by Sylvie Kurtz
“So you’ll be home Friday.”
“Yes, Mom. Friday.”
An annoying gum commercial played in the background.
“So, how is she? Ms. Meadows?” her mother asked, hesitation causing speed bumps in her voice. “Do you like her?”
“She’s like you’d expect, Mom. Devastated by her loss, but still full of hope that one day her daughter will come home. Actually, she got sick today, and I ended up getting an invitation to stay at Moongate for a couple of days.” No way was she going to tell her mother about Rita mistaking her for Valentina.
Her mother gasped. “You’re at the mansion?”
Her mother was always warning Valerie about the temptations of this world, of how her choice of career would lure her away from a true and humble path. Mom wasn’t big on organized religion—just the corrupting temptations of wealth and the evil of money. Valerie tried to mollify her. “It looks just like one of those fancy decorating magazines, cold and impersonal. It’s definitely not as cozy as home.”
“Remember where you’re from, the values we’ve taught you.”
In the background, Valerie’s dog started to yip, her mother to sob.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“You have to come home, Valerie.”
Here we go. “The job’s not over.”
“Can’t you hear the racket? I can’t control her.”
Her was Luna, short for Lunatic. Something wasn’t quite right with the dog. Valerie had found the basenji yodeling at the night sky, trapped in some illegally dumped garbage off the trail where Valerie ran every day. No one had answered the lost-dog ad or the posters she’d placed, and realizing that Luna’s nasty habit made her un-adoptable, Valerie hadn’t had the heart to turn her in at the animal shelter.
“She won’t shut up.” Her mother’s grief sounded all out of proportion to the situation. “The neighbors are threatening to call the cops.”
Wouldn’t be the first time. “It’s the moon, it drives her crazy. Hang something over the slider windows so she can’t see out.”
“She won’t let me anywhere near her.”
Valerie huffed out a breath and ran a hand through her hair. “She weighs twenty pounds, Mom. How hard can it be to push by her?”
“You know, if you’re going to take on the responsibility of a dog, you need to be home to take care of her.”
Luna’s yips turned into full-bore yodels as if someone was encouraging her. “Put her on the phone.”
Her mother’s hysteria died down for a moment. “You want me to put a dog on the phone?”
“You want the racket to end?”
“All right.”
“Luna!” The lament stopped midsong and was followed by a happy yip of recognition, and Valerie smiled as she imagined Luna’s permanent quizzical expression. “You need to be on your best behavior, understand?”
“Urf.” Luna’s red corkscrew tail thumped against a chair leg in Valerie’s kitchen.
“I mean it. I don’t want to find your corpse lying on the kitchen floor when I come back.”
“Urf.”
“Trust me, when it comes to Mom, there’s no contest. Even if you hold up your end of the battle of wills, you’ll come out bloody and battered.”
Which was why Valerie had been loath to ask her mother for a favor in the middle of a disagreement. But she couldn’t leave Luna alone, and none of the local kennels would take her because of the moon thing. Even the vet had joked that Luna must be part Swiss werewolf the way the sight of the moon set her off on a yodeling jag.
Valerie didn’t know who she felt more sorry for—her crazy dog or her mother.
“Mom!” Valerie waited until her mother came back on. “I think Luna’ll be fine. Just hang a sheet or something over the door. Or take her in the bedroom with you.”
“I’m not risking getting fleas.”
“Your choice.”
“You have to come home, Valerie.”
“I can’t, Mom, not yet.”
“I gave you a life. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
And her mother called her melodramatic! Where did she think Valerie had learned it? “It counts for a lot, Mom. But you’re the one who told me to always finish what I start.”
The gossip show’s theme music thumped with heavy bass in the background.
“Valerie?” Her mother gulped as if she’d just swum a mile. “Remember that I love you.”
Valerie sighed. “I know, Mom. I love you, too.”
A noise. No, more like a sensation of heat at the back of her neck made her turn around. Nick’s looming six-foot frame filled the doorway. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
HE SHOULDN’T HAVE COME. This could’ve waited till morning. But he’d been thinking of her, couldn’t seem to lock her out of his head, so he’d made the detour to her room before heading up to the carriage house that was his home and finishing the day’s business.
She looked small perched on the bed edge as if she were ready to flee. One hand, long-fingered and delicate, gripped the blue-and-white quilt with a fist that didn’t appear strong enough to harm a butterfly. Her big blue eyes had the look of a lost little girl.
He didn’t want to hold her, he told himself. Didn’t want to comfort her. The twitch in his hands, the tensing of his muscles were from the hard day that had gone on much too long and still had hours to go.
He needed to remember that there was strength in that slim body. The kind of strength that rang all of his alarm bells. The kind of strength he couldn’t afford to underestimate. Whatever she stirred in him, it had to stop. He forced himself to unknot his muscles and lean against the door frame as if her presence in this house was normal.
She dropped her cell phone in the purse at her feet, filled a glass with water from the pitcher and looked up at him, trying to look casual. But her eyes gave her away.
“Did you want something?” Her fingers played a nervous tune against the glass.
“I wanted to make sure you were settled in all right.”
