? Tell me!” Alexandra closed her hand, hard, on his shoulder.
“I had to stop her,” he gasped. “She knew too much.”
The truth speared into her, searing and unbearable. There was a roaring in her ears. “You murdered Eve. You murdered my sister. Say it, Anthony. Say it!”
His eyes locked on hers, shining. “Yes. I took her life.”
“Why?” she whispered brokenly against his ear. “Why?”
“The real firebird,” he murmured, “was never Ivan.”
And the smallest matryoska nesting doll opened at last.
Rhodes reached for her, gasping. “The Firebird rose from the flames… to protect the hero from those who would hurt him. Ivan was protecting me. I was the mole, all along. I had to be protected at all costs.”
She gripped his sleeve, suddenly understanding. “The Russians never activated Ivan. It was you! You wanted him found… you wanted us all to believe that Ivan was the mole.”
“Identify Ivan,” he whispered, “and the true mole could stay hidden forever.” He winced, struggled to speak. “I never expected Eve to become so close to Fraser. When I found out... it was over for us. And then Charles told her about Firebird. She came to me, for help. To help him! She was too close to finding the truth. I had no choice…” The words tangled in his throat. “I set her up.”
“The deposits to her bank accounts. The photographs in St. Petersburg.”
His breath rasped as he nodded. “I switched her sleeping pills, laced her Perrier with strong anti-depressants. And muscle relaxants.”
Drugs. That was why her sister had sounded drunk. “You filthy son of a bitch.”
“She would have exposed me.
I couldn’t… let that happen. I wrote the note asking her to come to the inn. Then I wrote the suicide note, brought it with me. I took her to the cliffs.” Coughs wracked his body. “She didn’t know she was meeting me. She was there because she cared about Charles!”
She looked down at him. “The rest, Anthony. Say it all.”
He closed his eyes. “I pushed her into the river.”
His voice was almost inaudible, bloodless. “I put the note into her coat pocket and drove home. I never - ” He began to cough. Blood seeped from his mouth as an alarm sounded loudly in the darkness.
She stepped back, sickened.
“He’s coding!” The EMT ran over, checked a monitor and shouted for help as he slid the stretcher into the ambulance. “If you’re coming with us, Ma’am, climb in now.”
She stood very still. “I’m not coming,” she said quietly.
She stood in the dark for a long time, watching until the flashing lights of the ambulance disappeared into the traffic.
“I hope you rot in hell,” she whispered.
Then she turned and walked back into the theater, alone.
CHAPTER 62
“Your daughter…”
Othello, Shakespeare
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1.
Almost normal.
Alexandra stood alone in the center of her living room, listening to the quiet.
Ruby was napping in the nursery, Danny and Olivia were on their way home to Queens for a well deserved rest. Almost normal.
She moved to the barred window and looked toward Washington Square Park. Skittering leaves, reminding her that it was already the first day of November. Taxis, buses, bikes. Dogs, the mailman, neighbors hurrying down the blustery street. But no blue-eyed stranger staring at her through the glass.
Was it really over? How had everything changed so much, in just twelve hours?
Anthony was in a coma. She’d been told Panov was no longer a threat. And Ivan - Rens Karpasian, she corrected herself - was in Intensive Care, holding on to life, with Tatyana Danilova and their son sitting by his side. And a Federal Marshall standing just outside his door.
Would he ever regain consciousness? Would he ever meet his son?
She’d talked with Billie Jordan for almost an hour. As they’d suspected, her brother Charles’ car crash had not been an accident.
But before his death, Charles Fraser had given Eve the Firebird brooch, and that brooch had set everything else in motion. Maybe now, with the answers, she and Billie could move on with their lives.
Move on.
A small sigh escaped her as she turned to the unfinished oil portrait of her sister, still propped on its easel by the north window. Yes, time to move on. Would she be able to finish the portrait now? One final promise to keep.
Help me paint your face, Eve. Help me find you one more time.
Standing in the quiet, she listened. But her sister didn’t answer.
A quick knock on the door.
She froze, and then remembered… no need for caution any longer.
She freed the lock, and opened the door to her niece. Her smile fell away when she looked into the glazed, red-rimmed eyes. “Oh, Jules.”
“I just can’t wrap my mind around it, Aunt Zan. My step father was good to me. He loved the horses. I thought he loved my mom, how could he…” Unable to finish the sentence, Juliet just shook her head, reached into her backpack and handed Alexandra a small painted box. “I came to thank you, Aunt Zan,” she said softly. “For finding out what really happened to my mom. For keeping your promise to me.”
“What’s this?” Alexandra caught her breath. “The music box! The one I gave you in California? My God, Jules, you were so young. You kept it all these years?” She opened the cover. A tiny ballerina spun around as the chimes of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty filled the room. “Oh, Jules. You told me you didn’t remember it.”
“I lied.”
Very carefully, Alexandra lifted the pure white shell nestled inside the music box. Sweet God in Heaven. “You still have the sand dollar…”
“You told me it held tiny doves, remember?”
“Yes. And that when the shell is broken, the doves are set free.”
