Fade To Midnight (31 page)

A
ham and cheddar omelet, English muffins and orange juice plus several cups of coffee at the Char Burger restaurant overlooking the Columbia River went a long way toward restoring Edie's courage. Even so, when she took Kev's cell and entered her father's number, her belly fluttered as if she were about to jump out of an airplane.

In a sense, she was. But she'd jump holding hands with the most special, unique, sexy, incredible guy she'd ever dreamed of. She could do this. Self-administered pep talks aside, her finger quivered, not connecting with the button. “Can he track us with this cell phone?”

“Yeah,” Kev said. “There's no GPS tag in it, but they could have the signal triangulated and get a fix on us. I should have turned the thing off last night, I guess, but I had no idea you'd given the number out to anyone until Marr called.”

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Giving the number to Des, I mean.”

“No one could have guessed things would get so weird so fast.”

“Brace yourself,” she said grimly, and pushed
CALL
. “They're about to get weirder.”

Her father picked up on the first ring. “Who is this?” he snapped.

That was a good sign. He was better. “Hey, Dad. It's me.”

“Edith! Where are you?” he barked.

She hesitated. “I'm fine. How about you? Still in the hospital?”

“Of course not! How could I stay there when my daughter's been abducted? Where are you? I'll send someone to pick you up right away!”

Edie stared out the restaurant's huge windows. Stray shafts of sunlight lit the shreds of fog draped across the high, dark mountains' shoulders. Green and gray swirled and spun as she blinked tears out of her eyes. “No, Dad,” she said quietly. “Thanks, but I'm fine where I am.”

She could hear the gears grinding as he contemplated his next strategy. “Ronnie needs you, Edie. She cried all night. She's not eating.”

Guilt was a classic, but he'd used it on her before. Betrayed her with it, too. She wouldn't do Ronnie any good once they'd pumped her full of drugs and locked her up. “I need her, too,” she said, her voice thick. “You're putting me in an impossible position.”

“I? I'm the one? Oh, for God's sake, Edie! Don't get me started! I cannot believe how self-absorbed you are!”

That touched off his tirade, but Kev was making a finger slicing over the throat gesture. She forced herself to cut over the stream of angry words. “One moment, Dad. I have to tell you something important before I end this call,” she broke in. “About an attempted kidnapping.”

“Attempted? Hah! It seems that he succeeded quite well!”

“Not Kev,” she said. “That's not a kidnapping. That's just me, hanging out with my new boyfriend. Which I have every right to do.”

“It's all in the labeling, then?”

“Please, Dad, listen to me! Three guys jumped us outside my apartment last night! One of them held a knife to my throat!”

Her father was silent. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” he finally said icily. “But if you hadn't deliberately eluded my security staff, they would have been there to protect you. How many times have I told you about how dangerous that neighborhood is?”

“Can we put aside the scolding and concentrate, please? They didn't get me, but I wanted you to know about it, because the staff needs to be especially on the alert, to protect Ronnie.”

Dad clicked his tongue in that thoughtful way that never boded well. “A knife to your throat? How on earth did you manage to escape?”

“Kev saved me,” she said. “He fought them. And they ran.”

“I see. Really. A surprise attack, in the dark, from three brutal professional criminals, and he scared them all away singlehandedly? My, my! He must be quite the warrior, hmm?”

She didn't understand her father's tone. How could he be so sarcastic and cavalier about this? “Yes, in fact, he is!” she said heatedly.

“Bet he didn't get a scratch, did he? Very impressive.”

“Dad, please. I'm telling the truth. I'm not trying to—”

“Don't talk to me about truth, Edith. I'm sure you've been carefully coached in everything you say to me.”

“No! I haven't! I was attacked, and it wasn't a mugging! I'm telling you so you can be on the alert! This was a courtesy call, understand?”

“Courtesy? Hah! God, Edith! You are so innocent, you must be a changeling! You were never in any danger from those attackers! They would have killed him if you had been!” her father yelled. “They would have shot him! How stupid can you be? Don't you see it?”

