by Nora Roberts
“Not petty,” Luke corrected and decided to try the brandy after all. “And never grifters. What do you want?”
“What I’ve wanted all along. To make you pay. I hated you, right from the start. Keep your hands where I can see them,” he warned. Luke shrugged and sipped brandy. “I didn’t know precisely why, only that I did. But I believe it was because we were so alike.”
Now Luke smiled. “You’ve got a gun on me, Wyatt. You can kill me or send me to prison. But don’t insult me.”
“Always cool, and still reckless. It was a combination I might have admired if you hadn’t been so disgustingly superior. You held the Nouvelles in the palm of your hand. Oh, I saw the potential even then, but you were in the way.”
“Face it, pal.” Maybe, just maybe, he could anger him enough to force him into a mistake. “You fucked up.”
Sam’s eyes glittered, but the gun didn’t waver. “What I fucked was your girl. And I seduced Roxanne away from you. Believe me, if I’d realized the potential there, I’d have fucked her rather than—what was her name? Annabelle.”
The fury bounded up. Luke had to curl his hand around the arm of the chair to stay seated. “I should have broken more than your nose.”
“There, for the first time, you’re correct. You should have destroyed me, Callahan, because now, I’ll destroy you. Come in, Mr. Cobb.”
Now Luke did jerk to his feet. Brandy splashed over his gloved hand. There, in the doorway, was his oldest nightmare.
“I believe you two know each other,” Sam continued. Oh, this was rich, he thought. Magnificent. What more could he ask for than to see Luke’s face go white? A great deal more, he decided, chuckling to himself. A great deal more. “You might not be aware that Mr. Cobb has been working for me for quite some time now. Help yourself to the bar while I explain a few salient points to our mutual friend.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Cobb strutted over to the whiskey decanter and poured a double. He liked the idea of sharing a drink with a man of Wyatt’s caliber, being invited—after all this time—into his home. “Looks like he’s got you by the short hairs, Luke.”
“Succinctly put. Now that we’re all together, I’ll outline the deal.” It was perfect, so perfect, Sam could barely keep his voice from shivering with excitement. “It was my idea to have Mr. Cobb contact you and squeeze you for a few thousand a month. Imagine my surprise when you paid quietly and with ease, even when I gave him permission to increase the amounts. Now, how, I asked myself, does a man—even one with a certain amount of financial success—pay off blackmail demands in excess of a hundred thousand a year without altering his life-style by even the smallest degree?” Waiting a beat, Sam tapped a finger against his curved lips. “He can’t, of course, unless he has another source of income. So, I began tracking you. I still have contacts of my own, you know. Then I laid the bait and watched you nibble. My insurance company, my security system, my schedule. It wasn’t difficult to make it seem as though I planned to be in Washington this week.”
The first wave of sickness had sweat springing cold to the back of Luke’s neck. “You opened the cage door,” he managed, “that doesn’t mean I’ll let it lock behind me.”
“I’m aware of that. You see with a clever lawyer you might just wriggle out of the charges. Since you came alone, it would be difficult if not impossible to spread the blame to the Nouvelles. I could simply kill you.” Lips pursed, he lifted the gun, sighting in on Luke’s forehead. “But then, you’d only be dead.”
“Don’t kill the golden goose,” Cobb said and chuckled at his own wit.
“Certainly not, particularly if you can make him roast slowly.”
“And he’ll keep paying, too.” Cobb poured more whiskey.
“Yes, though not in the way you mean.” Sam smiled at Cobb, then pulled the trigger.
The sound of the bullet exploded in the small room. Luke felt it echo through him as if he were a hollow tunnel. Dazed, he watched Cobb stagger, saw the look of surprise on his face, and the blood flow through the neat black hole that had suddenly appeared in his forehead.
The glass of whiskey hit the rug first, rolled unbroken across the bright Turkish carpet. And Cobb fell like a tree.
“That was easier than I imagined.” Sam’s hand shook once, but it was excitement rather than nerves. “Much easier.”
