Tasting Fear (52 page)

Jack’s muscles seized up. “What? You’re going to just stick the sketches in your purse? Carry them right out on the street?”

“I’ll put them carefully into the table leg where they’ve resided for sixty-five years, put the leg into a big shopping bag. No one will know they’re there,” she soothed. “We’ll all breathe easier when those sketches are safe in a vault.”

“I’ll breathe easier when that son of a bitch is dead,” Jack said.

Vivi kissed the top of Jack’s head. “Afterward, we’ll drive out of the city. Find ourselves a hotel, okay? If Nancy can spare the car.”

“Sure, but it’s kind of unpredictable,” Nancy warned. “The window in the back’s come loose, so don’t even try to roll it all the way up. It got smashed in by crazed crackheads one too many times.”

“Can’t be more rickety than my van was,” Vivi said, wistfully. “My poor drowned van. I owe that van. It gave its life for me.”

Jack’s urge to fight drained away. Look at him. Pussywhipped as they came. Following that chick around like a panting hound, doing exactly as he was told. Jesus. Still, the thought of a night in absolute privacy with her alone in a hotel room was too inviting to resist.

He wanted to have that talk that she had promised him. To thrash things out between them, so he could relax, and buy her a goddamn engagement ring already.

He wanted to close the deal. Now.

But his pussywhipped patience reached its end when he realized that she intended to stop at Lucia’s house in Hempton on the way. “There’s something I need to pick up there,” she insisted.

“At a time like this? What in holy hell could be so important?”

“It’s a secret!” She frowned at him. “You’ll understand later! Now just take this exit, turn to the right at the bridge, and stop arguing!”

He snarled obscenities as he flicked on the turn signal, and guided Nancy’s battered, coughing little car off the highway, following Vivi’s directions to the quiet street where Lucia’s house was located.

He jerked to an angry stop in front of it. “So?”

“So what? So thank you,” she said primly. “You’re very obliging. So polite, too. Do you want to wait here while I run up and get it?”

“Fuck no. You think I’ll let you go into a dark, abandoned house all alone?” He pulled out his gun. “Bring those goddamn sketches.”

“As if I’d leave them in a car,” she scoffed. “Let alone one with the back window held together with duct tape.”

Jack kept hold of her arm. The street was quiet at this hour, just a few of the houses lit, the bluish flicker of televisions here and there. But his senses were buzzing, his hairs rising. No way could anyone know they were here—unless Lucia’s house itself was watched. But who would watch an empty house? For weeks?

Get real
, he told himself, as Vivi pushed the door open.

She didn’t waste time in the sad, quiet house, just flipping on the light over the stairway, and then the light for the steep stairway leading up to the attic. Jack followed her up, fuming. His neck crawled. His discomfort grew as she pried open box after box. “What the fuck are you looking for, Viv? Christmas decorations?”

“Shut up and let me concentrate,” she replied calmly.

She finally found what she sought, although she would not let him see it. She hid it with her body, wrapping it in a big plastic sack.

“Okay,” she announced. “We can go now.”

He led the way down the stairs, muttering imprecations as they went back to the car. Vivi frowned at him as he opened the trunk for her. “I wish you’d relax a little,” she complained. “You’re making me tense.”

“I? I’m making
you
tense?” He opened the car door for her, and circled around, slid in, and started up the engine in one movement. “Let me tell you about
my
tension level, Viv.”

That instant, he registered the smell. Already too late. There was a rustling sound, like a flock of bats. Panic exploded inside him—

Vivi’s gasp choked off into a squeak. A heavy arm was clamped across her throat. A gleaming blade was pressed right beneath her eye.

John grinned from behind her car seat, a panting, stinking death’s head, his face swollen, bruised and shiny. The point of the blade traced its slow, cruel way down over Vivi’s cheek, leaving a thin red line in its wake. It ended up jammed against her throat. Point digging in.

“One move, and she bleeds out in forty seconds,” John rasped.

Vivi’s system was so burnt out from adrenaline, she barely reacted. She felt blank. Empty. No matter what she did, no matter how she fought, the way out of this trap was always barred.

“I’m sure it would be fascinating to hear about your tension level,” John said, with a wheezing, giggling laugh. “We can compare it to your tension level while you’re watching me cut your little fuck buddy here into bite-sized bloody pieces.”

