Fortune's Deadly Descent (7 page)

“Really?”

“Yes. But the joke’s on him. It doesn’t pay to be a rebounder.”

The word
rebounder
stuck in my head. I tried to imagine myself rebounding. There’d be issues. Serious issues. How could I ever get close to someone again? How could I ever trust anyone after this?

“Emily doesn’t really care about him,” Benicio said. “At least that’s what she says in her e-mails.”

In the quiet that followed, his face took on a raw, achy look, his eyes narrowing to slits.

Years later, on the evening Benny had asked about our meeting, he went to his first sleepover at a friend’s. I remember this distinctly because Oliver had already gone off to college, and it was the first time Benicio and I had been alone in the house since Benny’d come to live with us. We went at each other crazily, like a pair of teenagers starved for privacy, desperate not to waste an instant. Yet in the midst of so much pleasure, I’d felt a trace of Emily, as if memories of her eddied around inside Benicio’s mind. I couldn’t will them away; instead, I started tickling Benicio. Hard, in the ribs. He twisted sideways, laughing, and I ran to our bed, where he found me with a bowler hat from a costume party, on my head. “How Milan Kundera of you,” he said from the doorway, his interest in me still obvious. “How nerdish of you to point that out,” I said, tipping the hat and pulling back the eiderdown where he joined me for one of the most memorable evenings we’ve ever shared.

Now Moreau tucks that same eiderdown around me as I shiver.

Los Angeles. Four times in the last three months
.

“He’s playing us,” Benicio says. “Don’t listen to him.”

I want to follow his voice back to my heart.
You love this man deeply, fiercely
, I remind myself. Yet I ask him, “In what way have you been
in touch
with Emily?”

“He’s twisting it,” Benicio answers. “He wants it to look like something it’s not.”

Moreau seems not at all offended. He leans back, crosses his arms, studies us as if observing a surgery in progress.

“But this mystery man on the train,” Benicio says. “Are you lying about
him
?”

“How can you
ask
that?”

“How can I ask? Because I don’t know what to think, Celia.”

Before I can say, “You
ought
to know,” I catch Oliver’s silhouette in the doorway—how eerily like Jonathon he looks, shoulders curled forward, fists crammed in pockets, head cocked to the side.

“Mind if I come in?” he asks.

I shoot him a forbidding look, but Moreau says, “Not at all,” and Oliver enters. His stride, too, is Jonathon’s.

Moreau glances at Oliver, then me, then Oliver, as if trying to intercept the thoughts zipping between us. Oliver lowers himself to the foot of the bed, and Pinto flops her head onto his lap. “Everything all
right
?” he asks.

I have to stifle a nervous, grossly inappropriate laugh.

“It’s not a good time, Oliver,” Benicio says.

“Has something happened? Did you find Benny?”

“No, honey, we haven’t found your brother,” I say, then can’t keep myself from adding, “We found
Emily
. But apparently she wasn’t missing after all.”

“For god’s sake, Celia.”

I wrench the blanket off my shoulders. “Since when’s she been with your
agent
?”

“A year. Something like that.”

A
year
. I can’t even think what to say.

“Don’t you give me that look,” Benicio says, bordering on furious now. “I could ask just as easily how long you’ve known the comedian from the train, the one who had you and Benny cracking up.”

“May I say something here?” Moreau says.

“Don’t you
dare
,” I tell him, then snap my head back toward Benicio. “I’m going to say this one last time. The man on the train was a complete and utter stranger. I don’t understand why, but I’m being
set up
.” I grab a breath. “On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious what he’s saying about you is
true
.”

“We weren’t seeing each other,” he says after a long moment.

“You were in touch. What does that
mean
?”

“Not what you think!”

“What going
on
?” Oliver asks.

Moreau seems just shy of amused. “Just getting some items out from the shadows.”

“No, enough,” Benicio says. “This is bullshit.”

I throw my hand up before he says anything more. I face Moreau and say, “You’re right. He was engaged to her before we met—and she kept e-mailing him long after she’d married his supposed friend. She wanted him
back
. Isn’t that right, Benicio?
Tell him
.”

Benicio ignores me, takes a step in Moreau’s direction instead, as if to muscle him toward the door.

