Cassie’s right, life was perfect as we walked down those steps. Life was perfect, I wasn’t thinking about much of anything except maybe making love to her again as soon as we got home, and her left foot touched the ground.
I was right behind her on the steps, holding the handrail and admiring the beautiful sway of her body.
Light flared in the corner of my eye, bright and gone again in an instant.
I glanced left and saw on a distant rooftop something Sergei had taught me to recognize during that strange summer – the distinctive flash of light reflecting off a telescopic sight.
The kind of telescopic sight used on a sniper rifle.
“DOWN, GET DOWN!”
I knocked Cassie to the ground and dropped on top of her, shielding her with my body, and God, no, please –
“KRISTEN, DOWN!”
She stared at us, she glanced left and right. The day still looked perfect.
“Dave, what the –”
One lesson Sergei taught me all those years ago was that if someone tells you to drop or take cover, you hit the ground instantly – you don’t hesitate, you don’t think, you don’t breathe. Get down before your heart has time to beat, he said, or the bullet you did not see coming will put you down.
Kristen never learned that lesson. She hesitated.
Only for that single heart-stopping second, but that was more than enough time.
An echoing crack.
My sister’s body jerked to one side, blood fountained from her stomach, and she fell to the tarmac with a wet thump.
Cassie screamed, shouts echoed inside the plane, and the limo driver swung his door open to see what was going on.
Kristen struggled up onto her elbows. Blood welled up between her fingers and spread over her hands and soaked into the trailing ends of her hair. Her eyes, confused and swimming with pain, focused on me.
“Davey …?”
Another sharp crack.
The bullet drilled through her head at three thousand feet per second, and the light in those blue eyes went out forever.
Life was perfect a few seconds ago.
25
Dave couldn’t say anything but her name, over and over, all the rest of that day.
He whispered it under his breath, he said it as he stared at walls and people and the sky, and he cried it against my chest that night.
He cried for hours.
The next day, he froze and I cried.
He wouldn’t talk, he didn’t cry, and he never let me out of his sight. At the funeral home, I ran into the ladies’ room when I couldn’t stop crying and everybody kept staring – and there he stood in the half-open doorway, watching as I locked myself into a stall and sobbed until I couldn’t breathe and my throat hurt.
On the third day after Kristen’s death, Dave burned his blueprints.
He pulled them off the wall of his bedroom, he dumped them into his double-sided stainless steel kitchen sink, and he set them on fire with an entire book of lit matches.
I tried to stop him and he pushed me away. I cried and asked him why, and he ignored me.
He just stood there as the smoke alarm howled overhead, and he watched his dream burn to ash.
The day before the funeral, I stopped crying and got angry.
That murdering Hungarian fucker was going to pay for this.
Oh, we knew it was him. He told us.
Dave’s unofficial mystery phone buzzed to announce an incoming text message while I was laying out his best black suit for the services the next day. Dave stared at the screen for a few seconds and then handed me the phone without a word. He still wasn’t talking.
The phone displayed the words I’d heard Gregor Szörnyeteg say a lifetime ago in Dubai, along with a few more:
Children dream, women love, and we all die – some of us sooner than others.
My operative found your Chicago to be a dreary place, dirty and loud, but he reports the hunting at the airport was excellent.
We buried Kristen next to her father on Friday.
Maybe Einar Dallstrom had considered funerals to be a waste of money, but I didn’t. People need to show respect, they need to convince themselves this horrible thing really happened, they need to say good-bye. I should know – dealing with Mom’s death and then Dad’s only a few months later made me an expert on heartbreak.
I trusted the company’s stable of lawyers with the details – I just told them to make it brilliant and beautiful and elegant, like Kristen. Oh, and I might have added to invite everybody and buy out every florist in town, and maybe also that if the line of cars was less than a mile long, it would be their asses.
Dave nodded and agreed with everything I said. His eyes were distant and glassy.
The governor of Illinois gave the eulogy – Dave should have done it, but he still wasn’t talking. Chicago’s two-term mayor stood in front of the hundreds of people filling the pews of Saint Mary of the Angels and dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief while delivering a few sad words. Maybe he even meant what he said, I don’t know.
Kristen’s coffin – it makes me sick even now to say that, much less picture it – anyway, it was a giant thing of mirror-bright polished mahogany, covered in drifts of white roses. Everyone filed past it to pay their respects – senators, Fortune 500 CEOs, Oscar-winning actors, street performers, janitors, cooks, everyone. Gerard Butler rested his hand on the gleaming wood for a moment and muttered something I couldn’t hear. Dr. Ranjeet and his team of engineers stood together in silence as they fought back tears. I almost didn’t recognize Vincenzo when he showed up in a conservative coal-black suit and not a dab of makeup or nail polish or hair gel.
So many people, real people and celebrities both, cried their eyes red.
Dave did not cry. Dave shadowed me every second, his hand locked in mine. His empty, lost green eyes scanned the crowds. He shook the hands of mourners and accepted their regrets. He said nothing, he did not cry a single tear. Maybe he was cried out, or maybe he was thinking over the situation and considering our future.
