A Rush to Violence (19 page)

At some point, someone would discover that they murdered this man. And then what? She had a rifle, but she didn’t know how to use it. The men upstairs were skilled with guns. Once they found him dead, she knew they’d use those guns. Likely not on all of them because they needed to keep at least some of them alive. But they’d choose someone as an example of what happens when you go after one of their own. One or more of them would die for this. She knew that.  But who?  Her daughters?  She’d ask them to take her first.

They were approaching the staircase. Fifteen feet beyond it, she could see Jack, the Moores and Katie, all of whom now were standing and watching them emerge from the dark.

 At first, they looked confused. But the moment they came into the light, a sting of surprise flashed upon their faces when they saw what she and Beth were dragging.

Jack and Brian Moore quickly and quietly came forward to help. They moved behind Beth and Gloria and lifted the man’s feet. In a low voice, Jack said, “Gun. Calf strap. Mine now.”

Above them, they heard a door swing shut and a man’s voice ask where the rest of the coffee was. Were they out of it? The question prompted movement. Footsteps fell across the floor as cupboard doors were opened and closed. How many were they? Three? Four? Gloria couldn’t tell. Sounded like four. She prayed to God it was three.

“Bring him to the chair,” Beth whispered.

“Why the chair?” Brian Moore asked.

“My plan didn’t end with killing him,” she said. “The chair. Now.”

“You’ve got a plan?”

They moved past the staircase. But as they did so, a hand fell on the doorknob above them. Gloria looked left and saw the door at the top of the staircase start to open. Light shone down the stairs. A young man with brown hair and a beard stood at the top of them, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking into the kitchen they ushered them through earlier.

“Try the pantry,” he said to the man he was talking to earlier. “If there’s none in there, you’ll need to go out and get some.”

They were beyond him and the stairs when he said that. They moved as quietly as they could to the chair.

“Where am I getting coffee at this hour?”

Beth motioned for Barbara Moore to move the chair back, so it wasn’t directly beneath the light bulb. They eased the man into it and when they did, the horror of what Beth did to him was there for all to see.

His skull was smashed. His face looked as if someone had yanked it inward and then punched it outward. He had bled out onto his clothes, but his clothes belonged to somebody who didn’t want to be noticed at night—black T-shirt, black pants, black shoes. They didn’t show the stains. She glanced at her daughter, who was moving the man’s head so it tilted back, and she began to see what she had in mind.

A footstep on the stairs.

“There’s a store two blocks south.”

“Where the hell is south? You know I’m not from here.”

“Do I have to drive you? Figure it out or forget the coffee.”

“We’ll be here all night. We
need
the coffee.”

“Then go
get
the coffee.”

While the men argued, Beth took the dead man’s feet and crossed them so it looked as if he was sitting casually. She placed the only hand of his that wasn’t speckled with blood and put it on the armrest. With the chair moved back, his ruined face now was out of the light and in shadow. If someone came down the stairs to check on them, they’d see his legs and his hand, but not his face. They’d also see them looking frightened against the wall across from him. On the off chance that the man at the top of the stairs was just planning a quick visual check, they might be safe.

Beth directed everyone to the stone wall.

Above them, the argument escalated.

Gloria handed Brian Moore the rifle. She searched his eyes to see if he knew how to use it, but by the way he looked at her with a mix of bewilderment and concern, it was clear that he didn’t. She turned to Jack and glanced down at the gun he was holding. He gave her a quick, reassuring nod and switched it out for the rifle, which Brian immediately looked comfortable holding. They all sagged against the wall and waited for the inevitable.

But Gloria knew better. Who were any of them kidding? This wasn’t going to go well. She knew it, she knew the adults knew it, but she hoped her children didn’t know it.

If he was going to make an effort to come down here, there’s no way it was going to be for a mere visual check. He was going to want to talk to his colleague and then wonder why his colleague wasn’t talking back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

When Sam Ireland came to Camille Miller’s apartment, he was all business, which was a relief to her. She didn’t want to discuss their past. She just wanted to deal with the present and fix it before it was too late.

