Mira hadn’t spoken a word since he’d snapped the passenger seat back. He couldn’t see her face. She had turned her head toward the window and he wondered if she had fallen asleep. Even though he had secured her with the seat belt and tape, she could jackknife her legs. She could throw her body into his. She could make any number of moves while he drove. But bottom line, he knew she wanted to see if Adam was alive and figured the best way to do that was to remain passive, cooperative.
He began to wonder if he had taken on more than he could handle.
Ridiculous. He had handled situations more impossible than this one in his life. He, like the Mad Hatter, flourished under pressure. And it always came back to playing the game—the role—fully immersed in the character. That was how you won.
But what was the role? A week ago, it had been clear to him. Now he wasn’t so sure.
I am Spenser Finch. Like God, I hold the power of life and death.
Just look at the actors who had played God. George Burns in Oh, God! Gene Hackman in Two of a Kind, Val Kilmer in Prince of Egypt, Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty… and that was just the short list. Now, Spenser Finch as God.
But even God could use a few insights into the future. And if Mira provided a few glimpses, he would have some indication about his next move. And the next.
How would he know if she was telling the truth? She already had lied about the cell phone.
He would hold a gun to Adam’s head. That would force her to tell him the truth. And he would test her somehow, tell her to predict something that could be proven within ten or fifteen minutes. Like the call from Eden. How had she known the call was from her? Did Mira know her name? And if I’m God, how come I don’t know my own future?
As he slowly drove the final stretch to his house, he scrolled through the address book on her phone. When he found Sheppard’s cell number, he typed out a text message that made him smile, and placed it in the draft folder. One man to another. Sheppard would understand that.
His own cell rang as he turned onto his street. When had he turned it on again? He couldn’t remember. A reflexive action. He reached into his pocket. Before he could look at the ID window, Mira said, “It’s her again. The redhead.”
Finch looked over at her. Her huge blue eyes regarded him with such pathos—not contempt, but pity, for Chrissakes that his arm snapped away from him as if with a mind of its own.
She whipped her body to the right, as if she’d seen the blow coming, and his arm glanced off her shoulder. She made a choked, raw sound, then threw her body into his, and the van swerved to the right, the cell slipped out of his hand, and she sank her teeth into his arm.
He bellowed and tried to jerk his arm free, but she held on like a shark. Finch slammed on the brakes, hurling them both forward. His forehead struck the steering wheel, stars burst in his eyes, his head spun. The engine died, the thundering noise of the rain filled him. The next thing he knew, the passenger door stood ajar, wind blowing the rain inside, and Mira was gone. Flaps of electrical tape remained on the seat belt.
Finch threw open the door and leaped out, rain pouring over him. He saw her just ahead, stumbling along like a cripple. Jesus, the neighbors. What neighbors? Most of them had left before or after Danielle.
Most, not all.
He loped after her, gnomes pounding hammers against the inner walls of his skull. She veered into a field on the right, tripped, moved faster. Faster. A bubble of hysterical laughter surged in his throat. The road was a peninsula, water on three sides. Her only recourse was to leap in and swim, but only if she didn’t hit the rocks first.
Finch hurled himself at her, but at the last instant, she feinted to the right. He struck the ground and rolled. Dirt and bits of grass splattered his face and jammed up under his fingernails. Royally pissed now, adrenaline raging through him, he scrambled to his feet and tackled her a foot short of the seawall.
They slammed to the ground, Mira shrieking, grunting, kicking, fighting. Then he pinned her down, her chest heaving, her body still. For seconds, no more than that, he stared down into her fathomless eyes—and saw her horror of him.
But I’m God. You can’t feel that way about God.
Something snapped inside him. He heard it, a noise like twigs cracking underfoot. And his arm became a club and the club slammed against the side of her head. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets. She went completely still.
His head pounded and screamed. His skull threatened to split open. He wanted to just stay there, the rain dancing against his spine, his face buried in the wet, sweet hollow of her shoulder, and breathe in the fragrance of her skin, her hair, the earth, salt, sky. But he was exposed. Someone might be watching. There could be witnesses. A nosy kid. A crazy woman out walking her poodle. Some window voyeur.
