Fade To Midnight (32 page)

“What about my fear of losing you?” she yelled back. “Isn't that just as valid? This is not fair! Why aren't we arguing about me giving you permission to traipse around alone, huh? Explain that to me!”

His mouth hardened. “Sure, I'll explain it. Extensive martial arts training, three guns, five knives, and a roll of garotte wire. Sorry, correction. Four knives, since I left one in that fucker's leg. That's why I go, and you stay. Just a couple days. That's all I'm asking, Edie.”

“And then? What happens then?”

“Then we renegotiate,” he said smoothly.

She tilted her head and regarded him through slitted eyes. “Like hell we do. You think you're so slick, don't you?”

“Slick ain't even the word for it,” said a harsh, gravely voice from behind them. “Watch out for Kevlar, the mystery man, honey.”

Their heads whipped around. Three people were arrayed near the table. An older man led the phalanx, about seventy, broad and thickset, with a scowling bulldog face, a grizzled crew cut and glinting silver stubble. A woman of roughly the same age built like a large brick flanked him. Same down-turned scowl, same bulldog face, but her hair was a bouffant helmet of curls dyed matte black, and she wore a paisley polyester caftan and lots of clashing plastic jewelry.

On the other side of the old man was a muscular, dark, extremely handsome guy who was grinning crazily, from ear to ear. She recognized the dimples from the Lost Boys magazine article.

Wow. This was Kev's adopted family.

Kev let out a sigh of resignation. “Edie, meet the Ranieris.”

 

Kev would never have dreamed that he could be grateful to that motley crew for interrupting, but he could've kissed them. Even Tony.

“I coulda shot your ass up ten times over for how you wasn't paying attention, kid,” Tony scolded, and then he and Rosa trained squint-eyed stares on Edie as if she were a heifer being considered for purchase. Bruno just scoped her shamelesly, waggling his eyebrows.

“Nice, Kevlar,” he said, in admiring tones. “Sweet.”

Tony sat next to Kev. Rosa sat next to Edie. Rosa's fixed, hungry stare made Edie squirm in her chair. Bruno took the last chair.

“So this is her,” Tony said heavily.

“Edie, this is Tony Ranieri, Rosa Ranieri, his sister, and Bruno, their grand-nephew,” Kev announced.

Edie nodded with a shy smile, and murmured a greeting.

“So you're the billionaire's daughter,” Tony announced.

Fucking
ouch.
Kev hissed through his teeth. Tony had the grace and subtlety of a jackhammer. “Tony, goddamnit—”

“You ain't what I expected,” Tony sounded faintly miffed.

“What did you expect?” Edie asked, bemused.

“A fluffhead socialite,” Bruno offered helpfully. “Gidget goes to Paris. You know, pearls and heels and ringlets and a big dress.”

She laughed. “I've got the big dress, at least. It's at the hotel.”

Kev thumbed the cell on, and pulled up the photo he'd taken of her in the dress. He handed it to Tony. “Get a load of the dress.”

Tony peered over his glasses, staring into the little display screen, and let out a grunt of cautious approval. “Hmmph. That's more like it.”

Rosa grabbed the phone, and let out the exact same satisfied grunt. “Nice dress. Now that looks like a billionaire's kid.”

They stared at Edie again, trying to cross-reference the big dress billionairess image with the flesh-and-blood girl, but he could see that they were struggling with it. Edie had dressed down again, bigtime. Back were the dark rimmed, awkward glasses, the long mop of concealing hair, the faded jeans, the loose, knee-length button-up sweater. Strange, though. Trying to disguise her beauty made it all the more poignant for him. It also made him want to grab her, peel it all off. Wallow in her splendor. God. So pretty. She glowed.

“I actually don't have anything to do with the billions,” she blurted out.

Tony and Rosa looked at her blankly. “How's that, honey?” Tony asked.

