A Dangerous Game (26 page)

Rufus hurried back to the door, where the man stood waiting. Wren followed, noticing how the guy’s pale blue eyes lit up with recognition once they focused on Rufus. The man cocked his head, a lazy grin spreading across his features, which he quickly erased.

“Rufus? Man, what are you doing here?” He shook his head. “This is so not cool—you showing up here—at my home.”

“Sorry, Dan.”

Rufus stood before the man, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Wren wondered what he would say. He couldn’t very well ask to see the man’s wife. This guy had been blackmailed—and had been with several of the À Louer escorts. If anything would send this rich family man into a panic, well, here it was, right on his doorstep.

Rufus finally spoke. “We just stopped by because we didn’t know if you’d heard about what was going on. With Evan?”

Dan’s face went dark. “I heard,” he said softly.

They stood facing each other until the silence became uncomfortable. Finally Dan said, “Is that all?”

Rufus scratched his head and blurted, “Are you here by yourself today?”

“Yeah, why?” Dan looked wary, and then he focused on Wren. “Who’s this?”

“This is my friend Wren.”

Wren nodded. The situation had gotten too bizarre and surreal—he couldn’t think of a word to say.

“No reason. I just know you mentioned having a wife and kids. I wouldn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position.”

“Really?
Really?
And how did you think coming here wouldn’t do just that? How did you know I’d be here alone, anyway? Normally I’m not, but Martha and the girls are up at Lake Geneva at our summer place. I’m only here now because I had some work to take care of before I join them later today.” Dan stepped closer to Rufus, and there was menace in the closeness. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you.”

Dan shook his head. “I’m not buying what you’re trying to sell. Now get out of here before I call the cops. Unless you boys want to come inside and give me a freebie? A little three-way action?”

“Jesus,” Rufus sputtered. “We’re going.”

And both of them, to Wren’s great relief, headed away. Dan wasted no time in slamming the door behind them.

They said nothing on the several blocks’ walk back to the train station. As they were waiting for the arrival of the next city-bound train, Rufus said, “I guess that was a dead end. I’m sorry I put you through that.”

“Well, maybe now we can abandon this plan? Put it in the hands of the police, where it belongs?”

Rufus stared at him for a long time before responding. They were seated on a bench outside, and the summer air was heavy with humidity all around them. A dull, lifeless breath of wind lifted some of Rufus’s thatch-colored hair off his forehead, and he smiled. Wren could see, suddenly, how tired the man was, how afraid.

Rufus said, “You really do give a fuck about me, don’t you, little man?”

“Haven’t you realized that yet?”

“Yeah. I just didn’t want to listen. I wanted to make this right. I’m still scared.”

“And you still haven’t answered me. Will you talk to the cops? Use that business card they left behind? It’s obvious whoever is doing the killing, it’s not Dan’s wife. You heard him. She’s up at Lake Geneva with their kids.” It all sounded so innocent. “So we don’t know who’s doing this, but I do think your hunch about it being related to the blackmailing is right, and you do have good cause to be afraid.” Wren grabbed Rufus’s hand and clutched it. “I am not gonna let you out of my sight until someone’s caught, until you’re safe. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You’ll call?”

“As soon as we get home. Good?”

“Good.”

They heard the approach of the southbound train and stood, shielding their eyes from the sun as the train rumbled into the station.

Aboard, the gentle rocking motion of the train and perhaps relief that he was no longer going to have to do battle with a psychotic madwoman allowed Rufus to relax a bit, his head on Wren’s shoulder.

When the conductor came around, checking for tickets, he eyed the two men warily, but Wren didn’t care.

THE HEAT
had intensified, even on the short train ride home. As Wren headed down Catalpa Avenue with Rufus, he couldn’t wait to get inside his air-conditioned apartment. Maybe once out of the heat and away from the stress of going to Kenilworth, Rufus would finally listen to reason. He had promised to call the cops, and Wren intended to make sure the promise wasn’t an empty one.

Once inside, Wren took Rufus in his arms. He kissed him gently. Rufus pulled away, smiling at him.

“What was that for?”