Finch pushed up on his hands, rocked back onto his heels. He lifted her by the arms, hoisted her over his shoulder like a bag of mulch or sod, made his way back to the van. Fatigue seeped through him. His head kept shrieking. The migraine would be a mother, all right, and he wasn’t sure he could make the two hundred yards to the gate of his house without curling up in a fetal position and passing out.
But he would. He had to.
And he suddenly found himself in that trailer in Seattle, saw himself before he was taller and stronger than his old man, and felt that first agonizing blow from his old man’s fists.
And so he somehow got her into the back of the van, slammed the hatch, drove to the gate. His cell rang and rang, the hideous noise echoing inside the van. He stumbled out, opened the gates, drove inside. He could barely see now. The peripheral vision on his right side was completely gone. His drenched clothes clung to him. He desperately wanted to rest his head against the steering wheel and shut his eyes.
Somehow, he left the van again, trudging out into the sharp, relentless rain, and shut the gates. Now. Quick, stay focused. Yes, okay, back to the van, open the hatch, grab her ankles.
Finch made it up the stairs and into his kitchen and nearly collapsed from the exertion. Not much farther, just down the hall to the kid’s room. Uh-huh, uh-huh, he could do this. He had to do this. If he surrendered now, he was flicked.
To the bone, boy.
“Shut up, you sack of shit,” he hissed at his old man, and made it to the door of the kid’s room. The remote. He couldn’t see the keypad and had to punch in the code by touch.
The door clicked and he kicked it open, prepared to dodge a booby trap, but nothing happened. He blinked, clearing his vision. Lamp on. Bed made. Cooler lid open. Shower running. Bathroom door shut. Good, that was good. The room listed to the right. He quickly set Mira on the floor, then lurched back into the hall, shut and locked the door, and weaved toward the kitchen.
He didn’t make it. His stomach heaved, a blinding agony gripped his skull, he vomited, his knees turned to dust. As he went down, his hands flew out, seeking something to grab. Then, deaf and blind, he fell into a black hole so vast and deep that he was unconscious before he hit the floor.
Chapter 19
The Looking Glass
Sheppard walked through the store, up and down the aisles of empty bookshelves, his senses blocked to the people and noises around him. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but knew he would recognize it when he saw it.
And then, toward the back of the store, his gaze fixed on a white object on an empty middle shelf. The mate of the pearl earring that Suki had found on the floor of Mira’s office. Sheppard picked it up, held it tightly in his hand, and turned slowly, orienting himself to the store as it had been before the hurricane. Was he standing in what had been the young adult section or bibliographies? Politics or history? This should have been as clear to him as his own name, but he couldn’t remember. Yet the spot where she had put the earring might be important. Might tell him something.
And you could be grasping at bullshit.
He shut his eyes, trying to visualize the sections of the store as it had been when there were books o
n these shelves, life in these aisles, the aroma of fresh coffee in the air. He had to step through the looking glass into Mira’s world to do this, but he stepped eagerly, hopefully.
This was the young adult section. So what’s the message?
Maybe nothing. Maybe this was just the place where Spenser Longwood or whatever the hell name he went by now had been distracted and Mira had seized the moment.
Then again, if there were no accidents, as Mira constantly said, then the message pointed to information in Spenser’s early life that might be relevant. Young adult, early life. And since Mira hadn’t been at Kartauk’s, she couldn’t possibly know any of what he had told Sheppard and Goot unless she’d picked it up psychically. And for her to do that, Sheppard thought, the bastard probably had touched her.
“Shep, you got a minute?” Tina Richardson’s voice startled him.
His eyes snapped open. Tina stood in front of him, her soft eyes skewed with worry, triumph, anxiety, determination. “We got print matches on the bike out in the alley with our man Spenser.”
“Do they tell us where he is now?”
