Exposure (7 page)

Nico’s threat echoed in Martin’s brain as he watched the detectives’ tape recorder turn. If it weren’t for Tammy he never would have done this.

Besides, he’d
had
to do it. Once he started talking to Nico, once he began to hear the plan, there was no backing out. He’d be dead by now.

The detectives wanted to know every detail, beginning with how the robbers got into the bank. Martin shook his head. “Everything happened so fast. But I did ask them how they got in because I’d locked those doors myself. The leader told me they picked the lock.”

Surprised flicked across Detective Petra’s face. He looked ten years younger than Forturo, a muscled, solid block of a man with shaggy brown hair. “He answered your question?”

Ice slid through Martin’s veins. He managed a shrug. “Not really. They were working on getting the vault open, and he mumbled some disgusted comment like, ‘So we can pick a lock.’ ”

The detectives wanted descriptions of the four men, what they were wearing, down to the make of shoes. The brand of duffel bags they carried. Martin honestly couldn’t remember any of that. “Maybe Shelley or Olga can tell you more.”

Forturo jotted a note. “Hope so. And we’ll look at the tapes from your security cameras.”

The two women were somewhere else in the station, also being questioned. Martin tried to imagine their answers. Surely they’d say good things about him. He’d gotten them out of the vault and untied them. He’d kept his cool.

The detectives moved on to ask about his home life, his friends. How long had his family lived in Atlantic City and what had brought them here? What did he do after hours? Who did he hang out with?

Did they suspect his connections?

Much of what Martin told them was the truth. He and his wife and daughter had left New York City six months ago. At twenty-eight he’d wanted to leave the mean streets of NYC and move to some new town big enough to provide opportunity and decent medical care for Tammy. They didn’t socialize much. Lorraine was in the rental office most of the day, right next to their small apartment. Many times Tammy had to stay home from preschool with her. As for Martin, he worked at the bank and came home.

Except for the times he’d spent at a certain bar after work. The bar where he’d met Nico. But Martin kept that to himself.

After an hour and a half of questioning, the detectives said he could go home. But Martin hadn’t seen the last of being interviewed. No, tonight had only been the beginning. The FBI would be heading up this investigation, Forturo told him, and agents were already on the way from their Newark office, about two hours’ drive away. They’d meet with the detectives to go over the information gleaned tonight, but tomorrow they’d want to see Martin personally.

His fingers tightened on the wheel. Why hadn’t he thought about all this ahead of time? What made him think he could fool all these professionals?

A good night’s sleep, that’s all he needed. He was just too tense tonight. No time to calm down.

Forturo had towered over Martin as they stood. “Thanks for all your help, Mr. Giordano. Sorry you had to go through this.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He walked to his eleven-year-old Pontiac in the station parking lot, rehashing his answers.
I did it right. Didn’t I?

In the car his thoughts had turned to the money.

His cut was one hundred thousand. A pittance, given the take. But to Martin it amounted to a gold mine. One hundred thousand could buy Tammy all the tests she needed. The care and medicine, if they discovered some hard-to-cure disease. They could make a down payment on a house — in a year. He couldn’t go throwing around money anytime soon.

All Martin had to do now was keep it from Lorraine. How he’d explain the money he didn’t know. A long lost rich uncle died? He’d think of something. For now he’d hide it. Somewhere.

Tomorrow he would get the cash.

Martin turned into the lighted storage lot and parked his Pontiac next to Lorraine’s old van. As he rounded the corner toward the apartment, the door flew open. Lorraine ran out, their daughter in her arms. “Daddy’s home, Tammy!” Feigned brightness coated the terror in his wife’s voice. “Daddy’s home!”

Martin wrapped them both in a desperate hug and hung on tight.

Darkness surrounds Kaycee
,
smothering
,
chewing. She senses walls around her
,
closing in. Something mashes her arms to her chest. Both legs prickle with sleep. Kaycee struggles to cry out
,
but her mouth won’t move. She fights for oxygen
,
but the air is stale and thick as cheese. Panic swells her throat shut. Fingers — her own? — claw her lungs. Breathe.
Breathe!

Someone shoves her from behind. Kaycee’s limbs wrench free
,
and she scrabbles through blackness
,
churning
,
churning. Light seeps toward her
,
then drenches her body. Her blinded eyes squeeze shut.

The world stops. Time hangs in the hall of her mind
,
a fat quivering drop
,
then zips from sight in ragged ribbons.

Running footsteps. A wail. Someone falls to her knees
,
and Kaycee feels the motion in her own body. Through this unknown person’s eyes she sees two red-black holes in a man’s pallid face. Puddled blood by his head on a dark yellow floor. Its sweet-iron smell cloys the air. The someone screams
,
and Kaycee’s throat rips. She scrambles away and tumbles off a cliff edge into nothingness —

A violent spasm jerked Kaycee awake.

Her eyes flew open to a dark bedroom — not her own. Her heart pummeled her ribs, each breath an uneven staccato. Heaviness pressed her into the bed, her skin slick with sweat.

Tricia’s guestroom.

Someone was there, watching Kaycee. She could
feel
it.

For a moment she couldn’t move.

With a small cry she threw back the bedcovers, rolled to her side, and fumbled for the switch on the nightstand lamp. Blessed golden light spilled into the room. She sat up, casting wild glances into all four corners. She saw beige walls, a framed print of mallards in flight. White dresser. Her overnight bag on the floor.

No one was there.

A dream. Just a dream.
Kaycee ran a hand through her hair and willed her breathing to calm.

The small digital clock on the nightstand read ten minutes after three.

She flopped back down against her pillow, air whooshing from her mouth. Her pulse wouldn’t slow. That dream! It had been so real. Even now she could feel the darkness, hear the scream, see the two bullet holes in that dead man’s head. Smell the blood . . .

