It took five days from the burn in Bequia to reach New York City.
The Lutra had returned me to St. Vincent, waiting in the harbor until I had collected Alena and Bridgett, and we had set off again that night for Miami. Jerry and Carrie had taken another ten grand for the trip, and I suppose they were giving us a discount rate because we had been so good for business. Their fee had included a handling of all requisite paperwork, with the promise that when we reached Florida, it would be as registered members of the crew.
Alena had been conscious when we boarded in Kingstown, still groggy from the narcotic, and suffering a fair amount of pain. Bennet had provided her with a brace for her leg and a set of crutches. I told her about Havel's death, and Bridgett watched her like a hawk for a reaction.
"I did not know her," Alena said. "I'm sorry."
To which Bridgett had spun on a heel and marched off to find a berth of her own. I'd used some nail polish remover provided by Carrie to get the duct tape off my skin, and I tried to present Alena with the documents, but by that time she was already fading fast. Bennet had given her some Percodan to help with the pain as the local on her leg wore off, and the last thing she did before falling asleep was to hand me the bottle and ask me to throw the pills overboard.
I left her and went to find a bed of my own, only to discover that Bridgett and I were sharing a room. She was already in her bunk when I arrived, and she waited until I'd folded my bed down and gotten the blanket over me before speaking.
"She'd hired me, you know that?" Bridgett said softly. "Two weeks after you'd vanished, Havel came to my office and hired me to find you. Someone had told her that you'd made contact, Natalie or Dale or Corry, I don't know which, and she was certain you were with Drama and she was certain I could lead her to you both."
"She was right."
She rolled in the bunk, and I heard her feet bumping against the bulkhead. My bed was too small for me; I could only imagine how uncomfortable Bridgett was.
"All she talked about was what a great book it was going to be. She was so excited. It took me over three months to track you down, I went port by fucking port, and Havel was with me the entire time, and she never got discouraged, she never got disappointed. She just kept talking about what a great fucking book it was going to be."
Over the throbbing of the engines, I could hear the water lapping against the hull.
"And all along," Bridgett said, "we were just playing into that motherfucker's hands, we were just doing what he wanted us to do."
"Don't," I said.
"I'll feel guilty if I want to."
"If you hadn't brought her to Bequia, he'd have gotten her there some other way. His initial plan never included you, it was always Chris and Alena and me."
"If I hadn't found you…"
"Then maybe all of us would be dead instead of just her."
She moved in her bunk again, rolling, and I turned my head to see that she was staring at me, one hand beneath her cheek, her knees up against her chest. "It doesn't seem a fair trade."
"It isn't."
"You were willing to die for…" She made a gesture with her free hand, indicating the rough direction where Alena was sleeping.
"Bridgett, no bodyguard wants to take a bullet. That's a myth. No one in their right mind would catch a shot for someone else."
"But you'd do it."
"I'd do it. I'd do it for anyone who hired me. It's my choice, not theirs. It's what people pay me for."
"Chris should have hired you instead of me," Bridgett said.
The ship rocked on a swell, creaking softly. For a long time, there was nothing but the sounds of the boat and the water.
"That doctor," Bridgett said.
"Yeah?"
"He says she's never going to walk right again."
"Oh."
She moved in her bunk, and when she spoke again, her voice was more diffused, coming at me off the wall, indirect.
"It's still not a fair trade," she said.
There was only one snag during the voyage to Miami, when The Lutra put in at Cockburn Harbour in South Caicos for refueling. We were almost three days out from St. Vincent, and I'd been spending my waking hours with Alena and Miata. Bridgett gave us a wide berth. We still shared a cabin, but after the conversation that first night aboard, she hadn't uttered more than five words to me, and her silence seemed alternately hostile and sullen.
I actually hadn't expected to see much of Cockburn Harbour, since there was no immediate reason to leave the ship. The waterfront looked pleasant enough, though a little run-down, with a couple of empty warehouses skirting the edges of the harbor. Carrie mentioned in passing that the major industry had once been salt; she couldn't tell me what it was now, and seemed surprised when I asked.
