Year of the Monsoon (27 page)

Mariela nodded. “It’s my secret place. He has her up there.”

“I’ll never fit in there,” Maddie muttered.

“I’ll go,” Nan offered. “You go up the stairs. Maybe if we surprise him from two sides, we can get the upper hand before he hurts Leisa.” She was trying not to picture what might be happening upstairs.

“All right,” Maddie agreed. She watched for a few seconds as Nan squeezed into the carriage with Mariela. “Be careful.”

Mariela was the only person who could recall later precisely what happened. When the dumb waiter got up to her old apartment, she and Nan peered through the crack at the edge of the door. The only thing they could see were Leisa’s legs all askew. She seemed to be lying on her side. They could see no sign of Alarcon.

Nan knew they had to have gotten up to the fourth floor faster than Maddie could by the stairs. Just as she decided to wait a couple more minutes to give Maddie time to get up there, Alarcon stepped into view, a knife in his hand.

“If you don’t know where it is,
puta
, then you are of no use to me,” he said menacingly.

Without thinking, Nan slid the door open and ran at Alarcon. He saw movement behind him, but before he could react, Nan hit him on the side of the head with her two-by-four, dropping him senseless to the floor.

Mariela scrambled after her, running to Leisa who was conscious, but clutching her side, blood running from her mouth.

Leisa looked up at Nan who dropped her two-by-four, breathing hard and looking stunned by what she had just done. She rushed to Leisa’s side and helped her sit up.

“Are you all right?” she demanded. “What did he do to you?”

“I’m okay,” Leisa reassured her. “Just a little bruised.”

Then several things happened simultaneously – Mariela’s eyes widened as she screamed and pointed; Nan turned her head just in time to see Alarcon moving; without thinking, she threw herself across Leisa and Mariela; behind him, Maddie burst through the door. Alarcon was raising the handgun and fired two quick shots as Maddie tackled him from behind, planting her knee on his neck and mashing his face painfully into the floor. She grabbed the two-by-four and bashed his forearm as he fired a third shot. The snap of the bones was masked by his howl of pain.

A couple of seconds later, three police officers ran into the apartment, closely followed by Lyn.

“What the f–?” one of the officers began upon surveying the scene. He was stopped mid-word by a jab in the ribs from the female officer next to him.

“Leisa?” said the third officer as he recognized her still sitting with her back to the wall, a bullet hole in the plaster not a foot from her head.

“Matt,” she smiled, although her swollen, bloody lips made that an effort.

Matt Wellby scanned the bizarre scene before him. His eyes lit on Mariela. “Isn’t –” he pointed. “Isn’t that the little girl you came down for last winter?” he asked in complete bewilderment.

“Ma’am?” the female officer interrupted, looking at Nan who was swaying where she sat.

“Nan!” Leisa cried, reaching for her as she slumped to the floor, a growing patch of crimson spreading across her back.

Chapter 21

“WHAT WERE YOU PLAYING AT?”

No one voiced that question aloud, but Leisa knew they must have been thinking it, because she was.

Impatiently, she had shrugged off the paramedics who tried to examine her in the apartment. “I’m fine,” she repeated emphatically, insisting they take care of Nan.

It didn’t matter that the police finally had enough evidence to charge Pedro Alarcon with various crimes, aided by Mariela when she produced a paper-wrapped bundle that contained thousands of dollars and a large plastic bag of heroin.

It didn’t matter that Leisa was injured, her still-healing abdomen bruised and bleeding internally where she’d been kicked. She refused to stay in her hospital room once Nan was out of surgery, insisting on sitting by her bed in the ICU to receive her own transfusion.

“What were you playing at?”

That wasn’t how the police worded it, but that was the implication as they gathered data for their report, and the entire story fell into place.

She’d known it was foolish, to say the least, to wander into that part of town at that hour of the night, to think she had any chance of finding Mariela on her own, but “I couldn’t sit and do nothing while Mariela was in danger,” she would have explained, except then she would have had to add, “because it was all my fault.” Only now, because of her, Nan was the one in danger.

Mariela sensed Leisa’s anguish and felt she was to blame.

“None of this is your fault,” Maddie said, trying to make Mariela understand. “You were very smart and very brave to be able to get away from him and stay safe.” She and Lyn took Mariela back to St. Joseph’s as the ambulance pulled away with Nan and Leisa inside.

The bullet had bored through Nan’s right lung, piercing one of the pulmonary arteries, and it had taken hours of careful surgery to repair the delicate tissue. She’d lost a tremendous amount of blood, and looked very pale and fragile as she lay there, not really unconscious, but medicated into a heavy stupor with a chest tube and vacuum pump in place.

