How to Disappear (27 page)

Oh God!

I think about it.

Jack says, “Now what?”

Between the coiled rope and the holster, there’s a space against his chest I can fit into. His hands find the small of my back.

One hot failed assassin who gets to retire in a couple of hours.

But first, I have to make this whole thing stop.

She’s lost it. It’s as if she feels omnipotent when she’s on the trigger side of flying bullets. When I mention that geese don’t shoot back, she won’t listen.

If Mendes wants to bury her, shoving Don’s gun in his face isn’t going to defuse things. If he wants to bury his kid, he’s a monster who could do anything.

I’m holding her so close in the darkening woods behind her house. I’ve tried to talk her out of this a dozen different ways—reasonably, soothingly, threateningly—but if I were facing her down in Model UN, there’d be thermonuclear war.

I say, “What about if Mendes is armed?”

Nicolette sniffs. “He
hunts
. It’s not like he carries a Winchester around the house. Come on!”

She bounds through the woods with cheerleader enthusiasm. I can barely see the path in the twilight. She thinks we can just walk up to the house and use her Catherine Davis prepaid Visa Buxx card to unlock the door and get in, that if we trip the alarm, Mendes will think it’s a raccoon because it’s always a raccoon.

I don’t know what she plans to say to him because she won’t tell me. If her plan is to provoke him so he strikes, provoking me to do something to stop him, it’s a bad plan. I’ll try. But why would she think she could disarm me, but a guy with decades on me couldn’t?

Being this humbled this recently doesn’t make for a shit ton of self-confidence.

The French doors in Steve’s office open with the credit card.

The doors creak slightly, but it’s a creaky house. The motion detector isn’t on, no beams of light. Great, because I don’t have to sprint into the kitchen to turn it off. Bad, because it means Steve is home, walking around.

I wanted to get here first.

But it’s home. It’s Steve. It’s what I’m used to.

For a second, I relax. As if it’s safe.

But this is the opposite of safe. This is the lion’s den. Not the nice lion that likes the mouse for pulling a thorn out of his paw. The hungry kind that drags his prey through the woods. And stabs it eleven times.

There’s a light on in the hall.

We creep toward it.

I turn to lift the rope off Jack, motioning for him to put down all his stuff. It’s not like Steve is going to call the police on us, incensed homeowner pointing to a bunch of abandoned burgling tools.

Jack shakes his head.

This is what Jack looks like when he stops breathing.

He holds up his hand and points.

There’s a guy in a white shirt, sitting in the kitchen, texting.

Perfect.

You don’t forget the guy who hits you with the shovel he’s using to bury a girl. You don’t forget his profile when the flashlight lit him up, or his voice, or what you want to do to him.

Jack puts his hand on my shoulder. He actually thinks he can hold me back.

Well, he can’t.

Then Gertie comes charging out of nowhere. A tiny brown fur ball, barking her head off.

The guy stirs.

Starts to turn.

Starts to ruin everything.

I grab the white china pitcher that has orange roses in it. Always. In memory of my mom.

Bring it down on the guy’s head.

It’s not like TV. The vase doesn’t shatter. The guy doesn’t
make a sound. Slumps forward over the table. His phone hits the floor.

Roses strewn.

Jack mutters, “Jesus. Are you sure you didn’t cut Connie Marino?”

I punch him in the side. He grabs my wrist. I’m wrestling to get my hand back when Steve walks in. Comes toward me.

Followed by Alex Yeager.

A guy I’ve known since his dad, Karl, brought him up here to play in the lake while the fathers talked business.

And who is the scum of the earth.

I thought I knew how Jack sounded when crazy angry.

I didn’t.

He jerks around and yells, “Stop! Now!”

Steve stops dead. He’s sock-footed, like he was just taking his shoes off. Changing out of his suit. Just reaching for his jeans when he heard the vase bouncing off the guy’s head. Holding out his arm to keep Alex back.

Alex is glaring at me like his eyes could burn holes through me.

I’m glaring back. Like bullets could burn holes through him.

This isn’t looking too good for Mendes, one guy down, his other guy taking cover behind him.

He reaches out toward Nicolette as if she were an apparition. “Nicky, you came back. Did this boy hurt you?”