We docked early in the morning, and Jerry went ashore immediately to arrange for refueling. After he left, Alena and I went on deck and tried to do the morning yoga routine, but it was difficult for each of us to relax; there was no question she was in constant pain, and I was more concerned with her well-being than my own. Add to that Bridgett's scornful look when she emerged, and it made finding the right state of mind nearly impossible.
Alena and I were still sitting on deck when Jerry returned, and he didn't look happy. Without a word to us he went below, and then, after only two minutes, came up again and headed our way.
"I'm afraid we're going to be delayed," he told us. "Albert says he cannot give us the fuel, it'll tap his stores. He asks that we wait until he has restocked."
"How long a wait?" I asked.
"Six, perhaps seven days."
Alena sucked a sharp breath. "That will not work."
"There is nothing I can do about it, Giselle."
"This man, Albert, you do business with him often?"
"Regularly."
"The kind of business you do with me?"
"Not exactly the same. But he has an idea the kind of things Carrie and I do to provide an income."
Alena looked at me, shook her head slightly. I understood. A week's delay would be more than enough time for Oxford to catch up with us, no matter how big a lead we might have on him at the moment. A confrontation with him on The Lutra, especially given the state Alena was in, could only end badly.
"Is there any other way to get the fuel?" I asked.
"The problem is the paperwork," Jerry said. "With the papers for the three of you, I need to keep my manifests appropriately doctored. We burned a lot of fuel racing from Bequia, and if I get called to explain that, it could be tied into whatever you left behind. This must remain off the books. Albert is the man I use for that."
"Does he have fuel now?" Alena asked.
Jerry grunted an affirmative. "He tells me he's already sold it to someone else, one of the other yachts in the harbor."
Alena looked at me again, then reached for her crutches. I watched as she got herself back to her feet, struggling with her wounded leg. It took her almost twenty seconds to stand, and once she did, she settled the crutches beneath her arms.
"Where is Albert?" she asked Jerry.
"He has an office in one of the abandoned warehouses near the edge of town," he said. "But you won't have any luck convincing him. I tried, I offered him twice what I normally pay him. He's not selling."
"Which warehouse?"
Jerry pointed out one of the less-abused structures near the edge of the harbor. "That one, with the green paint. His office is in the back."
"Be ready to leave once we're refueled," Alena said, and she began making her way to the gangplank.
Albert's office was behind a thin wooden door with a frosted glass panel set in it. The window once had the word "manager" stenciled on the glass, but at some point the glass had cracked and the "m" was distorted, and a shard where the second "a" had been painted was missing. It hadn't been more than a half a mile walk from The Lutra to the warehouse, but when we reached the door, Alena was perspiring and breathing hard. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she nodded at me.
I knocked on the door, and when a man inside said to come in, I opened it.
Albert was older than I'd thought he would be, maybe in his mid-sixties, white, but with the leather skin that comes from living years under a strong sun. His hair was more white than gray, his face lined like someone had worked him rather viciously in clay before bringing him to life. The office was as weathered as he, and when he came around his rickety particleboard desk to greet us, I heard the furniture creak. When he smiled at us, I saw that he was missing two incisors, and had a third capped in gold.
"Something I can do for you?" His accent was something between South London and North Jamaica.
"Are you Albert?" Alena asked.
He nodded, smiled again, looking from Alena to me.
"Jerry needs his ship refueled."
Maybe it was because she was on crutches, or maybe it was sexist, but Albert directed his response to me. "I already told Jerry, I can't help. Fuel I've got is spoken for, that's the way it is."
"Where is it?"
He glanced at her. "Why?"
"Do you refuel from a boat, do you use a truck, how do you do it?"
"A truck," he said, looking at Alena curiously. "But as I said, it's spoken for."
"You will move the truck to the dock and refuel The Lutra."
Albert laughed.
I saw it coming, saw the shift of weight indicating that she was going into motion, but by then, she already had.
Alena moved her weight almost entirely to the left crutch and swept the right one up sharply in between Albert's legs. The blow struck him squarely in the testicles, and it crumpled him forward, and he lost his balance. As swiftly as she'd struck, she pulled the crutch free and jabbed again, this time higher, hitting Albert just beneath the collarbone. He didn't have much air left, but what he had came out in a gurgle, and he fell back against the desk. The particleboard tore beneath him as he rode it onto the floor.