Jack’s hand moved. John pressed the knife tip harder against her throat and clucked his tongue. “Not one muscle. Hands where I can see them. On top of the wheel.
Now
!”

Jack complied. Vivi wanted to look at him, but she was afraid the knife would jab right into her artery. Her voice box bobbed against it, stinging. “It’s too late to get the sketches,” she said, her voice thin and high. “I’ve told everyone. Curators at the art museums. Sotheby’s, the press. I’ve scanned pictures of them to the
New York Times
, to—”

“Don’t bother, you stupid bitch,” John hissed. “I know you haven’t done any of that yet. I watched you. I have vidcams all over Knightly’s house. What a bunch of careless, stupid fucks you all are.”

“Cameras?” She was startled. “At Liam’s house?”

He laughed, and the hot cloud of his foul breath made her gag. “All that time they spent in Denver with Liam’s dear old dad,” he said. “I rigged his house. Saw every minute. You never called the press. Just that curator bitch—what was her name? Jill Rosseau. Is she cute?”

She gathered her nerve. “You still won’t be able to sell—”

“You think I give a fuck?” His laughter was shrill and explosive. “If I can’t sell them, I’ll wipe my ass with them the next time I take a shit. I just want to make…you…scream.” He jerked her head back, dragging the blade over her tendons. He stank, of sweat, and worse.

“So with Haupt dead, there’s nobody left to pay you for the job, though, right?” Jack remarked, in a conversational tone.

“Oh. Haupt. That’s another bone I have to pick with you, slut. You killed the old bag of bones before I got a chance to do it myself.”

“You’re doing this for revenge?” Jack sounded casually interested.

Vivi’s hand clenched in the folds of the dress Nancy had lent her. It closed over the linked pendants that Nell had slipped into the pocket. She slid her trembling fingers inside, felt for the lever with her thumb.

“I’m doing it because you guys fucked me,” John snarled. “Nobody fucks me. You have to pay.”

His voice was shaking. So was the hand that held the knife. Vivi pushed the tiny lever of the linked pendants. The thin gold blade snapped out, pressing against her thumb, sharp as a box cutter.

“Must have hurt you quite a bit, with that head smash,” Jack said. “You must have one motherfucker of a chronic headache.”

“Fuck you,” John said sullenly. “Shut your mouth.”

“And that kick to the knee. Did I fuck up your knee? And don’t you have a bullet wound? Your arm, or your shoulder, or something? Has it gone septic? Smells like gangrene, man. You should have somebody look at that. You probably need IV antibiotics.”

“Shut up!” John shrieked.

“Come to think of it, you look like you’ve got a fever, too,” Jack offered. “You should pop some Tylenol. That smell is intense. Whew.”

“You fucking bastard! Shut the fuck
up
!” John whacked his hand across Jack’s face.

Vivi used that brief instant of distraction to snap the pendant up, slashing it into John’s face. He shrieked, jerked back. Jack twisted—

Bam, bam, bam.
The pistol blasts were deafening in the small car.

The force of the bullets punched John back against the corner of the backseat. His big, heavy face went slack. Eyes blank.

His head tipped, slowly and heavily to the side. Mouth slack.

They waited, several heartbeats. Jack reached back, gingerly, and pressed his finger to John’s carotid artery, for a long, cautious moment.

“Gone,” he said, his voice hoarse and exhausted. The gun slid from his hand, thudded to the floor. He sagged, breathing hard.

“Oh, Jack.” She lunged for him.

They rocked together, in a tight, trembling embrace. It was over.

It was several hours later, after a long, complicated, emotional stint at the police station, before Jack and Vivi managed to get to their hotel. They’d scrounged yet another car from Vivi’s long-suffering family, since the blood-drenched Jetta had been sequestered, and it was long past dawn by the time they checked into their room.

Vivi’s sisters had begged for her to come back to stay with them in Hempton, but Vivi quietly insisted on some time alone with him. Thank God. He was pathetically grateful for that small grace. Her sisters were lovely and great, and he liked them fine, but the conversation he needed to have with Vivi required privacy. No winking, nudging, or giggling.

