Shattered

by Olga Bicos

  She turned to face him. “I am not,” she said, “the reincarnation of Nina Travers.”

  “That much I figured out.”

  He said it rather mildly, disappointing her with his reaction. Even now, she supposed she lacked drama.

  She took a drink from the Corona and gazed out over the painted rail. She could see what Ryan had called the “Anchor Outs,” funky houseboats anchored in the middle of Richardson Bay, in complete violation of every code on the books but tolerated by the locals. When she’d first stepped onto the deck, she’d said they were beautiful. Ryan assured her that, by day, most were shanties.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked, wondering what else the light of day might reveal. “Why the whole stalker routine? I could have called the police. I could have made it ugly.”

  “I wanted to see your face when you saw the painting.”

  “And what would that tell you? That I was scared? That I was stupid?”

  His eyes met hers. “I wanted to know if you were in on it.”

  Of course, she thought. What else? He’d been watching her reaction, trying to figure out where she fit: victim or cohort.

  “I suppose, from your point of view, I could be,” she said. “An actress brought here to drive you over the edge.”

  And into murder, as Harris implied.

  “Well.” She toasted him with the beer she didn’t want. I should go home, walk out now. “I’m not. Again, just an architect looking to do her job.”

  She could hear a dinner party from the boat next to his. She imagined life just a few feet away, so normal. She wondered if Ryan had ever tasted that kind of ordinary. If someone could really get beyond his tragic past.

  “How horrible,” she said, giving in to her sympathy out loud. “Daniel springing me on you.”

  “If it helps,” he said, “for a while there, I did think I was losing my mind.”

  “What does it say about me that it does help?” she asked with a smile. Because he was right, there was a tiny part of her that wanted retribution. He’d followed her; he’d scared her. It was nice to know it worked both ways. “Okay,” she said, bringing them back to the business at hand. “Now what? You want me to go away, I assume.”

  “If only.”

  And wasn’t that the problem, she thought. These lovely hints of something else between them…how well she responded to the possibility.

  “Meaning?” she asked, pushing a little.

  That smile again. How many times had those looks opened doors, she wondered.

  “Meaning,” he said, “if only I weren’t such an ass.”

  Oblique at best, but she thought she understood. How else could she have sensed him there in the dark watching her if not for that strong connection between them?

  Only, his feelings seemed firmly rooted in the past, having a true raison d’être in Nina, while Holly had fallen for the same tired story. He was a hottie; she was lonely.

  “You should be careful,” he told her.

  “Funny. That’s exactly what Daniel said.”

  “Which makes things complicated for you. Who should you believe?”

  “Maybe I believe you both.”

  “Sorry,” he told her. “You have to pick sides on this one.”

  She wished he wasn’t so attractive. Why were the bad ones always so good-looking? Was it some bizarre rule of DNA, like being left-handed? Drew had been good-looking. What if Ryan became just another chapter of Holly’s Folly—Bad Taste in Men, Part II.

  “When you look at me, do you see her? Nina?”

  It was a gutsy move, just putting the question out there. Ryan didn’t even hesitate, coming closer to cut off the light from the dock and stand over her. He brushed back her bangs, exposing her face, making her catch her breath. He had gentle hands, with calluses. They were a working man’s hands.

  Standing there in the moonlight, the air damp, music streaming over the water, she wanted so badly for that look in his eyes to be all hers.

  “Here’s what I think,” he told her. “I think you were right a minute ago. You should go home.”

  She opened her eyes, for a moment confused. She hadn’t realized she’d closed them, that she’d been leaning toward him ever so slightly.

  “Right.” Her back hit the rail as she stepped away, feeling clumsier than ever. “Of course.” Get your breath, girl.

  He wanted her to go home. To Seattle.

  “Daniel asked me to stay and finish the job.” She lifted her chin, thinking of that woman in the portrait. “He told me to take my time and think about it. Not to be hasty. As an incentive, he’ll pay out the contract if I stay for a month.”

