Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) (21 page)

And so the Nurturing Empress life foretold by my Jump Up psychic commenced. Sort of.

Nick and I crammed ourselves, Taylor, and Oso into a furnished apartment in Corpus Christi that reminded me of my first apartment in Dallas. Boxy and functional, but not much else to brag about, like Corpus itself. It was a far cry from the lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to. We weren’t close enough to the ocean to smell it or hear it, much less see it. The walls were so thin we could hear the neighbors watching
Jersey Shore
and smell their garlicky spaghetti.

I wondered if they could hear me, too, each night at three a.m. when I started screaming. Nick sure could. The first time it had happened, I shot bolt upright in bed. It felt as if two giant hands had struck me hard in the chest. My hands flew to my chest and my heart beat so hard it felt it would break my ribs. I panted for breath.

“No!” I thought I heard Annalise say. But there was no one there.

Nick sat up and grabbed me by the arms and shook me once. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Annalise is very upset with me.”

He pulled me into him. The air vibrated as I whispered to Annalise.

“You love Taylor, too. You know I have to be here with him. We don’t have a choice. You’re upset now, but in the end, everything will be all right. Be mad at Derek, not at me. I love you.” Eventually, Annalise released me and I fell back to sleep. But it happened almost every night at the same time from then on.

So, we had noisy neighbors, and vice versa. We missed Annalise. But on the other hand, we didn’t have to deal with centipedes, hardly-working workers, or Bart anymore. I focused on the positives. Nick was steadily bringing in new clients and I picked up some contract legal work, which wasn’t bad at all.

Oh, hell, who was I kidding? I hated writing discovery responses like an overpaid paralegal, and my sexy husband had attention deficit issues—mainly that he focused on the situation with Derek more than I wished. Money was tight and our problems were real, so I tried to keep a sock in it. I distracted myself by teaching classes to senior citizens at the neighborhood dojo while Taylor was at Mother’s Day Out, the single greatest invention of all time. I could deliver vicious kicks and chops and no one had to know why.

When I wasn’t quasi-lawyering or bludgeoning my issues into submission, Taylor, Oso, and I spent as much of the cooling fall days outside as we could. We enjoyed walking the boardwalk on top of the stone seawall. It had the best view in the city, not just of the water, but also of the beachside motels and the tallish buildings downtown. Being outside eased the pain of missing Annalise a little.

Colorless Corpus Christi was like the reverse image of shiny St. Marcos. But if I closed my eyes, breathed in salt air, and listened to the whoosh of the waves, I could almost see myself back in the beautiful blues, greens, pinks, oranges, and reds of the pre-hurricane islands. Almost. At least once Annalise sold, we could upgrade our living situation, maybe to a rental house with a big back yard and some trees.

I had a strong nibble on Annalise less than a week after we left. The St. Marcos realtor I had signed with showed her to a group of businessmen who wanted to share a house on the island. None of them planned to live on St. Marcos full time. None of them had kids. None of their spouses indicated any interest in spending time there. I had promised Annalise I would find her a family, and these guys seemed the furthest thing from it. Ava told me the men were arrogant and greasy when I called to see how the house-sitting was going.

“What do you mean, greasy?” I pictured them in need of a good shampoo, lank clumps of hair hanging over their pimply foreheads, smudgy spots on their glasses.

“They wheeler-dealers, and they slippery. I not the only one take a dislike to them. They opening cabinets and checking things out, and one of them look under the sink. The pipe bust and spray him good. I cheer Annalise on, let me tell you. Betsy all horrified, teetering around in heels, afraid she get water on her white skirt. White. Why she wear something like that up at Annalise, nobody know.”

The realtor definitely lacked island sense, but I was looking for a Continental buyer. “You and Annalise be nice, now. We need a sale.”

“We need to book our tickets to New York.”

I still hadn’t told her I wasn’t going. I knew I owed it to her, but I couldn’t muster enough courage. Ava could get righteously pissed, but I feared her sadness more than her anger. “Soon,” I said, and changed the subject. “Anything new on Jacoby?”

“No. Should there be? People die in hurricanes. It sad, but it a fact. I do got news, though. Junior Nesbitt missing.”