“But…but I…but he—”

“It was staged!” he roared. “This man is playing you! And you are making it so easy for him! I'm sorry if this hurts you, but this is not about you, Edith! It's about what he's trying to do to me! To punish me for what he perceives are my crimes! Whether I'm guilty or not, I don't know and frankly, I no longer care. Do not let yourself be used in this way! It is so painful for me to watch!”

“Dad, stop.” He had it wrong. He hadn't been there. He couldn't know.

“I am embarrassed for you!” Charles Parrish raged on. “I can imagine your gratitude, hmm? What a bonding moment it must have been. It makes me nauseous just to think of it.”

“Then don't think of it,” she said.

“Ah. So that's how it is. I'll add that to the long list of things I can't bear to think about. Like my firstborn child, trying to poison me.”

Edie was speechless. She finally forced air through her vocal apparatus, and squeaked, “What? What are you talking about?”

“You heard me, Edith. The toxicology tests aren't back yet, but Paul searched your apartment this morning. He found two vials of something called…Tamlix, I think it was? God knows where you got a designer poison like that. I certainly don't want to. Dr. Katz did some research. He tells me the effects of a small dose are consistent with my symptoms last night. The amount that you splashed in my face would have sufficed. And a larger dose would have stopped my heart.”

She shook her head, as if he could see her. “I would never—”

“I know you're angry with me, Edith. But I did not know how angry. I would never have thought you were angry enough to kill.”

“B-b-but I wasn't!” she stammered. “I haven't! I would never—”

“I would never press charges. I hope you know that. Particularly since you tried to stop me last night. I suppose I owe my life to that crisis of conscience.”

“No! Dad, I—”

“All I want is for you to get the help you need. For you to be safe and well, Edith. And away from that…that person. I know you would only do such a horrible thing if someone else put you up to it.”

She swallowed back the desperate, bleating denials. He couldn't hear them. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she whispered. “I'm so sorry that you believe this of me. It's not true. Please tell Ronnie that I love her.”

She let her arm drop to the table, and stared at the phone, still issuing a tinny squawking of frantic orders. She pushed the
END
button, and made it stop. Would that it were always that simple.

Kev took the phone from her without a word, and turned it off. Then he grabbed her hand, and held it. She pressed her other hand against her shaking mouth, as if her face were about to fall off.

“He thinks I was the one who poisoned him last night,” she whispered. “They found vials of poison in my apartment this morning.”

“Oh, shit,” Kev said quietly. “That's bad.”

“And the kidnapping? He says you staged it,” she said. “Those guys, last night. To lure me into your wicked trap, don't you know.”

His hand tightened around hers. “I would die before I would deliberately hurt or scare you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

The sincerity radiating from him was impossible to fake to her, with her kinky talents. But it wasn't like she could explain that to her father. “I know,” she whispered. “Thank you. For being so truehearted.” The phrase was old fashioned, but so was Kev. It fit.

He kissed her hand again. “This is getting really wierd,” he said. “Who would set you up for that? The kidnappers? And why? Why would they give a fuck about framing you to kill your dad? His death would only complicate their ransom negotiations. It doesn't make sense.”

She shook her head, hiding her face in her hands.

“I can see why he thinks the kidnapping was staged, though,” Kev mused. “I don't get it either.”

“Well, I'm just grateful for it,” she flared. “So stop saying what a big head scratcher it is that they didn't blow your brains out, because I don't want to hear it again! Be grateful, OK?”

“OK.” His smile was wary, uncertain. “Sure, I'm grateful. I don't think I've ever enjoyed being alive so much.” He turned her hand over, kissed her palm. “I want it to go on and on. Forever.”

She sniffed back tears, and stared out at the river. Trying to process it. Her father thought she'd tried to murder him.

“Funny,” he murmured. “About me staging the kidnapping.”

“Funny?” She snorted. “Oh, yeah. It's just a big laugh riot.”

