Like a Knife (12 page)

He heard the sound of the engine cutting out and knew the boat had landed.

"Who is it?"

'Two of Rennie's men."

The parking lot swallowed Rachel and Nick in darkness, but he wouldn't feel safe until he'd put the plant well behind them. He pulled Rachel through the gates and turned left onto the road. He didn't stop running until the plant was out of sight.

As he slowed to a fast walk, he glanced over at Rachel. She was out of breath, but alarm had replaced the sadness in her face.

"What do you think they wanted?"

"I don't know. Maybe to search the place."

"Why? What are they looking for?"

"I don't have a clue." And he didn't want to know. He just wanted to get her out of there, on a train and back home safely.

And suddenly he remembered the goon at the train station. No wonder he didn't get on the train; he hadn't been after Rachel. He'd been watching Martin.

A sick little shudder went through Nick and he trudged on in silence, glad of the dark. Somehow it seemed to mirror the darkness inside him. The picture of the boy screaming over the dead body etched itself into his brain. Would he ever forget it? He was responsible for two boys now. Two boys in agony.

"Nick, who was in the car?"

Her voice brought him back to the present. "What car?"

*The car that left the plant a few minutes after we got there."

Nick thought back to what seemed hours ago, when the teenager had bopped out of the plant and into the night.

"I think she was a baby-sitter. Martin must have been shuffling Isaac around, farming him out to various sitters."

"Do you think that's how Rennie tracked him down?"

"I don't know."

"But if Rennie knew where Isaac was, why did he need you?"

He shook his head, thinking back over the day and his conversation earlier with Frank. "Maybe he didn't know. At least not when he recruited me. But he knew this morning. Or Frank did."

She looked at him questioningly.

"The job I overheard Frank planning," he said. "Two men, tonight. Two men helped Frank clean up."

She trembled, and for a moment he thought she was going to be sick again. But she swallowed and pushed on. "If they knew this morning, why didn't Frank say something?"

He smiled grimly but didn't tell her about pulling his gun on Frank. "I wasn't exactly toeing the line. And anyway, Rennie probably knew I'd never-"

"Kill for him?"

"Do that particular job," he corrected gently.

She looked away, clearly disturbed, and a shiver rippled through him, as if the blanket of her good opinion had been removed. He clamped down on his jaw, trying not to care and only half succeeding. It was, time she knew the truth about him, wasn't it? Time she knew what he was.

They turned up a street and walked half a mile until they reached a major intersection lined with industrial companies, Nick scanned the area but saw no pay phones. They headed west, and as they walked, he felt the weight of her unasked questions. He wished they would remain unasked, but he could hardly say he was surprised when she broke the quiet with one.

"I saw Isaac's face, Nick. He has your eyes."

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"Did Rennie know about-about you and Shelley?"

A rush of shame fluttered through him. The last thing he wanted to talk to Rachel about was Shelley. "I don't think I'd be here if he did."

"How long did you and she... when did you... start?"

He wanted to lie and say their affair had been brief. He wanted to make up some story about her seducing him. But Rachel deserved the truth. "It started the minute I laid eyes on her."

"Was she as beautiful as her pictures?"

Oh, yeah.
"The first time I saw her, she wore this filmy white dress that floated around her like angel wings." He spoke softly, wistfully, remembering. "I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." He gave a short, hard laugh. "And she knew it. She used it. Teased me, tempted me. And I wanted to be tempted. Badly. I spent a year sniffing around her, watching her watch me. A month after she married Rennie, I'd slept with her."

Rachel looked out into the night. "You took a big risk."

She was right. But at the time ... "I was young and yery, very stupid."

"And Shelley?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe she just liked living on the edge. At least for a while. Then, out of the blue, she got tired of me. Said she was bored. I bored her." He remembered the shock and the hurt, but it was far away, as if it had happened to someone else.

"You told me you hadn't worked for Rennie in six years. Isaac must be six or almost six. Is that why you left? Because she broke up with you?"

"That, and other things."

"What other things?"

"Things I don't want to talk about."

She didn't press him, and he was grateful.

It took them the better part of an hour before they found a phone and a cab company willing to pick them up at three in the morning in the middle of nowhere. But they did finally find one, and waited twenty minutes for it to pick them, up and take them to the train station, where Rachel slept on his shoulder until five-thirty-five, when they caught the first train back to the city.