She looked uncomfortable. “I was cut out. I'm just your average starving artist now. No billions. In fact, my bank account's overdrawn.”

Tony grunted. “Yeah, we heard your daddy was a real hard-ass.”

She slanted Kev a glance. “Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that in my life lately.”

“So what's wrong with you? Why'd he cut you off?” Tony demanded. “What did you do?”

“That's Edie's private business, Tony,” Kev said.

“No, it's OK,” she said. “There are a lot of reasons, actually. I embarrass him. I say whatever I'm thinking at the wrong times, I don't dress appropriately, I chose the wrong occupation, and I, ah…I don't follow orders well.” She shot Kev another hard look.

He gazed back. She wanted a challenge? He'd let the Ranieris loose on her. Let them tear and rend. He'd be damned if he'd intervene.

“And now he's pissed because of Kev,” Bruno concluded. “It's a real Romeo and Juliet scenario. Super romantic. Man, I go for that.”

“I wasn't expecting all of you to come out here,” Kev complained.

“You weren't thinking,” Bruno said. “Fortunately, you've got me to think for you. Zia Rosa's the person least likely to be associated with you in a cyber-search, so we had her rent the car. And once she knew, you think she was going to stay behind? With a new girlfriend to grill?”

“I guess not,” he said, with ill grace. “Jesus. What a circus.”

“So me and Tony and Rosa go back to the city in my car, and I go back to work this afternoon, since some of us poor slobs actually have to work. Remember work? Or has it been too long, for you?”

“I know all about work,” he muttered.

Bruno snorted. “And I come up to the cabin tomorrow morning bright and early to spell you and do my pit bull imitation, so that you can go do your Osterman archives searching bullshit
in santa pace.
”

“Ah! Really!” Edie's tone made Kev's stomach sink. “So you two have already organized everything! How helpful of you!”

Everyone promptly found something else to look at. Bruno looked up at a wall full of Indian artifacts, whistling. Tony and Rosa became deeply absorbed with the tugboat going by on the river outside.

In fact, Kev had taken great care to discuss this aspect of the plan with Bruno while Edie was in the shower. For simplicity's sake.

“This stuff takes some advance planning,” he muttered lamely.

Her elvish eyebrow tilted up to a dangerous angle. “It would have been nice to be invited to the planning session.”

“So, ah, Edie!” Bruno broke in, his voice big and fake and hearty. “How'd you like the rose petals and the candles?”

Edie couldn't help but smile at that transparent, bouncing clown. “I loved them,” she said softly. “It was wonderful. The food was marvelous, too. Thank you. It was a lovely thought.”

Well, hell. Bruno's instincts and timing were better than his own, but that reflection just irritated the shit out of him. Sweet-talking punk. “Breaking into my apartment was somewhat less wonderful, though.”

Bruno gave him an indignant look. “Just trying to help you out, buddy. You would never have thought of rose petals on the bed in a million years. Watch and learn.” He waggled his eyebrows again. “A guy gets amazing mileage out of a little gesture like that.”

Kev was so grateful for the giggle that burst out behind Edie's hand, he decided not to come down on Bruno after all. For now.

Edie turned her attention to Tony. “I've been so curious to meet you, after what Kev told me,” she said.

Tony looked intensely suspicious. “What did he tell you?”

“How you saved his life,” Edie said. “And chased that guy away who was beating him, and left your job to hide Kev. That was brave.”

Tony grunted. “Stupid, more like,” he said gruffly. “Real nice '83 Cadillac Escalade I had to get rid of after I put him in the backseat. He was more like raw hamburger than a man. Shoulda seen that damn car. Had to bribe someone to bury the sorry piece of shit in a landfill.”

Kev winced. “Jesus, Tony! Too much information!”

But there was no stopping Tony. “It ain't like you can take a car to an auto detailer and say hey, man, can you get a couple a quarts of human blood outta this thing? Fuck, no. Had to ditch the whole car for this crazy punk. He cost me money from the start. Shit, he still does.”

