A Rush to Violence (A Spellman Thriller)

by Christopher Smith

“Probably.”

  “Don’t you think they’ve hired protection?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m here, Camille. I can help.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Then you don’t remember me very well.”

  He smiled at that, but regardless of the sunglasses he wore, she knew it wasn’t a smile that reached his eyes. They were different now. Time had changed them.

  “Are you still working?” she asked.

  “No.”

  That surprised her. “You’re out?”

  “I stopped three years ago.” He looked down at the duffel bag at her feet. “That’s what I do now. I help out people like you. But if you need me to go back into it, I’ll do it.”

  “I couldn’t ask that of you.”

  “You may have no choice.”

  She couldn’t deal with this now. She needed to make this as brief as possible. “I need one more favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hair color. Scissors. Makeup. There’s a second-hand clothing store just around the corner. I need something that I can move easily in. There’s also a pharmacy nearby. I can’t look like this. They can’t recognize me. At least not immediately.”

  He looked at her body. “Still a size two?”

  “Make that a three.”

  “What color?”

  “Blonde. But I’ll need to strip it first or it will look ridiculous.”

  “You think I’ve forgotten? I was there when you first went orange. And I was there when you learned what it took for someone with dark hair to go blonde.”

  She turned behind her. French pop music thumped from her daughter’s boom box. Emma wouldn’t stay in her room forever. She needed for him to leave.

  “How are you going to protect her?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve told me about your family. You know you can’t trust them, so you know you can’t leave here without her. Who will watch her when you’re out?”

  “Nobody knows I’m here.”

  “You’re smarter than that.”

  “They’ll think I’m somewhere in Manhattan. They won’t think of Brooklyn.”

  “Come on, Camille. It’s me.”

  There was no sense in arguing. The truth is that she didn’t know what she was going to do with Emma. It was the one thing she worried about most. She didn’t have an answer and so she shrugged at him. “I have nobody. And don’t say that I have you. I appreciate all that you’re doing, but I can’t involve you any further than I already have.”

  He took off his glasses and for the first time in years, she saw his eyes. Brown and clear. Thick lashes and brows. Fine lines where there weren’t fine lines before. She could remember a time when his skin was so smooth and poreless, she envied him for it. Now they were getting older.

  And if that wasn’t love she saw in his eyes, she’d be lying to herself.

  He looked at her wordlessly before he left the duffel bag and stepped back into the hallway. “Give me an hour or two. I’ll get what you need.”

  “I’ll be at the window watching. Could you leave everything on the steps? I’ll run down and get everything when you’re gone.”

  The disappointment that crossed his face was unmistakable. “You have my number,” he said. “Use it.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “You’ll come to your senses.”

  He started to walk down the hallway.

  “That woman on the phone,” she said. “Was she your wife?”

  She hated herself for asking the question, but she wanted to know.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “You said you’d never marry.”

  “Who said I have? Look for me in the window. Call if you need anything else.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It took him ninety minutes to buy what she needed.

  The cab stopped outside her building, he got out, glanced up at her in the window and then went to the stairs, where he dropped off the bags before getting back into the cab and driving away without looking back.

  She was more focused now than ever. She couldn’t let him inside—literally or emotionally. If she needed him, she knew where to call. And she knew he’d be there for her if she did.

  She moved into the living room, passed the door that led to Emma’s noisy bedroom, and hurried into the hallway. She unlocked the door, darted down the two flights of stairs, grabbed the bags from the granite steps and raced up them again.

  When she entered the apartment, she eased into it and listened. She could hear nothing but the drumming sounds of muted music. Emma’s door was closed. Earlier, Camille tucked the duffel bag beneath her bed. Not the perfect hiding spot, but in this apartment, it’s all she had and it would have to do. The items Sam just dropped off would be easier to hide.

  She was about to slip into her bedroom when Emma opened her door.

  There was an accusing look on her face. She folded her arms and nodded at the bags. “What are in those?” she asked.

  She must have been near her bedroom window when Sam left. Her daughter knew nothing about her past life, but Camille was no fool. At some point, Emma would find out. In her worst nightmares, she assumed one of her siblings would tell her out of spite, which is one of the reasons they lived in France and kept no contact with them. When Emma was older, Camille planned on telling her herself. Then, she’d try to manage the fallout, if that was possible. She dreaded the day. But now? Now the truth could destroy their relationship, something she couldn’t bear.

  “I ordered a few things,” she said casually.

  “What things? And who was that who dropped them off?”

  “A courier.” She crossed to the kitchen and put the bags on the counter top. “I need a change,” she said, removing the box of hair color from the bag. “I’m going blonde and I’m cutting my hair short.”

  “It’s taken you a year to grow out your hair. You said you wanted it longer. Now it is. Why cut it off?”

