Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (16 page)

“Max, your father was spotted leaving Arkady Glinka’s river house,” Ava finally answered. “It seems to confirm your suspicions.”

Alone in his bedroom with the door closed, Max gazed at the night-blackened sea. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew it was on the move, like his father, driven by treacherous currents running just below the surface.

“My suspicions that there remain two occupied collars on the late Ivan Volynski’s long leash? That because his pet mole Morozov now comes down from his Urals hiding place and risks capture to consult with Glinka, we might assume them both complicit in Gorev’s murder?” He waited for no response. “Allow me to explore this a moment, Ava. With Ivan’s generals Fedorovsky and Andreyev gone, the mantel of insurrection falls on the mastermind’s childhood friend and avenger, the extraterrestrial-communing Arkady Glinka. The assassination of Gorev is just his first salvo. It is not only revenge for what he believes was Gorev’s order to kill Ivan, but more critically, it is the all-systems-go for Ivan’s strategy to overtake the government. Gorev out, Glinka in.” Max sniffed. “No doubt, Glinka has already celebrated the victory with the dead Ivan in a reunion of the two in some smoky séance somewhere. I venture to say it was—”

“I must stop you there, Max. There is something else you should know.”

Max waited.

“President Noland has received what he believes to be a message from Ivan Volynski, a recent message, which suggests he’s still alive.”

Max didn’t stir, but his mind leapt to one implication in particular. Liesl. If the man who twice had ordered her death were still alive, what would it take to protect her now? And why should he consider that before the more obvious: that Ivan Volynski still ruled. That a confirmed-alive Morozov and a confirmed-active WMD had both recently departed the Ural Mountains bound for where? The back yard of Ivan’s hated half brother? But that hadn’t been Max’s first thoughts. It had been Liesl. It was always Liesl. Would he ever learn to love another as much as her?

“Max, are you there?”

“Of course, Ava. Tell me what the message said.” His mind whirled in two separate chambers of thought, simultaneously. Liesl’s safety, and the rest of the world.

“It was a photograph of Noland’s father with a young Ivan. The accompanying message was simply,
Our papa and me.
It was dated less than a week ago.”

Max grew hopeful. “Can you be sure it was Ivan’s handwriting? Someone else could have sent it as a perverse but timely joke. Ivan himself could have postdated it with instructions to deliver it should something happen to him. Who knows the real source?” Still, Max knew they couldn’t ignore it altogether.

“We’re working on that,” Ava responded. “In the meantime, I suggest you talk Liesl into canceling your upcoming performances.”

Max chuckled. “Sure. Right after I reverse the rotation of the earth.”

“I understand. I can hear her insist that Volynski, if he’s alive, can get at her anywhere, anytime he wants, as he’s already proven. And she’s right. But why make it easier for him?”

“You and I think that way. Liesl doesn’t. And won’t, I can guarantee it. But I’ll try again.”

“It’s not just Liesl I’m worried about. Maxum is out there too and he knows it was his son who literally dug up the evidence against him. You and Liesl would be twin targets, wide open on that stage.”

“No, Ava. He’s had a year and a half to come down out of those mountains and do anything he wanted to me. I believe he’s the only reason I haven’t been a target like Liesl has. Maybe out of some belated sense of fatherhood. He probably knows, though, that if anything were to happen to her, it would—” He stopped himself. Ava Mullins had no right to know that such a thing would mean a kind of death for him, too. He covered himself without missing hardly a beat. “It would hurt us all.”

“Still, you must both be alert and cautious at all times.”

“I suggest we concentrate on finding Ivan if it’s true he’s alive. We already have a fairly positive ID from the cop in Florida that it was him with Glinka in that speeding stop just two years ago. That would be a good place to look.”

“There’s an FBI undercover team on its way there now. But there’s something I don’t get. The whole world watched Ivan’s chopper explode in New York and heard Noland declare him dead and gone. If he’s alive, we’ve given him the perfect cover. If everyone thinks he’s dead, then no one will hunt him. He can move about invisibly. So why would he deliberately blow his cover by sending that teaser to the president?”

