Ashes (39 page)

With that he pulled the sheet away, and she flinched, not knowing what horror might be under it. Kincaid might mean her no harm, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a danger to others.

The sheet was off, and before her was a man, gagged, bound to a chair, strapped with duct tape so that only his head was free to move. He was tall and bearded, eyes the color of steel, and he looked even more weary than Kincaid did. The man took in his surroundings, and then looked at her. She saw recognition and dismissal; his gaze went off into the middle distance.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“His name is Richard Blaine. He’s the head of an antigovernment group based out of Wisconsin. Last year one of his toadies posed as a janitor and put explosives around the support columns in the garage of the L.A. federal building. And boom,” he said softly, holding up a fist and then uncurling and spreading out his fingers. “That’s all she wrote. He’s the man behind it all.”

Jennifer could not believe what she was hearing. She made it a point to avoid the news, but of course she knew that no perpetrator had been caught, though bombs aplenty had rained down on the Middle East. “No,” she said, trying to make sense of it. “No, it was the Arabs who did it, everyone said so.”

“That’s what they said.” Kincaid’s smile twisted bitterly. She looked away from it, looked back at the bound man. “But they lied. That’s what they do best. I know. You see, it was better politically to blame the ragheads and lob some air strikes their way than to admit there was trouble at home,” Kincaid said. “Isn’t that right, Richard?”

Blaine aimed a look of weary hatred at Kincaid.

Kincaid seemed unruffled, but Jennifer caught a flicker of something behind those dark blank eyes, as if he understood that look of hate, knew that it was deserved. Curious, but it was the least of Jennifer’s concerns right now. “Is it true? I mean, did he really do that?”

“Answer the lady, Richard.”

Blaine nodded. He looked as if he wanted very much to say something, but he could not speak around the gag and Kincaid made no move to remove it.

Jennifer stood, staring at this man. This ordinary man. This American, just like her. No foreign face of hate staring out from a magazine cover. Right in front of her. She groped for something to say and found the one question that had been asked after the bombing by everyone and was satisfactorily answered by no one. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because he hates the government. And thought the best way to get his point across would be to blow up a federal building,” Kincaid said, then spread his hands out as if to say
I don’t get it either.

Jennifer took a breath. Too much going on. Being kidnapped, trapped here in the safe house, Kincaid and his unreadable eyes, Mr. All-American in front of her. Too much, too much, she needed to think about it all. Tried and she kept seeing the boardroom full of people cut to ribbons. The man who caught the cable and fried right in front of her. Carrie walking down the hall, waving at her, never to be seen alive again. Carlos with his neck broken at the bottom of the stairs. Mrs. Danvers asking her
How does it feel
?

Can’t take this.
“Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be in jail? Why am I here?”

Kincaid let out a deep breath, as if some moment had arrived he’d been waiting for. Something about it sent a chill through her. “You’re here to give this man what he deserves.”

“And what’s that?”

He reached into his pocket and took out a revolver. Laid it on the table in front of her, and for a moment all three of them stared at it. Then Kincaid looked up at her.

“Justice.”

She stared at the gun. The prisoner. Kincaid. Felt as she had in those weeks after the bombing when she could not escape from her own image. When she could not walk past tall buildings without cringing, waiting for them to fall, or go into offices without feeling nausea and panic rise up in her throat. When strangers came up to her to tell her how brave she was, unintentionally twisting the knife of guilt deeper into her heart. When she read the list of the names of the dead every day in the paper and knew somehow that they were dead only because she was alive. She remembered it all, remembered how she’d had to flee — not just Los Angeles, but her home, her country. Her life.

Jennifer felt some sound rising up out of her. She wondered what it would be — a scream, a wail, a demand for revenge. It was laughter. She giggled and the harder she tried to make herself stop, the louder the laughter became.
So this is what it’s like to go off your nut. I always wondered.

She was still laughing when she looked back at Kincaid. He was smiling. He thought she was happy, that he was doing her a favor. She took a breath and once again did not know what she was going to say until it was out of her mouth. “You son of a bitch!”