My hands turned icy. I had convinced myself I’d either dreamed up the picture on my iPhone or Annalise had conjured it to hurt me for leaving her. An image popped into my mind of a pool of blood on my driveway.

“Katie, you there?”

“Yes, sorry. What do you mean, he’s missing?”

“Vanish. He s’posed to work and not show up.”

“That’s pretty normal for him.”

“He not show up for a
week.
Even on the day he pay his men.”

No contractor could stiff his workers and stay in business long. He really was missing. “Taylor is calling. So sorry. I have to run. Thanks, Ava.” I hung up.

Nick was beside me on the sofa. He stared at me like my nose was growing. “What?” he prompted.

My mind scrambled for a plausible story without stopping to figure out why I felt the need to cover up for Annalise. “Junior disappeared. Ava thinks he ran off because he crossed the wrong person.”

Nick’s brow furrowed. He left the question of why that should bother me so much unspoken.

“Bad memories,” I said into the silence, then quickly, “When is Taylor’s next visit with Derek?”

Nick’s eyes told me he wasn’t buying it, but I could always count on Derek to take the spotlight off me. After the paternity tests had proven Derek was Taylor’s dear old dad, their visits had become routine. And the routine was that Taylor went bananas every time he had to go, sometimes starting a couple days early.

“Monday,” Nick answered. “We get the weekend off from Satan.”

The weekend came and went, and Monday arrived.

“No go,” Taylor informed me at breakfast.

I hadn’t mentioned the visit with Derek yet. “No go where? The park? Don’t you want to go to the park and go down the slide?”

This got an emphatic nod.

“The beach? Do you want to go play in the sand?”

Again, a happy nod of his head.

“With Mr. Derek?”

“No go! No go! No go!” Taylor yelled and kicked his heels against his high chair.

WWMD, I asked myself, and got no reply.

Nick walked into the kitchen. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Taylor doesn’t want to go with Derek.”

Nick bent at the waist and pulled Taylor from his chair. He crouched down, setting the boy’s feet on the floor but still holding him in place by the arms. “Why don’t you want to go with Derek?”

Taylor squirmed away and ran off towards his bedroom. Nick’s cell phone rang in harmony with the doorbell. The bell was bound to be the social worker to pick up Taylor.

He grimaced. “It’s a scheduled client call. I really need to take it. Is that OK?”

I waved my hand in answer. I understood, but boy, did the universe have great timing.

I ushered Alice in and went to fetch Taylor. She had the joy of supervising the visits twice a week, and each time we handed Taylor off to her, it got worse. I hauled the struggling boy from his bedroom and followed Alice out to her car with him, talking up the outing as we went. “It will be fun, fun, fun!” My face almost cracked from the effort of my fake smile.

I wrestled Taylor into his car seat. The way he carried on, the neighbors would be calling the police for a domestic disturbance any moment. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t do jail well. I shut his door and turned to Alice to confirm the logistics. They were meeting Derek at Chuck E. Cheese’s, and the visit would last an hour. Then I told Alice about Taylor’s resistance, as if she wasn’t living through it herself right that moment.

“I’m really concerned about how badly it’s going. It’s not just when we give him to you. He starts resisting as soon as he senses a visit coming. I’m worried Derek has done or said something that is making Taylor so,” I searched for the right word, “distraught.”

The heavyset young woman smoothed her skirt. “It’s normal for a little boy his age to be scared of people that are new to him. And he could be picking up on how you and Mr. Kovacs feel. I’m with them every second, and I haven’t seen anything to worry over. Give it some time.”

Alice drove away with Taylor screaming and kicking in his car seat. I hoped she was right that nothing bad was happening, but I just didn’t know what to think, and her answer was unsatisfying. WWMD, WWMD. I didn’t know that either. She hadn’t exactly faced this situation.

When I went back inside, Nick was off his call and wanted to know how it went.

“Awful,” I said. “And she thinks everything is just fine.”

Nick sat at the breakfast table, and I sat down in his lap. I leaned into him. He put his chin on my shoulder. “I think I should call our attorney,” he said.

“I agree.”