Max thought about that, about the peculiar strain of sadism that sometimes runs between blood kin, father to son, scorned brother to anointed brother. Then he answered, “To jab with a needle that no one can prove exists.”

Ava hesitated only a moment. “Then we must prove it does.”

T
ally was awakened that Saturday morning by the tinkling of wind chimes hanging from the knob of her bedroom door. It’s what they were supposed to do when anyone attempted entry to her tower domain. The slightest turn of the knob from either side of the door set off the alert.

“It’s just me, Tally,” Mona Greyson called.

Tally knew it shouldn’t be anyone else. Just the two of them lived in the house. That was the reason for the chimes. It was just the two of them … in a house with lots of outside doors and climber-friendly balconies. Regardless of what she’d told Denise about not locking the front door, the kind of person who would break into a house draped with evil eyes and ghostly mirrors was the kind of person Tally feared most. It was another reason she’d claimed the farthest reaches of the house for her room.

Tally rose from her covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Come in,” she answered, gratefully acknowledging her mother’s customary habit of announcing herself before entering.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Mona said, crossing the small room to sit next to Tally on the bed.

“That’s okay. I was going biking early this morning anyway. Better get going.” Tally made a move to get up, but her mom laid a firm hand on her arm. “Not just yet. I need to talk to you.”

Dread rose in Tally’s chest as she settled back on the bed. “It won’t take long, will it?”

“As long as it takes.” Mona examined her daughter’s face. “I saw you sneak into the house last night. You said you were staying at Denise’s. What happened?”

Another good lie would end the inquisition. But that was getting harder to do. As much as she’d resisted the things she heard at Denise’s church, they’d begun to make sense to her, even appeal to her. Maybe like Mr. Fremont, watching someone you love lose themselves in the dark made you want to run to the light. Was God that light? Maybe, maybe not.

She drew a long breath. “We both got busy with other things.” No need to say more than she had to. Besides, it was the truth. Too busy stalking through the woods to indulge in silly sleepovers as if they were still children. She smiled pleasantly at her mom.

“So where were you last night?”

The smile vanished.
That’s going to be harder.
“Well, uh, we just went out for a walk and Denise went straight home.”

Mona looked down and fingered the old pink chenille robe tied snuggly about her slim waist. “Tally, a friend of mine at the camp called this morning. She told me she was pretty sure she saw two girls slipping around there last night. That one of them might have been you.”

Tally didn’t dare make eye contact with her mother. Nor did she say anything, though that was as good as a confession, she knew.

“Tally, look at me.”

When she did, Tally saw a glimmer of fear in her mother’s eyes.

“Did you follow me?”

Tally could answer truthfully. “No, Mom.” She had known her mom was somewhere in the camp but hadn’t gone there to find her. It had just happened that way.

“Then why were you there?”

A loaded question. Tally and her irritating conscience were trapped. She glanced at the muddy sneakers she’d tossed in the corner last night. “Just wanted to show Denise what it was like.” Another truth. She turned innocent eyes on her mom.

“And what did you see?”

This is getting worse.
“Nothing much.”

Mona turned fully toward her daughter. “Did you see me?”

Tally couldn’t escape her mom’s piercing brown eyes. She found herself nodding quietly, unable to shut out the cries she’d heard from the open window of Lesandra Bernardo’s house. Her mother’s tormented pleas.

“Did you hear me, Tally?” Now the brown eyes filled with tears.

Tally swallowed hard and tried to look away but couldn’t. Again, she nodded, then began to sob, quietly at first, then uncontrollably.

Mona wrapped both arms around Tally and clung to her. “I’m so sorry,” she moaned, her own tears spilling onto Tally’s cheek.

But Tally suddenly pulled away. “Don’t go there ever again, Mom. Something bad happens there.”

But Mona only shook her head and looked away. “You don’t understand. Something bad already happened, when I was a child.”

Tally dared to ask. “Was it your dad? Did he do something to you?” Tally did and did not want to hear the answer to that.

But Mona suddenly drew herself up straight and wiped away her tears. She pulled the robe tightly across herself again and stared into space.

“Mom? Are you all right?”

She could see her mom’s mouth working, speaking silent words. Her delicate hands rose to her cheeks, now flushed and quivering. Then she calmed, laid her hands back in her lap and turned to Tally. “I’m trying desperately to be all right. Miss Bernardo is helping me.”