“And sewing him up, ah,
madonna santa
,” Rosa flapped her hands expressively. “His face. Like sewing wet tissue paper.”

Kev slanted Edie an apologetic glance. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“It's OK,” Edie replied. “I saw you in that condition, too.”

That was a shocker, and required lengthy explanations about Edie's presence at her dad's office that fateful day eighteen years before. But Kev was getting antsy. “We need to move,” he broke in.

Tony and Rosa hovered next to Edie while he paid for the meal, eyeballing her as if she were some exotic animal. They were going to embarrass the shit out of him. The price he had to pay for their help.

Zia Rosa opened fire. “You want babies, honey?” she demanded.

Edie turned pink. “Yes,” she admitted. “Very much. Someday.”

Zia Rosa snorted. “Someday? What's this someday crapola? You ain't getting any younger.” She glared at Kev. “He certainly isn't.”

“You don't even know how old I am, Zia,” he reminded her, as he stuffed his change into his wallet.

“Old enough.” Zia Rosa dug in her imposing shiny black plastic purse, and tossed him the keys to a rental. “Old enough.”

“Edie's twenty-nine,” he informed her.

Rosa was unimpressed. “My nonna back in Brancaleon was a grandmother by the time she was twenty-nine!”

“You can't be recommending that as family planning,” Kev said.

Rosa gave his good cheek an admonishing pat. “You wait too long, your sperm's gonna get old.”

“My sperm is fine, Zia. Back off.”

Edie embraced the older woman, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Give us a little time. We need to work out some things first,” she said. “But we're already talking about it.”

“Talk?” Rosa's mouth quivered as she sternly refused to smile. “I know what makes babies. It ain't talk. You don't start now, Tony and me'll be too feeble to be good
nonni
. The babysitting, the diapers—”

“I ain't changing no fuckin' diapers,” Tony said darkly.

Zia Rosa spat something at him in that language Kev often cursed in. Edie glanced at Kev. “What did she say?”

Kev hesitated, but Bruno leaped into the breach. “She said, ‘shut up, dickhead,' he translated cheerfully. “Very grandmotherly, huh?”

“Good-bye, Zia,” Kev said loudly. “Thanks for the car. I owe you.”

Tony and Bruno each took one of Zia Rosa's elbows, and hauled her toward the door.

“Eat my pork tenderloin!” she called. “Rice pudding, too! It's in the trunk!” She jerked her chin at Kev. “Strong sperm! Eat meat!”

Tony and Bruno led Rosa out to the parking lot. When Bruno's BMW pulled away, Kev looked over the garish yellow Nissan Xterra that had been parked beside it. An eye-jarring, memorable color, but what the fuck. That was Zia Rosa for you. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“Don't be sorry,” Edie said. “She's impatient. She wants grandbabies. She thinks of you as her son. I think she's great. I think they're all great.”

He glanced over at her, startled. “Really? You do?”

“So direct,” she said. “You know where you stand with them.”

It was the God's own truth, but it had certainly never occurred to him to be grateful for it. “Huh. Glad it works for someone. Let's move.”

T
ony's cabin was in the middle of nowhere. Kev crossed the river at Cascade Locks, drove east on the Washington side to White Salmon, and then headed north up into the mountains around Mt. Adams. The roads grew progressively smaller and rougher, winding higher until they were teetering on crumbling, washboarded gravel tracks barely wide enough for the vehicle's axle. Bumping over washed-out creeks, crawling past collapsed shoulders, rockfalls, cliffs. Heart-in-mouth driving. Kev stomped upon all attempts at conversation, so she stared out the window, fuming as the miles crawled by.

If he'd wanted to trap her up here, he'd done a great job. It would take her ages to hike out of this place. If she didn't freeze to death or get eaten by a hungry predator first.