She cocked her head, sort of smiled. “Uh, no, Shep. We’re good, but we’re not that good.”
He held out his hand and opened his clenched fingers, revealing the other pearl earring. “Found it here.” He gestured at the shelf. “Tell me about Hansel and Gretel, Tina.” He knew that Tina heard the pain in his voice.
She gently rubbed his shoulder. “Stop beating yourself up, okay? Hansel and Gretel were just a couple of screwed-up kids with dysfunctional parents who followed bread crumbs through the woods. This guy’s leaving us a lot more than bread crumbs. It’s Mira’s bike out in the alley, with Spenser’s prints all over it. He’s getting sloppy, Shep. He hid here last night.” She threw out her arms. “Mira’s store. The asshole hid in the most obvious place and we didn’t get it. That’s part of his MO, okay? To do what we least expect. Her car is missing and it shows up on the security feed for the nine A.M. ferry, which left way late and didn’t get into Key West until around eleven.”
And then? The cameras didn’t extend beyond the dock’s parking lot. “Yeah, great. And he’s got more than a hundred miles of highway beyond it that lead to Miami. So where’d he take her?”
The question hung in the air, one more conundrum. The peal of his cell punctuated the silence. It took him a moment to recognize the number.
“It’s Annie,” he murmured.
“And you’re the dad,” Tina said. “That’s how you need to play it.” With that, she walked away from him.
The dad. Sure. The absent dad, who technically hadn’t been even a stepdad. The guy who, right now, was just the ex-live-in boyfriend. “Annie the granny,” he said in the most cheerful voice he could muster. “What’s going on?”
“Can you talk, Shep? I mean, is this an okay time?”
“For you, it’s always an okay time.” He kept walking toward the back of the store. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“Shep, I spoke to Mom really early this morning, she was on her way to the bookstore. We were talking about me coming to Tango. Anyway, after we talked, I started feeling uneasy and I kept calling her cell to tell her I was going to come today. But she didn’t answer her phone. Is she with you?”
Sheppard combed his fingers back through his hair and struggled with his conscience. If he told Annie the truth, she and Nadine would be down here by nightfall, both of them eager to help and in the way. Nadine would have the usual chip on her shoulder and would blame him for what had happened. Yet he loved Annie like a daughter and, at the least, owed her the truth.
“Shep?”
“Yeah, can you hear me all right?” He now stood in the empty yoga room, staring at the door through which Mira and Spenser had left the building. “I’m inside.”
“I can hear you.” She paused. “You’re stalling, Shep. Something’s happened, right? Something with Mom.”
He heard the sharp rise in her voice, the soft tremor of fear beneath it. Of course she would know. She had been here before. Sheppard pushed open the rear door and stepped out into the alley. The rain still fell. He huddled under the eave and started talking, but kept it simple and brief, like an article in People magazine, something you could grasp before you jumped in the shower. And in the ensuing silence, Annie’s quick intake of breath sounded like wind through a tunnel.
“I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew something wasn’t right.”
“I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself. I don’t want Nadine to worry.”
“You don’t want to hear her shit.”
He smiled at that. “Yeah, there’s that. We’ll find her, Annie. And I want you to stay where you are.”
“Can I call you? Like, when I feel panicked or something?”
“Always. And I’ll keep you posted.”
Silence, then: “I have your word on that?”
“Annie, have I ever lied to you?”
More silence. He paced back and forth under the eave.
“No. But you never said good-bye either, Shep. How come? How come you didn’t at least talk to me about what was going on when you moved out?”
The easy answer was that Mira wouldn’t let him talk to her or see her. But the truth was more complex, it always was. “I was angry. I felt… ashamed. I felt like I had failed you, your mom. I thought it would be easier for you if I just got out. I don’t know. It’s complicated, Annie.”
“So do me a favor, okay? From here on in? Just be up front with me?”
“You got it.”
“Are you and Mom… you know, like getting it together?”
“I think so.” Hope so. “Yes.”
“Like, well, how together? Are you moving back into the house?”
