Like a Knife (10 page)

When Nick woke, Rachel was finally asleep. She'd stirred beside him for the first hour, restless and owl-eyed every time he checked on her. But now she slumped against him, her head resting on his shoulder, one arm flung possessively across his waist.

He hadn't felt her drift close, but he liked it. He smiled, resting his cheek on top of her head. Her slim legs brushed against his own, her bare shoulders, sleek and smooth in the orangeade sundress, pressed against him. He let himself enjoy the sensation, the sight of her beside him, smaller, feminine, warmed by the shelter of his body. They could have been anyone, a normal couple, off for a few romantic days at the beach. Him and David Goodman's daughter.

The irony ran through him like a hard wind. Goodman had been an advocate for public safety, while Nick was the embodiment of violence and public mayhem. The comparison doused whatever lingering fantasies he had. She was on that train because of Rennie. It always came back to Rennie.

A few minutes later the train pulled into the station and jostled to a stop.

"Rachel." He shook her awake. "We're here."

The clock in the station read twelve-fifty-seven when they got off at the seaside town. Nick kept them in the middle of the passenger pack, scanning for Martin.

"What are you going to do?" she whispered as they ducked behind a billboard to avoid being spotted.

"We're here. Might as well find out where he's going."

When Martin got into a cab, Nick found one too and guided Rachel into it.

"Keep your head down," he said in a low voice.

Somehow they managed to keep Martin in sight without being spotted. Twenty minutes down the highway, Nick started smelling the ocean.

"You mentioned Rennie's beach house," she said. "Are we heading that way?"

He shook his head. "Opposite direction."

Ten minutes later, Martin's cab slowed and pulled through the battered gates of an abandoned fish plant. Nick's heart sank. Dark and overgrown with weeds, the place was ideal for the kind of illicit work Rennie's business demanded. Something big was going down, something bad. Whatever it was, he was beginning to suspect it had nothing to do with Rachel

"Keep going," Nick said to the driver, and when the cab had sped past the plant entrance, he ordered it to stop, then paid off the driver. The cab turned around and left, and Nick led Rachel back to the entrance. There, he 145

stationed them behind a scruffy pine tree until Martin's cab came back through the fence gate.

"What now?"

Rachel leaned into him and he grit his teeth as her breasts brushed his arm. He moved away. "I don't know. Whatever happens, I don't have a hell of a lot of persuasion power."

"What do you mean?"

"Your cousin has my gun."

He could have kicked himself for that. But he hadn't had time to run into Rennie's and grab a weapon, not without worrying that she might have followed him inside.

"Maybe you won't need a gun."

He heard the faint note of hope in her voice and flashed her a tight smile. "Maybe. But I sure wouldn't mind having the option." He glanced out toward the

plant gates again. "Stay here. I'm going to take a fast peek inside. If anyone shows up, either coming or going, I want to know what direction they take. See if you can get a bead on the car and how many people are inside." He didn't really care who else turned up, but he wanted Rachel safe. And she'd be a hell of a lot safer where he'd stashed her than anywhere near the building.

"Okay."

He scurried across the parking lot, grateful that the lights had long ago burned out or been smashed by vandals. Only the moon broke through the inky darkness. The moon and a small bulb that illuminated a boarded-up door set into the ramshackle wood building ahead of him. A car was parked against the back of the building. He skirted to the left to avoid it and headed around the side, where he was betting on another entrance.

As he turned the corner, he saw that the plant building opened right onto the ocean. And here, for some reason, light blazed, spotlighting the bay and the crumbled piers that led from three wide doors down to the water. Small waves licked the pilings of the one lone dock that still stood upright. The brine smelled rank and musty, and a faded sign over the central door said "Fisher Sea Products."

The murmur of voices drifted toward him.

"Thanks." Deep and rumbling, Martin maybe.

"No problem." Higher, younger. Female? Squinting into the darkness, he saw a teenage girl exit the fish plant, counting a wad of bills.

He blinked. If he had expected anything, it was not a gangly girl in cutoffs and a midriff-baring T-shirt, chewing gum and bobbing to the rhythm of the Walkman plugged into her ears.

Muscles tense, eyes and ears alert to the girl's every possible movement, he flattened himself against the side of the building. Luckily, she went in the opposite direction. A minute later a car engine chugged to life.
The parked car.
He waited for the sound to fade away, hoping Rachel had kept out of sight. Then he slipped around to the front and entered the building.