When he finally parked, she slid out, startled at the sweetness in the air, the vast silence that contained infinite songs and sounds. The trees at that altitude were a shaggy, short collection of hardy conifers, interspersed with dead white skeleton trees and choked with gray undergrowth. There was a shallow, trembling lake, a cold wind whiffling across its reedy surface, the water as transparent as glass.

Kev grabbed her hand and her suitcase, and pulled her through a thicket of trees. On the other side was a tiny clearing, with a cabin. It was humble, just a box made of weather-beaten wood. Kev undid a heavy padlock and went inside, throwing open the shutters. Inside was a tiny kitchen, bathroom, a sleeping area with a curtain to divide it. One bed, covered with a canvas drop cloth and a plastic tarp. A sealed plastic bag full of bedding sat on top of it.

“I'll get a fire going, and light the propane for the water heater,” Kev said. “In a couple hours, it'll be warm enough for a shower.”

She looked around, charmed. “Did Tony build this?”

Kev grabbed a handful of kindling from a box by the door and crouched in front of a potbellied stove. “No, this isn't Tony's style. He bought this place about twenty years ago. The widow of a friend of his who got killed in Nam needed the cash. Tony's not much of an outdoorsman, but he used to bring me and Bruno up here, just to get us out of the city. I've been keeping the place up, last ten years or so.”

“It's beautiful,” she admitted. She didn't experience the grandeur of nature very often. But she loved it, when she got the chance.

“Yeah, I love it up here.” His face was thoughtful, as he lit the crumpled paper inside his tower of kindling and watched the flames take hold, licking at the twigs and bark. “I feel more comfortable here than anywhere else. Maybe…” His voice trailed off.

Edie finished his thought. “You came from a place like this?”

“It's possible,” he admitted. “I have dreams. A house in the woods. Mountains, trees.”

“People, too?” she asked, hesitantly.

He nodded, his face somber in the dimness. “I can see their faces in the dream, and hear their voices, but it all slips away when I wake up,” he admitted. “Like a wall slamming down. I can't hang on to it.”

“So the memories are there,” she mused. “Just blocked.”

“I don't know how to pry them out,” he said. “There was no physical trauma to my brain. The people who did this to me didn't cave in my skull. I think the block is self-inflicted.”

She sat down on the bed. “You did it to yourself? How?”

“I don't know. It's protective, to keep Osterman out. It's just that I can't undo it. That's just my hypothesis, though. Who knows what really happened. I'll probably never know. I just have to accept that.”

She looked around the tiny cabin. Kev followed her gaze. “It's pretty basic,” he said. “No cable TV, phone, cell or Internet. It's one of the reasons I like the place so much. But I'm sorry if you get bored.”

She snorted. Bored. Hah. As if she could get bored, with her life in a centrifuge, and Kev Larsen constantly boggling her mind.

“You know, I could stay here alone tomorrow,” she said. Kev started frowning and shaking his head, so she hurried on. “Really. Don't make Bruno skip work and drive up to babysit me. It's a big hassle, and he'd be stuck making nervous conversation all day with some girl he barely knows. I'm used to solitude. I have my sketchbooks.”

“Don't worry about conversation with Bruno,” Kev said. “The problem is in getting him to shut up. Feel free to tell him to zip it, by the way. He won't get his feelings hurt.”

So much for that attempt. “I hope you know what a huge concession this is, on my part,” she said darkly. “You guilt tripped me into this, Kev. Don't make a habit of it. I already regret having given in.”

He lay a couple of larger sticks on his fire. “Too late.” He was making a big effort, but his voice wasn't quite apologetic enough to be convincing. “I'll make it up to you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Really? How?” she demanded.

He rose to his feet. “I'll think of something good.”

“What bullshit.” She flung the plastic bag full of bedding at him. He caught it, tossed it back. She was swinging the bag of pillows at his head when he seized her.