Over the course of ten minutes, she debriefed him on the situation, leaving out nothing, including the part where Emma asked whether Sam was her father.

That was a mistake. That’s when it got personal.

“Did you tell her?”

“I didn’t.”

“Do you have a photograph of her? If we’re going to search for her, I’ll need to know what my daughter looks like.”

They went into Emma’s bedroom and she showed him the photo of Emma and her grandfather that Emma kept on her desk. Sam looked at her for a long moment but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Watching him, Camille could tell that he wasn’t just committing her face to memory. He also was trying to see traces of himself in her, which were there.

Like her father, Emma possessed high cheekbones and smooth olive skin that appeared almost as if it was without pores. Her eyes mirrored his in that they were the color of chestnuts, only not quite as dark or as hard. They had the same thick lashes, which could not be attributed to any member of the Miller family. It was all him.

“She’s beautiful,” he said.

“If we’re lucky enough to find her, you two will meet.”

“If she’s as bright as you say she is, she’ll also see the similarities.”

“I understand that.”

“But you’re not happy about it.”

“It’s not that I’m not happy.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s that I don’t want her to get hurt. She recently lost her grandfather. He meant the world to her. Now, she’s about to meet her father. Do you know how huge that will be for her? How many questions she’ll have for you? How much she’s going to want to get to know you? But what if you also disappear from her life? Once, you had the chance to choose us, but you didn’t. When I got pregnant and told you I was getting out, you pretty much wished me the best and went on your own way. You washed your hands of us, Sam. I know you well enough to know that you could do that again. That kind of emotional turmoil isn’t something I want for my daughter.”

“Neither do I. We were kids back then, Camille. We thought we could change the world. I think we each see things differently now.”

“Do you? You’re still in it, Sam. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you haven’t left that I know of.”

“I only provide weaponry to those who need it. That’s the extent of it. I haven’t accepted a contract in eight years.”

“Why?”

“I knew I could help in better ways.”

“So you continue to take risks. You’re illegally selling guns and God knows what else to an underground market that could turn against you at any point. And you’re doing it in New York City, of all places!  Because of that, you’re still just as much a target as you’ve always been.”

“Maybe. None of us really change, Camille—you proved that by calling me today and asking for your own supply of weapons. We just get older. We re-prioritize. I still believe that any individual actively and repeatedly harming innocent civilians should be taken out. I still think that all over the world, countless judicial systems are a joke. Unless something radical changes, which it won’t, I always will believe that. But here’s what you need to know. Nobody receives weapons from me without first telling me why they need them. It has to be a reason I believe in. I need to know the circumstances. I need to know who they’re targeting and why. And I need proof of all of it.  My ideals haven’t changed since you and I were crossing the globe and doing the work ourselves. It’s just that now I’m the middleman, not the shooter.”

When she didn’t respond, he said, “Tell me you’ve changed. Tell me you’ve had an epiphany and now believe that our governments and judicial systems are working properly to protect the innocent.”

“I never said that.”

“My point taken.”

“Actually, it isn’t. I have changed. I’ve been completely out of it for sixteen years. You said it yourself, Sam. When we were young, we thought we could make a change for the better.”

“Do you think we did?” he interrupted.

“In some ways, yes, I do think we did. There are certain people I’m glad are no longer on this earth. They needed to be dealt with.”

“Murdered.”

“Fine. Murdered. Whatever. But evil always will be present. It always will dig down its roots and find its way to reach up and harm people. When I got pregnant, I knew I couldn’t bring my daughter into what increasingly was becoming a tenuous and losing situation. No matter how hard we tried, there always would be others. It became clear that we’d never keep ahead of them. At some point, you have to accept that. I got out for that reason and I did it for my child.”

“And you’re still looking over your shoulder.”

