Just Fall (27 page)

Later, they lay together, entangled on the floor. There was a thick smudge of blood on Rob’s shoulder where Ellie had bit him. Blood smeared her lips and chin. They were both breathless, shocked at their own ferocity, unwilling to speak of it.

Death. It follows her, swallows her, spits her out on the other side. Leaves her chewed and broken. And then circles back for another vicious bite. Ellie is almost used to it. Resigned.

But Thomas. Hardly more than a baby.

Ellie closes her eyes. Maybe she will never move from this spot again. Maybe she will just lie here. Burn in the sun. Let the tropical rain pound, the lightning flash. She will freeze in the cold dawn, stare down the stars in the inky night as she starves and dies. She deserves death. Her carcass will be pecked at by birds and nibbled by rats.

Sunspots swim against her shuttered lids as she thinks about all the different ways girls she knows have debased themselves for men. Drunken texts. Facebook stalking. Midnight booty calls. Turning a blind eye to cheating, gambling, a drinking problem. Forgiving that first angry punch and thereby becoming ripe for the next one. She thinks about poor Lou.

It hits her like a slap. She’s more pathetic than any of them. She’s let people lie to her her entire life, but she’s been complicit. She’s been a victim and blamed everyone else. And now she has willingly destroyed her own life for the sake of her husband. For Rob she chose to kill and mutilate a man. Now a child’s death is on her hands. All for a man who has done nothing but lie to her. The hell with Rob Beauman, or whatever the hell his name is. She owes him nothing.

She seethes with fury. How the hell did she lose control over her own life?

Before she goes to prison, or dies (both seem equally likely), she needs to reclaim herself. Redeem herself.

Ellie’s eyes snap open. Thomas is no longer splayed on the ground below. There is, to her bewilderment, no sign of him.

For a moment, she’s convinced she has hallucinated him. Was he nothing but a figment of her tortured imagination?

Wait. Is that a rustle in the whispering beach grass? Her eyes narrow against the sun. She can’t tell for sure.

Maybe the ghost of poor betrayed Marianne snatched him up, Ellie thinks wryly as she drops from the roof to the ground, landing painfully, staggering upright.

Wherever he is, she’s going to find him and bring him home to his parents. She will not leave behind a boy who trusted her. There’s been too much damage done. She will not let another person become a victim, especially not a child. But are there other children inside? She needs to check.

Ellie slips into the house through a shattered French door. She finds herself in a sunroom of gracious proportions. The house is cool and smells of mildew. There is a soggy patch of ceiling from which water drips steadily and arrhythmically.

Ellie tiptoes into the main hallway. She knows she needs to avoid Quinn and Rob as she searches, so she moves stealthily. Broken glass from skylights litters the once glorious wide-plank floors, now buckled and rank. The light is fractured and bent. Misshapen discolorations mar the painted walls.

As she creeps deeper into the house, she finds cracked tile floors, whole chunks missing, graffiti. Evident looting; a bathroom gapes with ragged holes where fixtures and copper piping once dwelled. Water drips and puddles in unexpected places. Maison Marianne lives up to its eerie reputation. The formerly grand palace is sodden with grief.

Ellie hears the faint murmur of men’s voices and dips away in the opposite direction and up the stairs. She’s in a hallway, three closed doors in a line.

A pitiful, mewling sigh floats through the air. The cry of a child? Ellie shudders. Flings open the first door. A bedroom probably, empty now but for one battered armchair. Opening the second door she finds only a stained mattress, dozens of empty beer bottles, charred wood and ash.

Her ears straining, Ellie clutches the handle of the third door and twists it, only then noticing the deadbolt. With trembling fingers, she unlocks it. The door hinges release an ugly screech of protest as she swings it open and she freezes, heart racing, certain the sound will bring Quinn and Rob running.

She finds herself staring into the very room from which she freed Thomas. Empty. Sun slanting in, dust motes dancing. There, by the window, is her beach bag, abandoned in her fruitless attempt to rescue Thomas.

And then from behind her, that cry again, full of despair and longing. Ellie whirls.

No one is there.

The morning of his wedding to Ellie, Rob woke in his hotel room, reaching instinctively across the bed for her warm body. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why. As the realization hit, he smiled, a goofy grin of liberation.

He had done it. He had fulfilled his obligation to Quinn, as least as far as Quinn knew. He had killed for the last time. He was free to start his new life. He felt happy, a foreign emotion and therefore hard to trust. But already his mind was leapfrogging to all the delicious possibilities of what could come next.

As he showered, Rob wondered, and not for the first time, if Quinn had told the truth when he claimed he and Rob were father and son. In his heart Rob just couldn’t believe they were tied by blood. Or maybe he just hoped that was the case. So what if he had no family at the wedding? So what if his mother and grandparents would never know? He was about to start his own perfect family.

Rob turned off the shower and smiled. Today he would marry Ellie. As he toweled off he made himself some promises: From here on out, his life was going to be a clean one, a good one, one that atoned for all his many wrongs. From this day forward he would love Ellie and take care of her.