Maybe he was broken.
The graveside service had everything. A minister blathered into a microphone, a soprano from the Lyric Opera of Chicago sang “Amazing Grace,” and row upon row of people wearing black sweated as they sat on folding chairs beneath a blazing Chicago sun. A marble angel guarded the gaping hole in the earth that would soon be filled, while birds perched on nearby tombstones and sang as if nothing had happened.
The only thing missing was Gregor Szörnyeteg’s head on a plate.
But I knew who could provide me with that, didn’t I?
My better self said it wouldn’t bring her back. My better self said she wouldn’t want me to do this. Find another way, Cassie. Drop an anonymous tip to the FBI and then hire some private investigators to dig up evidence prosecutors could use – it could take months or years, guys like Szörnyeteg are always good at covering their tracks, but maybe …
My worse self said the number I needed had to be on Dave’s mystery phone.
I waited until he fell asleep at three the next morning. The poor guy hadn’t slept a full night straight through since it happened, and he still had issues with me being away from his side – he shifted and mumbled when I climbed out of the bed, reaching for me out of a dream.
No problem, I’d figured out a cover story. I unplugged his unofficial phone from the charger and put mine in its place, so that he wouldn’t immediately notice the empty spot on his bedside table if he looked that way in the dark. Then I bent over him.
“Just have to go in the bathroom and take care of something, might be a while – you know, girl stuff.”
Perfect, right? Guys have no idea what we’re really doing in there, and they definitely don’t want to know about it if feminine hygiene products are involved.
“Mmmkay, hurry …” He sagged back into sleep, tangling himself in the sheets as he curled up into a ball.
I shot the bolt of the bathroom door behi
nd me. I turned on the water in both sinks and the shower too, and I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, leaning forward as I scrolled through Mystery Phone’s contacts list.
None of the listings had pictures, none displayed straightforward names, and I didn’t dare call the wrong one and wake up Putin or the CIA or some third-world dictator.
Cassie, this was a terrible idea. Go back to bed now.
I told my better self to shut the hell up. So, did I want to talk to ‘NK38’? Or maybe ‘SainatevMst24’? Would tapping ‘BelgrMxTffr’ get me the right guy, or was he listed as ‘Kalmak38shop’? Maybe ‘ZhengouPizza5309’ really would connect me with a Chinese pizza place, and ‘DakarMinisterA’ didn’t look promising.
I skimmed the contacts for a third time and stopped. I backed up. I spotted a name, one that stood out, a real name – sort of.
‘Marcus Aurelius’?
My instincts said yes. But my common sense said no way he’d be listed under the name of a dead Roman emperor who dabbled in philosophy, so I called the number with a format I didn’t recognize before I could talk myself out of it.
Buzzing. Pops. A beep. I guessed at the time difference and figured it was late morning in that part of the world, or maybe lunchtime? And who knew if he was even there, or if this was even the right –
A deep male voice I didn’t recognize barked out a few words in a language that I also didn’t know – but there was no missing what sounded like ‘Dahveed.’
“This is David’s girlfriend Cassie, and I need to talk to Sergei right now.”
Silence. I crossed my fingers. Then the same voice said more words I totally didn’t understand, with a rising inflection at the end that clearly indicated a question. What was he asking? I had no idea. Had I screwed up in an apocalyptic manner and called the wrong guy? No clue.
So I bulled right on ahead as if I knew exactly what I was doing. “Tell Sergei David’s girlfriend Cassandra Marie Hamilton wants to talk to him, and that he owes me for blowing up my bar!”
A grunt. Then Deep Voice called out to someone nearby. I listened to a flurry of voices in the background, none of which I could understand. The sound of hurrying feet. A door slammed.
Then I heard English in my ear – it was the voice of an older woman with a thick accent, but this was definitely English.
“This is who, please?”
Breathe, Cassie. “My name is Cassie Hamilton, I’m David’s girlfriend, and I need to talk to Sergei now, it’s an emergency. Please.”
A long pause. “Be waiting a minute.”
Silence. Maybe I did have the right number, or maybe I’d just talked to Putin’s mom and the NSA was listening in. It could go either way.
Rustling, footsteps. And then a familiar voice with a movie-villain Eastern European accent came on the line, a voice I’d last heard on the Kansas prairie outside the burning ruins of my bar, and holy shit, I had lucked into calling the right guy.
“Miss Hamilton? It pleases me to hear from David’s fierce young woman, truly, but I am surprised – does he know you are calling me, in what I am thinking is the middle of the night there?”
I glanced at the bathroom door. “No, but –”
“And I am also thinking you call about his sister’s death? Tell our David I grieve for him – she was spirited and intelligent and also innocent, and did not deserve such a fate.”
“Damn straight, and I’m calling to have you hurt the guy who did it. Hurt him until he’s a smoking hole in the ground, hurt him until his ancestors feel it, and do it now, today, however you soon you can. His name is –”
He cut in before I could get out the words. “No name, please. Anton tells me these phones I must throw away after I use them one time are safe, but it is best to be cautious, yes? Many people try to monitor my communications.”