She lowered the crutch and covered the distance to Albert with one move, set the tip of the right crutch against his body again, resting it just above his stomach.
Albert's eyes were wide, bulging almost comically, and he wheezed in short spurts.
"If I push down, you will die," Alena told him.
Albert's expression indicated that he absolutely believed her.
"To live, you will do the following – you will get the keys to the truck. You will drive myself and my companion to The Lutra. You will refuel The Lutra. You will never mention us to anyone, ever. Do you understand?"
He nodded, then nodded again.
Alena moved the crutch from Albert's solar plexus. He avoided her gaze, tried to catch mine, silently pleading for help. What he saw gave him no comfort.
"I'm with her," I told him.
We left the South Caicos less than sixty minutes later, leaving Albert in the cab of his truck, parked on the pier. Jerry paid him for the fuel.
It took another day to reach Miami, and from there Alena, Bridgett, Miata, and I caught a flight to New York, landing at Kennedy. Not once during the trip did Bridgett speak to Alena, and for her part Alena never tried to engage her in conversation. From Bridgett's expression, I guessed she had a good idea of what had transpired in Cockburn Harbour, but she said nothing to me about that, either. I'm sure she thought that we'd left a body in our wake, and there seemed no point in my trying to explain otherwise.
It made for a fairly tense trip.
After we'd picked up Miata and moved out to the curb, Bridgett asked if I was headed home.
"Not yet," I said.
"You want me to tell anyone you're back?"
"I'll handle it."
"I'll rephrase. Is there anyone you don't want me to tell that you're back?"
"No."
"All right, then." She glanced at Alena, who was leaning on her crutches a couple feet away, talking to Miata in the dog carrier. Assured that she was out of earshot, Bridgett turned back to me. "You change your mind, all you have to do is call a cop," she said, and she headed for the taxi stand and climbed into a waiting cab.
We rented a car, and from the airport Alena directed me to one of her caches. It was in Queens, a tiny storage facility that abutted onto a junkyard and had easy access to the Cross Island Parkway. When we arrived, she told the manager that her name was Kim Gallagher, and that she needed to pick up some things for her brother. She showed him a current New York State driver's license to prove her identity, and when he checked his files, he saw that, indeed, her brother had given her permission to access the locker.
We brought the car in close, parked, and as we got out, I asked, "How many of these do you have?"
"In the five boroughs? Four." She handed me the key, leaning on her crutches. "At one point I had six, but one was broken into last year, and the other has most likely been compromised, so I won't go near it. This one is very clean, I haven't visited it in six years. It's never been used."
I unlocked the door and ran it up on its rails, and before we stepped inside she used one of her crutches to pull a piece of fishing line out of the darkness. The string had been run about five inches high, across the opening, and there was still tension on it.
"Safety," she said. "If it's broken, I know someone has been inside."
"Unless they replaced it."
"Unless they replaced it, yes. I don't think anyone has."
We stepped inside and I pulled the string that ran to the single bulb hung in the space. It was low wattage and didn't penetrate to the corners, but it didn't need to, because all that was inside were two pieces of luggage, a large blue duffel and a smaller black rolling bag. I put them in the car, closed the locker again, and we stopped at the manager's on the way out to return the key with thanks.
In Manhattan we checked into the SoHo Grand and got ourselves into a large room on one of the pet-friendly floors. I stuck with the Paul Lieberg identity; Alena called herself Jessica Bethier.
Before we headed up, I gave the FedEx envelope I'd been carrying in my go-bag to the young woman who checked us in, asked if she could send it out that afternoon. She assured me it would be no trouble at all.
Our room had a king bed and a couch that would convert to a queen. As soon as we were inside, Alena opened the carrier and Miata sprang out and stretched, then began snuffling his way through all of the corners. The hotel directory actually had a separate menu for pets, and Alena used it to order him something to drink and eat. The food arrived in under ten minutes, and Miata dove into his bowls. Once she saw that he was happy, Alena sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her crutches up after her. I opened the bags we'd taken from the cache and dumped them out on the bed, and Alena and I began going through the pile. She'd cached a couple changes of clothes, three pistols, and one HK PDW submachine gun. There were also three wads of well-used bills, twenties and tens bound with rubber bands.
"How much is there?" I asked.