As he stepped out of the bathroom, Rob saw Quinn. He was sitting on the edge of the bed idly toying with the gold cufflinks Ellie had bought Rob as a wedding present.

“Here to wish me well?” Rob asked the gaunt man evenly.

“Always,” said Quinn, with that smile that never reached his eyes.

“We had a deal, Quinn. I did what you wanted.”

“What do you really know about her?”

“I know all I need to.”

“You disappoint me, son.” Quinn’s tone was mild, like a father rebuking a son for a minor infraction—ditching school or getting caught with a pack of cigarettes. “I don’t think you’re really thinking things through. She’s a good-looking American woman; she would make an excellent mule.”

“I won’t get her involved.”

“But I ask you—what kind of woman do you really think could love you? Don’t you realize she must be as damaged as you are?”

Quinn let that question suspend between them for a good long beat. It hit a bitter nerve. Rob had wondered why he and Ellie felt so drawn to each other. But surely she was accessing his light? Surely he was not liberating her darkness?

“Violence is in you,” Quinn continued softly. “Your mother welcomed it, didn’t she? Even reveled in it. And you took your raw inclination for it to new heights once I schooled you. You can’t escape who you are. And either your little bride senses it in you and wants it, or she is going to get the shock of her life when your true nature is revealed.”

With sickening dread, Rob realized he might never be free of Quinn. But he had one last card to play.

Rob told Quinn that he knew where Ethan Clark had hidden the money he had stolen, that even better, he knew with whom Ethan had been colluding.

This pricked Quinn’s interest. He asked for details.

“I took care of Ethan. Of Matt Walsh. I’ve always been loyal to you,” Rob insisted. “If I give you the rest of the information, I’m asking you, please, let me go.”

Quinn tossed the cufflinks from hand to hand. Finally, he gave a curt nod. “I need to know.”

Ethan had teamed up with Carter Williamson, one of Quinn’s men in St. Lucia. It began with Ethan diverting funds from Quinn’s smuggling operations to Carter, money that was now snugly situated in St. Lucian bank accounts. Rob had traced the money, knew the account numbers and passwords.

Rob withheld the kicker for the finale. Ethan and Carter Williamson had been trafficking children into the U.S. for the black-market adoption industry. Using Quinn’s pipelines without Quinn’s knowledge or consent. They had betrayed Quinn, something he, Rob, had never done.

The revelation that Quinn had not been in total control was even more infuriating to him than the stolen money.

“Carter Williamson. I never would have thought he had the balls.” Quinn’s fist tightened around the cufflinks.

“Okay?” asked Rob. “Are we good?” He held his hand out for the cufflinks.

Quinn tossed them on the night table, ignoring Rob’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, son. You’ve done well.”

Quinn left the room, closing the door softly behind him. Rob rushed to the door. Flipped the security bolt and cursed himself for not having done it earlier. But although Quinn was gone, Rob didn’t believe this was the end of it. He had been under Quinn’s dominion too long to fool himself. But he also knew Quinn now. Could predict how he would react. Rob checked the clock. Ellie was due at the hotel in an hour in order to get her hair and makeup done. The wedding was in four hours.

He had time.

Lucien and Matt drive to Vieux Fort in silence. Bertrand’s favorite stuffed caterpillar is in the backseat of Lucien’s Ford Taurus, a silent rebuke, a painfully cheerful totem of children and family. Lucien prays for his nephew. Then prays for himself, keenly aware that for the first time in his career, he is coloring way outside the lines. He has always prided himself on his ethical behavior. Even the threat of the thrashing he had leveled at Carter Williamson’s partner, Pascal Jarett, had been no more than a ploy. Despite the recent hue and cry about frequent brutality on the force, this is not Lucien’s way. He has fired his service weapon fatally only once in the course of his career, a shooting the resultant inquiry declared a clear case of self-defense. He has respected the rights of the criminals he has apprehended, even when the sons of bitches were really asking for it.

Now as they pull into the town, he glances at the American sitting next to him, wondering at the man’s silence. Not many people, particularly Americans, have the ability to be so self-contained.

“First time to St. Lucia?” Lucien asks.

“Yes.”

Matt volunteers nothing more. Lucien maneuvers his car into a parking space in front of Lou’s shabby little hotel. The half-lit neon turtle sputters and flares.

“This is the place. We have reason to believe Ellie was here.”

In the lobby, Matt’s eyes skim the décor, the white rattan furniture with its faded cushions, the pile of brochures for local vendors on the coffee table, the Dutch door leading into what had been Lou’s office, the now-empty parrot cage with its plaques announcing the names of the birds.

“We found Louise Butler’s body in room 6.”

Matt nods and the two men make their way over to that room. Lucien breaks the police tape crisscrossing the door so they can enter.

“I assume your people went through the room thoroughly?” Matt asks.

“Of course.”

“And found no message of any kind?”

Lucien has to hide his irritation. He has encountered this attitude before from tourists. A kind of condescension toward the local police, as if being from the island meant they were playing at being cops.