The other men, similarly armed, were slighter but just as menacing, shared his same unhealthy pallor. The two smaller men looked like brothers, each with sandy-blond hair and something weak about the set of their jaws. I tried to say something but the horror of my situation had made my mouth dry, filled my throat with gauze. I found myself inching backward, like a crab, on feet and hands. Every instinct in my body made me want to be away from these men.
The large man raised his free hand. “Just stay still,” he said with a smile. “Please don’t move.”
I recognized his voice instantly from the voice mail I’d heard. Ivan. But I was smart enough not to say so. I looked at each pair of eyes, searching for something I could relate to. But there was no fear, no remorse there. None of them even glanced in Fred’s direction, as if they were accustomed to being in the presence of violence and spilled blood.
“Just tell us where he is. And,” Ivan said, shrugging and pointing to the door, “we leave.”
I had completely lost my ability to communicate; this scenario was so far out of my frame of reference, something that I might have imagined and written. But nothing in my life had prepared me for this type of event. I looked over at Fred, then back at Ivan. He gave me an almost friendly smile but there was something terrible about it, something dark.
“He’s not dead,” he said lightly. He pointed to Fred and then to his own square brow. “The head. It bleeds a lot, you know?”
To illustrate, he walked over to Fred and gave him a soft kick in the ribs. I was elated to hear my stepfather groan in pain, see his eyelids flutter. I moved over to him quickly, felt his blood soak through my skirt. I put a hand on his forehead; it was cool and clammy. I looked up at the three men.
“If you’re looking for Marcus,” I said, finally finding my voice, “I have no idea where he is.”
Ivan regarded me carefully, seemed to size me up and consider my words. I became conscious of time passing quickly. My cell phone was in the pocket of my skirt. I wondered if I could press 911 and send without him noticing. Fred needed help fast.
“He betrayed me, stole from me,” Ivan said, angry, almost petulant. “He tried to kill me.”
He lifted his shirt with his free hand to show me a swath of bandages around his chest, too much blood-garish red against the white-seeping through the gauze. I saw sweat emerge on his gray forehead. Was he the one I’d heard screaming? One of his colleagues lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall. The smell filled my sinuses. I shifted my hand into my pocket. But Ivan shook his head at me. I removed it slowly.
“He betrayed me, too,” I said finally. We could have been discussing anything-the crumbling economy, bad weather, gravity, forces out of our control that can change our lives. I felt a sudden wash of rage.
“Look at me!” I yelled suddenly, startling all of them. Both of the smaller men raised their guns. The smoker let his cigarette drop to the floor. I pointed to my own head. “Someone did this to me. A tall woman, a blonde, from Czech like you. She destroyed Marcus’s office, probably my home, too. They took everything from me. If I knew where he was, do you think I’d be
Ivan considered me. I noticed a deep scar on his face, that his hands were callused. I was still yelling, trying to make him understand.
“Hush, hush,” he said, as though he was talking to a weeping child. And I realized I
I saw it then, the way he didn’t like me yelling, was uncomfortable with my tears. He was a bit on the slow side, not quite disabled but someone with a very low IQ. There was something babyish about him, too, and something skittish. A child used to being brutalized, one who’d developed a flinch. Suddenly there was a strangely familiar expression on his face, something around his red-rimmed eyes, the corners of his mouth. I thought of Marcus’s photo album. Had he been in there? Had I seen him before?
“She was tall. Nearly as tall as you, with blond hair and green eyes,” I said more softly. “She knew Marcus,” I continued when he didn’t say anything.
He nodded slowly, a deep frown furrowing his brow, his expression going dark.
“Do you know who I’m talking about?”
He nodded again, but this time to his two friends. He said something in Czech that I didn’t understand. The two men both looked at me for a second and I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. They got what they wanted from me and now they’d have no use for me or Fred. I’d lost my gamble. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, the two smaller men had moved toward the door and were exiting. I heard their footfalls on the landing. They were bold, these men. Coming and going in broad daylight, not hiding themselves or their vehicle. Were they careless or apathetic? Aware that the property was removed from the street, not visible to the neighbors? They must have been watching the apartment, followed me up here from the city. I’d been too oblivious, too naive to notice.
A second later, with my heart a turbine engine in my chest, I heard a car hum to life outside. Ivan raised his gun at me, but this time I didn’t look away. I didn’t want to make it easier for him to kill me; I wanted him to see my eyes.
“Who is he?” I asked. “What’s his name?”
Fred shifted and moaned beside me. Ivan offered that same weird smile again, this time accompanied by a low chuckle.
“Tell me,” I said, holding his gaze. “I need to know. If you’re going to kill me, I want to know my husband’s name before I die.”
Something strange passed between us. Two people who might as well be living on different planets, our experiences and ideas, our intellects were so opposite. In that moment, we were unified by rage and betrayal. He lowered his gun.
“His name is Kristof Ragan.” The smile dropped from his face. “He is my brother.”
He raised a finger to his lips then and made a shushing noise. Then he took that same finger and drew it slowly across his neck, whispering something in Czech that I didn’t understand. On the other hand, I don’t suppose I needed an interpreter.
Then he turned and left, more quickly and gracefully than I would have imagined possible of a man his size. I was already dialing 911 when I heard the car move down the drive.
BY THE TIME Linda returned to the loft, she was frazzled and drained. After a long, slow trip uptown to Isabel’s apartment, she learned that she’d missed her sister by minutes, according to the cop in the hallway. She was shocked to look over his shoulder and see Izzy’s apartment trashed, but she wasn’t allowed inside. The detectives working the case had also left, following up a lead. She left feeling frustrated and filled with a sick anxiety. She’d inherited her mother’s proclivity for worry. Fight it as she might, she’d never quite been able to overcome it.
She had a tension headache brewing when she closed the door and saw Erik waiting on the couch. Something about the look on her husband’s face ratcheted the pain up a notch. Dread and guilt duked it out in her chest as she moved closer to him.
“What?” she said by way of greeting, more testily than she’d intended.
“We need to talk, Linda.” She felt a jangle of alarm as she flashed on her assignation in the bathroom at the Java Stop. So tawdry. So foolish. Did she
“Sure,” she said, laying her bag by the door. She moved over to the couch and curled herself up in a ball there. In spite of the tension, she still found herself glancing about at the perpetual mess that was their home. If it was cluttered, at least it was clean-but only because of the weekly cleaning woman. How long had Trevor’s soccer jersey been hanging off that chaise? Wasn’t it anybody else’s responsibility but hers to pick up after the kids? Weren’t they old enough to pick up their own stuff?
“Don’t worry about the mess, Linda. I’ll take care of it in a minute.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He released a breath through his nose. He was perched on a stool, a half-full glass of water in his hand. She found she couldn’t look at him directly, couldn’t hold those earnest, loving eyes. She didn’t deserve that gaze. She looked down at her fingernails. Her nails were a mess; she needed a manicure.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said. He shifted off the stool and came over to her, sat heavily beside her on the couch. “I’ve done something really stupid, possibly unforgivable, Linda.”