“No, about me luring you into my wicked trap. I was doing fine without going to insane lengths like staging a kidnapping.” Kev sounded disgruntled. “He thinks I'd have such a godawful time getting a date?”

His aggrieved tone set her laughing, but the laughter turned to tears. She grabbed a napkin. “He'll never let me see Ronnie again.”

“I'm so sorry, babe,” he said. “I don't know how to fix that.”

She shook her head, grateful for him for not offering false encouragement. Some things weren't fixable. They had to be swallowed, and simply endured. She was sorry he'd suffered, but it was good to be with someone who understood that. So much didn't need to be said.

She flung her head back, lifting her glasses to dab the tears out of her eyes. “We need a plan of action.”

“We've got a couple of options,” he said. “I'm still in favor of falling off the grid. It would be hard, but we could do it.”

“Reindeer, emus? Or goats in Crete?” She gave him a wobbly smile. “I can't give up hope of ever seeing Ronnie again. I'm just not ready to do that. I feel like I'm betraying her already. And if we ran, it would make me feel guilty. Even though we've done nothing wrong.”

Kev gazed at her for a moment. “OK. That leaves plan B.”

“Which is?”

Kev gazed into his coffee, apparently reluctant to go on.

“Just lay it on me, OK?” she begged. “Don't leave me hanging with the significant silences. I can't stand it. My nerves are shot.”

He nodded. “Last night, a strange thing happened to your dad,” he said. “A strange thing also happened to you, and to me. So let's take a closer look at what all three of us have in common.”

There was an odd inevitability to it, as the name popped out of her, like it had been waiting to be let free. “Osterman,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“But…but he's dead,” she said helplessly. “Three years ago, now. He was burned to a crisp. A fire in his lab. It's a dead end.”

Kev shook his head. “Osterman murdered and tortured people for decades. I don't buy the fire in the lab. There's more to it than that.”

“So you'll take Des up on his offer to look at the archives?”

Irritation flashed across Kev's face. “I don't look forward to having him in my face, but it's a start. He might be in cahoots with your dad, so that's a risk.” He grimaced. “I'll call him. I guess.”

“Call him,” she suggested. “Call him now. Let's get started.”

Kev shook his head slowly back and forth. “I get started, Edie. Not you. You stay guarded in a safe, remote place.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“What I said. No more, no less.” His eyes were hard as flint.

Her spine straightened. “No,” she said. “We do this together.”

“Don't start.” She'd never heard his voice sound so cold. He sounded like a different man. “This is an argument that you will lose.”

Well, she was a different woman, too. “No, Kev,” she said. “I have not exchanged one prison for another. Or one warden for another.”

“I'm sorry that you see it in those terms.”

“Those are the only terms there are to see,” she said. “Consider this. To make this work the way you want, you would have to genuinely abduct me. Right here and now, in this restaurant. I refuse to comply. I am done with that bullshit. Now and forever. Understand?”

His eyes closed. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Christ, Edie.”

“You can't do it, Kev,” she said quietly. “It's just not in you. You're not like my dad. And thank God for that.”

He buried his face in his hands. “Shit,” he muttered.

Several minutes passed while she let him digest that. He finally lifted his face, his eyes blazing with intensity. “A compromise,” he said.

“I'm not compromising about this,” she told him.

“Please,” he said. “I can't tell you why I feel this way, but I sense it so strongly. You're in danger. You, specifically. Those men were trying to abduct you. Your father is trying to control you. Somebody's trying to frame you for murder. Des Marr wants to fuck you. Everyone is after you, babe. Just let me do this one thing alone. The archives. Just that. Just stay off the screen for just a couple of days, while I get a clearer sense of what we're dealing with. Please, Edie. I love you.”

“That's not the issue!” she snapped. “Do not use that against me!”

“I just found you!” His voice was rough. “Let me keep you safe for a couple days, at least! I'm so afraid of losing you. I came so close last night. I can't stand it. It would kill me. It would fucking destroy me.”