by Rachel Caine
Lustig rattles off an address, which happens to be in a suburb of Atlanta. A six-hour drive from where we are tonight. We agree on a 10:00 a.m. rendezvous. That means we need to be up and driving before dawn, but that doesn't bother either of us much. I feel lighter when Sam closes off the call. I feel dizzy with it. Yes. Finally.
Without thinking, I put my hand on Sam's shoulder. He reaches up and puts his fingers over mine. His touch feels so unexpected, so warm, that I realize how chilled I am. Why not, I think, and I am almost giddy with it. The kids are safe. We've got a short rest in a beautiful, calm, secure place.
He looks up at me, and I see the spark. I feel it.
He smiles a little sadly. "I know," he says. It's not exactly a question. Not exactly a statement. But it's a toe across the line, inviting me to match him.
And I want to, so much. I look at Sam, and I think that in another life I would have met this man, and liked him, and loved him, and we would have been something good. Something lasting.
But this is not that world.
I lean forward and kiss him gently on the lips, and it's sweet and soft and lovely, and it doesn't feel like mines, or traps. It feels right.
But it also feels wrong. It feels like the ghosts are screaming, and my ex is laughing, and I can't do this.
So I leave. Fast. I hear Sam say my name, but I don't look back. I go into the bedroom. I shut and lock the door. Lock it--against Sam, against myself, against the memory of Melvin crawling into the bed we shared at night. I get beneath those lavender-scented covers, still wrapped in my robe, and I ache; I ache for all the lost things, the lost moments, the cost of ever choosing Melvin Royal, even though I was young and naive and virginal when he romanced and married me. Because some mistakes you have to keep paying for, forever. Marrying a monster like Melvin . . . that's a mistake that never, ever goes away.
I can allow myself to be happy when this is done. When he's done. Maybe.
Or I will be dead. But at least I will have paid in full.
When I close my eyes, I see Melvin standing down that hill, just in the shadow of the trees with his eyes shining like silver coins. Smiling. And I whisper, "Just wait there, you son of a bitch. I'm coming for you."
I'm coming.
8
SAM
Why the fuck did I push her?
I say Gwen's name, but she doesn't respond. I want to say all the things bouncing around inside my aching head, like I need you and I'm not going to hurt you, but the fact is that although both those things are true right now, I can't guarantee they'll be true in the morning. The need part, probably. I've felt that since . . . since when? I'd memorized her face from the online photos first, and I damn sure hadn't needed her then. She'd been an empty set of pixels, something to pour my rage into. I'd looked at a thousand pictures of her and felt nothing but contempt and blind hatred. This woman helped kill Callie. I remember thinking that, over and over again. I remember wanting to hurt Gina Royal, pay her back for every wound my sister had to suffer.
I dedicated the better part of two full years to tracking her, paying for intel, following just behind her until finally she settled at Stillhouse Lake with the kids, and I could slip into the landscape. Blend in. Watch her as she went about her business. I became a member of the same gun range, both to keep up my practice and to see her up close, in situations where she wasn't as on guard.
I don't know when I started seeing past the still photo. Maybe it was the grateful, thoughtless smile she gave me when I held the door for her; I don't think she even clocked who I was, just that I was a friendly stranger. Maybe it was watching the way she shredded the target, and afterward, the look in her eyes--that shimmer of grief and rage. I knew that feeling.
Maybe it was seeing her with her kids, laughing, interested in what they had to say, sharply protective of them. I was careful. I watched from a distance, trying to catch her with her mask down, trying to see the monster underneath, the one who'd allowed my sister to die so horribly. Who was complicit in the inhuman crimes of the man she'd married, and stayed with. The man who'd abducted, tortured, and raped my sister while I was overseas, fighting for our country.
But I didn't see a woman who covered up for a monster. Instead of Gina Royal--whom I'd never once met--I saw Gwen Proctor, a woman with a faint resemblance to that other person. Someone who had a full, human personality. Who treated others kindly, if a little guardedly.
