Move to Strike

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  But then the phone rang, and it was Nina Reilly, calling from some hospital in Winnemucca, calling to tell them about Aunt Beth, and to explain about her father, why he left without saying good-bye.

  When Beth began talking again at the hospital, Nina went into legal mode, not allowing her to say anything. She recommended a lawyer, Karyn Sheveland, an experienced criminal attorney in Reno, and called her for Beth.

  Then she called the Winnemucca police.

  Paul left a card with Sheveland. He planned to keep track of Beth. He felt an obscure sense of obligation to her. Something had happened to him during those final moments down in the cavern with her, something important. He had felt the difference between them. Beth had let the lizard out of a crack in her soul. And that place—that place where it was all emptiness—that crack was still open in his own soul, and might never close.

  He would be vigilant. He would guard himself. He would remember her eyes when she said that it had been easy to kill the mechanic.

  She had helped him discover that he would have to be vigilant for the rest of his life.

  Back at the hotel, Connie Bailey had left a message on his voice mail. She had finally gotten around to looking over Skip’s papers and noticed that the passenger manifest Paul had read as “Mr. Sykes,” said “Mrs. Sykes.” Nobody could read Skip’s handwriting like she could. Did that help him?

  Thanks, Connie.

  Well, at least Beth wouldn’t be suing Skip Bailey’s estate for the wrongful death of her son. Connie had lost her husband, but she wouldn’t be losing everything.

  Paul went to bed and woke up Sunday afternoon. Beth was in custody and Nina was meeting with Nikki and her mother and didn’t seem to want to talk on the phone.

  The knock on the door came at eleven Sunday night.

  He had been lying in the hotel bed with the light off, his arms behind his head, thinking about his leg. This led him to roam more deeply than he had ever done into his private places. All this being bothered, the accident, the problem with Susan, had to do with the burden of carrying around a secret about himself. He understood what he had done. He didn’t think anyone else could, but that wasn’t a problem anymore, because his secret was out. Nina and Bob knew what he had done. Just as well. He was done pretending.

  “It’s me,” Nina said through the door. “Let’s talk, Paul.”

  He jumped at the sound of her voice. There was only one reason she would show up at this hour, after a day like this.

  Confrontation time.

  But he wasn’t ready. He envisioned the talk ahead, laid out starkly as a walk from death row to the site of lethal injection. They would start with the wrong he had done and move into what he had to do to right it, such as turning himself in. She would say, “You have to do the right thing,” just like she had told Daria that day. She was a lawyer, an officer of the court. She would tell him to have faith in the judicial system. And what would he say in response?

  “Paul?” she said from the hall. “Are you there?”

  He feared what was coming. He feared her, and he had thought he feared nobody.

  “Paul?”

  “I’m coming,” he mumbled. He got up in his shorts and answered the door. She was all wrapped up in a long wool coat, holding it shut although it wasn’t that cold outside. She probably didn’t want him to get any ideas. She smelled like gardenias.

  She came straight in and sat down on one of the chairs by the window. “May I?” she said, indicating the pint of Jack Daniel’s he had been working on. He couldn’t read her face.

  Bringing her a plastic glass, he poured a finger of bourbon for her. She tossed it off as though she needed it.

  Avoiding his eyes, she poured one for him. Handing the glass to him, at last, she looked up. She took a sip from her glass, then another, brown eyes locked on his face.

  Paul couldn’t drink. He had never cottoned to the Irish habit of celebrating with booze at wakes. “Dutch courage for an Irish lass?” he said finally.

  Still focused on his face, she set her glass down. “So you killed him,” she said.

  There it was, the big moment. He could lie or he could tell the truth, allow the break to happen, as it inevitably would. He felt his whole vision of the future slipping away. She had been in his vision. He felt overwhelmed.

  “He was breaking into your house,” he said. “He’d jimmied the lock. But yes, I came up on him from behind. I could have taken him in. I just didn’t think he should be alive anymore.”

  “He had come to kill me, hadn’t he?” Strong, steady brown eyes looked into him.

  “Yes, after he was through with you.”