"Here? A little under fifteen."
"And there's money in every cache?"
"Always. The U.S. is expensive."
"Oxford works the same way?"
"I'd expect he does. Money is pretty integral to the work." She started loading the pistols. "It's time we talked about what we're doing."
"I want to get you someplace secure, somewhere that you can recover from your injury."
She had been sliding bullets into the cylinder of a Colt revolver, and now she stopped and looked up at where I stood. "I will not recover. My left leg below the knee is permanently crippled. It cannot support my weight, it will never support it again."
To prove the point, she extended and raised her leg, then set it on the bed, her foot pointed at me. She reached down and pulled up the cuff of her pant leg, folding it back quickly to just below her knee. A large gauze rectangle was taped to her shin. She pulled it free, then turned her ankle to give me the full view. The stitches ran from just above her ankle to almost behind her knee, a zigzag of thread thick and black with dried blood. Her calf was only half as wide as it should have been.
"I've lost a large portion of my lower leg," Alena said, her face entirely neutral. "It's possible that the tibia and the fibula were both splintered, if not broken. The doctor in Kingstown did the best he could without a hospital and without more skill, and there is no infection, and the skin is knitting. But I will never walk on this leg again, not without assistance."
"We can get you proper medical help," I said. "Not some backroom surgeon. We can get you someone who knows what they are doing."
She folded the gauze back into place over the stitches, began rolling her pant leg down. "Atticus, even if you are correct, what you are saying requires time and money. Money I have. Time I do not. Oxford is on his way here, if not in New York already."
"All the more reason to get you someplace secure."
"I have not disputed that." She picked up the Colt, slid another round into the cylinder. "What do you suggest?"
"I want to bring in my colleagues," I said.
She finished loading the revolver, closing the cylinder with a push, a calm motion, very controlled. "Will you tell them who I am?"
"Yes."
She turned the gun in her hand, looking at it thoughtfully. "I will not go to prison. I will not allow that."
"They're my friends. They'll respect my wishes. If I tell them to keep it quiet, they'll honor that."
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
"Sure enough to bet my life on it?"
"Yes."
She smiled, setting the gun back onto the bed.
"You must have very good friends," she said.
"Absolutely not," Dale Matsui told me. "No way. I can't believe you'd even ask us to do this!"
He looked around the table, to Corry and Natalie, and then to Special Agent Scott Fowler, to see if they were going to offer him support. From their expressions, I suspected he would get it.
It was nearly midnight, and we were at the back of The Stoned Crow in Greenwich Village, the same bar where once, months ago, Lady Ainsley-Hunter was supposed to join students from NYU in merry pitchers of beer. All around us on the walls were representations of crows, paintings and pictures, some literal, some more loosely interpreted. Over Corry's head hung a poster from The Crow movie, and farther down the wall was a promotional flyer for a concert by the band of the same name.
It had taken a couple of hours to assemble everyone because I'd had to go carefully, unsure of who Oxford might already have under surveillance. In the end I'd made contact through Scott, thinking that he would be the most risky for Oxford to mark, and therefore the least likely to watch. Scott had taken it pretty well, saying only, "I was wondering when you'd call," and then he'd agreed to contact the others. He'd arrived at the bar first, with Natalie close on his heels, but he'd had just enough time to pull me aside.
"Gracey and Bowles are looking for you," he'd said. "We really need to talk."
Now he was staying silent, and I suspected he'd let the conversation run its course before weighing in with his own opinion and whatever facts he himself had.
Corry said, "I'm with Dale, Atticus."
"She's a paying client," I said. "Like any other."
"Uh, no, I don't think so," Dale said.
"Look, we take money to protect people we don't like all the time. It's never been our job to pass judgments…"
"Okay, hypocrisy readings are off the charts," Corry said. "Perhaps you may recall you're the guy who was complaining about spoiled-brat movie stars. Those are jobs you were all too willing to turn down."
"I never turned them down, I just never liked them," I replied.
Dale was shaking his head. "It's a personal choice, Atticus. I'm not going to protect the Grand Wizard of the KKK. I don't give a damn about how professional I'm being or not. I'd have thought you would agree with that."
"She's not who you think she is."