“We haven’t gotten that far yet, Annie.”
“But things have improved, right?” You’ve slept together. That was what she really was asking.
“Vastly improved.”
She was silent for a few moments and he could almost see her, intense Annie, pacing, squinting, trying to sink between the lines to read what he wasn’t saying. Finally, she spoke. “Listen, Nadine picked up a word related to all this. Eden. Does it mean anything to you?”
Eden. As in the garden of? Was Eden a street? A name? A place? What? “That’s it? Just Eden?”
“Just the word.”
“It might be connected to something. If you or Nadine pick up anything else, call me. Hell, call me even if you don’t have squat, Annie.”
“Love you, Shep.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
But she already had disconnected.
Mira came to on the floor, with a blurred face hovering over her and a cool, damp cloth pressed to her forehead. The side of her head throbbed and ached, as if she were suffering from a massive hangover.
“You’re Mira. I saw your picture on TV”
Her vision swam into clarity. “Adam?” She tried to lift up on her elbows, but her head spun.
“Take it easy.” He slid a pillow under her head. “Just stay still for a few seconds. He must’ve hit you pretty hard. The side of your face looks nasty. I’ll get you some water.”
Mira stayed still, eyes shut, her mind stuck back in that open field where he had tackled her, the last thing she remembered.
“I heard the car drive up, so I turned on the shower, shut the bathroom door, and hid in the closet. I could see him through the slats in the door. He left as soon as he set you down on the floor, stumbled outta here. Migraine, that’s what I figure.” Adam crouched beside her, lifted her head gently. “Take a sip.” He touched a bottle of water to her mouth.
Mira sipped eagerly at the cold, soothing water.
“He looked really bad,” Adam went on. “Like he does when a migraine hits him. I heard him puking on the other side of the door, then there was a crashing sound. I think he passed out in the hall.”
Mira took the cloth away from her forehead and managed to sit up without t
oo much dizziness this time. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“Lots of threats.” He rocked back onto the soles of his feet and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Sometimes he grabbed my hair. He was… gone a long time, since yesterday. I didn’t think he was coming back and was trying to conserve the food and stuff in the cooler. All the ice melted.” His eyes suddenly brimmed with tears and when he spoke again, his voice was a hoarse, choked whisper. “I’m sorry he brought you here, but I’m so glad to see you, I’m not sorry.” The tears spilled over and he looked quickly down at the floor, embarrassed.
Mira slipped her arm around his hunched shoulders, hoping to comfort him. Instead, the contact catapulted her into the rushing flow of Adam’s youthful energy and she caught glimpses of what he’d endured since he’d been snatched from his bedroom.
Whispering: “Listen, Adam. We’re going to get out of here. But you need to tell me everything you’ve learned about him. And while you do that, we’re going to search this room for a way out and…”
“There’s no way out.” He pulled back, rubbing at his eyes. “But now that there are two of us, we might be able to rig something, to trick him. He’s really strong, so I don’t think that even the two of us could take him physically.” He leaned over, his cheek flat against the floor, and peered under the crack in the door. “The same dark shape is there,” he whispered. “He hasn’t moved.” He pressed his ear to the door, listening. “No sounds. Maybe he had a stroke or something. You think he’s dead?”
Dead? Mira’s senses moved away from her like tentacles, probing the space beyond the door. “He’s not dead. He’s somewhere else.” But not indefinitely. She sensed something else forming in the field of energy around the man, something he didn’t expect, but couldn’t define whatever it was. She kept seeing a small bird too, like a sparrow or a finch. How did that fit?
She pushed unsteadily to her feet and Adam caught her arm. “You okay?”
“I’m good.” But her skin tingled where Adam’s hand held her arm and images popped into her mind of Adam cowering on the bed in this room as the temperature plunged. As frost formed on the windows. As the man hurried over to the thermostat to check the temperature. “Adam, tell me about the woman you’ve seen. The one who makes the temperature drop. Tell me about her.”
Cold As Death (The Mira Morales Series Book 5) Page 22