Firebird (46 page)

Dios!  He’d never expected to feel this closeness – this
tenderness
– again.  He felt totally unmoored.  

Worst possible thing for a sailor.

And yet - it was the only time since his wife died that he’d stopped thinking about her.  Admit it.  Yesterday morning, on the boat, he’d wanted to hold Alexandra Marik close.  To touch his lips to hers.   He’d wanted to stop living in the past, to
feel
again.  To believe that the only thing that mattered was this beautiful,
alive
woman standing in front of him.  

“Can there be a second chance for me?” he said to his Lab.  “Is it so damned much to ask?”

Hoover raised his head and barked, seeming to say it was.

“You’re right,” muttered Garcia, “she deserves the whole enchilada.  The crazy I-would-run-into-a-blazing-building-for-you kind of love.  But I don’t have it to give anymore.”

This time, the Lab kept his opinion to himself. 

You bloody fool, Garcia told himself angrily.  You
idiot
!  You can’t go through loving anyone like that again.

Not that it mattered now.  He’d pushed her away, out of the line of fire.  Hadn’t he?  And she’d just taken it on the chin, and walked away.  Out of his life.

Nothing here to hold me anymore
.

It’s for the best, he told himself.  Just focus on the sea.  Focus on the job.  Don’t think about her.

He slowed the engines, checked the running lights, eased the
Vaya con Dios
toward the marina and her slip.  He reached for his cell phone, cursed as he realized it was turned off.  He’d missed three messages.  He fumbled for the buttons, and heard Alexandra’s voice.

She’d found Ivan!  And then - Stratton? 
Stratton fucking
Vermont
?  Damn the woman!  So much for out of the line of fire.   You are a whole world of trouble for me, Chica.

Stratton.  So he’d have to break a few more rules.  But she was worth it. 

He clicked on the third message.  Her voice once more.  But this time shaking with shock.  Panicked, close to hysteria.  The message cut off. 
Christ
.

Hoover jumped up and began to bark.  He raised his eyes, saw a woman running down the dock toward him.  His heart leaped.  Alexandra?  No, too tall.  Billie.  A terrible coldness gripped his chest as he spun the wheel into the wind.

CHAPTER 48

“...in a gondola...”

As You Like It
, Shakespeare

STRATTON MOUNTAIN, VERMONT

The night was cold and brilliant with frost.  The four-wheel-drive crunched up the steep twisting road, headlamps spearing snowflakes the size of quarters that whirled in a dizzying frenzy against the mountain darkness.  Wipers scraped snow from the windshield to expose, for a brief moment, huge white pines that towered over the road like hoary sentinels.  Then just as quickly the trees disappeared, swallowed in a blanket of crystals.

Alexandra hunched forward, gloved hands gripping the steering wheel, every fiber concentrating on the road ahead that appeared and then vanished into the raging storm.  A howl of wind sent the snow spinning, and, just for a moment, high up on the mountain, she could see the lights of Stratton, glimmering like frozen stars against the pines.  Beyond the village, the lights of the gondolas and scattered lodges wandered like fireflies up the mountainside.   

Ivan was up there somewhere. 
And so was Juliet
.

Hurry!

The fear burned in her chest.  The text message had been terrifying.

I have Juliet.  Come alone to Stratton Ski Resort in Vermont.  Bring the brooch.  I will be waiting...

Her eyes had leaped to the photograph.  A close up of Juliet’s face.  Eyes closed.

Dear God in Heaven.  

She’d made good time, considering the snow, reaching the Vermont border just before six.  She’d called Billie from the road, stopped at the Bondville gas station for directions and started climbing the Stratton Mountain Road a few miles back.  How much farther?  Was she lost?  She didn’t dare take a hand from the wheel to check her watch or the directions.

The road was growing steeper.  Shifting to low gear, she angled carefully around a sharp bend.   A brief flash of light suddenly caught her rear-view mirror.  On the road far below her, headlamps flared through the pines.  You’re as crazy as I am, she thought.

She glanced again in the rearview mirror, saw the headlamps closer now, steadily gaining on her.  Too fast for this road.  A frisson of fear skittered down her spine.

Snow swirled against the window.  Then the glitter of ice caught her headlamps.  She gripped the wheel and eased the Jeep forward into the storm.

