Vincent picked up his little bell and rang it three times. Seconds later, Nigel appeared.
“Show them out, will you?” Vincent said.
Nigel gave a little bow, then turned on his heels. We stood and followed him. Not one of us dared to look back.
Chapter 49
Anna Costello
BUT UNCLE Vincent had one more card to play.
“Except for you, Anna,” he said. “You and I have other matters to discuss.”
Sarah and Serena looked at each other, then at me. I thought I could hear their hearts pounding along with mine.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You girls go on. I’ll be fine. Won’t I, Vincent?”
“I’ll see she gets to her destination.”
My destination? A mud pit? An alligator’s gut? As threats go, that one was vague, but not so veiled. Vincent looked at his watch.
“The clock is ticking, ladies,” he said.
It was clear they weren’t going to budge.
“We still have Broch,” Serena said.
Now I was sure her brave streak would get us all killed.
“And you can keep him,” Vincent said, grinning. “Men like Broch are a dime a dozen. They’re meant to be disposable.”
I locked eyes with Sarah.
“Would you get her out of here, please?” I said. “I’d like some private time with Uncle.”
She took Serena’s arm, nudged her away. Nigel shut the doors behind them.
“Please, sit down,” Vincent said. “It’s a shame how seldom we’ve found ourselves with an opportunity to really talk.”
I eyed the dinner knife lying idle beside his plate. I figured it wouldn’t be idle much longer.
“I’ll pay you,” I said as I took a seat. “The house, the cars, the yacht—you can have all of it.”
“Do I look like a man who needs money?”
“I’ll disappear, I promise.”
“Oh, yes, you will. But on my terms. It’s true what I said: I can’t afford to look weak. Disposing of the cook and the maid wouldn’t exactly be a show of strength, now would it? But you? Anthony’s widow? The woman who infiltrated our family and then did her level best to destroy it? I might be merciful, but my mercy has its limits. You’re a cancer. I have no choice but to cut you out.”
He’d stood to watch Sarah and Serena go. Now he sat back down, comfy and casual as though we really were going to have a nice little chat. I took up my glass and drained it. Then I took up Serena’s and drained hers, too.
“That’s right,” Vincent said. “A little anesthetic never hurt. You can swig straight from the bottle if you like. I seem to remember your relations passing one around at the wedding.”
He leaned forward, reached behind him, and pulled a gun from his waistband. Then he took a long, cylindrical object from his pocket. A suppressor.
“This is for me,” he said. “My ears aren’t what they used to be. Anything louder than a low roar and I hear ringing for days.”
He kept talking to me while he screwed the cylinder in place. He told me I wouldn’t escape Anthony so easily. He said any two people who managed to screw up such a good thing ought to find themselves bound together in this life and the next. He sounded as though he was scolding a puppy.
“Do you know who you’re avenging?” I asked. “Anthony was laughing at you. He said stealing from Uncle Vince was like stealing from a senile baby. ‘Big tough guy,’ he said. ‘You have to hold his hand so he doesn’t wander off.’ He joked about getting you one of those toddler leashes.”
Vincent was savoring the moment, taking his sweet time assembling that gun. Something in me had changed tracks. I was more angry than afraid. Maybe Sarah and Serena had felt something similar that morning in the kitchen.
“My mind is as firm as it ever was,” he said.
“That’s what I told Anthony. I told him he was playing a dangerous game, but he didn’t care. He wanted to hurt you. It was more about the hurt than the money.”
“Why on earth would the boy have wanted to hurt me? He owed me everything.”
“Because he couldn’t bring himself to kill you. He wanted you to make the first move.”
Vincent let out a big, theatrical guffaw.
“You’re talking nonsense,” he said.
But he knew that I wasn’t. Beneath the smooth facade, a crack was beginning to open. His fingers had stopped working the suppressor. He was listening. He wanted to hear more. Certain truths would be lost to him forever once I was dead.
“Anthony hated your guts,” I said. “He knew better than to let it show, but he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t hate you.”
“Absurd,” he said.
He turned back to the task at hand, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate. The suppressor fell onto the table. He picked it up, started over. He was seething now, struggling to keep the anger down. I decided to go for the jugular. There was something I hadn’t known for sure until tonight—until Vincent said that Anthony was just like his father.
“Actually, it makes perfect sense,” I said. “I mean, you did kill his old man.”
Now I had his full attention.
“I did no such thing,” he said. “And Anthony never believed that I did.”
The second part might have been true. Anthony never talked about his father. He didn’t have much to talk about: William Costello died when his son was only three.
“Then where’s his portrait?” I asked.
“What?”
“At the country house. There’s a great big painting of you. There’s one of your father. But where’s Bill?”
He shook his head as if he was dealing with a lunatic.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy it very much.”
“Is that why those veins are bulging on your forehead? I always thought Anthony was paranoid, but it’s true, isn’t it? Bill Costello was the real brains. He set it all up. He just wasn’t ruthless enough to keep it going. That was your special talent.”