  “If you stay the month, you’ll stay for the job.”

  “That, I assume, is what Daniel believes. But I could fool you all. I could just run off with my money, laughing all the way.”

  “No.” He watched her, looking for clues, but not the way Harris did with his hocus-pocus act. With Ryan it was something personal between them, something that made the air sizzle and pop as if there were too much static electricity buzzing around.

  “You’re hooked,” he said. “You want to stay. You want to bring Cutty House back to life. Even Daniel can figure that much out. But here’s my humble opinion on the subject. You should get the hell out. Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough.”

  “Because you don’t want Cutty House to succeed?” She crossed her arms, still holding on to that Corona, needing to turn the tables on him. “Emma said you were working in Napa. How did she put it?” She wanted to get the words just right. “A total loser worker bee?”

  “That’s Emma. She only knows how to see Daniel’s side of things.”

  “Oh, Emma was very informative. She told me you got away with murder. She even mentioned the possibility that you had been institutionalized.”

  Ryan took a beat and then started to laugh. It was a rich sound, his laughter, very deep, so that he had to take a moment to compose himself. When he did, he smiled, a nice smile, one she could learn to like.

  “So now I’m a killer and a lunatic? Or maybe the two always go hand in hand? Poor Holly.”

  He stepped closer. With the rail behind her, there was nothing for her to do but hold her ground.

  He picked up a piece of her hair and twirled it around his fingers absently. “You want me to tell you it’s safe. That I’m not some demented psychopath following you around, ready to do you in. Go figure.” His hand came to rest against her mouth, his thumb gently caressing her bottom lip. “Maybe it’s better that you stay scared. Maybe you’ll be more careful that way.”

  “I’m not a bit scared,” she said, digging up a little bravado of her own.

  Ryan dropped his hand. “If you’ve made up your mind, why did you come here?”

  She gave him back the beer and pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder, trying for a businesslike exit, at least.

  “I suppose I wanted to see your face when I told you.” She liked the sound of it, using his own words against him. “I thought I would know then if Emma was telling the truth.”

  She walked back toward the sliding glass door leading to the kitchen. She told him, “Don’t worry. I’ll show myself out.”

  Ryan heard the front door close behind her and her heels on the gangway back to shore.

  Everything she’d felt, her outrage and desire, had been clearly on display. She didn’t bother to hide a thing. Or maybe she couldn’t.

  He’d wanted to kiss her. When she’d leaned forward and closed her eyes like that, it had been damned hard not to.

  Imagine, still able to strike up such a sweet little moment. Since the day he’d met Nina, there hadn’t been many of those.

  He looked down at the beer, smiling to himself. “She makes a hell of an exit.”

  Inside, the phone rang. He put down the bottle and slipped into the kitchen. When he picked up, he could hear the static of a cell phone and the distant sound of traffic on the other end.
/>   “Leave her the hell alone!”

  The line went dead. Ryan stared at the handset. The caller had been talking about Holly.

  Someone had followed her here. They knew his number.

  He released the breath he’d been holding and hung up the receiver. He hadn’t recognized the voice.

  Ryan stepped back outside. He picked up Holly’s beer bottle from where he’d left it on the round glass-topped table. He took a drink, thinking. Could the caller have been her brother? A concerned sibling watching someone he loved take a misstep? Or something more sinister? The voice had sounded distant and harsh, as if the caller were trying to disguise it. Someone I know?

  He stared out over the water. Imagine, a long time ago, he’d dreamed of sailing away. Now, the only boat he had was solidly anchored to shore.

  He told himself to be careful. Her coming here to-night…all those hours he’d spent following her around…Holly Fairfield was dangerously close to becoming an obsession.

  And apparently, she wasn’t his alone.

  15

  One of the real gifts of architecture—what Holly most about her craft—was the ability it gave her to create order on paper. With her drafting board and drawing leads, she had total control. It was an illusion, and a wonderful contrast to the chaos life offered.