But when he did, Mary sang from the same hymnal. “Without proof or even a few details, we won’t get anywhere with the court. It’ll just drag this out further. And every report says Derek is still working at Chico’s Shoes, meeting with his parole officer, and showing up on time and clean for his appointments. He’s drug-tested once a week, and he’s passed them all.”

“What does she want us to do, just wait until all the damage is done?” Nick asked me after the call ended.

“I hate it, too, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Nick did, however. He scooched me off his lap and stood up. He looked taller than his six foot one. His eyes were burning with that dark intensity that made me want to climb up him and at the same time throw myself in front of him like a protester in front of a tank. “What good is it to be a PI if I don’t use my skills and resources for my own family?” he asked.

Just because he was speaking logically and metaphorically didn’t mean I was going to like where it went. “But what can you look into that the court doesn’t already keep tabs on?”

“I don’t know yet, but if I follow him for a few days, I might find out.”

“Be careful, Nick. He scares me.”

“He’s a punk. But Teresa did tell me he had a habit of carrying a Beretta nine millimeter that he wasn’t afraid to use.” Or on St. Marcos, a switchblade, I remembered. “I promise, I’ll be careful.”

Now my phone rang. It was the realtor. I held up one finger to Nick, who nodded and walked back toward the office. Betsy told me to look for an offer on Annalise in my email.

I hung up. The email had already arrived. I opened the attachment and scanned it. The buyers were offering nearly one and a half times my asking price, as in half a million dollars extra. That was strange. No, it was unbelievable. I read further. It made no sense. I called Betsy back.

“What in the world is this?”

“I know, right? It’s very unusual. These guys run a company that buys life insurance policies from terminally ill people. Then they make their company the beneficiary of the policies. The company keeps paying the premiums until the people die, and then they collect the payouts.”

“What?! They get paid for people to die? That’s morbid. Is it even legal?”

“Apparently so. The way they explained it to me, a lot of times when people get really sick, they can’t work and they run up big medical bills, so they sell their life insurance policies to get the cash to live on until they die. They see themselves as helping people who are in distress.”

I paced the confines of the apartment, walking as close to the cheap drywall walls as I could get, willing the space bigger, wishing it wasn’t all painted utilitarian white. “They can see it however they want. It’s still creepy.”

“Yeah, but when you think about it, there are lots of businesses that profit from death. Funeral homes. Casket companies. Florists.”

“I know, but these guys are sitting around waiting for
specific people
to die. They know their names. And I guess the faster they die, the better the rate of return on their investments.”

“True. And yours, too, if you take the offer. They want to cover the purchase price by making you the beneficiary of policies whose payouts are one and a half times your purchase price. Think of the extra money as a prepayment of interest on the balance they owe you, since it will take a while for all the people to die.”

“
Eww.
I’d feel like the Grim Reaper. Worse.”

“You wouldn’t have to get involved with the policies, though. It would be very arms-length. Their company would handle everything, make the premium payments, and arrange for you to be paid.”

Ick. Ick to the max. Ick to the power of infinity. Ick to the hell no. Except that if I took the offer, I’d help us get out of that apartment and focus on being an empress instead of worrying about a big jumbie house two thousand miles away. All while dead bodies piled up around me to make it happen, and without even the consolation of a family for Annalise. It was a lot to think about. Better yet, not to think about.

“I’ll have to get back to them.”

“Make it fast. Their offer expires in forty-eight hours.”

The morbid offer wigged Nick out, too. We talked in circles all afternoon but hadn’t reached a decision by dinnertime. After we put Taylor to bed, we cleaned the small kitchen together and let the topic of dead people die. I tied the ends of the trash bag and hefted it from the can as Nick loaded the dishwasher. I hate touching dirty dishwater, and he knew it. He always picked that job. The man was twenty-four-karat.

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” I asked.

“You mean what are
we
doing.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do. My dad asked us to go deep-sea fishing with him and his buddy Nate.”

Fishing is not my world-favorite activity. “I should work.”

“You told me earlier you didn’t have to.”

Rats. I had. I played my trump card. “What about Taylor? I should stay with him. You guys just go have fun.”

“Taylor is having a Grandma day. She can’t wait.”

“I could hang out with them.”

“Come on, Katie, please? My dad really wants to spend time with us and get to know you better.”