Kincaid’s smile lasted a second longer. The second it took for him to realize she was not saying it to Richard Blaine but to him. The smile vanished as abruptly as if she had slapped it away, and he took a step back from her.

“How can you ask me to do this? What gives you the right?” she asked. “After all this time? Do you think I’ve been sitting around waiting for this? I’ve been putting my life back together after bastard here,” she pointed at Blaine, “ripped it apart. And now that’s what you want to do, rip my life apart. I won’t have it, do you hear me? Take your present and give it to someone else.”

Kincaid seemed stunned. What had he expected? That she would be happy? Yes, that was exactly what he had expected. “I wanted to help you,” he said. “That’s all.”

“This isn’t help. And even if it is, I don’t want it.”

She turned and began heading for the door again. Locked or not, bulletproof glass be damned, she felt wired enough to smash it all down if she felt like it, and walk all the way back to Haven Cove. A hand seized her arm, and she was whirled around. Found herself staring into Sean Kincaid’s face.

Now she could see behind his eyes. They were burning with some emotion she did not recognize. He held her by the upper arms, and his grip was tight, almost painful. “I did this for you,” he said, his voice low but so intense he seemed to be shouting. “I turned my back on everything I cared about to help you.”

“I don’t—”

Kincaid’s eyes blazed, his fingers bit deep into the flesh of her arms. “Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through? Do you want to know the things I’ve done?”

Only a gut feeling that he wouldn’t deliberately harm her gave her the courage to speak. It was not his hands or his voice that frightened her but his eyes, rage and despair and something she couldn't name, something she had never seen before and never wanted to see again. “You’re hurting me,” she said.

He looked down at her arms, saw that his fingers would leave bruises. Let her go quickly, as if the touch burned him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just—”

Laughter from behind them. Hearty laughter, as if at a joke well-told. Jennifer and Kincaid turned around, and she saw that Richard Blaine had managed to work the gag out of his mouth. He smiled at them. “Go on, Sean,” he said with a chuckle. “Tell her.”

Kincaid started walking back to Blaine. “Shut the hell up, you—”

“No.”

Jennifer’s voice made the two men stop and look at her. “No,” she said again. “I want to talk to him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Kincaid.

“You did this for me, right?” she asked. “Right?”

Kincaid nodded.

“Well, I want to talk to him.”

She walked over and stood in front of Blaine. The gun was on the table, within reach of her hand, but she didn’t think of that. She wanted to know why. She wanted to ask him something.

“It’s true, isn’t it.” Not a question. “You did it.”

“Yes, I did. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t expect you to understand.” Blaine’s voice was low and rich. Even now, sitting here tied to a chair with certain death facing him, he sounded calm. Persuasive. A man who knows he is right, and is willing to die for what he believes in. “But it wasn’t personal. I never meant anything against you, or any of your friends. The machine was what we were striking out against. You and the rest were just the cogs in that machine.”

Jennifer stood there, feeling sick. Maybe he did have some sort of legitimate grievance. She wouldn’t know. But what did she or any of the other people have to do with that? Mr. Danvers and Carrie and Carlos, the hundreds of others she had never known other than as faces in the crowd. But all lives, all special to someone in some way. All gone now. Because of this man.

“They weren’t cogs,” she said. “They were people. They had lives and families just like you.”

“They were working for a government that betrays its own people.”

“All they wanted was to work and raise their families! What sort of crime is that?”

“They should have found another way. I don’t hold that against them, or you. It’s too bad, but really you were just...what’s the term you and your friends like to use, Sean? ‘Acceptable losses’?”

Kincaid said nothing.

Jennifer stood, shaking. She swallowed hard and asked the one thing she wanted to know. “Are you sorry for what you did?”

Kincaid took a step closer, as if anxious to hear the answer himself.

Blaine looked directly at Jennifer. Looking into his eyes, she saw determination and pride. And something she had not expected. The look of a man who had sustained some blow, and was half-welcoming the ease that death would bring. But even without that, she was sure his answer would have been the same. “No. I’m not.”