Leisa reached through the bedside rails and held Nan’s hand. “Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered, trying to quell the fear of that shadow, that presence she knew was looming there, waiting to pull her back into its grasp.

“What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” Leisa had asked as she stood on a ladder, carefully running her paintbrush along the ceiling’s edge, cutting in so Nan could roll paint onto the walls of the living room.

Nan shook her head. “I will never understand how your mind works,” she said somewhat absently as she concentrated on not hitting the ceiling with her roller. “It bounces along like a tumbleweed, and random thoughts pop out of your mouth. I never know what’s going to come out.”

Leisa laughed. “Stop stalling and answer. What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?”

“Buying this house with you,” Nan answered.

Leisa paused long enough to look down at her ruefully. “Be serious.”

“I am being serious,” Nan replied, risking a quick glance up at her. “This is scary shit. I’m tied to you legally now.” She shook her head. “I never thought I’d be doing this in my lifetime.”

Leisa came down off the ladder and wrapped her paintbrush arm around Nan’s neck, kissing her.

Nan pulled back and looked askance at the paintbrush. “If you get that in my hair, you are going to get this roller someplace you don’t want it,” she warned.

“Are you sorry?” Leisa asked.

“Sorry about threatening you with this roller?”

“No, silly,” Leisa said with a grin. “Sorry about buying this house with me?”

Nan wrapped her free arm around Leisa’s waist and drew her close, kissing her again. “No. I’m not sorry.”

“So what’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” Leisa asked insistently.

“You are like a dog with a bone,” Nan sighed in resignation. “Nothing,” she shrugged. She thought about Marcus and never standing up to her mother in his defense, and she thought about giving up her baby to strangers because she didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility, and she shook her head. “I’ve never done anything brave in my life,” she said flatly.

Leisa recalled that conversation as she sat there, and thought about all the things she knew now that she hadn’t known then, all the times Nan had sacrificed herself for others.

“You are the bravest person I know,” she whispered.

“No,” Nan mumbled groggily. “I was just the closest target.”

“You’re awake!” Leisa stood, clutching her own side in pain as she leaned over the bed rails to kiss Nan’s forehead.

“I think that’s the only place that doesn’t hurt,” Nan grimaced as she tried to sit up a little higher in bed.

“I don’t think you should move yet,” Leisa said worriedly.

“Oh, I think you’re right,” Nan agreed, sinking back into the same depression in the mattress. She looked up at Leisa. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Leisa said, brushing Nan’s hair back off her forehead. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have gone down there.”

Nan squeezed Leisa’s other hand, still clasped in hers. “You had to go.”

“I couldn’t bear the thought of losing someone else, but then I almost lost you,” Leisa said, her eyes filling suddenly.

“You almost got yourself killed,” Nan reminded her.

“You saved our lives, Mariela’s and mine.”

Nan laughed a little and immediately winced. “I don’t know who that was, but it wasn’t me.”

“Oh, yes it was,” Leisa said. “You can’t fool me anymore. I’ve seen you without your mask on and I know who you are.” She kissed Nan’s hand tenderly. “You’re my hero.”

“There you are,” said Jo Ann when she found Leisa sitting in the family room, staring out the window.

Jo and Bruce had insisted that Leisa come home with them when she was discharged from the hospital, and told Nan they expected her, too, whenever her doctor released her. Jo drove her over to visit Nan briefly each day, but reminded Leisa that she was still supposed to be resting.

“I keep forgetting to ask if you’ve ever heard from the people in New York,” Jo Ann said casually as she sat at the other end of the couch. She rarely called them by name, and never, Leisa noted, referred to them as her biological mother or brother.

Leisa looked at her aunt. She hadn’t told anyone about that last day in the hospital in Syracuse. “I don’t really expect to hear from them,” she said vaguely, turning back to the window.

“What is it, honey?” Jo Ann asked. “You’ve been so quiet.”

Leisa didn’t answer for long seconds. “I’ve made such a mess of things.” She blinked hard, not wanting Jo to see her crying. “They didn’t…” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, ashamed to admit, even to herself, how much she had wanted them, wanted Eleanor, to want her.

“They got what they wanted and didn’t need you anymore?” Jo Ann guessed astutely.

“I know I sound horrible,” Jo had confessed to Nan back when they were still waiting for the results of the bloodwork, “but I hope she isn’t a match. I know I shouldn’t deny the poor boy a kidney –”

“He’s not a boy,” Nan interrupted. “He’s a twenty-eight-year-old man who sponges off his mother and does absolutely nothing to keep himself healthy. And I know exactly what you mean,” she sighed.