The trip seemed to last forever, and during it, he re-enacted the scene at the pier over and over. Rachel dozed on and off, but when he shut his scratchy eyes, the pictures cycled inside his head, and he woke with a start. What should he have done? What could he have done?

One of those times, Rachel put a hand on his arm. "It wasn't your fault."

He turned to her. How could she know what he was thinking?

'There was nothing you could do," she said. "They outnumbered you four-to-one. They had weapons, you didn't. If you had tried to stop them, they would have killed you. And me."

True, but galling just the same. One more screwup to add to the long list.

Forty-five minutes outside of Manhattan, he thought to examine the knapsack. Rachel was sleeping again, and opening the bag gave him something to focus on.

He unfastened the latch, raised the flap, and took out the teddy bear, noting how beat-up it looked. Beneath the bear, shorts and a T-shirt stared up at him along with a pair of miniature sneakers. He began to explore, forming a picture of the boy's life through his things. Buried under the clothes, he found a book, a computer game, and a Mets baseball cap.

And underneath those, an inch-thick wad of papers, rolled up and bound with a rubber band. At first he thought it was a bunch of Isaac's drawings, because it looked like the greenbar paper at the preschool, feeder hole strips and everything. But when he unfurled the roll, he didn't find brightly colored pictures of crude houses and people.

He went utterly still. Even without examining it, he knew what it was. What it had to be.

Spier's assets, every last illicit million. Traceable to all the dummy corporate accounts he set up in every hole-in-the-wall Caribbean bank.

Nick flipped the pages to the middle, and it was all there on his lap. Wire transfers, times, dates, amounts. He stared at the numbers in a stupor of exhaustion, knowing he'd done Rennie's bidding at last. Because in the end, he'd found what the men in the boat must have been looking for. What Spier had wanted all along.

Rachel woke with a gentle prodding from Nick fifteen minutes outside the city. A dark, empty feeling woke with her, remnants of the long, horrific night. She leaned back against the seat, exhausted. She didn't want to think about what she'd seen, wanted the pictures in her head to stop and her life to go on as if none of it had happened. But try as she might, she couldn't forget the boy or Martin, or what Spier had done to them both.

"We have to go to the police," she said to Nick. "We saw Spier kill Martin. We're eyewitnesses. We'll go to the police, and they'll arrest Spier."

He looked at her patiently, the way a parent looks at a beloved three-year-old. "And what happens to Isaac?"

"Nothing. Why should Spier harm him, he's his-" She was going to say, "his son." But she caught Nick's eye. Would everyone recognize what she had? Would Spier know the boy wasn't his? She shuddered. She didn't want to think about what Spier might do if he did.

"No police," Nick said.

His curtness left anger pooling in her chest. Her mother's killer had never been caught either, and as a child Rachel would wake up screaming that the bad man was coming back, coming for her. She didn't want the same for Isaac, especially since he knew who the bad man was.

"You can't let him get away with this, Nick."

His mouth thinned into a grim line, and something hard came over him; something she didn't want to see or acknowledge. "I won't."

She looked down at her hands. Miraculously, they lay calmly separate in her lap. "And the boy-how do we get him back?"

"With this." He hauled up Isaac's knapsack and lifted out a set of rolled-up papers. Removing the rubber band, he flattened the pages on his lap. They looked like the donated computer paper her kids used for artwork-pale green stripes with columns of numbers, names, and dates.

"What is it?"

"A paper trail. Illegal transactions, wire transfers, shell companies. It lays out Rennie's whole organization."

My God.
She stared at Nick, floored by the implications.

"Don't even think about it," he said.

"But we can stop him. This"-she gestured to the printout, excitement rising-"this could stop him."

Nick rolled up the printout with a sharp twist, snapping the rubber band in place. "Forget it. The kid comes first. Nothing else matters. Nothing. I'm going to make a simple trade. I get the boy, Rennie gets his life's work back."

"But-"

"No buts, Rachel. And no screwing around. Rennie is serious business."

After last night, she couldn't deny it. But she also couldn't deny that as much as Rennie was brutal, he was also untrustworthy, and the printout was the only leverage they had against him. "So you hand this back? And what-he lets you walk away free and clear?"

"That's my problem."

She shuddered at his flat tone, and the way it shut her out. "And what are you going to do about it?"

"Get you out of town." -

"Out of-" Her world was tilting madly again.

