Escape the Night (50 page)

“Only if you have children.” She shot him a sardonic glance. “Your grandfather kept both jobs to tease his sons. But our finances are so complex now that whoever serves as publisher has his hands full with just that.”

Carey nodded. “That's why I'd like to split the two, with me as publisher.” He sipped his coffee. “But there's a problem: you'd have to stay as editor-in-chief.”

Ruth stared at him. “Is this some sort of bizarre consolation prize?”

Carey paused until he was sure that she would listen. “You know, the other night Noelle finally asked me if I ever felt strange about having killed someone.

“I told her I was glad. I could see that she believed me: there aren't many things about what happened that I can be very clear on yet, but that's one of them.

“This is another. I mean to have this firm survive. I'll do whatever I have to do to see you take this job.”

Ruth looked away. For a moment she could not speak, and then she said, “I've wanted it all my life.”

Noelle had smiled when Carey repeated this that night. “So she's taking it?”

“Uh-huh. She's a remarkable woman, really. I'm glad my father had that—glad they both did.”

The week Noelle moved in with Peter Carey, she asked Ruth to come for dinner.

Peter built a darkroom for Noelle, in the basement. When at first she would not go there, he said, “I only care that you work somewhere.”

That fall, the
Times
sent her off to Poland.

She stayed in Warsaw for two weeks. Capturing the medieval and the Stalinist, so different from New York, she felt her reflexes returning with her curiosity, and the warmth of missing Peter.

Her long flight back was thoughtful.

Peter met her at the airport. “How was Poland?” he asked.

“Strange.” Together they watched the carousel revolve, as they waited for her bags. “I'm not sure now that I'll keep this job indefinitely.”

He turned. “What else would you do?”

She smiled at his alarm. “I was wondering about cinematography, doing documentaries. I had to leave behind so much of what I saw and heard.”

Peter's face relaxed. “I thought you meant quitting.”

“No, I realized that I could never really give it up, just maybe do it a little differently.” She frowned. “One problem with documentaries is that they'd demand more travel.”

Peter reached for a bag. “In that case,” he told her, “we'll just have to work it out.”

By late fall, Noelle's nightmares had stopped.

“Do you really think they're over?” Carey asked one evening.

Noelle passed back his martini, light one olive. “I hope so. I guess it's helped for me to understand a little of what happened.”

Carey nodded; rummaging through Phillip's files, badgering Benevides and Gregorio, he had fought to learn the names of those who had murdered Levy and his uncle, as Phillip and the faceless man had killed his parents.

The day he found out, he told Noelle.

Englehardt, and Martin.

Like witchcraft, names seemed to rob the men of power. The ugly man was a former CIA agent; the faceless man his superior; and they were dead.

Explaining, Carey tried envisioning a series of facts, linear and impersonal, excerpted from the life of someone else. “George thinks that Englehardt stole my grandfather's will, then used it to persuade Phillip to help dispose of my father and me.” His tone grew flat. “My mother was incidental.”

Noelle's response was careful, neutral. “Do you think that's right?”

“I think so, yes.” Without looking up, Carey spoke more softly. “Englehardt was there to fix the brake and steering column: Phillip wouldn't have known how. But I only knew him as a faceless man, stabbing out my eyes.”

Carey ordered Benevides to petition the government for every piece of paper that had to do with Englehardt.

Weeks later, Benevides reported back. “They're afraid you'll sue Uncle Sam for what happened twenty years ago. After all, it changed your life.”

“Assholes,” Carey snapped. “What price would I put on that?”

What
was
priceless, the father he had lost, Ruth Levy tried to give him.

Sometimes the two of them would sit up late, drinking brandy in his living room; Ruth would talk of Charles Carey, the things they had said or done together, the love he had for Peter. “He
did
leave you things,” she said one evening. “You look more like him every day, and you're sensitive in the quirky way he had—he usually knew when
not
to talk, and what to say to me when he did. But your instinct for a dollar you got from Black Jack Carey.” Smiling, she added, “Given that we're meeting with the banks tomorrow, that's probably just as well.”

Carey looked at her. “I hope you don't mind remembering.”

“Charles?” She shook her head. “I only mind that I don't have more than memories, as I do of Bill …”

Impulsively, Carey kissed her cheek, and then the talk turned to the meeting.

It ended early. Coming home, he encountered Noelle bounding upstairs from the darkroom, photographs in hand. The sense of his good fortune, wondrous and irrational, hit him with a rush …

“Marry me, okay?”

She stopped in her tracks, grinning.

“I mean it,” Carey said. “You're precious to me.”

Noelle put down the photographs.

“It's fine with me,” she told him later. “But we're too old to stage some bogus event.”

They did it quietly, at Christmas.

At the end of their last ski run, Peter stopped to watch a small boy with his father.

They stood at the bottom of the hill. The boy was quite young, no more than four, and his skis resembled slats. Noelle watched him, a small figure on small skis, legs spraddling in a precarious split. The boy's young father held his hand; laughing and patient, he looked as if no one else were as important, or ever would be. Peter smiled after them.

“Remind you of someone?” she asked.

“In a way.” Still watching, he added, “What I remember is how good he was with me, when my mother couldn't be. I wonder how he understood so much.”

Noelle turned to him. “You'd understand.”

She took his hand, and they went back to the cabin.

In the warm darkness of their bedroom, they touched each other, gently and without haste, until at last their bodies lay skin to skin, and they moved, and then cried out, together.

Afterwards he held her, warm and drowsy in the night. They felt too close to speak.

That Sunday, they had breakfast at the lodge. Peter bought the
Times
.

They split it. On the first page of the Arts and Leisure section, Noelle found a photo of Natalia Makarova, dancing with Baryshnikov. The picture snapped with electricity: from the height of her leap, Makarova seemed to stare straight at them, all fire and ambition. The credit beneath it read, “Noelle Ciano Carey.”

“That's her, all right.” Peter turned the picture toward him, smiling as he read the credit. “I hope you don't mind.”

“The name, you mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not really—I had a choice.” She grinned. “Besides, it'll be less confusing for the kid.”

Peter looked up from the photograph.

They laughed together.

About the Author

Richard North Patterson is a
New York Times
–bestselling author of more than twenty novels. An acknowledged master of the courtroom thriller, he was a trial lawyer in San Francisco for many years. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and several have been adapted for television and film. He is a winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Silver Bullet Award from the International Thrillers Writers.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1983 by Richard North Patterson

Cover design by Michel Vrana

ISBN: 978-1-4976-7914-6

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

EBOOKS BY RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

Available wherever ebooks are sold