Go ahead and ask
, Tally told herself. “Was that really your dad’s voice we heard?”

Mona turned on her daughter in something close to terror. She sprang to her feet and looked down with hard, accusing eyes. “Don’t you ever ask me something like that again. Don’t you ever follow me again. And never—ever!—talk about this to me or
anyone
else.” Her voice didn’t match her eyes. The fiery words drowned in the liquefying eyes that, for an instant, pleaded for help. Then the instant passed.

Mona rushed from the room leaving her daughter in a puddle of hurt and confusion. What had just happened? Tally wondered. What had she done but ask honest questions? She looked out over the tops of fruit trees growing near the house. Mango, lime, tangerine, grapefruit. All so lush and thriving. Why not the people who lived here? She mourned for her mother, for the loss of her. What had happened to the exuberant woman who’d taught Tally to roller-skate and fly kites, who’d taken her for long walks in the country around their Georgia home and taught her how to grow a vegetable garden. Who had filled Tally’s head with reverence for the creator of all living things. And who was that, exactly?

With an irresistible need to feel something pure and cleansing against her, Tally went straight to one of the tall windows surrounding her room and opened it wide. Then another window and another until a whirlwind of crosscurrents fresh off the Atlantic swept through the room like the fanning of wings, soft and feathery against her skin. She inhaled them to the depths of her and lifted her face to the touch. As if by pure reflex, without forethought or calculation, she closed her eyes, opened her mouth … and prayed.
Is that you? You’ll have to tell me because I don’t know. Are you the one true god? Not one of the voices I hear at the camp?
Tally opened her eyes and looked into a bright morning sky fluffed with cotton-ball clouds. Another gust caught the sheer curtains at one window and swirled them gently about her.
The people at Denise’s church say you are the creator. If that’s true, then you know me and my mom pretty well, don’t you? Will you help us? I don’t know how you’re going to do that. But I’ll be watching.

I
an O’Brien bounded up the steps as fast as his seventy-four years would allow. It was early Sunday morning but there would be no church service for him and Henry Bower today. The Lord would understand, Ian reasoned as he paused outside Henry’s door. The house on Tidewater Lane was quiet. With Mr. and Mrs. Cade O’Brien in Israel, the two men had rattled aimlessly about the old house the day before, until Ian had left to join Ava for an early dinner at her place. The carriage-house apartment she’d rented after transplanting herself to Charleston was a short walk from Tidewater Lane. Ian had arrived early, too early and unannounced.

He hadn’t intended to eavesdrop on her phone call after letting himself in, and later regretted the compulsion to snoop through notes she’d left on her desk. But the sum of what he’d discovered had sent him headlong into a tailspin. He’d lain awake most of the night trying to decide what to do about it. If he questioned her, Ava, the bulldog federal agent, would only evade, which she was well trained to do. There was only one option.

He rapped twice on the closed door and called, “Henry, if you’re not already awake, you’d better pretend you are because I’m coming in.”

But as he reached for the doorknob, it turned and the door opened. Standing there in a pair of ragged pajamas, Henry squinted irritably at Ian. “What’s the matter with you? It’s just six o’clock. We don’t leave for church for two hours.”

“We’re not going to church. Now get dressed and meet me in the kitchen. And bring your charter book with you. We’ve got a slew of cancellations to make. Now hurry.”

As Ian clomped back down the stairs, Henry called, “Could you do just a tad more explaining?”

Without turning around, Ian waved him on. “As soon as you get down here. And if you want to burn those pajamas you got on, it’s okay with me. But do it later. There’s someplace we got to go.”

He didn’t have to look back up the stairs at his friend and fishing partner. Ian could picture the man’s scowl clearly. That would change instantly, though, as soon as Ian used just one word of explanation—Liesl.

Before heading back to the kitchen, where he’d already started the coffee, he stopped briefly in his room for the map. Cade and Liesl had insisted he take the recently passed Lottie Bower’s main floor bedroom. The climb from the basement apartment he’d been living in or to a top-floor bedroom was too taxing for his arthritic knees.