It was the same man she’d seen in the camera. But that picture had been a close-up. No view of the dark yellow floor, the spilled blood.

Through whose eyes had she seen these things in the dream? Whose scream did she feel in her own throat?

Kaycee gripped the bedcovers. No one, that’s who. Her mind had just gone wild in sleep, adding its own imaginings to the picture she thought she’d seen. That photo hadn’t even been real. Nor the camera.

And
no one
was watching her.

Kaycee’s thoughts snagged on her still rapid heartbeat, then abruptly spun to Tricia’s windows. Were they all locked?

Stop it
,
Kaycee.

But the fear only grew.

She slid from bed onto shaky legs. Edging to the door, she opened it with caution. Stuck her head out. A nightlight tinted the hall in yellow-green. Kaycee glanced at the closed door on her left. She didn’t want to wake Tricia. Ghostlike, Kaycee stepped over her threshold and glided down the hall into the TV room. She turned on a lamp. Pulse skittering, she eyed the sliding door onto the backyard patio. Its lever was down in the locked position, but the curtains were pulled back, the night a sucking black void that would swallow her whole.

Kaycee could feel unseen eyes upon her, watching through the glass.

She hurried over and yanked the curtains closed.

Belinda.
The name tumbled through her mind. She’d fallen asleep with that name on her lips. Why did it haunt her so? She didn’t know anyone by that name. Never had.

Belinda . . .

The sensations of the dream shuddered anew over Kaycee’s skin. She pulled both arms across her chest. Her gaze fell upon a window near the corner of the room, and she hurried to it. With trembling hand she nudged back its curtains to check the lock, then let them fall shut. A thin crack of night pulsed between the two halves of fabric. Kaycee pulled one side firmly over the other.

As if chased, she fled into the kitchen and flicked on its overhead light. Checked its windows and rolled down the shades. Then she flung herself into the living room where she and Tricia had sat. Here the curtains were already closed. She’d insisted upon that as soon as she arrived. Kaycee felt the lock on every window and on the front door.

Done. Dry-mouthed, Kaycee hunched before the door, feet cold against the tile and fingers gripped beneath her chin.

So much for fighting the fear.

She wandered to the couch and sank upon it, drawing her pajamaclad knees to her chest.
Why
couldn’t she get this fear under control again? Even her mother had never been this crazy. She hadn’t called police to their house or seen some camera that went off by itself.

Kaycee’s mouth twisted. Maybe, but her mother had given in to her fears in worse ways. What about all that moving they’d done? Even now Kaycee felt a stab of pain just thinking about it. Easy enough for Monica Raye to move, with no roots of her own. Her parents had died by the time Kaycee was two, and she, like Kaycee, had no siblings. But in town after town Kaycee would make friends just to be torn from them. No matter how she begged to stay put, her mother never listened. Monica Raye’s secretarial skills were highly portable. She refused to see that her daughter was not.

Kaycee pictured her mother on the Christmas Eve three years before her heart attack. Kaycee had graduated from college the previous year and was still struggling to get her fear of being watched under control. To that day they’d never spoken openly about their common paranoia.

“Kaycee, I’m so sorry,” her mom said. Blinking lights from the Christmas tree played across her face.

“Sorry for what?”

Her mom absently rubbed the ragged scar on her left forearm — the remnant of some childhood accident. “For passing it on to you. I wish . . .” Her voice tightened. “I wish I hadn’t.”

Kaycee stared at her. What made her broach this forbidden subject now? “It’s okay.”

But of course — it wasn’t. What it had cost Kaycee as a child. What it cost her even then.

“I tried to make a better life for you, Kaycee. I hope you’ll believe that.”

Kaycee’s chest constricted. Did her mother see through her that well? Did she see that as much as Kaycee loved her, the seed of blame had long ago taken root and grown in her daughter’s heart?

“Mom, really. It’s okay.”

Her mother started to say more, then turned away.

Kaycee leaned her head back against Tricia’s couch. So much left unsaid. You think you have plenty of time, then suddenly — you don’t. Three years later Monica Raye was dead. If only they’d fought their fear together over the years. Maybe they could have helped each other. Now, Kaycee thought, this paranoia would destroy her.

Kaycee shivered, suddenly cold. She pushed off the couch and hustled back into Tricia’s guest bedroom, leaving the lights on behind her. Unseen eyes seemed to follow her every move. She closed her door and locked it. Jumped into bed and pulled up the covers. She could not bring herself to turn off the lamp.

Her gaze roamed to the drawn curtains of the window to her right. They were out there. Watching.

Kaycee squeezed her eyes shut.
No.

The dream washed over her once again. Darkness . . . screams. Running feet . . . the dead man’s face. Puddled blood on a dark yellow floor.

Kaycee buried her face in the pillow and prayed for morning.

Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.

Japanese proverb

Man, those eggs looked good.

Thirty-two-year-old Joel “Nico” Nicorelli sat down to breakfast with the underboss of the Lucchese family. As always when he came in to Vince “Bear” Terelli, Nico held his face just right — half
Sure
,
boss
and half confidence in the respect due himself. He hadn’t been made a captain for nothing.

And he didn’t plan on staying there.

In La Cosa Nostra, Nico had worked his way from the bottom up. First he’d been a lowly street worker, helping to run the Lucchese family’s rackets and loan sharking. After a few years he’d moved up to soldier, becoming a “made” member and taking the solemn oath of Omerta — swearing absolute loyalty to the family. As a soldier he’d done real good, always gunning for the next level. Three years ago he’d made captain, reporting directly to the underboss. Not many higher than Nico now. Only Bear, plus his counterpart, the
consigliere.
Both those guys reported to the family patriarch, the boss.