“Of course, I am. I always will be. Right now, someone we murdered twenty years ago has a son or a daughter who’s pissed off that they never knew their father. There will come a time when they will be told what happened to their father. And regardless of how careful we were to conceal our identities all those years ago, we weren’t perfect. We made mistakes even we don’t know about. They’ll dig, they’ll learn who we are and they’ll come after us. They’ll want us dead for all they believed we cheated them out of. And I suppose on some level they have every right to do that. I live with it every day. I expect it to happen at any point. I know you do, too.”

“Do you think your brothers and sisters killed your father?”

“The question is whether I believe
all
of them are responsible. That’s what I was trying to get across to Emma. I needed to look each in the eye. I wanted to hear the tone in their voices when they answered me. Only then would I know for sure.” She stopped herself and looked at him when it occurred to her. “Which is what
she’s
planning to do.”

“Or is doing right now.”

“We need to leave. We need to get to the city. She’ll be at one of their houses. I don’t know which one, but she’ll be at one of them.”

“I want to get to know her, Camille.”

“To what end, Sam? We live in Paris.”

“So, there’s no such thing as a plane? Skype? E-mail? Facebook? Cell phones? The possibility of us getting back together?”

She wasn’t going near that. She grabbed her keys from the kitchen counter and dropped them in one of her jacket pockets. She went into her bedroom, grabbed the duffle bag with the rifles and the ammunition, and swung it over her shoulder. “We’ll discuss it later.”

“When she sees me, she’ll know who I am. What if she wants to get to know me?”

“If you keep pressing, then she can get to know you when she’s eighteen. Right now, she’s a minor. It’s my decision. I’m her guardian and have full control over her.”

“Really? You call this control?”

“That’s a low blow.”

But as they left for the door, she knew he was right. She had no control over her daughter. None.

* * *

When they stepped out of the building, Camille asked where he was parked.

“Three blocks east.”

“Three blocks? There was nothing closer?”

“Camille, in this neighborhood, I was lucky to get a parking spot that close.” He nodded at the duffle bag. “Let me carry that.”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s heavy.”

“Just walk to my left. I don’t want to be seen.”

“You think I do?”

But he moved to her left as she lifted the hood on her jacket and put it over her head. Street traffic was moderate, but the sidewalks were busy. It was a warm summer evening and people were out in force in an attempt to enjoy it. Some were out for a stroll while others, the twenty- and thirtysomething crowd, were hurrying to get to the subway so they could be in the city and plunge themselves into all the nightlife it offered. They were loud, full of life and ready for whatever adventures awaited them.

Camille watched them go and wondered what her life might have been like if she hadn’t gone to Paris and made decisions that would shock most. When Emma was born, things changed. She saw the world through her child’s eyes and it was a brighter world. Through her daughter, she realized there was something to be said for being frivolous, which she’d never been. She wanted that opportunity to continue for Emma’s sake. She wanted her daughter to have a normal life. She wanted her to go through her early years with a light heart. She wanted her to take risks. To fall in love. To have the kind of youth Camille denied herself because she chose another route.

What had she missed by doing so? What was it like to be driven by no other concern than fulfilling your own joy? The idea of living a hedonistic lifestyle in a world that offered countless entries into it was foreign to her.

When she and Sam were together, there were a few times when they held hands and took a walk in a city that seemed designed just for that activity, but too often life was about work, the sort in which you walked away with blood on your hands and a knot in your gut.

Being with him exposed her to the cruelty of the human spirit. Bringing up Emma on her own exposed her to the possibilities of the human spirit. She didn’t regret her time with Sam. He opened her eyes to a world from with most look away. But as much as she loved him them, she regretted that his passion was saved mostly for his work and not for her. That wasn’t his fault—it’s who he was. It was her fault. At that age, railing against coming from such a wealthy family, Sam Ireland offered her a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn away from that life. When it was offered to her, she ran toward it and faced real issues. Her hands got dirty. For the first time in her life, she thought she was making a difference.