  Only, tonight she wasn’t in her office hovering over pristine drafting sheets and irregular curves, with a protractor at hand. She was driving into the city, back from Ryan’s house—the last place she should have gone. Chaos was taking over, choking out reason.

  In keeping with the spirit of the evening, she drove her rental not back to her apartment, but to the next “last place” she should visit: Cutty House itself.

  She used the same door as Ryan. A magic jiggle of the knob, a good push with her shoulder, and she was in, hiking the stairs, finding a light switch here and there to guide her.

  Back to her chess game. She’d certainly lost a knight in Daniel East. The Queen across the board no longer bore Vanessa Cutty’s face, but Nina’s. And now her castle looked about to fall. Everyone was settling back, waiting for Holly to make her next move.

  She dragged the painting up against the couch and pulled back the curtains so that only moonlight shone like a spotlight. Very atmospheric.

  The eyes seemed the most different. A bit knowing. A little hard. Holly was staring at a painting of a young woman who had most certainly led a privileged life. Why was she so world-weary?

  “What happened to you, Nina?” she whispered.

  The article in the paper implied more than a tragic accident. The police report said something about an argument. The paper cited “unnamed sources” at the coroner’s office, intimating that she’d been pregnant. Was that a motive for murder?

  People quarreled. They got into cars angry, had accidents and were killed.

  Or was she just making excuses? Everyone else seemed only too ready to point the finger.

  She smiled to herself, wondering if that weren’t part of the problem, her penchant for the underdog. She was a Sonics fan, after all.

  She stepped around the portrait, her eyes still very much on Nina. “Big deal, I look like a dead woman. So what?” she told the painting.

  Bravado, the last stand when reason runs thin.

  She pulled up a chair and sat down. Well, she’d never been one for reasonable. Reasonable wouldn’t have brought her here, full of dreams. She’d hoped the trip tonight out to his boat would clarify a thing or two. But there she’d been closing her eyes, lifting her face for the fairy prince’s kiss. Dreaming again.

  She remembered Harris asking her once: Don’t you ever want to be the one who picks? At the time, she hadn’t known what he meant, so he’d explained.

  “Even in high school, you were always waiting around for someone to pick you. For a dance or a date. And Drew. Honestly, the guy just wore you down. Talked you into the business—the marriage. Don’t you ever want to be the one who picks, Hol? Just see someone you want and go for it? To say, that’s him, that’s mine.”

  And when she’d mentioned Harris’s own track record, he’d answered with a smile. “Well, there you go. That’s why we’re so miserable at love. We never get to pick.”

  She told herself she hadn’t picked Ryan. That’s not what this was about. But if she left, he’d be what she missed. Him and Cutty House.

  Behind her, she heard a door open. She turned around, startled. “Hello?”

  Creaking floorboards just outside in the hall.

  Her first thought—the sounds of an old house settling. But there was a rhythm to the noise. Footsteps?

  Ryan. He’d followed her again.

  “Ryan?” she called out.

  A change in tempo, the staccato beat of running, bringing with it a frisson of fear.

  “Is that you, Ryan?”

  Well, it had to be. Who else did she have stalking her these days?

  Anger seemed a futile emotion, but it came just the same. She thought they’d gotten past this sort of thing, that he understood his beef was with Daniel and not her.

  “Ryan?” She jumped to her feet. “For goodness sake, this is ridiculous,” she said, talking to herself as she walked to the door.

  The sound of footsteps again. This time, farther down the hall.

  She opened the door and took off, hoping to catch him, refusing to be frightened. She should give him a piece of her mind, that’s what she should do. He was acting all of twelve, forcing her to chase him down.

  But when she reached the end of the hall, she realized she’d entered yet another section of the house. The place looked long abandoned. An exaggerated mustiness filled the air, the smell of a house unattended. Not much light, either. Just the bare bulb she’d flicked on down the hall when she’d come upstairs. She looked down at the floorboards, scuffed and worn. She could see light shining up between the cracks in the floor from below. Not a good sign.