"She's the woman who nearly killed me twice," Dale replied. "So you tell me, Atticus – who am I supposed to think she is? How am I supposed to get past that?"
"I did," I said.
Natalie, who had been watching me closely the whole time, looked down at her beer, and I realized it had been the wrong thing to say.
"Yeah," Corry said, quieter. "Yeah, you did. And frankly, that's a problem for us."
"You've put us in a really bad position," Dale said. "You've put the whole firm at risk. If this gets out, what you've been doing, of what happened to Havel, of where you were and who you were with…"
"Wait just a fucking second," I said. I hadn't gotten as far as telling them about Havel. I hadn't told them about Oxford yet. I'd gotten only as far as telling them who my principal was and that I needed their help.
Natalie turned the glass of beer between her hands. "Bridgett came by the office this afternoon. She had us call Scott."
Hell, I thought.
"She told us everything that happened," Corry said.
"No, she didn't. She told you what she thinks happened. But she's got her facts assed up."
"Is Havel dead?"
"Yes."
"Were you living with Drama for over three months?"
"Yes."
"Was it more important to you to keep Drama from the authorities than it was to report the murder of a woman who was, ostensibly, if not a friend, at least an acquaintance?"
"Where are you going with this, Corry?"
He didn't like my tone, which was understandable, I suppose, because I certainly wasn't liking his. He put his elbows on the table, leaning forward, and Scott had to adjust how he was sitting to keep his eyes on me. I still couldn't get a bead off of him, of what he was thinking.
"You've abused your friendship with everyone at this table," Corry told me. "We've spent over a quarter of a year worried sick about you, waiting for a word or a sign that you were all right. We were your friends, and you abused our friendship. Did you even consider us?"
"I thought about you guys all the time," I said. "I wasn't in a position where I could just pick up the phone and call."
"You were absent for four months, dammit! Four fucking months! You should have found a way!"
"I couldn't! God dammit, if I had she would never have trusted me! If I had you wouldn't have understood! Don't you think I fucking agonized over this?"
Corry straightened, leaning back in his seat. He moved his beer around on the table, then lifted it and drained the glass dry.
Dale said, "Did you really think we'd greet you as the conquering hero?"
"I thought you'd give me the benefit of the doubt."
"We are giving you the benefit of the doubt," Corry said. "We're here, now."
"And when we're done, is Scott going to throw me down and slap the cuffs on?"
Natalie made a delicate snort. "Oh, please."
Corry spread his hands, as if sweeping all of our words from the air. "Okay, let's just forget the personal for a second. Let's talk about the professional. Do you know what happens to us if this gets out? We lose everything we've gained, everything we've worked hard for. We're back where we were when Trent had us blacklisted. You have no idea how we had to scramble after you vanished, Atticus, you have no idea the damage control we had to do. We lost two jobs as a result of your disappearance, and there was major footwork involved in keeping three others."
"Bottom line," I said.
That made him really angry. "Yes, bottom line. And you know what? I don't think I'm in that great a minority on this. I have a wife and a child and another on the way…"
"Esme's pregnant?"
"Yes, she's three months along, and you know what, Atticus? I want to keep a roof over my family's head, I want to send my children to college, I want to keep them fed and clothed and give them the things I never had. And to do that I need money, and I'd prefer to earn that money doing something I enjoy, something I take pride in. Like it or not, KTMH is a business. You had a responsibility to that, and you abdicated it."
"Then there's a solution," I said. "Buy me out."
Natalie looked across the table at Dale. She said, "I told you."
"I'm serious," I said. "Buy me out. What you don't seem to get, Corry, is that I do understand what you're saying, I do understand your concerns, and I sure as hell do know how this could look. I don't want to see the firm die, certainly not through any action of mine."
"Then why are you doing this?" Corry demanded.
"Because I have agreed to protect this life, I agreed to do this job. And because I believe her life is worth protecting."
There was silence at the table for a minute.
"I can't do this, Atticus," Dale said, finally. "I'm sorry, man. You're my friend, we were legs together, dammit. But I cannot do this thing."
"Neither can I," Corry said.
We all looked at Natalie. "You'll sell us your share of the firm?" she asked.
"Draw it up tomorrow morning, I'll sign it tomorrow afternoon," I told her.
"Then once it's signed, I'll take the job," she said.