"I can't have you out there like live bait waiting to be stuck on a hook and dangled in front of me. Once I make the call to set up the trade, I no longer work for Renni«, and you're fair game. I'll find a safe place for you and Isaac. We'll leave tonight after we make the trade."

She tried to gather her composure. Ten days ago, her life had been normal crazy, not crazy crazy. A week ago- She drew in a sharp bream. "What day is it?"

"I don't know," Nick said, abstracted. "Wednesday or Thursday."

She counted back. It was Thursday. Her heart sank. "Tomorrow is the Parish Council meeting, Nick. They specifically requested my presence. If I'm not there, they'll vote to end my agreement with the church."

He muttered a curse and ran a hand through his hair. "We have to leave tonight."

"But I have to be at that meeting. I haven't found emergency funding or another place to go."

His eyes reflected the anguish she felt, but he was adamant. "I can't wait, it's too dangerous. Rennie could move the boy where I'd never find him, he could hurt him, twist him, do to him what he did-" He swallowed and looked away, his jaw tightening, but she finished his unspoken thought:
to me.
"I'm not leaving him in that house, surrounded by Rennie's people and Rennie's world, not for one second longer than necessary." His face was tense and pale, almost sick with memory. "I'm sorry, Rachel, but we have no choice."

She wanted to argue to rail against him, but she couldn't quarrel with the look in his face. And every time she closed her eyes, she saw the boy screaming on the pier. She couldn't turn her back on him, whatever the cost.

But the realization, and the choice it implied, filled her with despair.

From Manhattan, they caught a subway to Astoria. Nick walked her to the foot of the church steps, handing her the knapsack. "Put it in the supply closet and lock it up."

She did what he told her, but it went against her grain, as if locking the evidence away was like closing the door on a trap with themselves inside.

She was two hours late, so she went to find Felice and tell her the story Nick had concocted on the subway.

As she walked down the hall, she admired the way Felice had opened the school and organized the kids without her. Felice could handle everything for a few days. And surely Rachel wouldn't be gone more than that. But the thought was like dust, flimsy and insubstantial. She had no idea how long she'd be gone.

When she got to her classroom, Felice was overseeing a finger-painting project Dressed in reams of bright yellow, she looked like a huge, hot sun with a smile to match.

'.Rach! Wondered when you were going to show up;"

"Sorry I'm late." She took her over to a corner for pri-vacy, but her face must have given something away, because Felice immediately asked if she was all right.

"Fine." But Rachel knew she didn't sound fine or look fine. "Look, my... my cousin was in a car accident."

Felice was immediately solicitous. "Was it bad?"

Rachel nodded. "They don't-" Her voice shook with the lie and gave it an unintended realism. "They don't know if he'll make it."

"Oh Rach, I'm so sorry."

"I...I have to take some time off." Rachel was afraid to look at Felice, afraid her face would give her away.

"Sure, Rach, absolutely, as long as you like. We'll be fine here." Felice gave her a swift hug. "You just do what you have to and don't worry about us."

"Thanks."

Rachel trudged down the hall to her office and pulled out her phone book. Riffling through it, she started a list of every agency she could think of. If she could find even some financial assistance, she could keep the school afloat after the Parish Council shut her down.

As she worked, she tried to blot out all thoughts of murder and retribution, but every few minutes her eyes drifted to the supply closet that hid the knapsack and Spier's printout Justice, vengeance, and safety were inside, so close, so very close.

She turned away and picked up the phone.

For the next few hours she called everyone she knew, but struck out three tunes over. Times were tough, and money was tight. A band of worry squeezed her head, making it ache.

At noon, Felice poked her head in to ask if she wanted anything from the deli around the corner.
'

"No thanks," Rachel told her. She'd never get a bite down. She thought briefly about asking Felice to attend the council meeting in Rachel's place. Felice wasn't always politic, but she did care about the school, and any representation would be better than none. But Rachel quickly dismissed the idea. She wouldn't be able to explain why she couldn't attend herself. Even if her cousin's condition were real, she should be able to take an hour for the meeting, especially if it was important.

So she said nothing. Felice left, and Rachel gave up searching for miracles. Instead, she sketched out some lesson plans, trying to suggest enough ideas for Felice to run the school in Rachel's absence. If there was a school to run. She threw down her pen and looked around her office, tears prickling her eyelids. The scruffy, familiar space was the start of her dream, and now her plans, her kids, were all in jeopardy.

But so was one little boy.