I reach for the gun.

Nicolette yells, “
Shit,
Steve! You better
duck
!”

“Nicolette!” Like he’s the stern dad, having missed the facts that I’m aiming Don’s gun at him and that once your kid figures out you’re going after her, you don’t get to rein in her language.

Mendes says to me, “Whatever you want, you can have it. But why don’t you put that down on the table? I’ll stay back here. No problem.”

“No problem!” Nicolette says. “What would be a problem to
you? Your kid sees you
burying
someone and then you say she’s not even your kid and you’re getting rid of her?”

“How could you think I meant that?”

The young guy half-crouched behind Mendes says, “What is this, fucking
Family Feud
? Why am I even here?”

Nicolette screams, “You said I was
next
—are you kidding me? How could you
say
that?
Hey, Nicolette, I love you, just kidding, now I want you DEAD!
How could you hire someone to kill me?”

“What are you talking about?” Mendes is getting unhappier by the minute.

“He wasn’t stalking me for fun!” Nicolette nods in my direction. “Somebody made him. Someone has to pay.”

Mendes is moving almost infinitesimally toward her, saying, “Nicky, come over here and stand behind me,” as if he missed what she just said, missed her face when she said it, and missed the fact that there’s already a chickenshit bozo right behind him.

I tell Nicolette, “Don’t!” with a lot of conviction.

Nicolette gives me a withering look. “Right, I’m an idiot. I want to be a human shield.”

Mendes keeps coming. “He’s lying. I wanted to find you and bring you home. I sent people to find you.”

I say, “Nobody said anything about bringing her home.”

“You look exactly like Art Manx. You’re Art’s boy,” Mendes says. “Do you think he’d be proud of you, menacing a sixteen-year-old girl?” Mendes fixes his gaze on Nicolette. “Nicky, I love you. I didn’t hire this boy.”

But the fact that he has one guy slumped over his kitchen table and his second guy trailing him like a puppy, and the smooth way he’s trying to deal with me, snuffs out hope that he’s just an accountant with a couple of rough clients, in over his head. He’s way too comfortable with this.

Nicolette puts her hands over her ears. “I
heard
you! How could you say those things about me?”

“What do you think you heard?”

She starts to sob, leaning against the chair that holds the comatose guy, who hasn’t budged since she beaned him.

Mendes keeps inching toward her, his minion behind him like a mime playing a shadow. The minion’s a good-looking guy, his mouth hanging open, a little confused. I’m not that worried about him, but Mendes is another story.

I bark, “Stay back!”

My arm is extended; the gun is extended.

Nicolette yells, “Don’t!”

At first, I think she’s yelling at Mendes.

“Jack, don’t! This is a mistake! Don’t hurt my dad!”

My grip tightens, and my finger is tense around the trigger. The younger guy has started creeping closer too, reaching for a kitchen drawer on his way, sliding it open, and I don’t like it.

Mendes keeps coming. He’s so close, I could get him through the eye with a peashooter.

Then Nicolette screams, “Knife! He’s got a knife!”

It’s the younger guy pulling a long kitchen knife out of a drawer as Mendes moves toward Nicolette.

“Knife! Knife! Knife!”

Nicolette has all but jumped on my right arm with all her weight, forcing the barrel of the gun away from Mendes; Mendes is reaching for it; and this muscular guy with the knife—who’s no use guarding Mendes, if that’s what he’s supposed to be doing—is coming at her, or me, or both of us, blade first.

Screw Mendes, I have to stop the guy with the knife. Assess your target: he’s it.

I’m pulling back, taking aim, not giving up the gun, when Mendes tackles Nicolette from the side. A chair pitches toward me. The bodyguard—or whoever he is with the knife—charges. And there’s a blast like we just broke the sound barrier.

Blast after blast after blast.

Everything explodes. There’s a spatter of blood.

It could be anyone’s.

It could be mine.

Blood everywhere.

Steve’s blood and Alex Yeager’s blood.

Jack’s pressing on Steve’s arm with a dish towel.

There’s no point in trying to help Alex Yeager. He’s gone.

Nobody is saying anything.