“Thank you for agreeing to this.” He kissed her with such intensity she had neither time nor breath to say anything snarky. Heat kindled, flared, and the embrace took on the usual urgent, twining desperation. He lifted his head, panting. “Edie—”

“Exploring ways to keep me entertained without TV?”

He looked agonized. “Actually, not right now. I have to make that phone call to Marr. Should have done it before, but I was in such a hurry to get some space between you and the city. I won't have time tomorrow morning, because we have to hike up to the bluff to get a signal, and it takes forty minutes just to get up there, and we have…” He glanced at his watch. “…a scant hour of daylight left.”

“You'd go faster without me,” she suggested.

He gave her a look. She sighed. “I'll come. Goddamn tease.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean for it to take off like that. It was supposed to be just a kiss. But a kiss is never just a kiss with you.”

She shoved at him. “Fine. Let go. Stop stimulating me.”

Following Kev up to the bluff was hard at the pace he set. They thrashed through undergrowth, clambered over tree trunks, slipped and slid across rockfalls. Edie's flimsy sneakers were up to the walk even less than her legs were, but when they cleared the crest where the trees petered out, the view of snow-covered Mt. Adams blindsided her.

She forgot about her burning lungs and legs, and stared, slack-jawed. At such close range, the power radiating from the slumbering volcano was overwhelming. And oddly familiar.

It was like Kev, she thought. This awestruck feeling was familiar because Kev was just like that lonesome, snow-covered volcano, its rounded top wreathed in clouds. Secret fire in its depths. Austerely beautiful, potentially deadly, mysterious. Magnetic.

She couldn't resist the pull. She couldn't imagine ever wanting to.

The comparison brought tears to her eyes, but the raw, blustery wind blasting over the bluff was a good enough excuse, and Kev wasn't paying attention. He wandered the boulder-strewn hillside, looking for a signal. He finally crouched down in the lee of a towering black rock face.

Edie sat beside him, clutching the oversized jacket he'd insisted she wear. She was used to Portland's soggy, temperate weather. Her ears hadn't been this cold since that trip to Aspen years ago, when her dad tried to teach her to ski. She'd ended up in the hospital with a broken leg. Painful, but Dad got the message. No more skiing for Edie.

Kev was shouting into the phone, but the wind whipped the sound away. He was arguing with whoever he was talking to. He flipped the thing closed and grabbed her arm, frowning. “Let's get down the hill before you freeze.” He sounded grim.

Edie scrambled to keep up with him, stumbling with weariness. Darkness had fallen when they reached the shelter and quiet of the trees. “So?” she asked him. “You set it up?”

“Tomorrow morning, at the library of the new Parrish Foundation building. With Cheung, the neuroscientist. Marr's upset that you're not coming. He thinks you're hanging from a hook by your hair someplace.”

“So let me come,” she suggested. “I'll put his mind at ease.”

He shot her a look. “I don't give a shit about the ease of his mind. And even if there weren't kidnappers and guys in white coats gunning for you, I'd sooner drown myself than let that slobbering dog anywhere near you. Hurry up, Edie. I don't want us out on this slope if it fogs in.”

She was hurt by his brusque tone, but too busy scurrying to protest about it. She was relieved when she finally caught sight of the cabin below, and the smoke that issued from the chimney.

Kev was still grim and silent once they were inside, though the cabin was deliciously warm, the fire in the potbellied stove crackling. He yanked the stove door open, stirring and stoking while Edie peeled off layers and rubbed her numb fingertips. She was accustomed to this tense, walking on glass, not-daring-to-speak feeling. She'd spent her whole childhood like this. She would not tolerate it from a lover.

“Why are you angry?” she asked flatly. “What the hell did I do?”

He was silent for a few moments. “Nothing. I'm sorry I appear that way,” he said, his voice stiff and formal. “It's not directed at you.”

“I'm the only one here,” she told him. “I can feel it, on my skin. Is it Des who bugged you?”

