by Leigh Tudor
“Cliche’s exist for a reason, Ava.”
Loren turned toward him. “I’m no longer Ava. You can never call me that, Vlad. My name is Loren, Mara is now Mercy, and Charlotte is Cara. Have you mentioned our prior names to anyone in Wilder?”
He brought the glass to his lips, and hesitated. “If I had, what you do? Kill them?”
“No, but I might kill you for being a liability.”
“You not kill me. I love your sister.”
Loren stilled as she pulled a box of cereal from the pantry. Finding her bearings, she turned, placing the box on the kitchen table. She grabbed a bowl that was left drying on the countertop next to the sink and then reached into the refrigerator for milk.
She cleared her throat. “For how long?”
“Do not worry, padruga; I do nothing to regret.”
She snorted. “As much as I hate to pop your vodka-infused bubble, that doesn’t make me feel better.” She sat in the chair across from him, pouring the cereal into her bowl. “I’ve met plenty of people who’ve done some pretty heinous shit and didn’t think twice about it.”
“I not Doctor Halstead.”
“I have no idea who that is.” She took a scoop of cereal and stared into her bowl. “Never heard of him.”
“I was deported back to Russia after Halstead die. After you escape.” He eyeballed her as he ran his finger around the edge of the glass. “I know you kill him.”
She stopped chewing.
“You find arsenic?”
She began to chew slowly, remembering that day very well. Finding misplaced or discarded items was like a game to her. But when she found the arsenic, it was as if she’d found the unholy grail.
“You think someone might put vial where you find it?”
She stilled, was he blackmailing her or confessing?
“It took time to place where you find vial before others. I too being watched.”
Well, that answered that. She looked up, and swallowed. “Why were you being watched?”
“I question your sister symptoms. Her medical information, all fail to, how you say, ‘correlate.’”
“Why would you leave a vial of arsenic within reach of a well-documented psychotic?”
“You not psychotic. Mar—Mercy not psychotic.”
Her eyes narrowed.
He poured more vodka into the jelly glass and downed it. “I began going through files. Those to which I had access. I find nothing to unmake conclusion.”
“So . . .?”
“So I ask your sister.”
“You asked her, an insane person, if she was insane?”
“I ask her why she there.”
She picked at a deep scratch in the table-top. “And she told you?”
“Da.”
“And you believed her? Why?”
No one else at the Center believed them, or ever spoke to them except when it was necessary. “Breathe in, breathe out”; “Open your mouth and say ah”; or, “This might hurt,” just before setting a bone. Let alone cared to ask what brought them to the bucolic state of Utah. Besides, it was all in their files. And if they expressed any pleas to the contrary, the staff dismissed them as part of their delusional psychoses.
“I believe her because what she tell me correlate with gaps in medical information. And because—”
She glanced up, her brow arched. “You love her.”
He smiled sadly and nodded. “Da.”
“Does she feel the same?”
“I hope, padruga.”
“So, what are you saying? That you’ve never shared your feelings with her?”
“The Center watch everything. Conversation with patients not permitted. I barely manage to find private place to ask her real story.” He swiveled the glass on the table. “She young. I wait for her be older. Wait until she understand. To share feelings. I give her time. Now, she older. She knows. She knows my heart.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I tell her with eyes.” One side of his mouth turned up.
Loren sat back in her chair, openly perusing the handsome Russian sitting across from her. She had to admit, he was charming. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think Mercy could have fallen in love with the only person who cared to have a real conversation with her that just so happened to look like Edward Cullen in that vampire movie they watched last week. “What are you, twenty-eight? Thirty?”
He smirked. “Twenty-seven. I not age well?”
“That would make you, what, twenty-four when you came to the Center? Most physicians begin their careers at thirty, maybe twenty-nine.”
He smirked. “For genius, you not see obvious.”
She hesitated, then it came to her. Before she could confirm her suspicions, he opened up.
“I too, ‘gifted.’ Not high as you and sisters. I graduate from university at eighteen. Come to US on student visa, graduate medical school twenty-two.”
“Hmm,” she clucked with a shrug. “What took so long?”
He smiled. “I need learn English, padruga.”
She tapped her fingers on her lips, doing her best not to show how impressed she was.
He continued, “Three years internship and residency, I am twenty-five, recruited by most prestigious neuroscientist for Savant Syndrome, Dr. Halstead.” He put the stopper back on the bottle. “I was easy choice. Brilliant doctor, easy to deport when services no longer needed.”
Suddenly an anxious Mercy was in the kitchen doorway. “Umm . . . we have company. It’s either a hulking man posing as a Hemsworth, or our surly neighbor who has the patience of a bomb squad.”
“Ally!”
Loren’s eyes widened at the familiar voice of her highly suspicious neighbor and then noticed the kitchen, which had suffered from last night’s physical altercation.
It could’ve been worse, considering the element of surprise Vlad bestowed upon her in the middle of the night. But the broken glass, cracked cabinet doors, and kitchen chair with one bent metal leg would tell a different story.
Loren turned to Mercy. “Any chance you noticed a vein pulsating in his neck?”