Darkness greeted him, and the stale smell of space long unused. The faint odor of fish still lingered beneath the dust and mildew. Keeping low and hugging the walls, he crept down the corridor. The glow of a lit room gave faint illumination to the hallway ahead of him.

He followed the light, and it led to what must have once been one of the plant offices. It was a compact room, empty of furniture, empty of everything except a small, dark-haired boy sitting cross-legged on the floor playing with a worn-out teddy bear.

Nick froze. His body refused to move, his brain refused to think. The boy looked up, a photograph come to life. When he saw Nick, the child's face filled with fear, but Nick barely noticed the emotion in those eyes. All he cared about was their color.
Black.
As black as Nick's own.

The realization hit him like a tidal wave, but before he could move or speak, someone else did.

"Get away from the boy, Nick."

Nick whirled. Behind him stood Martin, huge and square, his hands wrapped around a gun.

* * *

Rachel's heart jumped into her throat when the car drove through the gates and swung into the street. Blinded by the headlights and by the fact that no streetlights lit the area, she couldn't see who was in the car. She bit her lip. Was Rennie inside? Did he have Nick with him? Where was Martin?

She hesitated, unsure what to do. Nick had told her not to move, but what if he was in danger and needed help?

Praying she was doing the right thing, she stepped out from under the tree and ran across the lot. The wide expanse contained no hiding places; if another car drove in, or if anyone stepped outside the building, she'd be caught. Mouth dry, she looked over her shoulder at the gates. They yawned like a black pit, wide and empty and infinitely alarming. Her heart began to beat in triple time.

When she reached the building, she paused to catch her breath. Pressed against the side of the fish plant, she hoped no one could see her Was Nick inside? Was he all right? She took a deep, calming breath that didn't do much to still her shaky legs, and turned the corner to the ocean side of the building. Inching along the front of the building, she saw three entrances with piers leading to the water. The door closest to her was locked, but the main entrance had been cracked open. She slipped inside.

Almost immediately, she heard two men arguing. She crept toward the voices, sure that one belonged to Nick. A liquid wash of relief made her stop for half a second before stealing closer. A third voice spoke, and her heart began to hammer again. It sounded like... like a child.

"Is that a gun? Why do you have a gun? Is he a bad man?"

"Yeah, Isaac, he's a bad man."

Oh, my God.
Isaac.

* * *

Nick's heart squeezed as the boy looked at him in fear, but he ditched the regret as fast as it came. He couldn't afford to think about that now. He could only think about the gun trained on the center of his chest, an HK SOCOM. Developed for Army Special Ops, it was a heavy, brutal weapon that Martin favored.

Nick eyed the .45 and the big man holding it. "I won't let you take him back to Rennie."

Martin laughed, a low, easy chuckle that didn't quite match the expression in his eyes. "You won't? That's good, Nicky. That's real good. And how the hell are you going to stop me?"

Nick judged the distance between him and Martin, rapidly tallying ways of disarming him, which were slim to none. "I'll figure something out."

Martin laughed again, shaking his head. "I'll bet you will. But before you do something stupid, and knowing you, Nicky, that's a given, first, I'm gonna tell you a little something. I'm not taking him back. I'm taking him away. It's what Shelley wanted, and it's what I promised her." .

Nick wasn't sure he understood. "What do you mean? What did you promise her?"

"To get her out. Her and her son."

"You were helping her?"

'That's right, Nicky. The big, dumb dog was helping her."

Nick's brain stuttered; he couldn't process what Martin was saying. "You don't expect me to believe that." Martin shrugged, as if to say he didn't care what Nick believed. "But-Christ, why? Why the hell would you do that? What was in it for you?"

"You have a dark, cynical mind, my friend." Martin shook his head. "But because you used to trust me, I'll tell you.
She
was in it for me." The lopsided grin faded, and Nick saw pain behind his eyes. "I loved her, Nicky. I took care of her, or tried to. And if everything hadn't gotten screwed up, we'd have been out of here weeks ago, and she'd still be alive-" Martin's voice cracked, and for a moment he looked away from Nick, struggling for control.

For a split second, the big man's aim was off, but Nick only noticed it vaguely, still too stunned to careV "Wait a minute-what got screwed up?"

"I bankrolled everything through a dirty deal with the ILC, but the damn ship broke down."
The Irish Liberation Council
Someone had mentioned the council recently. "That's why I was in Sweden," he said bitterly. "The trawler was just a cover. I had to check on the boat, which put into Malta for repairs. Then my flight got screwed up, and I was a day late getting back. If I'd been here-" He swallowed. "But I wasn't, and Shelley-" He smiled, but it was more like a grimace of pain. "Well, we both know what happened to Shelley. And that left the kid loose. I'm dead if Rennie finds him, so I have to make sure he doesn't."