That was when I realized that those Internet trolls I hung out with online, the ones who were trying to track her movements, competing to be more aggressive, more vindictive . . . they were wrong. Wrong about who she was. What she deserved. Wrong about her kids. What else had they been wrong about? Her role in the killings?
I remember the day she opened her door to me. Her son had gone missing from school, and I'd found him nursing a bloody nose down at the lake. I'd seen the relief at finding him safe, and then that flash of pure, terrified rage that I might have done something to her child. Then the gratitude when she judged I was being honest, that I hadn't done anything but be a responsible adult.
I'd told myself I stayed around them to gather evidence of her guilt, but from that moment on it hadn't been true.
Need came later, but it came on slowly. Softly. Against my will.
I'm not prepared to say I love her. But I am willing to admit to myself that it's more than curiosity, more than liking, more than the kind of one-night-stand lust that you get over in the morning.
There are moments when it feels like I've always known her. And then, like tonight, there are moments when I feel like I don't know her at all. Like she's a mystery I'll never solve, wrapped in barbed wire and thorns and roses.
I think about what she said. Melvin Royal called her. How he'd gotten the number is a mystery, but then again, he's still working with Absalom. Maybe they'd located footage of me in the convenience store where I'd bought the disposable phones. Maybe then they'd tracked us from the rental car agency, where we'd used a fake ID. The Georgia police. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It's useless to speculate how, but the important question is . . . why? First, always, it's to torment her, and it's worked. He's unsettled her. Thrown her off balance.
Which means we are getting close to him now. Melvin deflects. Misdirects. Hits there and moves here. Classic tactics, but done with the slick, unnerving confidence of a true sociopath. I can't play chess with him; I don't even have whatever sick board he's using. But I can understand that this isn't really about Gwen. She's a piece he moves, or tries to, when it suits him. She's no longer a pawn, like she'd been when he married her, but a more powerful piece: a bishop, a rook, a queen.
Me? I am a knight. I move in unforeseen directions. Which is why, after I hear Gwen close and lock her door, I dig earbuds out of my backpack, plug them in, and start up the torture video.
This time I make myself watch it without blinking, without stopping. It's long. A full fifteen minutes of torture, degradation, and horror. A human figure suspended by the hands from a chain, anchored to the floor by another two more. Splayed out and defenseless to do anything but bleed and scream. The video's jerky and poorly lit, but now I am paying attention, walling myself off from the horror of it and focusing on details. This is not a person, I tell myself. This is an echo. A collection of light and shadow. I am reducing that suffering person to the same pixels to which I once reduced Gwen. Stripping away the humanity because that is the only way I can save myself and still watch this unrelenting horror. I'm watching it for details. For the room. Anything I can use to possibly identify a location, the victim, or the perpetrators.
My first assumption--and, I'm sure, Gwen's first assumption--is completely wrong. The person who's screaming, suffering, and dying in this video is male.
And this isn't torture done purely for the sake of sadism. It's an interrogation.
I can't really hear the questions; the sound is terrible, garbled and echoing, which--I quickly note down--means a large, metallic room of some kind, mayb
e that warehouse we've already identified. I can't make out the answers the man's giving, either, mixed in as they are with microphone-overwhelming shrieks, with gasps and coughs and bloody mumbling. I close my eyes and reverse the video, starting from the beginning. Listening for questions and answers.
I finally get a few.
How long have you been tracking us?
Months.
Did you really think we wouldn't catch you?
Please stop, for God's sake . . .
Who are you working for?
I open my eyes, because I finally understand his last response. Just one word. A name.
I write it down, sit back, and stare at it.
Then I pick up the phone and call Mike Lustig. It's late--nearly two in the morning--but I know he'll answer. He does, on the second ring, with no trace of grogginess. "You know what time it is, my man?" he asks, but it's done in place of a hello. I don't answer the rhetorical question.
"You recognize the name Rivard?"
There's a long, long pause before Mike says, "Could be thousands of them, but the only one that springs to mind is Ballantine Rivard, owns Rivard Luxe. Been a tabloid staple for--how long? Forty years? The Howard Hughes of retail. Lifetime member of the billionaire boys club, with Buffett, Gates, Trump . . . Been locked up in his tower for years now."