Moreau gives a slightly theatrical shrug. “Monsieur, this is simply old-fashioned police work. Checking phone records, and the like.”

I glare at Benicio again. “You were
calling
her?”

“No. Only…a couple of times,” Benicio says.

“Quite true,” Moreau says, nodding. “But a big amount of texting back and forth. Isn’t this so, Monsieur?”

Benicio stands knuckling his forehead.

In an ugly flash I see Benicio and Emily reuniting—their absurd joy. “So how long have you two been
texting
each other?” I ask.

“The better part of six months,” Moreau says, glancing at Benicio for confirmation.

“That’s it,” I say, unharnessing myself from the bed.

I bolt past Benicio and begin shoving clothes into a backpack. Pinto watches from a distance, ears and tail stiffened in fear. For five days, shock has insulated my sanity from the fiery nerves trying to set it aflame. The body’s defense mechanism at work. But by now the shock has morphed into anger, and anger is a potent fuel. I will think of nothing else,
do
nothing else, until I find Benny.

Over my shoulder, I see that Moreau and Oliver have slipped out.

“Listen to me,” Benicio says, as I swing the pack up onto the bathroom sink.

I slide my toothbrush into a side pouch along with a small bottle of Motrin and leave everything else. When I whip around, Benicio’s body is blocking the door.

“You need to
get out of my way
,” I say.

I’ve never spoken to him like this in all our years together. I can’t believe I’m doing it now. But a horrible truth is rushing at me: I’ve made the same mistake twice. Trusted too easily, too
lazily
. I’d thought I’d known Jonathon through and through, but what a joke that proved to be. Afterward, I’d told myself I’d never feel so betrayed ever again, or be so seduced by denial as I was with him.

But now Benicio.
Benicio!

“An hour ago in our bed,” I say, “what
was
that? Placating me? Pretending?”

He can only gape at me for a second.

Finally he says, “If you tell me you don’t know that man, then I have to believe you. And you need to believe me about Emily. For some reason, they’re trying to drive a wedge between us. If you’ll only calm down a second, I’ll explain.”

“You’re the one driving the wedge, Benicio,” I say. I snatch my raincoat off the back of the door and head out into the front room.

Isak jumps to his feet and asks where I’m going. He glances around at the others as I slip into my Wellingtons. “Where is she
going
?”

“You know exactly where I’m going,” I say. “If you want me to stay you’ll need to arrest me.”

Meanwhile, Oliver’s on the floor hurriedly dumping clothes and books and what all from his own backpack, then thrusting a few things back in.

Moreau enters from the dining room, flaps his phone closed, pockets it. “It was Madame Moreau. Just checking in,” he says, as if this is of interest to us all.

“Celia, please,” Benicio says. “Really, this…You can’t just run off like this.”

I hold up my palm. “Watch me,” I say.

“Ms. Hagen.” Isak steps forward. “We don’t want to have to search for you as well.”

“I’m capable of taking care of myself,” I say. “You might want to review your notes about me and my past.”

Isak seems at a loss. Surely he knows I killed a man with a bullet to the throat, knows I ripped open the cut in Jonathon’s face with my fingers, yanked his flesh like wallpaper down a wall.

He tries once more to tell me I’ll
complicate matters
, that talking to outsiders about the case could be disastrous.

“So much time has been wasted,” I say.

He sighs, rubs a hand over his sandy buzz cut, clearly sick of trying to figure out how to deal with me.

I say, “Think of what can happen to an abducted eight-year-old in five days. You
know
?”

I hear Oliver’s backpack slump to the floor.

Everyone else has frozen.

Or happened in the first hours
…No, I can’t say it aloud.

Pinto breaks the silence with a twitchy whine, jumps up and paws at my thigh. “Goddamn it.
Off
,” I say.

I never talk to
her
like this either.

“This whole time,” I go on, “you led me to believe it’s
ransom
they’re after—since I have money. Now, who knows
what
you think—that I did it myself, me and some
boyfriend
?”