Both Dale and Corry opened their mouths, objections flying, but she cut them off.
"We've each got our own shares, we've each got our own jobs in the firm. I'm taking this one. But I agree with Atticus. We don't judge our principals. We protect them to the best of our abilities. That's always been the job."
"This goes bad for him, it'll be bad for you," Corry said. "And that'll be bad for us."
"If that's what happens, I'll deal with it."
Neither of them said anything. At the back of the booth, Scott hadn't moved.
Dale slid out of his seat, taking his coat from the peg on the side of the booth. He put it on and headed out of the bar. Corry followed, but he stopped while zipping up his coat.
"When it's all said and done, you know this isn't personal."
"I'm remembering when you were working for Sentinel," I said to him. "The way you hated Trent and how everything was about the bottom line."
He frowned. "If you can change, so can I."
"Hell yeah," I said.
He offered me his hand, and I shook it, then watched him walk away.
Scott cleared his throat. "Hi, remember me? I'm the guy whose face you lied in."
"I'm sorry about that, Scott."
"I figured you were, but I wanted to hear it."
"So," Natalie said. "When do we start?"
"I'm working on getting a house," I said. "She's got some connections. I want to button her up, then we'll start working this thing."
"Working it how?"
"How much did Bridgett tell you?"
Natalie looked at Scott, and Scott held up a hand, ticking off points. "Drama. Oxford. Book. Sex. Stockholm Syndrome."
"She really doesn't want to believe I'm doing this of my own volition," I said.
"She thinks you think it's your own volition, but no, she really doesn't," Natalie agreed.
"And what do you think?"
"I don't know enough."
"Scott?"
"I don't care," he said. "Gracey and Bowles have contacted me three times in the past week, wanting me to contact them if I heard from you. They said you were in trouble."
"Did you?"
"Of course not. Bridgett wasn't the only person playing detective these past months. Someone hired Oxford to do the job, and it's not just a coincidence that within days of that job going south I start being pestered for information about you. Whatever's going on here, I want to know about it. For the time being, that's more than enough incentive to make me forget who your principal is, provided everything remains on the up-and-up."
"You're thinking it was Gracey and Bowles?" Natalie asked.
"It had to be. If not them directly, someone who supervises them."
"Why?"
"I've got a theory. Not much evidence for it, but I kinda like it."
"Share," I said.
Scott adjusted his glasses, smiled again, a little embarrassed. "Look at it like this. Havel writes this book, gets a lot of attention. I mean, big-ass attention, pop-culture attention. Suddenly prime-time television is doing episodes about cops chasing professional killers, about lawyers defending assassins. There's a movie in the works. Everybody is suddenly talking about this thing that, up until a few months ago, nobody really gave much credit to.
"That kind of interest, it keeps building until it reaches a sort of critical mass. And the more people who are thinking about it, the more people who are saying, Jesus Christ, there are assassins for God's sake, the more people start asking questions."
"Questions like who and what and why and how," I said.
"Yeah, exactly. Now imagine that you're a Backroom Boy, and you've trained someone like Drama, you've created her. And now you're suddenly thinking, oh shit, I'm maybe three weeks away from a Congressional Oversight Committee. You can't stop people from talking about this thing, you can't undo it. But maybe you can get their attention elsewhere."
Natalie nodded. "According to Bridgett's version, that's pretty much what Oxford was trying to do."
"That's almost exactly what he said," I confirmed.
"There are very few people who stand to lose as a result of Havel's book," Scott said. "If two of them aren't Gracey and Bowles, then I'll give you even money that their bosses are."
"Finding evidence for this is going to be rough."
"But possible," Scott said. "Especially if you've got access to someone who knows how the system works. Especially if you're protecting someone who has been on the inside."
"You're a mercenary bastard," I told him.
"Call it payback for lying to a friend. I'm going to start digging, see if I can rattle a few cages. And I'd like to talk to, uh… Alena, is it?"
"Alena," I said.
"I'd like to talk to her in the next couple days. It can wait until she's buttoned up."
"She won't like it."
"Change her mind."
"And I can start tomorrow," Natalie said. "After getting the papers drawn up, of course."
"Just pay me my share, that's all I ask."
"You'll get what you're due."
"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," I said.