I tried to jive this with the taciturn father-in-law I knew, and failed. But Nick had said please. And a boat on the ocean is never a bad thing, right? “All right,” I said.

Nick whooped, and we heard a yell from down the hall. He had woken Taylor up. And for some reason, we both laughed.

Nick had neglected to mention we’d take the five a.m. ferry to Port Aransas so we could be out on the water by six. He redeemed himself by bringing me fresh-ground King’s coffee in my Baylor Bears mug. Taylor and I slept in our Tahoe on the crossing. He didn’t wake up until we docked on the island and drove to the Kovacs house, where I handed him to Julie, who was standing alongside her tall, silent husband. I’d felt a little queasy getting off the ferry, and when I told her, she ran back into the house for a box of Dramamine.

I really liked my mother-in-law. One good thing about living in Corpus was that I would get to know her better. Well, today was get to know your father-in-law day, so maybe next time. Nick put his arm around me and whisked me back outside and into the white Lincoln Town Car, which Kurt already had in gear with the engine running.

It was only five minutes to Nate’s place. He kept his boat,
The Juggerknot
, tied up in a slip outside his fantastic house on the point of Sandpiper Cove, overlooking the mouth of the port itself where it emptied out into the Gulf of Mexico. I walked sleepily from the car to the boat with a longing glance toward the house. It was tan stucco, Mediterranean style with a red tile roof, and it looked like a house that would have a lot of guest bedrooms for sleepy women who skipped fishing expeditions.

Nate was a hearty fellow, and he gave us a welcoming bellow.

“This is my wife, Katie,” Nick said. “Katie, this is Nate.”

“Nice to meet you, Katie.” He stuck out a giant red paw and gave my palm a good loofah rub as we shook hands.

“And you as well, Nate,” I said.

“The day’s getting away from us, so we’ll be pushing off,” Nate said, despite the fact that the moon had not yet set. He climbed onto the boat and up to the flybridge. “Nick, untie the lines for me, son.”

I scrambled aboard and the boat shifted slightly under my weight. I’d need to take the Dramamine pretty soon to give it time to work, but Nick had it and Nate had just commissioned him first mate.

Nick moved expertly around the boat, removing lines and pushing off. He threw his jacket down to me and worked in his shirtsleeves. I admired his arms and tried not to make it obvious that I was objectifying my husband. Kurt stood at the bow drinking his coffee, looking every inch the descendant of an Iroquois chief.

Nate backed us out of his slip and headed for the gap and out to sea. The brisk wind blew in my face and I was glad for my jacket, and Nick’s too, which I slipped on over mine. I felt the boat move with the surging water and despite myself, I felt a frisson of excitement. I had missed the sea. As soon as we cleared the last of the buoys, Nick joined me.

My phone rang and I looked at the caller ID. Service on the high sea, go figure. It was Ava. Well, it was eight thirty there, but damn, that was early for her. Maybe it was an emergency.

“Ava, what’s up? It’s six thirty here.”

“I had a bad dream,” she said, “and I wake up with a bad feeling to match. You not going to New York with me to cut the demo with Trevor. I right?”

Crap. “Ava,” I said.

“Just tell me yes or no.”

“No, I’m not. I’m sorry. I have to be here.” The wind was blowing and I couldn’t tell whether she was being silent or I’d lost reception. “Ava? Are you there?”

“I here. When you gonna tell me?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“That crap. You don’t go, no point I go. They don’t want just me. You really gonna do this?”

I closed my eyes. It wasn’t just a demo, it was all that came after if it went well, like more time in New York, far away from Nick and Taylor. Nick put his hand on my shoulder and I said, “I’m very, very sorry. I understand you’re mad at me, and I hope you understand that I love you and I would do this for you if I could.”

I heard her crying on the other end of the line. “I gotta go,” Ava said. She hung up.

The waves had grown rougher, and I realized I was holding onto the side with one hand and bending my knees to absorb the shocks. A light smatter of water sprayed my hand. I turned toward Nick and he pulled me into his shoulder, where I laid my head. He rubbed the small of my back in slow circles.

I tilted my head up so my voice would carry to him. “I should take some Dramamine.”