She had expected it, but was still surprised at the anger that blazed up in her. For months she had borne the weight of guilt for simply surviving. Would still carry that weight, in some way, for the rest of her days.

And this man, who had actually done the deed, could not even say he was sorry.

She slapped him as hard as she could. The impact stung her palm fiercely, made that anger blaze warm inside her. His head rocked back but he made no cry. She wanted to hear him make some noise, protest. Wanted to hear him ask for mercy. Say he was sorry. She hit him again, and again.

Jennifer stood there panting, her palm feeling as if it were burned. A gentle hand took hers, placed something heavy and cool in her hand. The coolness was soothing against her skin. She looked down. She held the gun.

She had never so much as touched a gun before, and was surprised by its weight. Heavy, for not a very large gun. The gun’s metal slightly oily. She held it by the grip, which was rubber, and well-used. She could feel the grooves that a hand had worn into it. A man’s hand, larger than hers. But the handle fitted snugly into her palm, almost as if it belonged there.

Jennifer stood, looking at the gun, at Blaine. Kincaid left her side, began to walk slowly around the two of them in a circle, round and round, and she thought of a snake going up a tree, winding its way up and up.

“That’s a Ruger .38 you have there,” Kincaid said. His voice was quiet, but it carried well. She heard him quite clearly. “You don’t even have to pull the hammer back. Just pull the trigger and it’s done. It’s over.”

Jennifer held the gun. Felt its weight, and the knowledge that this was serious business. Once the trigger was pulled, there would be no undoing it. And it was tempting, of course, but was it what she wanted? What she needed? What was right? “I don’t want to go to jail,” she said, trying to buy time and think.

“No one’s going to jail. I told you, we’re at a safe house. There’s no one around for miles. I’ll take care of everything for you. You can go home and sleep tight knowing that you rid the world of a murderer.”

She stood, hesitant. He must have seen it, for his voice became softer, cajoling.

“We could send him to jail but the appeals will last for years. He’ll get three hot meals a day courtesy of the taxes. The same government that inspired his crime will pay for the punishment. If you can call it that.”

Jennifer said, “I don’t know. I mean...I don’t think I have the right to do this.”

She meant that she had not lost enough in the bombing.
Give this chance to Carlos’s widow, to Mr. Danvers’ widow, to the mothers who had lost their babies in the day care center.

“Why not, Jennifer?” asked Kincaid. “So much guilt you felt just for living that you had to leave the country? Why should you have been punished for something you didn’t do? Look at this man. He ruined your life and he’s not even sorry for it. And this isn’t some sort of brave last stand. I’ve sat at his dinner table for a year now and if he’d said he was sorry just once I might have let it go. But he didn’t. He was even planning to do it again.”

Kincaid now stood next to her. “Let it end here.”

She wanted to. Very much. She was angry, and grieving, and most of all she was tired. Let this be closure. Not the sort the psychologists talked about, but maybe the best she could find. Jennifer stood, looking at Blaine, not raising the gun, but not putting it aside either.

Blaine’s nose was bleeding from the blows she had dealt him. He snuffled back blood and looked at her. One side of his face bright red, as if from sunburn. “It helps, doesn’t it? Hurting the people who’ve hurt you.” Blaine asked. “Believe me, I know.” He glanced over at Kincaid, who had been observing, smiling.

Now Kincaid’s smile vanished and he went pale. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” asked Jennifer.

“Something you should know before you decide, Jennifer. You want to know what your friend Sean had to do to bring me to you? Want to know how he got those bruises on his neck?”

She didn’t want to know, but found herself nodding anyway.

Blaine’s eyes were cold, his voice colder. “I gave them to him. After he killed my wife.”

Jennifer stared at Kincaid. He stood, looking back at her. His eyes blazing with that peculiar look again. “Is it true?”

But knew it was, for now she understood what lay behind his eyes. A damned soul looking out at her. “It was an accident,” he said. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“But it’s true.”

He closed his eyes, softly said, “Yes.”