“Jesus.” Luke tried to spring to his feet but found his limbs heavy. He rose slowly, like a man fighting his way up through water. The room spun like a carousel and the bright, bloody carpet flew up to meet him.
When he awakened, his head felt clogged. The drummers banging inside it were muffled with wads of cotton wool.
“Obviously you have good stamina.” Sam’s voice seemed to drift through the mists. “I thought you’d be out longer.”
“What?” Wobbly, Luke managed to crawl up on his hands and knees. He had to fight a powerful wave of nausea before he dared lift his head. When he did, he saw Cobb’s dead-white face. “Oh, God.” Lifting a hand, he wiped the sweat from his face. He was light-headed and sick, but still aware enough to realize he no longer wore his gloves.
“No gratitude?” Sam demanded. He sat behind the desk again, but when Luke focused in, he saw he held a different gun. “After all, the man made your life hell, didn’t he? Now he’s dead.”
“You didn’t even flinch.” Sam, the gun, the room wavered as Luke fought to clear his head. “You shot him in cold blood and didn’t even flinch.”
“Thank you. Remember, I can do the same with you—or Max or Lily. Or Roxanne.”
He wasn’t going to beg, not on his hands and knees. Painfully, Luke pulled himself to his feet. His legs wobbled, adding humiliation to terror. “What do you want?”
“Exactly what I’m going to get. I can call the police now, tell them you and Cobb broke in while I was working late in my office. I surprised you, you pulled a gun. Then you argued between yourselves, and you shot him. During the confusion, I managed to get my gun. This is my gun by the way.”
He gestured with a trim .25. He wanted to pull the trigger, wanted badly to pull it and feel that jolt of power again. But that would be too quick. Too quick, too final.
“The other is unregistered, and untraceable—except for the fact that it now has your fingerprints on it. You’ll be charged with murder, and with your connection to Cobb, I doubt you’d wiggle out.”
He smiled then, hugely. A man dazzled by his own brilliance.
“That’s our first scenario,” he went on. “Which would play nicely, I believe. I don’t like it as much as the second, because it involves me. The second is that you take the body and dispose of it. Then you go.”
“Go?” Struggling to remain lucid, Luke dragged a hand through his hair. “Just like that?”
“Exactly. Only you don’t go back to New Orleans. You don’t contact the Nouvelles. You, quite literally, disappear.” The grin on Sam’s face spread, erupted into a fast, wild giggle. “Abracadabra.” The sound had cold fingers squeezing Luke’s spine.
“You’re out of your mind.”
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?” Sam asked, and his eyes glittered. “You’d like to think so because I’ve beaten you, beaten you at last.”
“All of this?” Luke’s voice was still slurred from the drug. He spoke slowly, carefully, as if to be certain he understood the words himself. “You planned all this, you murdered Cobb, just to get back at me?”
“Does that seem unreasonable?” Sam leaned back in his chair, swiveled it side to side. “Perhaps I’d think so if I were in your position.” He jerked forward again, and had the pleasure of seeing Luke jolt and brace. “But you see, I’m not. I’m in charge. And you’ll do exactly as I say. If you don’t, I’ll have you arrested for murder, and I’ll see that Maximillian Nouvelle is investigated for grand larceny—unless I find it more enjoyable to kill him.”
“He took you in off the street.”
“And kicked me back onto it.” The smile on Sam�
�s face twisted into a sneer of disgust. “Don’t expect loyalty from me, Callahan, especially if you’re not willing to put your own on the line.”
“Why don’t you just kill me?”
“I prefer the idea of you grubbing for a living in some godforsaken town, having sweaty dreams about Roxanne and the men she’ll fill her life with, losing that star you’ve held on to so tightly over the years. Escape this, Callahan. You go, or the Nouvelles pay, for the rest of their lives. And don’t think you can leave now, then reappear in a few weeks. You may slip the noose, but I’ll pull it taut around Max’s neck, that I promise. I have all the evidence I need to hang him, right in the safe you never had the opportunity to open.”
“No one would believe you.”