Nick stared at the beefy man. Martin, the epitome of the dumb but loyal disciple, the order taker, the shuffler. He had loved Shelley, had helped her, had gone behind Rennie's back to work a black-market arms deal. Every assumption Nick had ever made about the way the world worked was suddenly suspect.

And in the silence of his confusion, Isaac spoke. "Mama went away." His voice was low, his manner grave and somber. For an eerie minute, he looked like a tiny old man. "That's why we're leaving. It's a secret."

Nick stared at the boy. At his dark, serious face, his eyes intense and adult. And black. So black.

"That's enough, Isaac," Martin said. "Go wait outside in the hall and tell me if you see anything corning." The boy hesitated, then picked up his bear and trotted over to the entrance. But he didn't go out. He stood in the doorway and faced the two men in the room.

Nick lowered his voice to keep the kid from hearing. "Where are you taking him?"

Martin replied in the same hissed whisper, waving the gun for emphasis. "I'm not gonna tell you, so don't even bother asking."

"He's my kid, isn't he? Don't I have the right--"

"You haven't earned the right, pal. Where were you when he needed you? Where were you when Shelley had to hide him and keep him safe? Nowhere. Drunk."

Nick felt the weight of the boy's hot eyes. It made him sick to think he might have heard that, sick to admit the words were true. "I've been sober a long time. She could have come to me. We could have worked something out."

"Rennie kept a running tail on you, Nick. Monthly reports and everything. If she had told you, you would have wanted to see the kid, and sooner or later Rennie would have found out."

Nick's stomach turned over. He knew Spier had kept tabs on him, but not to that extent. He should have known Rennie wouldn't really let him go.

As if he'd read Nick's mind, Martin said softly, "Ren-nie's got you, Nick. He always has, and he always will. Me, he doesn't give a shit about. He never hung his hopes on me, never watched me close enough to care."

So Shelley had made her choice. And Martin was right, it was a smart one. Him, not Nick. A whisper of pain shot through Nick, a pain Martin seemed to understand. "It was for the boy," he said quietly. "She would've stayed if it weren't for the boy. She didn't want Rennie to turn Isaac into another one of us. A thug or a drunk."

That, he understood.

"So, what are you going to do, Nicky?" Martin shifted his weight and hefted the gun again, his large, rubbery face collapsing into a hopeful grin. "We were friends once. I don't want to shoot you."

Nick eyed the weapon and barked a curt laugh. "I don't want to get shot."

"Does that mean you're gonna help or be a pain in the ass?"

"Haven't figured it out yet." But he had, he just wasn't ready to admit it. He'd only set eyes on the boy a few minutes ago; now he'd have to watch him disappear into the sunset. Tough break. But wasn't keeping Isaac from Rennie the thought that had been circling his own head all the time?

Martin took Nick's silence for continued stubbornness. The big man's face hardened. "Look, I tried to keep you out of this! Why the hell couldn't you just take the hint and stay away?"

The hint.
Nick's focus narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

The tension must have been plain in Nick's face because Martin backtracked fast. "Nothing. Forget it."

"No-you said hint. Did you send me a message, Marty?" But Martin didn't have to answer. Nick stilled. He'd received a message. The night before in Rachel's apartment. "That was your man at Rachel's, not Ren-nie's."

An angry thump began in Nick's chest.

"I had to-do something," Martin said quickly. "I was afraid you'd find us and mess things up."

The thump sped up, fast and hot. He began to advance on Martin, not caring that his hand had tightened over the .45.

"Stay there, Nicky. Calm down." The big man backed away. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Yeah, but you didn't mind hurting Rachel."

"It was just to scare her. I thought if you blamed Ren-nie, you'd walk. Why the fuck didn't you walk?"

His chest was on fire. "You sent a goon into Rachel's home to keep me away? You stupid son of a-" With a shout, he leaped at Martin, knocking away the arm that held the gun, but not before Martin squeezed off a round. The shot went wild and pinged into the wall. Isaac screamed and ran out of the room.

"Isaac! Wait!" Nick leaped toward the boy, but Martin spun him around, knocking Nick's head back with a punch that sent him reeling. He staggered through another left to his jaw. Martin was nothing if not huge and powerful, and he put all that force behind his fist. Before Nick could get his bearings, a third wallop sent him to his knees.