“I’m warning you,” he said. “There are slower ways to die.”
“So one day Billy just disappeared, his body never to be found. You cried so convincingly the cops skipped right over you. They looked at cartels, rival families, even a serial killer who’d been racking up bodies. But never at you.”
“They had no reason to look at me.”
I ignored him.
“You call yourself a man of principle? You’re a fake. A fraud. A con man. You stole your brother’s life.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“‘Brothers kill each other all the time.’ Isn’t that what you said? How’d you do it? A bullet to the back of the head? Quick and painless? Then again, I guess we can never really know about the pain part.”
“Enough!” he screamed, rearing up out of his seat. “I’m going to—”
But as he rose the suppressor went flying, and the gun slipped from his hand. He looked around, confused, blistering with hatred—for me, for Anthony, for himself. I lunged forward, grabbed the dinner knife, and drove it into his chest.
Chapter 50
Sarah Roberts-Walsh
VINCENT’S OUTDOOR militia milled around under the porte cochere, smoking and laughing and shuffling their feet. Now and again one of them would glance in our direction. They’d probably never seen an economy car parked outside Vincent’s castle before. Either that or they wondered why we were sticking close by when their boss had so kindly spared our lives.
“We can’t just sit here while he murders her,” Serena said.
“What are we supposed to do?”
“I’m calling the police.”
“Even if you found a cop who wasn’t in Vincent’s pocket, he’d never get here in time.”
But she already had her phone out and was punching in the access code. That brought the militia running. They surrounded the car, drew their guns but didn’t point them at us. Their foreman banged a flat palm on the hood right
above my head. I cracked my window. Serena stuck the phone back in her pocket.
“This is a no-loitering zone,” he said.
“We’re just waiting for our friend,” I told him.
“No need to worry about her—Mr. Costello will see she gets where she’s going.”
His grin was more than Serena could bear. She dove across my body, tried to gouge his eyes out through the glass. The ape laughed. His buddies joined in. Their laughter made them look grotesque, like gargoyles come to life. Serena cursed at them in Spanish. I clapped a hand over her mouth, wrestled her back into her seat.
“All right,” I said. “We’re going.”
I turned the key in the ignition. They backed away to let us pass.
“You’re serious?” Serena hissed.
“We won’t go far,” I said. “But we can’t stay here.”
I shifted into Drive, had my foot hovering above the gas pedal when Serena grabbed my arm.
“Look,” she said.
I turned my head, saw Anna through the house’s open double doors. I nearly screamed with relief. Then I saw Nigel on her heels, holding the barrel of a revolver against the small of her back.
“Mierda,” Serena said.
“Just stay calm,” I told her.
Vincent’s goons tucked their guns away and scrambled back to their station. You’d have thought they’d seen a dead woman walking. I shifted back into Park, kept the engine running.
Anna wasn’t saying anything, and neither was Nigel. They headed straight toward us, Anna keeping the pace at a crawl, careful not to give Nigel a reason to pull that trigger.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered.
Serena was gripping my leg. I felt her nails digging in. We couldn’t have been more than a dozen yards from the doors, but it felt as though we were watching them cross the Sahara. When they were close enough, Anna gestured for me to roll my window all the way down. She put her hands on the hood where Nigel could see them, bent her knees, and leaned in.
“You mind popping the trunk?” she said.
This was a rental: by the time I found the button with the right icon, Anna and Nigel were already standing behind the car, waiting. I watched them in the rearview mirror until they disappeared behind the raised hatch. My mind was racing, trying to keep ahead of whatever might happen next. I thought Nigel would shoot her, push her in, have us drive her body to the Everglades.
But then Anna shut the trunk, and I saw Nigel walking back toward the house, the gym bag dangling from one shoulder. Anna climbed into the back seat.
“Sorry, girls,” she said. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
Chapter 51
One Month Later
WE WERE gathered in the kitchen for a kind of farewell dinner party. Aunt Lindsey had a fresh batch of her triple threat simmering on the stove—the high-end kind, made with heirloom beans and chunks of tenderloin.
“Seems like the right dish to serve given the company,” she said. “God help anyone who trifles with you three.”
The smell reminded me of my childhood, seemed to erase all the ugliness of the past few months. At least for a short while.
“Us?” Anna said. “What about you? You kept Goliath at bay all by your lonesome.”
“Weren’t you scared being alone with him in that house in the woods?” Serena asked.
“Nah. You should see some of the characters who end up in my ER. Anyway, between fixing his leg and cleaning up after his playmate, I had plenty to keep me busy. I can still smell the bleach.”
“Where do you think Broch is now?” I asked.
“Probably staring out the window of a Greyhound bus on his way to Timbuktu. You know, I still can’t believe I shot a man. In all my years, I never—”
She stopped short, turned a shade darker than crimson. I understood why: grazing a man’s leg was small change compared to what Anna, Serena, and I had done. I decided to launch the conversation down a new path.