Half her mouth curved up mischievously. “Are you going to lock me in to make sure I don’t wander out alone?”
The beginning of a smile tugged at his lips. “Do I need to?”
She sipped and made a face. “The water.” She touched her mouth with three fingers. “It tastes funny.”
“Well water. You’ll get used to the mineral taste.”
She pursed her lips and nodded, but slid the glass back onto the night table. “Was there anything else?”
“When is your interview with Kirby Cicco tomorrow?” The creep and his two friends were hired to help with the party preparations on the day of Valentina’s disappearance. They’d come back that night and taken off with Rita’s jewelry and, according to the evidence, her daughter.
Valerie reached for a decorative pillow and clamped it over her chest with crossed arms, hands hanging on to the tassels on each corner.
“Here comes the scary part,” Nick whispered to Valentina as they watched forbidden cartoons.
Valentina reached for a pink pillow and used it as a shield. Eyes shut tight, she squeezed closer to him. “Tell me when it’s over.”
He’d never have admitted it, but he’d liked it when she’d turned to him, when all he’d needed to do to make her feel safe was wrap an arm around her shoulders.
“How did you—” Valerie started, jolting him back to the present.
“What time?” Nick asked with a harsher tone than he’d meant. He stuck his hands in his pockets.
Valerie squished the pillow tighter, her eyes wide with question. “Ten. The prison official I talked to said it was a couple hours’ drive from here. Why?”
“I’ll drive. Be ready at seven-thirty.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he spun on his heel and left. Not, he assured himself, because he was afraid she could change his mind—nothing was going to stop him from going with her on that interview—but because every time he looked at
her a mad whirlwind of memories threatened to engulf him, and the last thing he wanted to do was to reach out to her.
Chapter Six
“Can you stop at the next exit?” Valerie asked him as a highway sign with a food icon slipped by.
Nick didn’t know why he was so ticked off that everything about her had checked out—at least on the surface. He’d told Joe to keep digging until he’d turned over every last rock in her life. No word yet on Simon Higgins’s financial status or Gordon Archer’s whereabouts—other than the news that Gordon had been a guest of the Florida state prison system as recently as last year. Why didn’t that surprise Nick in the least?
Coming face-to-face with the man in prison for kidnapping Valentina was just one more tug into a place he didn’t want to revisit.
“You’re trying to stall again.” Nick concentrated on the road, thick with leaf-peepers even though the season was petering out. What was the point of owning a Jaguar with a supercharged V-8 and four hundred horses if you were stuck doing thirty in a fifty-five zone? Just a touch of the accelerator and this baby could move, and boy, did he want to floor it and let her rip. “We’re going to be late.”
“If Mike doesn’t get fed, things will get ugly.”
“And if she doesn’t get coffee,” Mike added from the backseat and made an exaggerated shivering noise. “You don’t want to be around.”
“She’s already had two cups. And if you wanted breakfast, you should’ve gotten up earlier.” They called themselves professionals?
“Trust me,” Mike grumbled. “You want to get her topped off. And I work better on a full stomach.”
A whorl of blue trooper lights and red fire truck lights and a twist of metal between a minivan and a Toyota blocked the exit and saved him from another argument—and a stop. He just wanted to get this ordeal over and done with. “Accident. You’ll both have to wait.”
Valerie kept fighting him every mile of the way up to the North Country, which kept him from obsessing and, strangely enough, calmed him.
“You’re not cleared,” she insisted even now at the prison’s doors. “We got special permission to come on a nonvisiting day and interview Mr. Cicco.” She backhanded the letter. “Interviewer and photog only.”
“I’ll get in.” The many ways the Meadows name opened doors never ceased to amaze him.
“Have you ever been to a prison?” she asked, as if he didn’t know what he was getting himself into.
“Not recently. Have you?”
“Well, actually, no.” She stopped and turned to him, mouth hanging open. “Wait. You’ve been to a prison? When? Why?”
Before he could answer, their escort arrived and they were buzzed, beeped and clanged through doors, then stripped of anything that a prisoner could turn into a weapon.
The acrid smell of despair and anger underlying the antiseptic made Nick’s nose twitch. But it was the ceaseless noise, like the raspy breath of evil on a moonless night, that always got to him, put him on edge.
“What did you do?” Valerie whispered. The erratic echo of their heels and the stark light, arcing off the walls, gave the corridor the fractured feeling of an alien world. “Bribe a prison official?”
“I went straight to the governor,” he teased.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You can’t mess this up for me.”
“Why would I?”
“Well, I don’t know. Could be your charming disposition and your death-laser glare. He’s not going to want to talk to me with you intimidating him. And my segment’s already compromised with Rita sick and you not worth my bother to interview.”
“You find me intimidating?” he asked, doing his best to ignore the way the corridor seemed to lengthen and snake endlessly or the way he wanted to grab her hand and hold on tight.
She touched her chest with her fingertips. “Me? No. But I suspect most people do.”
“Why don’t I intimidate you?” Needling her kept the toxic wash of adrenaline from eating into him.
She tilted her head. “Could we focus here? I’m working. This is my job. It’s important to me. You know—on par with you keeping pretenders out of Rita’s way.”
