“Don’t be so sure.”
She reached in and began piling jewelry and coins and bars of bullion on a rosewood table. Cain paid less attention to the loot than to the sleek, rippling muscles of her arms. There was still some baby fat on her, but a lean, mature young woman was emerging fast.
She dug deeper. The safe seemed bottomless, a cornucopia of wealth. Cain saw stacked Krugerrands taped together, kilogram bricks of silver with Credit Suisse certificates attached, handcrafted pendants and bracelets and earrings that must be Ashcroft family heirlooms.
“You were right.” His voice was very low. “Nothing but stock certificates.”
The girl bit her trembling lip.
“It’s not smart to lie to me. Ally. That bitch cop lied too. Played games on the radio. Now she’s dead.”
The last word wrenched Ally’s head sideways. “You killed her”
“Bad things happen to liars.”
Tears muddied her eyes. “But … but she was unconscious, that’s all. She was still breathing.”
“Not anymore. My associates put her in the lake.”
“The lake” The girl stared at her trembling hands. “I-I go swimming there. Go swimming.”
The words, soft and toneless, were spoken only to herself.
“Well, next time you take a dip”-Cain smiled through his mask-“you can say hello to Officer Robinson. And give her my regards.”
Ally resumed emptying the safe, weeping without sound, and Cain watched her, wondering why she would mourn for a woman she had never known.
21
A young girl skipping rope.
She was nine years old, in a summer dress of blue polka dots, her laughter high and thin and echoey like the keening of birds.
Marta.
The cry, so plaintive, so urgent, was Trish’s own.
Marta, do you hear me
Sweeps of the jump rope, bounce of blonde bangs. The girl was laughing, laughing. She didn’t hear. She never heard.
Marta-don’t!
A blur, a lens slipping out of focus, and the girl was gone, just gone.
Only her laughter persisted, mysterious and haunting-disembodied laughter in a horizonless field of white.
Are you there, Marta … Answer me!
Eyes.
Huge eyes, filling the world, staring blindly. A roach crept among a forest of stiff lashes, antennae twitching.
The eyes were bloodshot and unblinking. Marta lay in the weeds, limp, twisted, the jump rope knotted around her neck in a python’s caress.
Oh, God, Marta. Trish heard suppressed sobs in her voice. I told you not to. I told you.
No response, no flicker of life in those staring eyes, save for the jerky progress of the roach, balanced on a glassy iris like a skater on a pond.
Trish shivered, suddenly cold, cold all over.
Wet and cold.
Wet …
She jerked awake.
For a disoriented moment she blinked, looking around. Vaguely she expected to see the porch light glowing through her curtains, the dark shapes of the scattered shipping cartons she still hadn’t unpacked, the luminous dial of the alarm clock resting near the foam pad where she slept.
Nothing. There was nothing.
And she was not lying on the pad, and this was not her new apartment, not any place she’d ever been.
The darkness was impenetrable, absolute. Her arms were twisted awkwardly behind her. She was soaked in chilly water, pants and shirt glued to her buttocks and back.
Pants, shirt-her uniform. She’d been on duty.
A groan escaped her lips as she remembered.
The prowler call. The Kents and their dinner guests. The cartridge case on the tablecloth. Ambush. Wald dead. A stinging blow behind her right ear.
They’d knocked her out and put her here, in this lightless, freezing, watery place.
Fear squeezed her heart. Impulsively she tried to bring her arms forward. Pain ripped her wrists as metal teeth bit down. Handcuffed-she was still handcuffed-and there was no air in here, no air, and she couldn’t breathe.
Come on, stop it, she was hyperventilating, that’s all. She had to breathe through her nose, through her nose …
Lips pursed, inhaling slowly, she convinced herself she wouldn’t suffocate. She was all right. Yes. She could get air in her lungs and she wasn’t going to die and she was all right.
The burning dampness in her eyes was a splash of tears.
What was this place What had those bastards done with her
She lay on her back, wrists pinned under her, knees partially bent in a semi-fetal pose. Immobility was bad, but the utter absence of light was worse.
No blindfold on her face. She was sure of that. So why was it so dark, so completely dark, without even the dim ambient light that bled into nearly any locked room
Had they-oh, God, had they done something to her eyes Blindness was her worst fear. That and paralysis. And now she couldn’t see and she couldn’t move, and the tears came faster.
She was so damn scared. Even when the gray-eyed man had held his gun on her, she hadn’t been this scared. She had known what was happening, it had made some sort of sense, but this was a nightmare, a parallel universe, insanity.
A wave of shudders rippled through her body. Both legs straightened reflexively, her shoes banging against a hard stop.
A wall.
She kicked it-again-again.
Hollow metallic thuds.
Metal wall Some sort of bulkhead
Her terror escalated, though she didn’t know quite why. She made little mewling, grunting noises as she probed further.
Intersecting walls on either side. Maybe a yard apart.
Bigger than a coffin, but not much.
“Where am I” she whispered, her voice hoarse and faraway.
The water pooling under her seemed colder than before. No, not colder, just more pervasive, spreading to parts of her body that had been dry only moments ago.
Spreading …
She stiffened. Breath held, she listened tensely. Heard a soft, continuous gurgle from behind her and below.
Water seeping in through fissures and seams.
Water that was rising steadily and would keep on rising until she was fully immersed.
Her heart pounded harder. Sightlessly she sat up, and her forehead struck a ceiling, metal also and impossibly low.
That can’t-breathe sensation was toying with her again. She knew it was psychological. There was still
