Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (4 page)

Lingering over the photo as long as she dared, Cass put it back on the desk, turning it slightly away from her. In the kitchen she reheated a cup of cold morning coffee, and then, turning off all the lights, folded herself into the red cracked-leather wingback chair she’d brought from the Southampton house. She propped her feet on the sill of a tall window and brought the hot cup to her lips, gazing over the urban nightscape.

It had stopped sleeting, and the air was clear, as if swept clean by the tiny, scouring crystals. The lights of her SoHo neighborhood twinkled against the ornate buildings. This was New York’s cast-iron district, historic for its artful architectural treatments. This building that she owned
was
clad top to bottom in a lacy, cast-iron overlay wrought by artisans of the 1800s. From her perch, Cass surveyed the building across the street, its own ironwork as distinct from hers as fingerprints.

In the dark of her apartment, she could see out, but no one could see in. So much like herself. Why would anyone want to see inside her anyway? Nothing there worth the effort.

Her eyes were beginning to glaze when the doorbell rang, jerking her from the gloom. She turned her head to the sound. Jordan was on a date. Who else could it be? A tenant whose plumbing had just sprung a leak? She had a very capable management team to handle those sorts of things. The bell rang again, and she sighed irritably, turned on a couple of lamps, and went to the peephole in the heavy wood door. She saw a fish-eye image of a man making goofy faces at her.

She unlatched two chains, turned two deadbolts, and opened the door just a crack. “Thought you had a date,” she said dryly.

“Well, I can stand out here and explain why I don’t so the rest of the neighbors will know,” Jordan replied. “Or consider this, I could come
in
and talk.”

In the instant before she opened the door all the way, she wondered at the thing she’d felt in the pit of her stomach when Jordan had told her about the date. Of course he had dates. What eligible, nice-looking guy wouldn’t? And why should that bother her?

“I brought you a coffee—decaf so you won’t lie awake in your counterfeit jungle up there”—he motioned toward the bedroom as he walked in—“counting fake stars and wondering about old Jordan’s date.”

“I don’t care about your dates,” she answered with too much petulance. She knew it and instantly regretted it.

He handed the coffee to her without comment.

“Thank you,” she said, then turned and walked to one of two plump white sofas facing each other over a hammered-copper coffee table. “Have a seat,” she said, slumping onto a sofa and tucking one leg under her.

“You’re welcome,” he said crisply, taking a seat on the same sofa. “I don’t know what this little pout is about, but you need to lose it and talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Cass turned hooded eyes on him and wanted to weep. But what good
would
that do? She unbuckled her leg from beneath her and stood up, glancing swiftly at the framed photograph on the desk.
There’s so much you don’t know, Jordan
.

She looked down into his upturned face, at the kind eyes with lashes too long and thick to waste on a guy. She resisted an overwhelming urge to drop into his arms and hold him. But he wasn’t interested in being anything more than a loyal friend. She was fairly sure of that.

Willing herself to rebound quickly, she turned away, raised her arms over her head, and stretched her petite, tightly muscled frame. She turned to look at him. “Nothing wrong. Just a mother going berserk over yet another wayward husband. What is wrong with you men?” Immediately, she regretted that remark too. What was wrong with
her
?

Jordan flinched as if struck.

“Oh, Jordan, I didn’t mean you,” she said, taking a step closer to him. “Not you.” She held his searching eyes a moment too long. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching to touch his cheek, brushing it softly with her fingertips. Suddenly self-conscious over this vulnerable display of affection, she stepped to the window and looked out, her back to him. “I’m just mourning what looks like the passing of yet another marriage at the hands of a delinquent husband.”

When Jordan didn’t respond, she looked back at him, surprised by the strange look on his face, by the hand he dropped quickly from his cheek. Had his face colored slightly?

He stood and joined her at the window. “You don’t know that Hans has a mistress, Cass,” he finally replied. “Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt before you toss him into the fiery pit with the rest of us males.” He winked. She winced. And they moved on.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do,” he told her flatly. “Tomorrow night, you’re going to stay in the car while I go to the door of this place.”

“But—”

“No buts. I don’t want you going to some strange door and getting dragged in by the hair.”

She couldn’t help but smile. It was amazing how thoroughly he could lift her mood.

“I’ll just make up a reason for being there,” he said.

“And what’s that supposed to tell you?”

“Not sure. But if there’s something funny going on, I don’t want him, or them, or any extraneous hers getting a look at you. I mean who could resist all that curly blond hair and pouty mouth?”

She was about to speak when he raised a hand. “I’ll go it alone, and you keep the engine running. A plan?”

How did you land in my world?
she mused, with full recall of her freshman biology class at NYU and the big beefy guy assigned as her lab partner. Jordan had a girlfriend at the time, and Cass had a sometimes boyfriend. A year later, though, she suddenly withdrew from school and Jordan’s brotherly friendship. No explanation given. She severed all ties to the outside world, refusing his calls until he called no more. It would be four years before they happened upon each other again.

“That’s a plan?” she asked doubtfully.

“Well, what would you do? Tell whoever comes to the door that you’d like a word with the woman your stepfather is sleeping with?”

“Not bad,” she said, nodding agreement. “I can do that.” She glanced at the huge round train-terminal clock on the wall. It was almost midnight. “Time for you to go, isn’t it?” She punched him lightly in the stomach. “Your well-heeled customers will be lined up on the sidewalk wondering why the Winslow in Winslow Designer Shoes hasn’t opened up yet.”