“Have we ever seen him otherwise?” she asked, leaning in the doorway. “He’s convinced Ally’s here. He’s waiting impatiently in the living room. Told him to give us five minutes to get dressed and we’d establish a search party complete with bloodhounds, the local police—all three of them. And the town psychic.”
“How you feel, milaya?” Vlad asked Mercy, raw concern in his eyes.
She looked at Vlad and then to her bare feet. “Fine, thanks to you.”
As many questions as that generated, Loren couldn’t allow their fire-breathing neighbor to see the chaos that was sure to refuel his skepticism and encourage questions she had no intention of answering.
Protecting their newly minted identities had to be the number one priority. And now, a certain love-sick Russian doctor was sitting in their kitchen, belting down 80-proof grain alcohol. And as much as Loren wanted to send him back to the Gulag, she couldn’t bring herself to fault him for coming to her sister’s aid.
And loving her.
So, if only for the good sense of falling for Mercy, he had to be protected as well.
“Quick,” she clipped, grabbing the broom and brushing the broken glass from the kitchen door into the pantry.
Mercy stashed the items that had fallen when Vlad crashed into the cupboard.
They heard Alec’s heavy footsteps making their way to the kitchen and they instantly stood straight, acting as nonchalant as their heaving chests would allow.
“Where’s Ally?” he asked, reaching the doorway into the kitchen and then came to an abrupt stop. “What happened?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, taking in the kitchen.
Loren took a calming breath not altogether sure what had her more flustered, the state of their kitchen or the testosterone-riddled specimen testing the confines of her doorway, wearing jeans, work boots, and one of those waffle-weave shirts, the sl
eeves pushed up to his elbows.
“What? Nothing,” Loren said, leaning on the kitchen counter and closing the knife drawer behind her.
“Okay, let’s try this again. What happened to your kitchen door?”
“We’re replacing the windows,” Loren explained with an overly wide smile. “A few of them were cracked. You know us, always with the house projects.”
He glanced to his side, clearly seeing the baseball bat leaning against the wall. Loren winced, remembering she’d left it there last night. As he bent over to pick it up, Loren and Mercy both eyeballed the butcher knife on the floor. Mercy kicked it toward Loren who stopped it by the handle with the ball of her foot, inches from the sharp blade. Alec glanced up at the scraping sound. She quickly opened the pantry door and kicked it out of sight.
Alec stood with the bat, tapping it into the palm of his other hand, eyes focused on Loren. “You in the habit of using bats during house projects?”
“Don’t be silly,” Loren huffed, “we just leave that in the kitchen in case we all decide we want to play . . . ball.”
Alec’s eyes settled on the back of Vlad’s head, narrowed, and then eyed Loren as if to say, care to explain?
How does one explain a Russian sitting in their kitchen doing shots of vodka before the noon hour? Not that she had to explain, but she had to be careful and stick to Vlad’s, sketchy-at-best, manufactured identity.
Something about being part Crimean and part Russian and assisting farm animals in the act of procreating. . . . “This is our friend, Vlad,” she said, deciding to stick as close to the truth as possible. “Vlad, this is our neighbor, Alec Wilder.”
Heat began to surface on Loren’s face as Alec took in the extra small tee and sleeping shorts that all but showed her lady bits.
Sans bra, no less.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
Thankfully, Alec turned toward Vlad, and they shook hands. Vlad with a shit-eating grin on his face and Alec with expressionless eyes.
“Vlad came for a visit.”
Alec cocked his head, his eyes lighting on her tee that shielded very little. “Must be a very good friend. Where you travel from, Vlad?”
“Russia,” he replied with his thick accent.
“Russia?” Alec asked with raised eyebrows.
“Da.” Realizing his mistake, Vlad over-corrected and blurted. “Ukraine. I come from Ukraine.”
Despite looking as if the conflicting answers to his question only conjured more, he turned to Loren. “Where are the girls?”
“The girls?” Loren asked. “Cara’s sleeping, but we haven’t seen Ally.”
Now that she thought about it, how did Cara not hear the commotion in the kitchen last night, or, for that matter, Alec yelling for Ally through the house?
A quick puzzled glance by Loren toward Mercy had her sister moving out of the kitchen and up the staircase.
Alec continued, “Are you telling me Ally didn’t spend the night here last night?”
Loren shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
He pulled a piece of paper from a pocket and showed it to Loren. “I found this note when I got home last night.”
The note advised Alec that Ally was spending the night at Cara’s house and would be back in the morning.
“I grounded her when we got home from school yesterday. After stopping by here I went for a beer at Lucky’s, came home, and found the note. It was late so I decided to wait to come get her this morning and extend her punishment another week. I’ve been trying to call her phone, but she’s not answering.”
Mercy rushed back into the kitchen. “Cara’s not here, but look at what I found on her nightstand.” She handed a printout to Loren, announcing a concert spotlighting a Queen cover band in Dallas. “Our little sister totally sucks at subterfuge. We’re going to have to work with her on how to better hide her tracks—”
“Mercy,” Loren interrupted with pursed lips. “Let’s focus on finding them.”