  He watched the brutal thought sink into her and settle.

  “The police looked everywhere,” she said eventually. “Everyone thought he had left Tahoe. How did you know he would come to my house?”

  “I put myself into his mind. He wasn’t afraid of getting caught, and he wasn’t finished, so I started watching. It didn’t take long. Then I waited to make my move until he had made his.”

  “You were going to do this thing and go your whole life, and never tell me.”

  “That was the plan.” He shrugged. “I probably would have kept breaking my leg until I told somebody, though. I’m not good at hiding things about myself.”

  “You didn’t feel you could trust me by telling me?”

  “The last time I confided in you about anything, when I punched out that jerk Riesner, you fired me. I thought you just might think this was worse. Plus I knew I could be quiet about it. I wasn’t sure about you. But then Bob . . . I couldn’t let that kid go through his whole life having those dreams, being afraid.”

  “I know that you did it for me. I just don’t know how you could do it, with your police background, knowing the risks.”

  “I took out the garbage.”

  That said exactly how he felt about it. He wasn’t going to show any false remorse. If he couldn’t fix it, if he couldn’t make her understand, at least he could be honest.

  She was silent.

  “I’m stronger than Beth.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. But I’m not going to lie to you and promise anything. I acted on instinct. It happened.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “For you. Because I love you.”

  She pulled him toward her, pulled him in until they stood body to body, her head resting on his chest. He made no move to put his arms around her. It was her show.

  She was going to be classy to the end. No recriminations, no guilt trips, no demand that he tell anyone else. She was treating him as an old friend deserved to be treated, resting her head on his shoulder so sweetly one last time as her way of saying good-bye. He raised a hand to her long hair, pulling the band out that held it at her neck, stroking it softly.

  She had closed her eyes.

  “You always talk so much better than me,” Paul said. “Talk to me. Just another minute. Don’t say good-bye yet.”

  Still she didn’t speak. He turned her head up toward him but her eyes were closed. “It’s a crying shame,” he said.

  Putting both hands up around his head, she brought him closer, turning his head slightly, bringing his head down. She put her lips to his ear.

  Gardenias. He felt her warm breath for the last time. He had lost her. He could do nothing to change it now.

  Running a finger along the lobe of his ear, she whispered something. Too softly. He couldn’t hear. “What?” he said. “What did you say?”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “From the bottom of my heart.”

  And as she pulled off her coat, the light from his bedside lamp played over the long expanse of her naked skin, as mysterious and radiant as opals.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With heartfelt thanks to our agent, Nancy Yost, for her infinite good cheer and caring, and our fine editor, Maggie Crawford, who works so hard to keep our work
tight and on track and to keep us mostly out of trouble. And to all the people at Delacorte Press/Bantam Dell, who have been so committed to making our novels a success.

  Thanks to the folks at the Royal Peacock Mine in the Virgin Valley of Nevada for a wonderful day getting dirty—and for finding at least one opal, and to the ladies with a card table full of dusty gems at the Bonanza Mine for getting us hooked on the real things. For opal facts and lore, among other sources we consulted Allan W. Eckert’s The World of Opals, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1997. For tips on natural healing, we delved into 100 Great Natural Remedies by Penelope Ody, Kyle Cathie Limited, 1997. Some information on flying came from The Student Pilot’s Flight Manual by William K. Kershner, Iowa State University Press, 1993.

  Warm personal thanks to: Pat Lewis, who takes our whimsical speculations so seriously; Alan Penticoff, the insurance whiz who is just full of tricky ideas, and is definitely the man to consult in Illinois when you are investigating small plane sabotage; Arlo Reeves, pilot and dreamer, man of a million facts, who, strangely, really got into how to take a plane down, too; the real Zack family, who put on a great reunion; Sherry Jenks, great friend and fellow writer; and especially Sylvia Walker, our intrepid traveling companion, singer, and raconteur.

  And, always, hugs to Patrick O’Shaughnessy and Brad Snedecor, bold heroes who actually read the first draft and offered shrewd but kindly worded suggestions on how we might make the next one better.