  A fine sheen of dust covered the boards. She knelt down for a better look, seeing the faint outline of footprints.

  Up ahead, a curtain fluttered as if a door had just opened. She felt a breeze, the hair rising at the back of her neck as a woman’s voice whispered, “Nina.”

  Holly rose to her feet, her breath catching, turning toward the sound of the woman’s voice. Not Ryan, then. It was someone else. Someone playing tricks, having a little fun.

  “Whoever you are, I’m not scared.” A complete lie. “I’m not giving up.” Closer to the truth.

  She was right about the door. Just ahead, it stood ajar so that a slight breeze trembled into the hall from the room beyond. She crept inside the room, stepping carefully on the floorboards. There wasn’t much light, but the place appeared empty, without so much as a stick of furniture.

  “All right. Whoever you are, you’ve had your fun.”

  And then she saw the windowpane, the writing there. The room was empty, but someone had been inside, all right. On the window, flushed with moonlight, words were written across the glass.

  She walked more purposely now, drawn to what appeared to be a message of sorts. Quick jagged letters written in a hurry. The words stood out in brilliant scarlet as if done in lipstick.

  Go Home!

  She stepped back, her heart jumping to her throat. She didn’t know what to think. The attack felt too personal. Someone had lured her here with the intent of her seeing this message. She took another step back, shaking her head.

  And felt the floor give way.

  There was a sharp crack! as she fell, screaming. She twisted around to break her fall, but her wrist collapsed with her weight, her cheek hitting the ground hard. Her ankle felt on fire, caught in the floorboards, pain shooting up to her knee. When she got her breath to look, she realized she was on her side, her arm pinned beneath her and her foot punched through the floor.

  She heard more creaking just outside the door.

  “Oh, God.”

  She lay perfectly still, like one of those skaters t
rapped on cracking ice. She tried to catch her breath, tried not to faint. She had this Stephen King image stuck in her head of the house coming to life, attacking her.

  “Not the house,” she told herself. “Not the house.”

  But someone.

  Someone who wanted to hurt her. To scare her. Someone who wanted her gone.

  Harris stared at the drawings on the coffee table. What had Holly called them? Idea sketches? He was smoking a cigarette. He’d quit five years ago but today was a special occasion.

  He’d always admired his sister’s talent, how she could create such beauty in her head. She could see inside a dead thing and give it life, while Harris knew only how to destroy.

  He stubbed out the cigarette on a small plate, then stood to rinse it in the sink. Hell, he might even use air freshener, though he doubted he’d fool his sister.

  He stood over the sink, suddenly fascinated by the sight of water gurgling down the drain. In the Southern hemisphere, the water would swirl in the opposite direction, counterclockwise. Coriolis Force. He’d had a friend try to convince him the damn thing was a myth, but every time he’d tried it, the effect had worked like a charm. Not that there’d been a lot of sinks in the jungle.

  He turned off the water. He shouldn’t have left Emma like that. Shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.

  He didn’t know who the enemy was, couldn’t imagine how to protect his sister. And after tonight—going to Daniel’s like that—there was a distinct possibility that he had made everything much worse.

  He heard the key first, then saw the door open. Too late for the air freshener.

  Watching his sister, he noticed right away that something was wrong. She was walking stiffly. Limping? She turned to face him, stepping into the light.

  “Ah, Jesus,” he said.

  Her pants were torn at the knee, the skin underneath red and raw. There was a cut on her cheek and she was holding her wrist.

  “Don’t fuss,” she said, stepping around him. “I was just a klutz.”

  He followed her into the kitchen, watched as she took ice from the freezer with one hand and dropped it into a plastic sandwich bag. She hobbled over to a chair and put the ice on her cheek, then seemed to think better of it and put the bag on her wrist.