“No? A dedicated public servant with a pristine record? A man who brought himself out of the hell of the streets? Who, though he felt a certain loyalty to the old man, could no longer conceal the facts? And who, recognizing the signs of senility, would plead for confinement in a mental health facility rather than prison?”
That turned fear to ice, a sharp, ragged spear of ice that threatened to draw blood. “No one’s going to put Max away.”
“That’s up to you. Your call, Callahan.”
“You’ve got the hammer.” He felt his life slipping through his fingers like sand. “I’ll disappear, Wyatt. But you’ll never be entirely sure when I’ll be back. One night I’ll just be there.”
“Take your old friend with you, Callahan.” He gestured toward Cobb. “And think of me, every day, when you’re in hell.”
24
Luke knew it was foolishly risky, but risks no longer seemed to matter. He left the second rental car in the hotel parking lot and, using the main elevators in the lobby, rode up to his room. Once inside he pulled a bottle of Jack Daniel’s out of a paper sack, set it on the dresser and stared at it.
He stared for a long time before breaking the seal. He tipped the bottle back, taking three long swallows to let the fire burn through the worst of the misery.
It didn’t work. He’d already learned from the harsh example of his youth that liquor didn’t negate miseries, it only compounded them. But it had been worth a shot.
He could still smell Cobb. The sweat and blood and stench of death clung to his skin. It had been a hideous job, weighing down the body and sinking it into the river.
He’d wanted him dead. God knew he wanted the man dead. But he hadn’t known what sudden, violent and pitiless death could do.
Luke couldn’t forget how Sam had fired the gun—so casually, as if taking a life was as simple an event as an evening of cards. He hadn’t done it out of hate, or for gain or in blind passion. He’d done it thoughtlessly, like a young child might tumble a building of blocks. All because Cobb had been marginally more use to him dead than alive.
Control, Luke thought, easing down on the bed like an old man. All these years he’d thought he’d been in control. But that had been a lie. All along there had been someone behind the scenes, pulling the strings and making a mockery out of what he’d thought he’d made and could make out of his life.
All because of some twisted sense of jealousy, and an overheated grudge due to a broken nose. Anyone standing in that leather and oak office that evening would have seen that Sam was more than ambitious, he was more than cold-blooded. He was crazy. But there was only one person still alive who had seen it.
What could he do? Luke rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes as if to wipe away the image of what had been so that he could clearly see what had to be.
He’d broken into a private home. If the police knew where to look they would find the trail, and that trail would lead directly back to the Nouvelles. If Luke went to the police with a tangled story of blackmail and murder, whom would they believe? The thief, or the sober citizen?
He could risk that. Though he wasn’t certain he could face prison without going mad, he could risk that. But there was a chance Sam would make good on his other threats. Max in a mental ward, Lily devastated, Roxanne ruined. Or perhaps Sam would find murder more to his liking and kill them—kill them with the gun that carried Luke’s fingerprints.
That thought brought panic bubbling up so that he grabbed the phone and punched in numbers. His fingers grabbed hard on the receiver. She answered on the first ring, as if she’d been waiting for him.
“Hello . . . Hello? Is anyone there?”
He could see her, as clearly as if he’d conjured her into the room. Sitting up in bed, the phone to her ear and an open book in her lap, an old black-and-white movie flickering on the television.
Then the image was gone, vanished like smoke, because he knew he would never see her that way again.
“Hello? Luke, is that you? Is something—”
He set the phone down, slowly, quietly.
He’d made his choice. To answer her, to tell her would be to keep her and watch her suffer. To leave her, without a word, without a sign, would mean she would grow to hate him, safely.
Like a man already drunk, he rose and brought the bottle back to bed. It wouldn’t ease his miseries, but it might bring him sleep.
• • •
In the morning, freshly showered, the disguise in place, he checked out of the hotel and headed for the airport. He wanted to live. Perhaps only to make certain, from a distance, that Sam left the Nouvelles undisturbed. And perhaps to bide his time, to wait, to watch and to plan a suitable revenge.
Yet he had no flight plan, no destination. Though he loved to fly, his life was now as empty as the bottle he’d left behind him.