“Then let’s say it was the short guy with the screeching crazy daughter who punched Dave. Hurt him, Sergei. You owe me, remember?”
“I know this man, sadly. He is a foul creature, with ice water for blood and a soul that he sold long ago – not that I am in any position to judge him or anyone, but still. You have proof?”
“Not the kind that the police could use, but yes. So are you going to burn him for this or not?”
A sigh, a long pause. “May I come and tell you a story first?”
“What? Fuck stories, just –”
“Once you asked what happened to the woman who loved me. I think that now I will come and tell you that story, so that you may know how deep the waters are over your head and what it is you ask of me. It is the least I can do for you and for our David. We will speak in perhaps a few days. Wait.”
The call dropped off into space and that was that.
I struggled awake at mid-morning, fuzzy and with a pounding headache. Lack of sleep, weird 3 a.m. calls, grief that wouldn’t let go – they added up to feel a whole lot like a hangover, even though I hadn’t had a drop to drink since before the world imploded.
Rolling over, I buried my face in my hands. Pain stabbed through my temples, I cursed the headache gods, and when I peered through my fingers I saw Dave sitting on the edge of the bed, talking into his normal, non-secret, regular business phone – wait a minute, he was talking?
“Yes, I need the Poznań and Belogorsk facilities reopened – and before you say it, I know the word the other day was to shut them down, but the situation has changed.” A single muscle tightened in his jaw.
These were the first words I’d heard out of him in over a day, and what was going on?
“Rehire the workers, bump up their pay, and get both locations back into production, that’s how you do it – I’ll check back with you tomorrow, and I’ll want to hear it’s been done.”
I pulled myself up into a sitting position and leaned against his shoulder; he shifted the phone to his left hand and wrapped his right arm around me.
His hand tightened on my hip. “The product that was on site has already been destroyed? Shit. Well, call the agencies in Tbilisi and Jakarta and tell them we’ll have their standard shipments ready in thirty days – we should be able to hit that target if we run double shifts at both facilities.”
A long pause, and his fingers dug deep into my skin, almost hurting. “Yes, thanks – yes, she was the best, I don’t know what we’ll do without her. I don’t know what I’ll do … anyway, bear with me while we’re making this transition and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks.”
The phone dropped from his open hand onto the bed, forgotten.
“Dave, what does Dallstrom Defense Systems make at these facilities in Poznań and Belogorsk?”
He stared at the hardwood floor between his feet and shook his head. “They’re not our facilities and it’s not our product, not on paper – an overseas subsidiary handles it, and the ownership is routed through so many holding companies and offshore accounts that it might all belong to the Pope, for all anybody on the outside knows.” He rubbed his eyes and added, “Dad made sure none of it could be traced back to us, I know that much.”
“One more time, Dave. What do they make in Poznań and Belogorsk?”
“Officially? Chemical fertilizer.”
“And unofficially?”
He sniffed and rubbed his eyes again, and I saw the tears he was trying to hide. “Baby, you’re safer if you don’t know. Trust me?”
The question in his voice broke my heart.
“I trust my Dave. I trust that something under your dad’s leadership was very wrong, and I trust that you’ve been trying to make it right.”
“Oh, I tried, all right. I tried, and now Kristen’s dead. I am an idiot child, for thinking it would be any different.”
He pulled away from me and lunged to his feet, stalking around the room and waving at the walls.
“My dream got her killed, you know that? Those stupid blueprints and thinking that I could change things and make a new future, a clean one? It was all useless, juvenile bullshit, it killed Kristen, and you know
what?”
How could I shut this down, how could I get through to him? “Dave, don’t think for one minute –”
“I don’t think, I know! I know that Szörnyeteg was right – once you cross certain lines, there’s no going back.” His feet trailed over the floor and he came to a halt.
Dave stopped waving at the empty walls that had once displayed his dream, and all the fight drained out of him in an instant. He wandered back to the bed. He sat down next to me with a thump, the mattress dipping under his weight.
“There are a lot of horrifying lines in this world, Cassie, and Dad crossed one of them a long time ago. He crossed that line, he dragged us all with him, and now there’s no way to go back. I was stupid to try.”
I wrapped myself around him, my arms and my legs and my everything. I pressed my face to his neck, I breathed in his scent. I didn’t know if I could make this right with nothing but words, but I tried. “Dave, I love you. I love you and I don’t know what your dad did, exactly, but I know I trust you to fix it.”
He clamped his arms around me, he buried his face in my hair, and now he didn’t try to hide his tears. “There’s no fixing it. There’s no way, I tried.”
“There is a way, you just haven’t found it yet.”
“Protecting you is all I have left, Cassie.” His arms tightened over my ribs and I could barely breathe. “Stay and let me protect you. Please don’t leave me, I love you.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Dave.”
I believed that when I said it.
No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance Page 27