"Couldn't be anybody else?"
"Depends on the context, but it's a pretty rare name."
"The context is, the man who's being tortured in the video we got out of that cabin says he was hired by someone named Rivard. We already know Absalom specializes in blackmail. Somebody that rich could be a hell of a target."
"Could be," Mike agrees. "You'd better be goddamn sure before we go after that particular pale whale. You sure you want to keep involving her?"
"I'm sure." Her means Gwen. Mike isn't convinced of her innocence. Like most people, he can't fathom how she couldn't have known something, since Melvin was bringing victims home to the garage just on the other side of their kitchen wall.
That's where we differ. I got sucked under on the Internet. I got indoctrinated by the echo chamber of like thinkers who set out to believe Gina Royal was guilty, and I swallowed it completely. I was blinded by my own hatred to the extent of planning just exactly how to kill Gina Royal. Not a merciful end. One that would deliver back to her all the pain and suffering that Callie had endured.
I had a cold, hard lesson in how easy it could be to lose your way, get lost in the shadows of your own rage and other people's delusions. I understand how Gina Royal might have been blind to her husband's horrors. She had been innocent. Too innocent to understand the depth of evil on the other side of that wall.
But I know Mike won't understand that. Not yet.
"You still with me, son?" Mike says. He means son in the sense that other people say brother. We're similar ages, though he comes across as much older. "'Cause you're keeping me from my bed."
"Not your wife?"
He laughs. "Vivian's dead asleep. After all these years of me being a field agent, she can sleep through a bomb blast, bless her. Don't make for much spontaneous late-night fun, though." He sobers quickly. "Don't let that woman get too close to you, Sam. You've got a weakness."
"I know," I say. "See you in the morning."
"Hell, yes, you will. Now go to sleep."
He hangs up.
I shut down the computer, take out the USB, and after a moment's thought, put it in a zippered pocket of my backpack. I take the pack with me into my bedroom, then shut and lock the door.
I don't want Gwen getting up and doing the same thing I just did. I'd rather spare her that, even though she might hate me for it.
Only one of us needs to live with those images. I've got the thing that matters out of all that pain.
Ballantine Rivard. Rich, eccentric old man who retired years ago from the company he founded--Rivard Luxe--and hasn't been seen outside his tower fortress since. No obituaries that I could find before I called Mike Lustig. The man was still alive and kicking.
Tomorrow we are going to find him and ask him why he hired a man to infiltrate Absalom.
And what he knows about Melvin Royal.
Gwen and I have coffee out of warm, heavy mugs downstairs in the B and B's dining room. It's far too early for breakfast to be ready, but we wolf down the rest of the now-cold, still-delicious blueberry scones from the night before. The proprietor's up, and presents us with our carefully folded clean laundry, which we add to our packs, and we're gone long before the first light of dawn even begins to blush the horizon. As Morningside House disappears behind us, I hope they do well. They deserve to. Maybe someday, we'll come back for a real weekend retreat, once all this horror show is done.
The drive to Atlanta goes smoothly, and we're already inside the city limits when Mike Lustig finally calls. He gives directions to a downtown coffee shop, which mostly involves various iterations of "Peachtree," and when we find it, it's almost exactly 10:00 a.m.
Mike's sitting calmly at a table in the busy place, with a huge to-go cup sitting in front of him as he checks his phone like the twenty-or-so other people in the place. He's not visibly FBI just now; he's wearing a nice sports jacket, black pants, and a dark-gold tie. The jacket almost disguises the gun he wears in a rig at his hip, but every cop, local or state or fed, has that same habit of scanning the room like a laser, looking for anomalies. The scan catches and holds on us, and he nods at me.
"Hey," he says. "Get your own damn drinks. I don't even have a budget for my own."
I take a risk. I leave Gwen at the table with him and get in line for the coffees; I make them simple and keep an eye on the table. To all appearances, Mike and Gwen are having a civil conversation.
Appearances are wrong.