Nick didn’t respond, so I repeated myself.

His head slumped forward. “Don’t be mad,” he said.

Nothing good comes after “don’t be mad.” Nothing. I tensed.

“I left the Dramamine in the car. But it’s a calm day. You’re going to be just fine.”

Normally I would agree with him, but that day my stomach didn’t. “Oh, Nick.”

“You look great, really. Just focus on the horizon and keep your face in the wind.”

He was probably right. I resolved to do just that. I loved being out on the water. I was with my gorgeous husband, and it was going to be a great day.

All of a sudden the boat lurched and the engines whined. Nick clutched me tighter and he and his father yelled up to Nate, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

Nate cut the engines to neutral. The boat slumped into the water and started rolling with the waves. The wind created by our forward motion stilled.

Nick released me and walked to the back of the boat. “Am I going in?” he yelled up to Nate.

“Yah,” Kurt said before Nate could answer.

“’Pears that way, son,” Nate agreed. “Snorkel gear and knife are under the seat, there.” He pointed to the bench seat in the stern.

The smell of diesel grew stronger. My mouth went dry. My ears started ringing. No, I thought. No, no, no. Look at the horizon. I tried to find it, but the boat’s up and down motion made it impossible to hold it in my sight.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Nate turned the engines off.

Nick had retrieved the gear and stripped down to his skivvies, a sight I appreciated more when I felt better. “Got something in the propeller,” Nick said. “I’ve got to cut it off.” He slipped a knife holster over his ankle, donned the mask, kissed my cheek, climbed up on the side, and jumped in feet first.

“But what about sharks?” I yelled at him when he resurfaced, bobbing while he put on his fins and adjusted his snorkel.

He stuck the snorkel in his mouth and shot me a thumbs-up, then disappeared below the undulating surface of the water. I’d loved the clear, warm Caribbean ocean, but this was a different kettle of fish, a cold kettle you could pretty much call black. Long seconds ticked by. Didn’t he have to come up to breathe?

“He’s been down too long, don’t you think?” I asked Kurt, who was sitting on the bench seat.

Kurt cocked his head like he was thinking, then he turned his face up toward Nate and spoke slowly, squeezing all the juice he could from each word. “How long he been down, Nate?”

Nate looked at his watch. “I wasn’t timing him, but I’d say about a minute.”

Kurt shook his head, then leaned it back into his hands. “Nah. He’s got a lot left in him. He set a record for free diving when he was eighteen.”

My father-in-law left a lot out between his sparse words. “And free diving is what?”

“Going down as far as you can on one breath, and coming back up. It’s how deep you can go and how long you can hold your breath.” He nodded, and almost smiled.

This was just about the longest speech I’d ever heard from him. I almost smiled back, except I felt too nauseous to do it without vomiting. Nick’s head popped up.

“Fishing net. It’s in there pretty good. Don’t get in a hurry to go anywhere,” he said. He sucked in a deep breath and disappeared again.

“Dammit,” Nate said. “Nothing worse than that.” He turned to me and said, “I carry nets, myself, but I don’t ever let them loose in the water. They can do thousands of dollars of damage in an instant.”

I managed a careful nod.

The boat rocked. The sun rose. The engines were completely off, but the smell of diesel seemed to grow stronger. I broke into a sweat and shed the jackets. Every few minutes, Nick would emerge for a breath, then dive again. Every time he did, I was breathing faster. My mouth watered. My eyes burned. And then it was no use fighting it any more. I ran to the side of the boat and heaved. Black coffee sprayed down toward the water. I was not too far gone to feel embarrassed.

“No vomiting allowed on my boat,” Nate hollered, laughing. Then he reined himself in and said, “Go to the back. You’re closer to the water there. Less to clean up later.”

I stumbled to the back, which positioned me roughly above Nick. I looked back at Kurt.

“Don’t worry about him. Just imagine what’s already in that water,” he advised.

I turned and spewed my breakfast into the water, then propped myself on the side of the boat, gasping. I hurled again as Nick came up for air. He got round two on his head.

“What the hell?” he said, then saw me hanging over the back. “Uh oh.”

“I would be fine if I’d have had some Dramamine,” I croaked.

He dove before I nailed him again.