Vivi flipped on the light, dropped her bags by the door and leaving blackout curtains closed against the morning sunshine. She sat on the bed, big eyed and solemn. She looked like a girl from another century, hair tangled and soft around her like a red cape. She wore a blue print dress that one of her sisters had lent her, but it was too big for her. The neckline drooped low over her bosom, showing off her tattoo. She followed his eyes, and smiled.

“Hey. You’re staring at my
Eranthis hyemalis,
buddy,” she said.

“Does it make you nervous?” he asked.

She reached up to touch the little yellow flower on her bosom, giving him a smile that made his crotch tighten. “Not in the least.”

He fought his surging sexual hormones down, and sank to his knees in front of her. It seemed appropriate, considering.

“You promised me that if the axe got lifted, we could have this conversation,” he said. “About us. And our future.”

“So I did,” she said demurely. “The axe is gone. And here we are.”

He stared searchingly into her face. “Why were you such a hard-ass, Viv? Were you punishing me for being a dickhead before?”

She shook her head, and stroked his jaw. “Hell no,” she whispered. “I was just trying to be a grown-up. How could you hook up with a woman who was nothing but a black hole of problems? What kind of a future could you possibly plan with a woman like that?”

He laughed, unbelieving. “I don’t care. I’d marry you anyway. I’d marry you if those fuckers were banging on the door this very minute.”

She pulled him closer, between her knees. He leaned forward against the swag of her full skirt, seeking more contact.

“I thought it would be better not to make plans, or get attached to the future,” she said. “Since I thought I might not even have a future. Better to stay in the moment. Since you’d already taught me how.”

“Ouch,” he grumbled. “Would you stop with that?”

“I don’t mean it as a judgment.” There was a smile in her voice.

“The hell you don’t.” His arms slid around her waist, and he nuzzled her solar plexus, dragging in a deep lungful of her sweet scent, rubbing his cheek against a glossy lock of dangling hair. “This is the thing, about staying in the moment,” he said, carefully. “There’s a lot to be said for it, but certain things require a larger arc of time. Like planting a flower garden. You plant, you wait, you weed, you water, you enjoy. Takes months. Or waiting for those
Eranthis hyemalis
seedlings to take root and spread into a floral carpet. That takes time. That’s not a momentary thing. They won’t even bloom until February. Understand?”

“Oh, yeah,” she whispered, her mouth touching his ear.

He was shaking, deep inside, in his core. “Or opening a gallery shop of wearable, usable art, for example,” he went on, doggedly. “Or, uh, making a baby. Although I don’t know. Now that you’re a megazillionaire, things might be different. You might want to live a glamorous, jet-setting sort of life. What the fuck do I know.”

“Megazillionaire, my ass.” She tilted up her face, and shook her head. “If I ever do see money from that mess, the only difference it’ll make to me is that I’ll be able to hire a girl to spell me at the shop. So that I can have time to work on my art. And, ah, the baby. Of course.”

He was grinning. Like a fool. He wanted to roll over backward for joy, wave his legs in the air. He controlled the impulse, with some difficulty. A proposal of marriage should be dignified, goddammit.

She slid both hands into the hair on the back of his head, leaned her forehead against his. Her hair fell down, fragrant against his cheek.

“You told me a few weeks ago that I’d pack up my van and drive away as soon as I realized what it meant to look at the same place, day in and day out. Or the same person,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” He nuzzled that fragrant hank of hair. “I was a dick.”

“No, no. I wasn’t roasting you. Let me finish. I just wanted to say that, um, I think I’ve definitely realized what it means, now.”

He pulled away, gazing at her with narrowed eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yours is the face I want to look at for the rest of my life,” she said quietly. “Day in and day out. And I want to see it in my children’s faces, if we get lucky that way. While seasons turn. Rain and snow and wind and sun. While flowers bud and bloom and go to seed around us. While seedling trees grow way up into the sky. A big arc of time. Decade after decade. As long as fate gives us.”

He hid his shaking face against her chest again, letting secret tears soak into her dress. “Just one more question, Viv,” he ventured.

She smiled, against his silky hair. “And what’s that?”

“What the hell was that thing you had to stop at Lucia’s house to pick up last night? The suspense is killing me.”

She froze, and then burst into startled laughter. “Oh! I forgot all about that! I’ll show you.” She retrieved the plastic bag from where she’d left it by the door and gave him an embarrassed look. “This makes me a little shy.”