“He should have been back hours ago.” Rubbing her damp palms together, Roxanne paced her father’s workroom. “Something went wrong. He should never have gone alone.”
“It’s not his first job, my dear.” Max lifted a brightly painted box from a waist-high bench and revealed Mouse’s grinning severed head. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“He hasn’t checked in.”
“This isn’t a weigh station.” At a press of a button of the remote concealed in Max’s sleeve the head gave a long, echoing moan. Another switch and the eyes rolled left and right, the mouth moved. “Excellent, excellent. Lifelike, don’t you think?”
“Daddy.” To gain his full attention, Roxanne shoved the box back down over the head. “Luke’s in trouble. I know it.”
“How do you know it?” He switched off the remote.
“Because no one’s heard from him since he left here last night. Because he was due back by six A.M., and it’s nearly noon. Because when I called the airport to ask about John Carroll Brakeman, they said he’d filed his flight plan but he’d never shown up.”
“Obvious reasons. Just as it’s obvious the head is still inside this box.” With a show of his old flair, Max plucked the box off the table. The head was gone, replaced by a thriving geranium. “I raised you better than to accept the obvious.”
“This isn’t a magic trick, damn it.” She spun away. How could he play games when Luke was missing? Max laid a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened.
“He’s a bright, resourceful boy, Roxy. I knew the first time I saw him. He’ll be back soon.”
She hurled his own words back at him. “How do you know?”
“It’s in the cards.” To distract and amuse her, Max pulled a deck from his pocket, whipped them into a fan. But his stiffened fingers couldn’t make the flourish. To Max, it seemed as though the cards had come alive to jump gleefully from his hands and scatter. He watched with eyes dulled with horror as they flew out of his grip.
Roxanne felt his heart break as keenly as she felt her own. She crouched to gather the deck and hurried to fill the awful silence.
“I know Luke sometimes breaks routine, but not like this.” She cursed the cards, cursed age, cursed her own inadequacy to fill the gap. “Do you think I should go look for him?”
He continued to stare at the floor, though the cards were gone, hidden behind Roxanne’s back. Now you s
ee them, now you don’t. But Max had a better magic formula. He simply stopped fighting to keep his mind on what was. When he brought his eyes back to his daughter’s there was a smile in them, a mild, pleasant, utterly heart-wrenching smile. “If we look hard enough, long enough, we always find what we need. Do you know many people believe there’s more than one philosophers’ stone? But they’ve fallen into the trap of the obvious.”
“Daddy.” Roxanne reached out with her free hand, but Max shook his head, miles away from the daughter who stood watching him with tears in her eyes.
Abruptly, he slammed a book with enough force to make Roxanne jump. There was no smile in his eyes now, but there was passion, and there was desperation. “I’ve nearly tracked it down now.” He held up a ream of notes, shaking them. “When I do, when I finally have it . . .” Gently, he set the papers down, smoothing his aching fingers over them. “Well, the magic will be there, won’t it?”
“Yes, it’ll be there.” She crossed to him to drape her arms around him, press her cheek to his. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me, Daddy?”
“No, no, you run along. I have work to do.” He sat to pore greedily through ancient books with ancient secrets. “Tell Luke to call Lester,” he said absently. “I want to make certain that new lighting equipment’s in place.”
She opened her mouth to remind Max that the old Magic Door manager had retired to Las Vegas three years earlier. Instead she pressed her lips together hard and nodded. “All right, Daddy.”
She climbed the stairs and went to search out Lily.
Roxanne found her in the courtyard, throwing bread crumbs to pigeons.
“LeClerc gets mad at me for doing this.” Lily tossed a handful of shredded bread into the air and laughed when the pigeons bumped and squabbled for it. “They get doo all over the bricks. But they’re so sweet, the way they bob their heads and watch you with those little black eyes.”
“Lily, what’s wrong with Daddy?”
“Wrong?” Lily’s hand froze inside the plastic bag. “Did he hurt himself?” She turned and would have dashed inside if Roxanne hadn’t stopped her.