  All errors are ours, unfortunately.

  Don’t miss the

  new Nina Reilly novel

  Perri O’Shaughnessy’s

  PRESUMPTION OF DEATH

  Now Available from

  Delacorte Press

  PROLOGUE

  “A little noiseless noise among the leaves”

  —KEATS

  PICTURE THIS: A moonless summer night filling a hollow sky, glossy unblinking stars; under this, the rolling brown summits of the Robles Ridge; under this, the dry rattling of the leaf-tops of clustering oaks; and beneath all this, in the deep forest that slopes even farther down toward Steinbeck’s pastures of heaven, two young men, hunting.

  In soft clothes that did not rustle, one behind the other, they moved in a line between gnarled tree trunks.

  To the west, distantly, out of sight, the Pacific Ocean lay black under the sky and poured itself out onto the shore, then drained back into itself with a soft rush. Up the mountain above them somewhere, their prey must be crunching like a big buck over the dense dry carpet of dead brush.

  They hunted along a steep wooded trail below where it widens to an open saddle before continuing up rocky slopes to the summit, hunting as their ancestors of the Washoe tribe had hunted for tens of thousands of years, following with ancient purpose a spirit moving through the darkness.

  But this spirit was no animal.

  “Shut up, Willis,” Danny whispered, then darted to a new tree, his bulky shape merging into utter blackness.

  “Don’t call me that. Only my mother calls me that.” Wish followed Danny, puffing, admiring his friend’s headlong confidence and quiet feet. “What am I doing wrong anyway?” he asked once he had picked his way across the brief clearing and stood pressed against the boulder with Danny.

  “Something plops every time you step.”

  “Oh. The camera. It’s slung over my . . .”

  “And you sound like an ox. What have you got on your feet?”

  “Hey, these are my new Doc Martens. I showed them to you. Remember? I paid a hundred twenty bucks for these . . .”

  “They sound like weedwhackers. Pick up your feet. Shh. I hear something.”

  An owl made a low percussive sound. Above them, bats rattled through the air like dry leaves. No sound, no echo of the sound they sought. A light rippling liquid fell onto Wish’s 49ers hat. Wish tore it off and hit it softly against a tree. “Bat guano falling through the branches, that’s all I hear,” he whispered.

  He looked up at a rift between the treetops where the Milky Way spread like gold buckshot across the sky.

  “Is he gone?”

  Danny didn’t answer. He dropped silently into a crouch. Unlike Wish, whose father hadn’t been around when he was growing up and whose mother worked in town, Danny had been brought up to know the wilderness. Danny was the leader here, but then, Danny had always been the leader. So Wish crouched too.

  Danny’s hand clenched his shoulder. For a moment they listened to the woods, heads thrust forward, nostrils spread. A hot little breeze lifted and dropped Wish’s lank hair. Danny gave him a push. “Feel that?” he said in a low voice. “That wind?”

  “Kinda warm for June.”

  “Listen!”

  “No, I . . .” Wish stopped talking. He cupped a hand around his ear. He heard a new sound. Singing, like cicadas.

  No.

  Crackling.

  “Fire!” Wish breathed. “He set one up there!”

  “Huh,” Danny said in a quiet, tight voice. He stood up, favoring his left knee like always, licked the tips of his fingers, and held them up. “The wind is going to take it down this side of the slope. Now look Wish. He’s got to come down this side. There isn’t any other way down. Can’t bushwhack in the dark, it’s way too steep. He’s gonna come down right past us.”

  “There are houses down here!”

  “We’ll get him. Then we’ll call for help.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “We’re not giving up. I know what I’m doing. Don’t I always?”

  Not at all, Wish thought. Just about never. His mom said Danny didn’t have as much sense as a pinochle card. What his mom couldn’t appreciate was that Danny was a force of nature. His energy pulled you along like a big wind. Wish felt excited, just being around him, blowing this way and that, never knowing what lay ahead. And here they were again, in trouble, like always when he let Danny have his way.

  They would get out of it somehow, he thought, come fire, earthquake, or landslide. You could depend on Danny for one thing: a screwed up, hairy outcome, but somehow, you survived.