She cut another glance at the closet and swallowed the taste of fear. Abruptly she got up, the choice she had to make suddenly unbearable. Leaving the office and its deadly contents, she ran to the yard for a breath of air. Nick had told her to stay inside, but if she did, she'd suffocate.

One of the teachers had brought her class out to play; five small children romped in the warm sun, each at a different stage of adjustment-squealing, somber, mischievous, and intent. From across the yard, Joselito's round face lit up when he saw her, and he ran over, flinging himself at her legs before taking off again. She watched him, the back of her throat tight. She couldn't believe she wouldn't be mere tomorrow or the tomorrow after that.

Surely she wouldn't have to stay away more than a few days. Surely Nick would work something out with Spier.

But can you work things out with a man like Rennie Spier? It would be like trying to work something out with a live grenade. The only way to survive was to run like hell before it exploded.

So she was running. The thought stuck in her throat like a lump she couldn't swallow past. She was running, giving up everything that mattered to her, but Spier was free to kill and maim, to ruin lives all over again.

Unless... a shaft of fear pierced her. Unless Nick killed him. But even as she recoiled from the thought, it remained wedged in her mind, a hard, clear nugget of intuition she couldn't escape. Because she suspected that was Nick's plan. And after last night, after seeing the way Spier had thwarted Martin's escape, seeing the way he hadn't hesitated or questioned or stopped for explanations before pulling the trigger, she wasn't sure Nick would succeed. Beneath the heat of the schoolyard she shivered again. Kill or be killed. Either way, Nick's life would be over.

The only alternative was locked inside the supply closet.

Dragging in a huge gulp of air, Rachel went back inside. She came through the door of her office, fretful and preoccupied, and an arm snaked around her neck.

Jerked backward, she gave a sharp squeal of terror. Instantly a hand covered her mouth: She clawed at the band, heard the sound of the door closing, heard her own useless, muffled yips.
Not again. God, please, not again.

A voice hissed in her ear. "It's okay, calm down. It's me, Nick. I'm going to let you go, so don't scream or anything."

The minute his hold loosened, she wrenched herself away and whirled on him in fury. "What do you think you're doing-"

"Shh." He reached for her again, but she swung away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"How did you get in here?"

"I told you to get the fence fixed." Which meant, she supposed, he'd sneaked through the hole in the fence and cut across the yard before the kids came out to play, then slipped inside, unnoticed.

She collapsed into the chair behind the desk, leaned back and closed her eyes.
Breathe. Just breathe.

He put a hand on her head. "I'm sorry," he said softly, slowly stroking downward.

His touch sent warmth rippling through her. She opened her eyes to find him kneeling in front of her, black brows drawn in a worried frown.
It's Nick. Just Nick.
She'd missed those brows and the rough lines of his face. For a brief moment,
a picture rose in her mind. A picture of her life entwined with his. Would it be a lifetime of days like this, of worrying about what he would do and if he'd come back?

She gazed into his face, his expression full of concern for her, and wanted to believe that everything would be all right. If only her stomach didn't feel queasy with dread. "You're forgiven." She tried out a smile. "Just don't sneak up on me again."

He held up two hands and rose. "I won't, believe me."

She noticed he'd changed into the once-familiar uniform of khaki green work pants and shirt, as if an ordinary guy had replaced the slick henchman. Only now the shirt was open at the neck. Silently, she congratulated him on that small step toward relaxation, even as her own tension mounted.

He looked around the room. "So, are you ready?"

Ready? How could she be ready to walk away from her life, her dreams? "Guess I don't have much choice. How about you?"

"Except for the phone call to Rennie."

She frowned, puzzled. "I thought that's what you were doing all day. Making the arrangements."

He shook his head. "Not until we're ready tp leave. We don't want to give him any more planning time than we have to."

No, we wouldn't want to do that.
She shivered, a minnow in an ocean of sharks.

"I went to the bank," he said, perching on the corner of her desk. "We'll need cash."

She straightened the pile of instructions she'd left for Felice. ''What's wrong with good old-fashioned credit cards?"

"No cards. Rennie could trace them."

She inhaled a sharp breath. Another probability that hadn't occurred to her. Would she ever learn?

"And I had your door fixed." He threw her a set of keys and an instruction'book.

"What's this?"

"It's for the electronic lock."

"The what?"

He looked sheepish. "All right, so maybe I went a little overboard. But extra security never hurts."