He waved his arm, dismissively. “Not him,” he said. “He's insignificant. I'm just…” He stopped, swallowed. Closed his eyes.

Edie didn't dare breathe. “What?”

“Scared.” He forced the word out, as if pushing it past a barrier.

Edie sighed, relieved. Familiar ground. Scared, she could relate to. She'd spent most of her life scared. “You'd be a fool not to be. Half your life, your lost family, everything you were. It's terrifying.”

“No, it's not that,” he said. “I'm not afraid of what I might find out. I'm afraid of what might happen when I remember. Because when I remember something…it's ugly, Edie. It's a bad scene.”

The trapped look in his eyes made her ache to embrace him, but something held her back. He would not be able to bear her touch.

“Tell me,” she said softly.

He stared down at clenched fists. “When I woke up from the coma, after the waterfall, I started to remember. That mechanism I told you about…the head injuries must have jarred it loose. And the pain, and fear, when things started coming back…Jesus, it was like being burned alive. I went nuts. I almost killed an innocent man. When I saw Osterman's face posted on Facebook, I blew a blood vessel in my eye and went into a self-induced coma. For lack of a better term. I was awake, conscious. But stuck.”

“That was your protective mechanism?” she said.

“Yeah. A hole inside my mind.” He sounded haunted. “No way out. And I was hiding in it. That's how scared I was. Just from seeing that man's face, in a fucking photograph. That's what it did to me.”

“You think sparking your memories might trip the switch again?”

“Bruno stopped me from killing Patil.” Kev said. “He dragged me to the emergency room the second time. At least tomorrow, if I should attack someone, it'll just be that butthead Marr in the crosshairs.”

Kev sounded more cheerful about that possibility than was strictly appropriate, but Edie was in no mood to judge him for it. “Why don't you send someone else to check the records for you? I'd do it.”

He shot her a hooded glance. “Nice try.”

She sighed. “Well, Bruno, then!”

He stabbed at the fire with the poker until sparks scattered onto the floor, and shook his head. “Doesn't feel right. It has to be me.”

That pissed her off. Stoic, pompous, self-sacrificing jerk. “You are so arrogant,” she snapped. “Such a hard-ass. You have to take on all the danger singlehandedly. Because nobody else can handle it, right? It's all for you. All the risk. All the responsibility.”

He rose to his feet. “For as long as I can take it.”

She shoved at his shoulder, barely budging him. “Well, I can't take it!” she yelled. “I think it's stupid, and selfish, and unfair!”

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” he said.

“Shut
up
!” She shoved him again, but he felt rooted to the ground. “Condescending
bastard!
Do not ever say that to me again!”

He grabbed her waving fists, and yanked her close. “You want to know how I came out of that hole in my mind?” he asked. “I always use the same technique. My magic secret weapon. Want to know it?”

“Why not,” she snapped. “Blow my mind, Kev. It's your specialty.”

“OK,” he said. “I used you, Edie.”

She stared at him, the pressure rising until it felt like the top of her head would blow off. “What the hell are you talking about? I didn't even know you! We hadn't even met! Don't bullshit me!”

But Kev was shaking his head. “It's true,” he said stubbornly. “That image of you, the way I saw you at Flaxon. You were my talisman. I told you that, in the coffee shop, remember? You were my angel.”

“No!” she yelled. “Don't start with the angel, because it freaks me out. She's not me, and she never was me! I'm glad if she helped you, but she's just a concept in your brain! Get it through your head!”

“When I was stuck, and panicking, you were my last resort,” he persisted. “When nothing else worked, I pictured you in my mind's eye. And it chilled me out. It focused me, just enough so that I could find my way through the dark. Maybe it lit up neural pathways that I'd blocked. I don't know, but you were the only safe way through that wall I'd made for myself. I don't know how it worked. All I know is that it
did
work.
You
worked. You saved my life. I wouldn't have made it without you.”