  “I just feel like something different.”

  “That’s fine, but since when do you cut and color your own hair?”

  She knew her too well—Camille always had her hair professionally done, as did Emma. If she didn’t stop this conversation now, it was only going to spiral into places she didn’t want it to go. She turned to Emma with a defeated look on her face. “Why are you trying to start an argument with me? Is this still about staying in New York?”

  “Actually, it’s about what we’re still doing in New York. That man came here earlier with another bag of some sort. It looked heavy. He had to hoist it over his shoulder. I’ve been sitting on my window sill, listening to music. I saw him when he first came and I just saw him now. Who is he?”

  “Emma—”

  “What did he bring you?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “What was in that other bag?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Before Nana died, she told me things about you.”

  Camille felt a start, but stilled it. “Your grandmother was very ill when we visited. She was delusional. We both know that.”

  “She also had her moments of clarity. We also know that. When I spoke to her, she was as clear as we are right now. I think it’s because she was concerned.”

  “With what?”

  “With you.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That when you were young, you killed people for a living.”

  And there it was, spoken as if knives were hurled across the room.

  “Is that true?”

  She looked over at her daughter and saw in her unflinching gaze a version of herself and Sam. She had raised her daughter to be strong and independent. She had raised her to question the world, to rail against what she didn’t believe, to not accept the status quo if she found it unacceptable. And that’s just what she was doing now. How could she blame her for
it?

  “I asked if that was true?”

  “You’ve waited this long to ask that question? Your grandmother died two years ago, Emma. Why now?”

  “When a strange man starts dropping off bags for you and you start being evasive about it, I’m going to question that, especially when you tell me that you want to cut off your hair and dye it blonde. Something’s going on. I want to know what it is and I want to know if what Nana told me is true.”

  She didn’t want to do this now. As mature as Emma was, she wasn’t ready for this conversation. Her instinct was to try to steer her away from it, even though she knew she’d only fail in the end. “There are things about each of our lives that are private, don’t you agree? I respect your privacy. I hope you respect mine.”

  “Just tell me, Mom. I’ve left it alone since Nana died. I want to hear it from you.”

  The wall she had constructed to protect her daughter was crumbling. She looked at her and saw in her eyes a steely determination she hadn’t seen before, at least not like this. It was as if Emma was looking straight through her. Her eyes were that focused and hard.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s sit in the living room.”

  Camille fell in step behind Emma and felt her heart race even as it sank. She could temper the truth or tell her daughter all of it. She could continue to lie about her past or she could allow Emma into it. And if she did the latter, what then? A truth this powerful could forever alter their relationship—she knew that and she feared it. It could shatter everything she had tried to build between them—a safe haven in which, for the past sixteen years, she had made every effort to protect Emma from the moment she was born.

  But apparently, for the past two years, all of that had been an illusion. In her final days, her mother had sold her out. Was it really out of concern? Or was it her mother’s way of having her final say on what her daughter had chosen to become in her youth and how much she hated her for what she considered sinking so low?

  She took the chair opposite Emma and sat down. Her daughter lifted her dark hair so it fell neatly on one of her shoulders and then she started to twist it into a knot behind her head. Camille watched her maneuver it. She felt the tension rise between them. She looked outside the window beside them and above the canopy of trees below them. Across the river was Manhattan, stretched out like an accusing finger pointing directly at her. The irony wasn’t lost on Camille. She wished she’d chosen the other chair.

  “If we’re going to do this now, I need you to listen to all of it first and then we’ll discuss it.”

  “I can do that.”

  “You won’t interrupt?”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Your grandmother told you the truth. When I was eighteen, just two years older than you, I went to Paris after high school. Your grandfather always thought it was important that all of his children see the world by themselves. No group trips, no chaperones. Just us, alone. He felt that if we were by ourselves for a period of time in other countries, we’d learn more about them and their cultures if there was no distraction from family or friends. What he imagined for us was a total immersion into new societies. But that’s how your grandfather was.”

  Emma agreed with a nod.

  “For me, the world started in Paris. It always had. Since I was a girl, I dreamed of living there. I read novels that took place there. I studied French movies to have a better idea of what life was like there, at least through a director’s eyes. When I finally arrived, you can imagine that I wasn’t disappointed. The city was everything I hoped it would be and I fell in love with it. Your grandfather had an apartment in the Marais, which is where I stayed. It wasn’t far from where we live now and it was magical. I loved the cafés, the galleries, the arts community. I fell hard for the Bohemian culture. But with that culture came a kind of seduction through the shared ideas.”

  She paused.