Find Ivan, find Juliet.

Hurry
.

* * * *

The bar, three stories high in the heart of the Stratton Village, was called Mulligan’s.  Alexandra parked the car and made her way through packed snow to the entrance.  She stopped for a moment in the doorway, overwhelmed by the crowd, the sudden blast of heat, the smoke and the DJ’s pulsing music.  Pulling off her wool hat, Alex began to push her way through the mass of people toward the bar.

No one had come up to her.  No one seemed at all interested in her.  Where was he?  Had the text been a terrible lie?  She couldn’t wait.  She had to take matters into her own hands.

A man in a batman mask leaned toward her and she caught her breath.   “Hi, gorgeous, trick or treat?”

“Excuse me?”

He tipped the mask above his head.  “Sorry.  It’s Halloween weekend.  And we’re celebrating First Snow.  What’ll it be?”

She looked around the bar, saw for the first time the masks and costumes in the crowd.  Halloween…  already?  Tomorrow, she realized.  Ruby’s princess outfit was ready, hanging in her closet.  But there was something more, something important lingering on the edge of her mind.  What was it about Halloween?

“How about a glass of char?”  The bartender was young and flaxen-haired, in his early twenties.  Alexandra dropped her hat on the bar and shook her head, wondering if a resemblance to the young Robert Redford was a Stratton requirement. 

“Black coffee.  And information,” she said, passing him a twenty dollar bill and the photo of Ivan that she’d printed from the Internet.  “Have you ever seen this man before?”

He took the money, glanced down.  “Sorry, doesn’t look familiar.”  He caught the look on her face and signaled the waitress at the end of the bar.

A cat woman appeared, then slipped off her mask.  The female equivalent of Redford, blond ponytail swinging across tanned skin, squinted at the photograph in the smoky darkness.  “Hey, I think that’s Stoli,” she said suddenly.

“Stoli?”

“You know, the best Russian Vodka.  Stolichnaya Gold.”  The young woman handed the photograph back to Alexandra.  “I call my regulars by their drink of choice.  He’s Double Stoli Gold, no rocks.  Nice older guy, just lonely, I think.  Comes in once, maybe twice a month.  I’m almost sure this guy is Stoli - but he usually wears some kind of hat, dark glasses.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

The girl waved a hand vaguely toward the high windows.  “One of those chalets up on the mountain somewhere.  Nothing but forest and snow, you know?  I think he calls his place Eden.”  She cocked her head and thought.  “No,” she said slowly.  “Adeen.  That’s it, Adeen.  Whatever that means.”

It means
alone
, in Russian, thought Alexandra.  “How do I get there?”

The girl shrugged.  “Never been.  But one night he had one too many, you know, and I said he shouldn’t drive, and
he
just laughed and said, “I don’t drive, I gondola.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not a skier, huh?”  The girl flung her hand toward the fogged windows.  “The gondolas are those huge glass cars that take the skiers to the top of the mountain.”

Sweet God in Heaven, I have to take a gondola up the mountain
?

“There’s a stop, half-way, at our mountain restaurant,” the girl went on.  “Great view from there, you’ll love it.”

“I doubt it.   Isn’t there a road?”

“Sure.  But it starts way back in Bondville.”

Deep breath.  Just get to Juliet.  “Okay.  What do I do when I get up there?”

“Go outside, there’s a terrace.  Just east of there, red flags mark an old hikers trail that leads into the woods, up past a handful of private homes.  Big bucks places, you know, perched like eagle nests on the edge of the mountain.  You can catch the gondola behind the Lodge.”  She gestured to her left.  “The cars run until 2 a.m.”

“Lucky me.  Thanks for your time.”  Alexandra handed the girl a fifty dollar bill and began to weave her way across the dance floor toward the door.

Hurry.

* * * *

Panov parked the snowmobile behind a stand of thick firs.  Snow crunched loudly under his boots as he moved toward the main street of Stratton Village.  He’d forgotten how big - and crowded - the village was.  He cursed in Russian.  She had to be here by now.  But where?

He should have stopped Alexandra Marik when he’d had the chance.

No matter.  He glanced back up the mountain.  Everything was in place.  Waiting for Alexandra Marik. 