“I’m thinking that stew’s warm enough by now,” I said.
“I swear I’ve never smelled anything this good,” Serena said.
“Just wait till you taste it,” I told her.
Aunt Linds lifted the pot from the stove, set it back down on a trivet at the center of the table.
“You might want to let that cool a bit,” she said.
Meanwhile, I poured the wine.
“We should toast,” Anna said. “To our friendship.”
“To our freedom,” I said.
“To the rest of our lives,” Serena said.
We clinked and drank and filled our glasses back up to the brim.
“What promising lives they are,” Aunt Lindsey added. “Especially now that there’s no trial hanging over your heads.”
After Sean missed his first court date, police assumed he’d skipped bail. They questioned me daily, stationed an unmarked car outside Aunt Lindsey’s house, then gave up and turned the search over to Interpol. When it became public knowledge that Vincent Costello was missing, too, every paper in town assumed that Sean had killed him and either fled or been killed in turn. The police didn’t disagree, though Detective Haagen was awfully disappointed that she didn’t get to arrest anyone. I guess she had a right to be: she’d put in a ton of work and had nothing to show for it. Of course, for a homicide detective, the next opportunity is never far off.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Sarah,” Anna said. “Were you really a double agent, spying on my husband for Sean?”
The question caught me off guard. I wondered if she’d come up with it on her own or if Haagen had planted it. Either way, I was done lying.
“At first,” I said. “Sean called it important work, said I’d be saving lives by helping him bring down the Costellos. To be honest, that was never my real motivation: I thought collaborating with Sean might bring us closer together, save our marriage. But it became obvious pretty early on that he had no interest in arresting Anthony—he just wanted me to keep an eye on his business partner. Can you forgive me?”
“For what? We didn’t know each other from Adam back then. Besides, I used to pray that Anthony would get locked up. Would have left me with all of the perks and none of the headaches.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
“I just wish we weren’t all heading in different directions,” Anna continued. “I never thought of myself as a team player before you guys came along.”
She already had an eight-figure offer on Anthony’s estate. Her plan was to do a bit of traveling, then start over in New Orleans.
“I want to see how much trouble I can get into on my own, without a husband pushing me along,” she said.
Serena had big plans, too. With a financial assist from Anna, she’d be attending Emory’s law school in the fall. It wasn’t hard to picture her prosecuting the Vincent Costellos of Tecomán, making her hometown safer for future generations—maybe even for her own children.
“What about you, Sarah?” Aunt Lindsey asked. “Where are you headed?”
She’d caught me with a mouth full of triple threat. I shrugged, then swallowed hard.
“I really don’t know,” I said. “Wherever my work takes me, I guess.”
“Maybe you could cook for one of those cruise ships,” Serena offered. “See the world.”
“A sailor in every port,” Anna said.
“Isn’t it sailors who have a girl in every port?” Aunt Lindsey asked.
“That, too,” Anna said.
I laughed. I’d miss them. I really would. But we were three very different people when all was said and done. Unlike Anna, I’d had enough excitement for one lifetime; unlike Serena, I wanted nothing more to do with dangerous men. All I wanted was to shut my eyes at night feeling certain that when I opened them again in the morning I’d be facing a gentle and predictable world.
Epilogue
Michelle Brown
The sound of the miniature Liberty Bell ringing above my
head startled me even though I knew it was coming. Doris poked her head out through the kitchen’s double doors, yelled “Anywhere ya’d like,” then disappeared back inside.
I took a seat at the counter. It was the same time of day on the same day of the week as my first visit. The same elderly customer sat two stools over, wearing the same filthy John Deere cap.
“Peaceful in here,” I told him.
He kept his head buried in his paper, same as before.
I ran my eyes over the Great Wall. I’d never asked Doris how she came by all those license plates. Maybe her customers donated them. Maybe her late husband picked them up on the road.
Late husband.
We were both widows now.
“Coffee’s free with the waffles,” Doris said, setting a menu on the counter in front of me. “Only special we got today is pea soup.”
She looked a little more frazzled and a lot more tired than the last time I’d seen her—so tired and frazzled that she hadn’t recognized me yet. I wasn’t surprised: those bustling dinner shifts would have run a full staff ragged, which explained why the help-wanted ad was back up on the Great Wall.
“I’ll take the waffles,” I said. “I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”
Something clicked when she heard my voice. She stepped back, gave me a long, hard scan.
“Well, I’ll be,” she said. “Never thought I’d see you again. Not here, anyway. Maybe on the news, dressed in orange.”
I’d hoped for a warmer reception, but I knew damn well I had no right to one.
“I came to apologize,” I said.
“Apologize for what?”
I stole a quick glance at the old man in the John Deere cap. Nothing short of sixty thousand dollars spilled across the floor would get him to look up from that paper. Still, I figured I’d err on the side of discretion.
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