“Ah yes. All the needy feet.” He scratched his head and yawned slightly. “You do remember, however, that being the last of the Winslows, and the first to hand off the reins to a store manager, I can come and go as I please. A lousy work ethic, I’m afraid. But when it comes to selling shoes, I ascribe to the Peggy Lee anthem. ‘Is that all there is?’”

Cass considered him thoughtfully. “For you? No. And someday you’ll find the rest of it.”

She patted him playfully on the back, urging him toward the door, then stopped and looked up at him, mustering her courage. “So, what happened to your date?”

“Canceled it.”

“You did or she did?”

A mischievous grin slid across his face. “Well, you know, you just can’t rely on an eighty-year-old woman to wait up all night for her grandson to come unclog the kitchen sink. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

Cass tried to mask the trickle of relief running over her.

After he left, reminding her to latch and bolt all the hardware on her door, she slipped into a plain flannel nightgown, turned off the lights, and climbed to the stars. Suspended from the ceiling at the ends of barely detectable wires, a sprawling constellation of tiny lights hovered over her each night as if they might watch out for her, protect her. She had assigned those powers to them—an illusion, their thin currents of energy wholly impotent. Mere decoration. She knew this. But what else was there?

She slid under the covers and pulled them nearly over her head, trying to eclipse the rest of the world. But nothing would shut out that one place, that one searing face.

Chapter 6

T
he next night, Jordan knocked at Cass’s door promptly at seven. Soon, the Honda pulled from the parking garage and headed northeast. The January sky flung bits of ice again.

“Comfy?” Jordan asked, pulling the collar up on his jacket and issuing a whole-body shiver.

Cass curled inward against her down coat, her mittened hands balled up in her pockets. Preoccupied with her mother’s state of upheaval, she didn’t answer.

“They’ve been married how long now?” he asked, undeterred.

She looked sideways at him, strangely comforted that he, unlike most, could glimpse her thoughts. “Three years.”

Jordan didn’t take his eyes off the snarled, early-evening traffic. It was more boisterous than usual tonight, or was Cass more sensitive to its intrusion?

“And how did they meet?”

Cass had heard only one story about that, her mother’s. “They dated during high school in the Bronx. Then my grandfather moved the family to Manhattan when he got a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and my mom left all her Bronx friends behind, including Hans. Soon after that, she met my dad. My grandfather brought him home for dinner one
night
. He was about six years older than she and already wealthy. His family in Greece sent him here to run this end of their shipping empire.”

Jordan glanced her way. “You don’t look Greek.”

“Neither does Mom.” In her mind, Cass flipped through portfolio images of her glamorous mother asserting herself on the covers of haute couture magazines through the late sixties and seventies. The stunning, strong-jawed face; the alabaster complexion; the naturally platinum hair pulled taut against the rouged, dominating cheekbones. It was her look from the teens on, and the New York ad agencies had paid handsomely for it. Even after delivering her only child, with certainly no need to augment her husband’s bulging wealth, Jillian Rodino continued her modeling career.

“So you look like your mom?” Jordan asked.

Why had she never taken Jordan to meet her mother?
“In some ways,” she answered.

Though much shorter than her willowy mother, Cass had inherited the blond hair and startling blue eyes. But unlike her mother’s cosmetically embellished features, Cass’s were nearly bare. She had come close to sterilizing herself to the simplest essence. Scant makeup. No image-enhancing clothes. Only a strong, defensive body to mask what lay beneath.

“So how did this high school sweetheart reappear?”

“Hans came to my dad’s funeral. Seems he’d been pining for Mom all those years. He was divorced. They sort of picked up where they left off, I guess. They were married a year later. Mom was so happy. I’d never seen her like that with my dad. Then something changed. She wouldn’t talk about it. Just that Hans was under a lot of stress at work. I think I told you before, he’s an investment banker for a Wall Street firm.”

Jordan was quiet awhile, then shifted away from the troubling conversation. “Well, how was the
Wicked
set today?” he asked brightly.

He was driving his usual slow, careful pace. But Cass was anxious to reach their destination and not in a conversational mood. Still, she was grateful for his company. “Oh, someone tripped and flattened a row of black corn after the performance last night. I spent all morning rewiring it before the matinee. Then a scale fell loose on the time dragon, and guess who they sent scrambling up to the ceiling to repair it?”

“The fittest of the fit, I presume.” He grinned at her, but she pretended not to notice.

“That’s your turn up ahead,” she announced. “Better move into the left lane.” She was too distracted to talk about what she loved most, the stage and keeping it filled with imitation storefronts, medieval balconies, haunted forests, and flying dragons. She’d been building such things since she was a kid left to her own devices on a lonely stretch of Southampton beach, where her parents had kept an oceanfront home for weekends and summers.

Jordan soon pulled within a block of the apartment and parked beneath a streetlight. He turned to Cass and made her look him in the eye. “Now, you promised. You’ll stay here and wait for me. Right?”

Cass nodded. “I will, but I still don’t know how you’re going to do this.”

“That’s two of us,” he said, then got out and locked the doors.

Only one lamp burned in the living room of Ivan Volynski’s apartment. He opened the heavy drapes to gaze into the street below. Patting his firm, flat stomach, he felt the tingle of the fine cognac he swirled in his glass, just a small after-dinner indulgence. He prided himself on how little he consumed in food and drink, two of the few things he denied himself.