Watching the emotions swirl like bright green water in the girl’s eyes, Alexandra thought, Your shell is cracking, darling. You are learning to fly, just like the doves.
Go with your heart, she heard her sister say.
She took a deep breath. “We’ve been through hell together, Jules. And it’s almost Thanksgiving. What do you think about having dinner with us?”
“Thanksgiving, with you and Ruby? Like… a family?”
Alexandra smiled into the shocked green eyes. “Like. But it’s not as if I’m asking you to join the three-legged race on family day, Jules.”
“I’m not some rescue dog like Hoover!”
The abandoned child, still so afraid to trust.
I won’t turn away from her grief, not this time. “It’s not about needing to be rescued. It’s about being together.”
Alexandra reached out, brushed the orange spikes back from the smooth forehead. “Bad things have happened to you, Jules. But you can’t let it define you. Take your time. Ruby and I aren’t going anywhere. You’re not invisible to us, we love you. So why don’t you go down the hall and get to know your cousin?”
* * * *
Another sharp knock on the door, followed by an excited bark. “Grand Central Station,” she muttered, once more unlocking the bolt.
A black Lab bounded through the door with a soft woof, lunged, placed two huge paws on her shoulders and licked her face happily. Behind him stood Garcia, holding an enormous shopping bag from Bloomingdale’s. A guitar case was slung over his shoulder.
“Hoover!” she cried, staggering back under his weight.
Garcia set the guitar and shopping bag on the floor and locked eyes with her. “Hello, Garcia, how nice to see you, too,” he prompted. “Please come in.”
With a suspicious glance at the Bloomingdale’s bag, she asked, “Has something else happened? Is there any more word on Ivan? Or Anthony?”
“No changes. If only –” he stopped as if struck, for the first time aware of his surroundings.
She watched him catch his breath in surprise as he saw the dazzling unframed canvases of contemporary art that covered the soft cream walls, waited for his reaction to the vivid, intense shapes and primary colors.
“Madre,” he murmured, bending closer to examine a soaring swirl of light. “Beautiful. The energy, the brush strokes… The passion! These are bloody brilliant. Who’s the artist?”
“Me,” she said from behind him.
He turned to her, astonished. “My God, Chica, you belong on the walls of the Baranski, not behind them. When did you paint these?”
“Before my marriage. I wanted to be the next Mark Rothko – all those gorgeous whirls of violet, orange, green. But my husband said they looked as if I’d thrown paint onto a canvas, and had them moved to the attic. After the divorce, well, I decided to take back my life.”
He gave her a long measuring look and gestured toward the oil paints and covered canvas on the easel by the window. “And now you’re painting again?”
“I keep trying to paint my sister,” she said, shaking her head. “But her face still won’t come. I just can’t conjure her essence.”
He reached out, touched a strong finger just above her heart. “Oh, it will come, Chica. You’ve found your sister. You’ve brought her home. Maybe now you’re ready to forgive her for dying.”
She lifted her face, feeling his words like hot tears on her heart. “Garcia…” she began.
Happy sounds erupted from the end of the hall. And so she said, “Juliet’s here. And Ruby.”
He looked down at her. “I don’t have to leave just yet. It’s time I met your daughter.”
CHAPTER 63
“as a man looks at a woman...”
Wallace Stevens
&nb
sp; Garcia watched Alexandra run down the hallway. Her feet, as usual, were bare. She was wearing the familiar narrow black turtleneck and leggings, her hair all fire-y spikes framing her face. Not his type at all.
And yet – she had created all these astonishing paintings. Flickering light, swirling shapes, bold colors that pulsated with life. Dios. They were so – her!
Did she kiss with as much passion as she painted?
Don’t go there. She deserves more than -
He stopped, his earlier words echoing presciently in his head. She deserves the run-into-a-burning-building-for-her kind of love. Damned if he hadn’t run into a burning building to find her after all.
With an oath he turned away, saw the huge bouquet of chrysanthemums on the coffee table, towering over his tiny spray of violets. How many blasted admirers did the woman have? In spite of himself, he bent to check the card.
To Alexandra, an original, Yuri Belankov.
Belankov. A dark reminder that it was time to get back to the Russian mob investigation he’d put on hold. “You’re still in my sites, Yuri,” he murmured. “And that’s a fact.” I still don’t know why you gave Charles Fraser that brooch. But I’ll find out. Just stay the hell away from Alexandra.
“Garcia.”
He turned. Alexandra was holding a little red-haired girl close in her arms. Juliet stood to one side, grinning at him as if she knew a secret.
“Hey, Gar-cee-a,” said the teen, sinking to the floor to nuzzle the Lab. “I’ve missed you, Hoover boy!” she whispered.
Fear and tension eased from the girl’s face as she wrapped her arms around the dog and buried her face against his neck. Garcia met Alexandra’s eyes over Juliet’s head. An unspoken thought seemed to pass between them.
Love heals.
“This is Princess Ruby,” said Alexandra, coming closer. She smiled down at her daughter, a confection in pink sparkles and tulle, and then gestured toward him. “This is my friend, Garcia.” Her fingers carved the baby sign for ‘friend’ in the air.
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