Mercy nodded rapidly. “Right, I’ll get your laptop so you can get inside the network of street cameras and find a match with Cara’s profile. I’ll hunt down the schematic of the concert hall from the Fire Marshall’s database showing the entrances and exits.”
Mercy left the room and returned with two laptops and sat beside Loren as they each began to login to their devices.
Alec’s eyes moved slowly back and forth between the two women. “Why don’t I just go into my Find Friends app”—he raised his phone—“and locate them?”
Loren looked up, realizing theirs was an overzealous approach. “Or, we could do that.” She slowly closed her laptop.
“Found them,” he said, laying his phone on the table so the others could see. “They’re on their way home. Should be back within the hour.”
Loren felt a swell of relief, knowing they were safe and on their way home. But then, anger quickly took over.
“What should we do?” Loren asked, looking around the room for answers. “They should be punished, right?”
“Of course, they should be punished,” Alec said. “For beginners, I’m going to ground Ally for at least a month. No phone, no iPad, no television, meeting up with friends, or going to after-school events. What they did was reckless. I’m going to make sure she thinks twice the next time one of them comes up with another brilliant idea.”
“That’s good,” Loren nodded. “Put them in virtual and physical lockdown.”
Mercy continued to peck on her laptop. “Says here that an effective punishment requires taking away the one thing they love the most.”
Loren and Mercy looked at one another, saying what they both were thinking at the same time. “The piano.”
Alec continued to watch this strange telepathic interaction with growing interest.
Mercy covered her mouth with her hands and then lowered them. “Cara is going to totally hate you.”
Loren closed her eyes at the thought, leaning her elbows on the table. She clasped her hair in both hands. “Why are our strait-laced, rule-abiding sisters turning into future prison inmates?”
“Boys,” Vlad said succinctly.
“Boys?” Loren looked from Vlad to Alec. “Cara doesn’t hang out with boys, the only friend she has is Ally.”
Vlad shrugged. “I have five older sisters. I tell you, girls reach certain age and hormone take over. Boys convince them go on road trip, drink alcohol.”
“You think they were drinking?” Mercy blurted, incredulous.
“It is likely,” Vlad said.
“Oh my God, Loren,” Mercy said, turning to her sister and grabbing her upper arm. “Do you remember the movie Superbad? All the drinking and . . . and . . . teenage sex? I knew we should have hit her over the head with the shovel.”
Alec continued to gawk at the exchange.
Loren held Mercy by her forearms. “She’s fine. You know how I know that?”
“How?”
“She’s Emma Stone in Superbad. Jonah Hill’s love interest? In the movie, Emma was levelheaded and . . . the voice of reason.”
Mercy nodded. “You’re right. There’s no way Cara would drink or have sex. She’s too much of a self-righteous do-gooder.”
“Exactly, she was probably watching out for her friends, being extra responsible, all while holding everyone in contempt.”
Alec cleared his throat to gain their attention. “Tell you what, while you two research parenting skills and talk yourselves into believing our altruistic sisters went to Dallas to look out for their corrupt friends, I’m going home and putting a padlock on Ally’s bedroom door and forging a chastity belt out of a piece of steel.”
Alec stalked toward the kitchen door and opened it, a loose pane of glass barely missing his hand as it dropped to the floor. He paused, took a deep breath and then stepped outside, closing the door behind him.
Loren stared after him, knowing she’d have some explaining to do, but she also had to prioritize.
“Look up
chastity belt,” she said to Mercy.
Chapter Sixteen
“No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.”
—William Kingdon Clifford
Mathematician and philosopher
who introduced what is now termed geometric algebra
* * *
There are few things in life more resolute and impenetrable than two teenage girls who share a common cause.
And a shitty attitude.
Upon their return, neither Cara nor Ally were remotely forthcoming, executing a well-planned united front.
To make matters all the more frustrating, whoever had driven them to Dallas dropped them off at the end of the driveway, which made Loren’s list of those to interrogate, outside of Cara and Ally, devoid of names.
She and Mercy cursed themselves for the rookie mistake, acknowledging their little sister had acquired some guile over the last few weeks.
Either that, or they’d lost their edge.
They totally should have staked out the end of the drive.
Instead, they’d ridiculously waited for a car to pull up to the house and were therefore slack-jawed and speechless when the girls walked through the front door as if nothing were amiss.
They rallied, like the highly trained intimidating interrogators that they were, circling the tight-lipped teenagers as they peppered them with questions. The girls responded with one-word answers or even more infuriating, one-shoulder shrugs.
After a few pointed questions concerning drugs and alcohol, the girls rolled their eyes and snorted with outright contempt until Loren was afraid Mercy was going to lose her shit and coldcock both of them.
That’s when Loren pulled Mercy into the half bath for a well-deserved break from the interrogation.
Mercy splashed water on her face, pulling a towel from the holder. “I’m this close to committing domestic violence on those little mongrels. How do parents do it? How do they balance wanting to protect their kids with wanting to beat the ever-loving shit out of them?”
“No idea,” Loren said, rubbing her eyes while leaning against the back wall. “But I think our cross-examination efforts are futile. Neither one of them is even close to caving.”