He would take care of them –
all
of them - tonight.

I warned you, Prince Ivan
.

He moved beneath the Austrian-like spire of the Stratton Village Lodge, searching the bright faces of the skiers who jostled past him.  Just ahead was the sign for the gondola - Starship XII.  Skiers were piling on, their tangle of skis and snowboards spearing the cobalt sky.  The car could only take twenty or so, but it looked like -

There!  A flash of sweet copper fire, shining under the gondola lights.

You should have worn your hat, Shura
.

And you’d better have that brooch with you
. 

He began to run.

* * * *

Alexandra stood frozen at the sliding door of the Gondola.  Other cars were snaking up the mountainside, their lights blinking uncertainly in the wind.  Lord.  Steep beyond imagination.  And so blasted high above the ground. 

You can do this, she told herself. 
You have to
.

Ivan is up there somewhere.  With Juliet.

She forced her body to the center of the car as cheerful twenty-somethings, many in masks, poured in after her, surrounding her with broad shoulders and ski poles. 

She was pinned in by Batman, Barack Obama, Donald Duck.  I’ve fallen into a Fellini movie, she thought.

The small car was almost all glass.  Somewhere up on the mountain, Ivan was waiting.  With Juliet?  Her mind whirled with questions.  Something about the text message was wrong.  Very wrong.   What was –

The gondola jerked
.  Lord
! 

With a high whine of motors, the car slid out over the snow, rocking upward.  A sudden jolt threw her off balance and her heart slammed in her chest.  The first stanchion, she remembered.  And only two more to go.

Higher and higher.  The car swung back and forth, creaking, steel on steel, wind whooshing past the glass.  She closed her eyes tightly.  Dizzy and sick, she gripped the handrail and hung on.  The things you do for love, she thought.

The second stanchion jolted the gondola, and her eyes flew open.  As the passengers shifted she saw the bright flash of blue eyes behind a black ski-mask at the far end of the car.

Fear struck like a spear of ice in her chest.  It couldn’t be!  She had to be wrong.  How could he have known she was here?

She shrank down behind a tall man dressed as the Green Hornet and dragged a hand through her hair in confusion.  Her hair!  God, that was it.  She’d left her hat on the bar at Mulligan’s.  The bright hair was a damned torch.

I’m here, it shouted, come get me.

“Over my dead body,” she muttered, and then looked around the crowded car in panic.  He could be anywhere.  By the door, over there, just behind her.  Was she wrong?  All she had glimpsed were those eyes.  But eyes that seemed so familiar...

Shura
.

She grabbed her phone, scrolled down the text, found the final words in the message.  And the truth slammed into her mind with a hammer’s blow. 
“
I will be waiting for you
, Shura
.”   In her terror, she’d missed those last words.  It was the man who had attacked her in Maine, the monster with blue ice cubes for eyes… 
he
was the one who had Juliet! 

Not Ivan. 

Staring down at the text, she turned off the phone to conserve the battery.  Maybe if she just -  A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she cried out.

“Are you okay?” asked Green Hornet.  He smiled down at her.  “Windy tonight, but good snow.  We’re almost there.”

“Don’t like heights,” she murmured.  “Thanks.”

He nodded and turned back to his friends.  Once more she crouched against his broad back.  You can do this.  Think.

What would you have done, Eve
?

A soft breath against her cheek, a sudden image of a youthful Eve on a crowded beach, slipping a pair of expensive sunglasses from a stranger’s back pocket with a naughty grin. 

Of course.  Easing forward, hidden by the broad shoulders of the green jacketed skier pressing against her, she reached out and pulled his ski hat from his unzipped pocket.

Piece of cake.  Thank you, Eve.

They jolted past the third stanchion just as she folded the woolen hat into her hand.  Now the car was slowing down.  She bent and pulled the dark ski cap down over her head to the eyebrows, covering every strand of her bright hair.  Sorry, Green Hornet, she thought, but I need this hat more than you do.

With her back to the rear of the car, she raised her eyes and saw the lights of the mid-mountain restaurant - finally! - just above them.  There, off to the right, the terrace described by the Mulligan’s bartender, lit by strings of swaying white lights.  And beyond, the mountain, a hulking black shape against a snow-filled night sky.