Isak tries to restore his Interpol face. “Ms. Hagen,” he says, “we know this was no spur-of-the-moment thing. It was well planned. You could even say brilliantly. There was inside knowledge, and the execution…the precise cutting of the wires, forcing the stop at just the right place. I admit it has all the makings of a ransom case, but…”

Here Moreau puts out a hand toward Isak’s chest, an unsubtle gesture meant to shush him.

After an incredulous moment, Isak defers, turns, and walks off in the direction of the kitchen.

Moreau patiently unwraps a stick of gum and deposits it in his mouth.

“I’ve been trying to believe you’re right, you know,” I yell after Isak. “I
needed
to believe it because if he’s their ticket to my money, they’ll take care of him.”

Isak stops, looks back across the room at me. “And why wouldn’t this be the case now?”

“Because
clearly
you’re fixated on Benicio and me.”

“As I’ve said, this is standard procedure.”

“Then use your standard procedure to find out who doctored my phone records,” I say.

“Celia,” Benicio says. “Take off your jacket.” He knows enough not to try to help me out of it. “Maybe you
should
go back,” he goes on, “but we need to talk first. You need to understand about Emily.”

I realize I cannot bear the sound of his voice another instant. I feel it curdling something in me, turning me sick with loathing. All at once, I’m lunging at him, pummeling his chest. He takes it
for a second as if indulging me, a
woman
, but when I swing for his face, he seizes both my wrists.

Left with no other weapon, I plow my knee into his groin.

He jackknifes at the waist, releasing me.

I watch all this as if from above, the pulverizing of my once wonderful life. Then, out of the chaos of shouts and Pinto’s yipping and dancing underfoot, Oliver’s voice hauls me back, his grip on my upper arms tight enough to bruise. After a moment, I let my muscles go slack. He drops his hands, and we stare at each other. Oh, please don’t
you
think I’m a madwoman, I pray silently.

A hand over his heart, Benicio coughs, catches his breath, shakes his head in a way that says,
I no longer have a clue who we are
.

I see Isak’s horror, and the looks on the faces of the others crowding around now, men I don’t even know, invading my home, my life, their thoughts palpable.
Violent. Unpredictable. Watch her
.

“You all can hang around here waiting for the brilliant kidnapper to let you know how much he wants for my son. Tell your jokes, eat your little boxes of takeout, twiddle your thumbs.”

Oliver swipes the copied notes off the dining room table into his backpack, which he zips and throws over his shoulder.

I open the door. “If you all were a little more brilliant yourselves you’d see that Isabel or Jonathon is behind this. And don’t stand there and tell me they’re in prison, for god’s sake.”

“Let’s go,” Oliver says.

“Oliver—” Benicio says.

“It’s nothing personal,” Oliver says. “It’s just, what if she’s right?”

We slip out into the breezeway. Before the door shuts, I glance back and see Moreau casually chewing his gum, smiling at me. “I,
for one, have indeed read up on you,” he says, and hands me a card from his pocket. “I suppose I’ll see you back in Saint-Corbenay.”

I drop the card in my purse.

And then he winks at me; the cheekiness stops me in my tracks.
Atta girl
, he seems to be saying.
You’re on the money now
.

Saturday morning in summer means riding our bikes to the farmer’s market, where I pick up sunflowers for the kitchen and dining room, and Benny plucks through leafy greens, berries, herbs, smoked meats, and cheeses. We pile it all into our panniers and ride the heavy, lopsided bicycles home. Over a month ago, Benny bought
Johannisbeeren
and made a sweet and savory syrup for pancakes. He lined ten small glass bottles on the kitchen counter and asked me to help fill them. “It looks like we’re bottling blood,” I said of the bright red liquid.

A moment later, strangely, Benny asked what a bloodline was.

“A bloodline? Where’d you hear that word?”

“I don’t know,” he said, eyeing the neck of the bottle.

“Well, why do you ask?”

“Is it a bad word?”

“No, no. I’m just curious.”

He seemed to be only half-listening, the rest of him lost to the chemistry of food.

“I think it’s mainly used with animals,” I said. “Like dogs? Breeders might want their dogs to have longer noses or a better coat, that kind of thing. They can even breed for how good a dog
is at sniffing out rabbits or being around kids. That make sense?” I was hoping I didn’t have to get into the actual
breeding
part.