  Around them, other creatures stirred in their holes, disturbed, sniffing in the bush. Wish caught a whiff of smoke, pleasant and woody like the fires in the cabin in winter back at Markleeville. “Fire, Danny. This is serious. We need to call the fire department. You got a mobile phone?”

  “Not hardly.”

  Though Danny didn’t ask, Wish offered, “Mine’s in the van, still hooked to the car charger.” He waited hopelessly for Danny to give him the okay to get going back down the hill to the street.

  “We’re close,” Danny said. “He’s up there, I can feel it. Give him a minute. He’ll come tearing down.”

  Too afraid to pretend patience, Wish flapped his long arms. “Haven’t you ever seen those shows? Where fire like, blows up in people’s faces? Where even firefighters get trapped? We gotta make like Bambi and Thumper out of here!”

  Ignoring him, Danny peered into the darkness above them, up the trail that rose another few hundred feet of scrambly sandy dirt to the saddle they couldn’t see. The trail climbed steeply up the east flank of the ridge. The breeze had turned gusty and blew across Wish’s cheek. Coming this way, his mind recorded automatically. Up higher, jittery reds, oranges, and yellows jerked down the hill in fits and starts like rush hour traffic, accelerating in bursts. “Could he stay up on the saddle?” said Wish. “It’s more open up there.”

  “Yeah, sit there and get burned up,” Danny said, disgusted. “He’s not that stupid. Unless maybe he doesn’t care and wants to go out in a blaze of glory.”

  “He might try to go uphill instead of down. There’s a trail that runs just below the summit.”

  “He might. But he’s probably got a car down there on Southbank.”

  “He won’t leave his car,” Wish said to reassure himself.

  “We stay put,” Danny decided. “Listen. He comes down this way, and we’re ready. He’ll have a flashlight, and we’ll spot him first. Then be
fore he sees us, we shoot him. We slide behind those rocks and trap him trying to get to his car. We shoot, then we let him go.”

  “But—”

  Danny got up, and Wish followed him behind the biggest of the rocks off the trail. Another time, Wish wouldn’t have gone near those tumbled rocks with their dark caverns where mountain lions might hide. Flashing his light all around behind the rock and seeing no yellow eyes reflecting back, he picked up a cudgel-like branch, then lowered himself beside Danny, who continued to watch the trail. They could see where it curved around toward them.

  What if this guy didn’t try to run after they shot him?

  Birds fluttered invisibly into darkness. Gusts of heat blew down the mountain. A hell was starting up there.

  Wish looked up. Harsh white haze blotted out the stars. A brushing sound, then thuds—somewhere up there branches dropped in erratic drumbeats. The primitive sounds moved through him, pinging like poison darts, making his body shake and his mind fall to pieces.

  “He’s coming,” Danny whispered. “I can smell him.”

  “Danny, we got to go.”

  “You want to bail on me? Now, when I need you? I should have expected it. C’mon, don’t panic on me, man.”

  “I’m going, Danny.”

  “Do what you want,” Danny said. “Go. But,” a note of desperation entered his voice, “please don’t go yet. A coupla minutes, okay? That’s all we need. Okay?”

  Wish said nothing.

  “The guy is going to come down. It’s a matter of seconds! I need this!” Danny said. “We both do!”

  A wavering glow advanced down the mountain toward them.

  “Three minutes,” Wish said.

  Two deer burst out of the bush, making Wish’s heart stop, and pounded past them along the trail. “It’s moving fast,” Wish said. There were people down below. “Danny.”

  “What?”

  “We could climb down to the street and catch him at his car, if it’s really down there. Shoot him there.”

  “One hundred thousand dollars,” Danny said. “One hundred thousand buckaroos. Remember why we’re here. Worth some risk, right? This way, we can’t miss.” He reached into his shirt pocket and popped a handful of barbecued sunflower seeds into his mouth. Danny ate when he was nervous, jelly beans, candy, seeds. “No more hitting up the family for five bucks to go to town. No more sleeping on the couch.”