“Because you did the right thing. Because you came back here.” Wren knew not to force the issue. He realized from watching his mother’s wise parenting over the years that the best way to get a person to do something you wanted was to give them a choice. Although Wren realized that, if they wanted to be safe and Rufus to safeguard his own life, there was really no choice—they had to call the police. But what he said was “God, it’s hot out there. You wanna lie down for a bit, cool off? Or do you just want to call those detectives now and get it out of the way first?”

“You are so lame. So transparent.” Rufus tousled Wren’s hair. “I’ll call. Let me just take a piss first.” Rufus disappeared into the bedroom to use his en suite bath.

Wren plopped down on the couch, hoping the end was maybe now, at last, in sight. He wondered what would happen to Rufus now that À Louer was no more. Would he lose this condo? What kind of work could he get? Would he go back to being an escort? This last thought sent a hot twinge of jealousy and pain through him.

Before he could consider anything else, though, there was a cry of alarm from the bedroom and then the sounds of a scuffle. Wren leapt to his feet as he heard a high-pitched, enraged scream. His heart pounded, his adrenalin pumped out in overdrive.

All this took place within a few seconds.

Wren stood, darted across the living room, and pushed into the bedroom so hard the door slammed back against the wall.

The scene that greeted him was surreal. He did one of those sitcom double takes, opening and closing his eyes because he simply could not accept what he was seeing as reality.

Rufus was holding the arm of a woman aloft. The woman, dark-haired and sinewy, held a butcher knife above Rufus. Her face was a mask of grim determination. She was grunting, trying to free herself from Rufus so she could plunge the knife into him. Although the woman was rail thin, he could see the power in her arms, roped with muscle, now straining as she tried to force the knife down—and into the man Wren loved.

“No!” Wren cried out, moving forward.

Rufus cast him a warning look, one that seemed to say
Keep away
, but it wasn’t enough to deter Wren.

Things happened so fast. It was almost like a blur of motion. There was no thought, no reason. Just doing.

Survival.

Protection.

Wren surged forward, grabbed the woman around the waist, and then yanked her backward. She cried out in frustration and turned on him, slashing. Wren gasped as he felt the blade slice across his shoulder. At first it didn’t hurt, but then he felt the warm rush of blood, which was following by a stinging fire that made him wince. Shocked, he put a hand up to his shoulder to try to curb the flow of blood. He pressed down hard, but already he felt woozy.

“You bitch,” Rufus said and grabbed her from behind. Wren slid to the floor and looked up to see Rufus with his hand wrapped around the woman’s wrist, bending it backward. He watched, numb, as the pair struggled, the woman’s chiseled face a grim mask of determination, Rufus’s a study in despair as he attempted to turn this potentially lethal situation around.

Wren gasped as a black blur dashed from under the bed. Lucifer, the cat, yowling and hissing, leaped into the air, claws outstretched, attacking the woman’s calf.

She screamed and attempted to kick the animal away.

It looked for a moment as though the woman might win out as she almost jerked her hand free and the cat was sent flying backward. Lucifer scrambled back under the bed. In that moment Rufus managed to slam his knee into the crook behind the woman’s knee, which caused her to stumble forward.

In the moment where she was no longer balanced, Rufus snatched the knife from her hands. Wren pressed himself into the wall, breathless, as he prepared to witness a murder. He was sure Rufus was going to plunge the knife into the woman’s back now that he had the opportunity.

But he didn’t. Instead he quickly stashed the knife in a dresser drawer, then leaned against it.

The woman regained her balance and charged toward Rufus, all fury and flailing fists. Rufus restrained her as she tried to pummel his chest and face with her fists, her frustration coming out of her in small grunts and cries.

All at once, it seemed as though the fight escaped her like air out of a punctured balloon, and she sank to the floor, weeping.

Wren didn’t want Rufus to move away from blocking access to the drawer where he had placed the knife, but he did. Rufus sank down beside the woman, his hand reaching out gingerly to touch her straight dark hair.

“It’s gonna be okay now,” he whispered. “It’s over.”

The woman simply sobbed, her body shaking as though she was having a seizure.

Wren had no idea what would happen now. Again, this feeling of unreality overcame him, as if this was all a fast-moving dream and any moment he would awaken to find himself lying in bed next to Rufus, the soft thrum of the air conditioning their only company.