  “Do you remember when you were having a difficult time in school?”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you it was normal for a reason. I was never popular in school. They hated me because my parents were rich. But over there? There I had the chance to rewrite my life. No one had to know where I came from. They didn’t need to know that I was Kenneth Miller’s daughter. Because of that, I was able to recreate myself. In doing so, I made friends easily, some of whom had radical ideas about the world and how we, as individuals, had the power to change it for the better. I was young and naive, but I believed what I heard. It made sense to me what they said. Over time, their mantra became my mantra. We needed change, even if change came at a cost.”

  She closed her eyes and drifted back to that time. “The leader of the group was a young man slightly older than me. He was handsome and kind, thrilling, dangerous and intoxicating. I fell hard for him. Before long, we were lovers. After a few weeks of exploring and talking and just being with him, your grandfather started to call and ask why I wasn’t moving forward into other countries. He was so focused on making sure I used every bit of that year to travel extensively that he eventually said I had a week to leave the apartment and to move on from Paris. What he didn’t know is that I already had plans to leave.”

  “You were going to leave with that man?” Emma said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “We went to Russia.”

  “What was his name?”

  She only would reveal his first name because it was so benign. “His name was Sam and he already had convinced me that I should join him in his line of work.”

  “Which was what?”

  “Just let me talk, Emma.”

  She took a breath and turned once more to the window, which was welcoming because just beyond the glass was none of this. Sun glanced off the buildings shouldering high above Manhattan and the water leading up to it. A pigeon flew past the window and Camille wished she could hop on its wing, soar out of this room and away from this conversation.

  But she had to continue it.

  “Sam was an assassin,” she said. “He was hired to kill people. I found this out late in our relationship, but for whatever reason I didn’t end it because I believed him when he told me he didn’t take just any job that came his way. The job had to meet a certain criteria. The person in question needed to deserve to die, which sounds ridiculous until you understand the quality of people he was asked to target. They were beasts. Radical political leaders in third world countries who retained hold of their power by creating cultures of fear. Corporate leaders who maligned their workforce while making every effort to make themselves richer than you could imagine. People who organized violent hate groups so they could rob people of their dignity. Men who made millions by either enslaving children to work in sweat shops or by selling them for sex to the perverts who paid plenty for them.”

  She shrugged. “But the jobs weren’t always so intense. Sometimes, they were smaller in scope, such as when we dealt with men who physically abused their wives and children. Child molesters were common and they were taken out. So were proven serial rapists. Those were the sorts of people he agreed to target when he was approached and those were the people I was trained to target through him. Turns out I was good at my job. Soon people started to contact me. And then I was in it so deep, his ideology became my ideology.” Her eyes flashed up to meet her daughter’s. “Back then, I liked what I did. I liked stopping someone else’s pain.”

  “There are police for that. We have a court system that deals with it.”

  “In theory, we do. But when you’ve purchased an infant from a meth addict, for instance, and sold it into the sex trade, get caught, do five years and are back on the streets doing it all over again, as I’ve witnessed, you have to wonder how effective our judicial system is, Emma. Every person I killed was that sort of person. You need to know that I don’t regret one death. I don’t apologize for any of it. Every time I took a job, I made certain I had proof that the person in question
was deeply harming—or in some instances, routinely killing—others. When it was clear, that’s all I needed.”

  “You’re not God.”

  “I’ve seen too much to believe in God.”

  “Do you think you’ll go to hell?”

  “I don’t believe in hell.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “Doing what’s right. Being a good person. Raising a good daughter. Being a good daughter myself. I can go on if you want.”

  “I get the picture. When did you get out?”

  “When I was twenty-three.”

  “So, you did this for five years?”

  “Four. Not that it matters.”

  “How many people did you kill?”

  “Too many. I don’t know. Dozens.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “I stopped when I learned that I was pregnant with you. You changed everything. The life I lived was dangerous and the life growing inside me wasn’t going to be harmed because of it. The day I learned I was pregnant was the day I left that world behind. I haven’t been back since.”

  “But you’re about to go back now, aren’t you? It’s why you’ve bought the hair color and the scissors and the clothes I saw in those bags. Why are you doing this again?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I need to know. If we’re going to get through this together, if we’re going to get back on track, I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “I’m not involving you in this.”

  “I already am involved.”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s bullshit. It has to do with Papa, doesn’t it?”

  Camille sat silent.

  “He was murdered, wasn’t he?”

  She said nothing, but inside, her stomach roiled. How did she know? How could she know?

  “The fact that you’re saying nothing says it all. Papa meant everything to me. He didn’t trip over Blue—we both know that. It didn’t make sense to me when we first heard the news and it still doesn’t make sense. Papa trained that dog beautifully. We used to write e-mails back and forth when Blue was doing so well in school. He was proud of him. Blue never would have got in front of him like that, especially near a set of stairs.”