“You do fluff pieces.”
“Well, I’m flattered. You checked up on me. But if you’d bothered to watch a whole segment, you’d know that I provide a deeper insight.”
Yeah, he knew. And her ability to get to the heart of a person in a few minutes had surprised him. He’d found himself savoring the lingering feel-good button she’d pushed.
More clanging and banging and reverberating echoes jangled his nerves as they were led into the visitors’ room where the air threatened to collapse under the weight of broken dreams and failed promises. What had made him think time had erased the density of misery?
Valerie consulted with Mike and they chose a table in the middle of the stagnant space. She deposited a file of notes on the surface while Mike set up his gear.
She came to stand next to Nick. “I don’t get why you want to be here.”
“Personal reasons.”
She snorted. “Yeah, let’s not give too much away.”
Once again he saw a three-year-old in front of him. Valentina in her overalls and pigtails, all huffy and pouty because he wasn’t talking to her. He blinked away the image. “What exactly is it that you’re hoping to accomplish with this interview?”
“Something you’re fighting suspiciously hard—getting to the truth of what happened to Valentina.”
“What makes you think one word coming out of a con’s mouth is going to come anywhere near the truth?” Nick certainly had heard none the last time he’d visited his father in prison.
Her sigh bounced in the bad acoustics of the room. “Okay, this is how it’s going to work. You’re going to go sit over there.” She pointed at the far corner out of the prisoner’s line of sight. “You’re going to focus on anything, except Mr. Cicco.”
Nick slid his gaze appreciatively down the length of her body. “Anything you say.”
She bumped his chin back up with the edge of her hand until their gazes met and lifted a brow in warning. “You’re not going to interrupt, snigger, suggest, bully or otherwise interfere with my interview.” Her arm swept in front of her to point at the door. “Or I’m going to have that big guard over there throw you out.” She put on her own version of his death-laser glare. “And don’t think I won’t.”
Mike hooted. “She will, too. I’ve seen her do it.”
Nick lifted his hands, palms up in mock surrender. “Bossy, aren’t you?”
“When I’m working, yes.”
A guard led in the prisoner stuffed into a jumpsuit like a salami, and Valerie turned away from Nick, all business. Mike attached a mic to the jumpsuit, then went back to his camera, and seemed to melt into the background.
Nick retreated to his assigned corner, because observing had been his intention in the first place and not because the four-foot dictator had asked him to.
A blade of anxiety stabbed him under the rib cage and wrenched the breath out of him. He’d sworn he’d never come back, never submit himself to the soul-sucking gravity of evil. But he’d had to know. To look the man in the eyes.
Cicco had gained weight since his arrest and lost hair. Really, he was nothing more than a pathetic sad sack. How could he be the source of such nightmares?
To keep his thoughts from tumbling back to the horror of that night, Nick focused on Valerie as she prepared for the interview. Watching her was like watching a ballet, and he could breathe again.
She’d gone for the competent, professional look. As if pinning her hair up in a severe bun could take away the softness of her face and divert the prisoner’s attention from her femininity. Her gray tailored pantsuit had a mannish cut that couldn’t quite hide the subtle curves beneath the wool. Did she wear silk under the pale pink cotton blouse? He shook his head. Out of the gutter, Galloway. Allowing his thoughts to run on such dangerous lines made him no better tha
n the creep staring at her breasts.
Nick moved, drawing the convict’s attention away from Valerie’s chest, and sent him a silent warning. She glared at Nick over her shoulder. He gave a small nod acknowledging her admonition, but he wouldn’t let that stop him from breaking Cicco’s arms if he tried to move in on her.
Standing behind her, out of the way, Nick rocked on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t preemptively punch out the pervert.
His mood was edgy, and he needed it to stay even.
Kirby Cicco was serving a life sentence, but the case was still open, thanks to the family lawyer’s unwavering pressure for answers. Someone from the attorney general’s office worked the case on and off, but no new leads had turned up in over a decade.
“Are we ready?” Valerie asked Mike.
“We’re at speed,” Mike said, hidden behind the eye of his camera.
She smiled at Cicco. “Are you ready to start, Mr. Cicco?”
“Kirby.” He went all gaga on her, blushing and shuffling his feet like a lovesick teenager. “Call me Kirby. And yeah, I got nothing to hide. I didn’t kidnap or kill that kid.”
She started with simple questions to put her subject at ease. She asked her questions in a way that their meaning would be clear to the viewer even if they didn’t hear them. And the siren song of her voice made Nick want to confess to sins he hadn’t committed.
“Tell me about that day, Mr. Cicco. What were you doing at Moongate Mansion?”
“There was some sort of fancy party going to happen. We—”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“My buddies, Tim Vore and Derrick Thiede. We’d done some odd jobs there before, and Ms. Meadows had hired us to help the old man with some yard work.”
Nick knew the story by heart. His focus on the creep’s words waned, and he let the man’s essence speak instead. The side-to-side snake flicker of his eyes in their sockets. The slimy tendrils of anger, the bone-gnawing hunger for retaliation, the soul-deep rot of evil.