He wished for that, anyway.

Rufus looked over at him. “Are you going to be okay?”

His question reminded Wren of the stinging in his shoulder. He took his hand away from the slash, expecting the blood to spurt out, but it had slowed to a trickle. He pulled the fabric of his T-shirt away to reveal a gash, one that would need stitches for sure but was in no way life threatening. He swallowed, feeling his heart rate and respiration beginning to slow. “I’ll live,” Wren said softly.

Rufus nodded and turned back to the woman, taking her hands in his own. She collapsed against his chest, sobbing. It seemed like removing the weapon from her hands had sapped all her fight, all her menace.

Maybe she had simply wanted someone to take away her knife all along.

Wren watched as Rufus stroked her hair, whispering, “Shh.”

He allowed the woman into his arms, and Wren was amazed. This was the woman who had somehow broken into Rufus’s apartment and tried to kill him, and
he
was showing
her
compassion.

This was most likely the woman who had killed his friends.

And
he
was showing
her
kindness.

It seemed they sat that way, frozen in this tableau of despair, danger, and regret, for hours, while in truth Wren knew it was only for a few minutes. At last Rufus led the woman to sit on the bed. To Wren’s relief he opened the drawer, removed the knife, and took it into another room.

He came back in, closing the bedroom door behind him. “We’re gonna get you some help real soon, little man. I just need to talk to Martha here.”

He sat down next to her on the bed, draping an arm over her too-thin shoulders. She was trembling now, her brown eyes glassy, staring forward at nothing.

“We need to get you some help,” Rufus began, his words barely above a whisper.

The woman looked at Rufus as though she didn’t recognize him, like he had materialized out of nowhere. Her lower lip trembled.

“It was Dan. It was always Dan,” she said in a voice that was a frail shadow of the ferocity she had displayed only a short time ago.

“What do you mean?”

“He made me do it.” The woman’s tongue snaked out, licking lips that were dry and cracked. “He was never faithful. Not from the very start, when he went away with that boy in Miami on our honeymoon. There were so many men. He didn’t care if I knew—because he knew I was trapped. I was just a poor girl from Chester, West Virginia. If I left him, what could I go back to? An alcoholic mother in an apartment above a liquor store? It sounds like the plot for some bad Lifetime movie. So many men. Rubbing my nose in it.

“And then he started using our money to pay for the whores. And then I found out they were blackmailing him—and even more of our money, our children’s money, was going out the door, robbing us of our future. I didn’t know where it would end.

“I had to put a stop to it.” She grabbed Rufus by the front of his shirt, her wild eyes staring up at him. “You understand that, don’t you? I was just a mother protecting her kids. I just did what any mother would do, right?”

Rufus gently removed her hand, rubbed her back. “Sure. I understand. I see. You were just looking out for your family. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in? Who could you have turned to?”

The woman’s expression lightened, and she smiled, sniffling. “You understand! I didn’t think anyone would.”

Rufus looked at Wren over her shoulder. He mouthed the words “Go” and “Call.” And Wren had no problem deciphering the instructions.

He got up, wincing with pain but otherwise quiet as he walked, steadily as he could, from the room.

In the living room, he picked up the cordless where it still lay on the coffee table. He fully expected the movie cliché to come true and to find that when he tried to call 911, he would get no dial tone, that Martha Williams had severed the phone line. But when he pressed the button to activate the phone, a welcoming hum greeted him.

He made his way into the kitchen and saw the back door still partially open, the glass pane above the doorknob broken. On the slate tile floor, the glass lay in shatters, much like Martha Williams’s mind, he couldn’t help but think.

He looked outside at the still, hot, and humid day, took a deep breath, and punched in the digits that would bring them aid.

WREN COULDN’T
believe two months had passed. He stood shivering in the mist of an early October morning, sipping coffee from a paper cup. It was unseasonably cold for this early in October, and the fog that had settled on West Harrison Street made this part of the city, just west of the Loop, seem like something out of London’s East End, back when Jack the Ripper was prowling its streets. Or at least Wren thought that’s what he would imagine if he were a romantic sort, which he had decided, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was not. He was simply more attuned to his feelings, more intuitive, if you will.