Gertie is cuddled next to me, wagging her tail. Licking me with a dripping, bloodred snout.

I’m calling 9-1-1 over and over, but they keep putting me on hold.

Then men start racing in, weapons unholstered.

Jack says, “Crap, he has an army.”

But it’s the Cotter’s Mill–Kerwin Township P.D. All these
men I recognize in flak jackets, tracking through blood to get to Steve.

Someone’s on his phone confirming that the caller who said he heard a bunch of shots fired heard shots fired and they need three ambulances. Yes, three.

Jack keeps pressing down on the shattered arm, two-handed, kneeling across Steve’s chest.

Steve is turning white, and then kind of gray.

I’m chanting, “I’m sorry,” as if it could make him open his eyes and believe me.

I can’t even think about Alex, lying on the kitchen floor in more blood than you’d think a person could lose that fast.

He’s done hurting people.

I’m home. It’s like I’ve returned to some form of sanity, where Steve spurting blood like a human fountain is just wrong.

Please, please, don’t let anything happen to Steve.

Steve’s touching my leg. He says, “No matter what, you go with the police.”

Then everything gets fast and loud.

Steve and the guy I bashed on the head are on stretchers, paramedics shining lights into their eyes. Racing them through the house toward the sirens outside.

Jack’s gun is in an evidence box. Jack is under arrest.

I’m under arrest.

I say, “How can you arrest me? You know me!”

Jack says, “Jackson Arthur Manx . . . Summerlin, Nevada . . . yeah, Arthur Manx was my dad . . .”

Before he turns completely pale, Steve says, “Not one word. To anyone.”

Our hands are bound behind us with the kind of plastic fasteners you use on giant garbage bags. They hurt.

A guy in a Kevlar vest asks me, “Do you know who they are?”

Alex and his stupid friend I knocked out with the vase.

“The dead one with the knife. His dad knows my dad. And I saw the other one, too. That once in the woods by the lake. Digging the hole.”

Jack, as they’re leading him away, says, “Nicolette, stop talking.”

The huge guy who’s got him by the arms shoves him. “Are you
threatening
her?”

“I’m telling her to listen to her dad! You can’t ask her questions without her parent there.”

“If she’s a suspect.” This guy does not like Jack.

Jack says, “You arrested her. That would make her a suspect.”

The guy in the Kevlar vest says, “It’s the Manx kid. What do you expect?”

“Do we know who knocked out this one?” He waves his arms at the cracked vase.

“I did.”

Jack says, “Nicolette, shut up!” Then he says, “Look at her. It isn’t physically possible. I did.”

At which point Rosalba, who can sleep through almost anything—except this, apparently—comes roaring out of her room in a bathrobe, calling out, “Nicky!” She hugs me, and then she starts yelling at people.

I end up in my room. A deputy from Kerwin is sitting on a dining room chair outside my door, waiting for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to show up.

I could go out the window, but there are guys outside, shouting. About the perimeter and hard targets and soft targets and attempted murder and murder. About Steve and the guy that I knocked out and Alex.

Alex Yeager.

I wish I could forgive him and pray for his immortal soul and mourn his loss and be a good person.

But I can’t.

I’m not.

Even Steve told me to keep quiet so the police wouldn’t figure that out.

I stick my head around the door. I ask the guy, “What happens now?”

He says, “Cool your jets.”

What does that even mean?

I try texting Jack, but either he’s someplace without reception or he’s more under arrest than I am.

I call over to St. Francis again and again to find out how Steve is. They tell me there’s nobody there by that name. I ask the guy outside my door if we can go over to the hospital, and he tells me I have to sit tight.

“I don’t want to sit tight. I want to go to the hospital.”

“You were supposed to stay with the police, remember? I’m the police. Sit tight.”

“Is Steve all right?”

“After your boyfriend shot him?”

“He’s not my boyfriend! And he was trying to protect me from the guy with the knife. Please. The hospital won’t tell me anything.”

The marshal smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Listen, honey, in the morning, you’re going to have a lawyer. Your dad had someone call her. Until then, I need your phone.”

“Why can’t I have a phone?”

“This is for your own protection.”

“Where’s Jack?”