I get there with the coffee and set Gwen's down in front of her, and I see the hard shimmer in her eyes. I'm familiar with that look, and the unyielding set of her chin. They're staring at each other without speaking, and I slip into the chair to make it a triangle and say, "So I see we're getting along."
"Oh yeah," Mike says to me in an offhand kind of way that I know from experience means nothing in particular. "Ms. Proctor here was just telling me in detail why I don't know how to handle her ex-husband. So you go on, ma'am, and tell me all about how to do my damn job."
I can't tell if Mike's actually mad, or just pretending to be. Mike has made an art form out of separating how he looks from what's inside; back in the war zone, he was able to smile like a son of a bitch and drink all night with the guys, and then tell me as we were staggering home that he'd spent the whole night wanting to scream and rip his eyeballs out. I was never able to hide it that well.
"Let's not," I say, then take a too-fast, too-big swig of boiling-hot coffee. My tongue stings and goes mercifully numb. "You got info for us about this warehouse address?"
"Yeah," he says. "You want to tell me how the hell Ballantine Rivard figures into it?"
"Wait," Gwen says. "You mean the Ballantine Rivard?"
Mike gives me a questioning look. "You got that video for me?"
"Yep. But I wouldn't watch it here," I tell him. Mike is wondering what I've told her. I confessed going through the recording on the drive over, and we've gotten that inevitable argument out of the way. She's made it clear she's not happy with my choice to take that on for her, but she understands why I did it. "She knows I watched it."
"Uh-huh." Mike taps on his phone for a few seconds, then turns it outward to show a photo of an old white man, hair wispy around his skull, black-rimmed glasses framing watery brown eyes. He has a face like a basset hound, but somehow it manages to convey cleverness, too. Maybe it's the focus in the eyes on whomever, out of frame, he's addressing. He's wearing a dark-blue silk suit and tie. Hand-tailored, probably. He looks perfectly stylish despite being in a motorized wheelchair. "Ever seen him in person?" he asks her, and she immediately shakes her head.
"I only know the name. I don't exactly shop at Rivard Lu
xe."
"Yeah, you wouldn't, unless you were a one percenter who thought Neiman Marcus was too down-market," Mike says. "It's a department store for people with so much cash they use it for carpet. Upside to only selling to the stupidly rich: they never stop buying, no matter how much everybody else starves. Rivard turned a few million into about ten billion in ten years. He's worth upward of forty billion now."
"And the man who died in that video probably worked for him," I say. "Or at least, he said he did. Rivard makes sense both as a blackmail target and as somebody with the resources to try to fight back on his own terms."
"And . . . we think those people in the video torturing him are from Absalom. Right?"
"No idea," Mike says, "since I haven't seen the damn thing yet." He holds out his hand. I unzip my backpack and hand it over. Gwen's eyes narrow, and I see her biting back an impulse to say something cutting to me. I'm sure it'll come later. We'll have a good argument about how I don't have any right to protect her, and she'll be correct. But Gwen doesn't need my permission, and I don't need hers, and sooner or later she'll protect me, too. She already has, more than once.
The USB drive disappears like a magician's assistant with a quick, fluid motion of Mike's hand. Now you see it, now you don't. I'm glad I made a copy and put it up in cloud storage. Just in case. "And the documents?" he asks. Gwen's turn; she hands them over in a manila folder. He seems satisfied with that, though he gives the rest of the papers a good going-over, too, once he puts on a pair of evidence gloves. The paper with the warehouse address is on top, and he nods. "Okay, then. Let's drink up and do this thing."
My coffee is still too hot to give it another attempt, and Gwen doesn't seem to want hers at all. Pity, but I dump both cups on the way out the door. Mike follows us, and I frown back at him. "You're not taking your own car?"
"Nope," he says. "My official car has monitoring." And, I realize, he doesn't want it showing up on any routine GPS checks the FBI might do. He crams himself into our backseat, which isn't easy to do with those long legs, but then again, he must manage it in airplanes, and the FBI damn sure doesn't pay for business class. While I'm getting the car started, he takes out his phone and powers it off. "You should shut both of yours off, too," he tells us. "Trust me."