Текст книги "Circle of Bones"

Автор книги: Christine Kling

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Washington, DC 

March 28, 2008

12:35 a.m.

Dig caught her arm, twisted her around and with his forearm pressing against her larynx, he held her tight against his body. His other hand was smashed against her cheek, turning her head so she could see his face. The bastard was smiling.

From downstairs, Riley heard the sound of the front door opening. A voice called out, “Hello?”

Dig jerked his head toward the stairs, and Mrs. Wright left the room.

With her one free hand, Riley pulled at the arm across her throat, trying to open up a small airway. The harder she struggled, the tighter his grip. When the black started closing in, she stopped fighting him. He loosened the pressure on her neck. She sucked in air.

“You see, Yorick? Your daughter is here in my arms.” He jerked her around so her father could see her.

 The left side of her father’s face still showed red where Dig’s hand had struck. His good eye glared at Dig.

“Don’t we make a lovely couple? We did once. Down in Lima. She didn’t tell you? Once I realized who she was, it was easy. She wasn’t a bad lay, but knowing I was fucking the great Yorick’s daughter made it all the sweeter.”

“Kill you,” her father’s words came out in a breathy hiss.

Dig laughed. “Your time is done, old man. With you gone and proof of Operation Magic in my hands, no one will oppose me. I’ll have taken everything that was once yours. Imagine – first your son, then your daughter, and finally, your bastard protégé sitting in your chair.”

While Dig was talking, Riley had forced her body to go limp. Then, when Dig was concentrating on her father, she slammed the heel of her sneaker down on his foot. He groaned and the pain caused him to loosen his arm enough for her to continue her downward motion into a squat. She slipped right out from under his arm. Pivoting around and shooting upwards, she brought her knee up into his groin with every bit of anger and strength she had in her.

Again she heard him moan as his body bent. She stepped back, trying to get out of his reach, but his arm shot out. He grabbed a handful of fabric at the front of her shirt. He straightened up with effort and pulled her to him. Though she hit back and landed several good punches to his body, he didn’t flinch.

Then both his hands were around her throat and she could not breathe. He pulled her face so close to his, she could see the watery tears shining in his blue eyes. Dig’s attempt to smile through his own pain turned his face into a horrible grimace of clenched teeth and drawn cheeks. She didn’t want to look into those eyes, but he held her so close, there was nowhere else to look.

In the distance she heard another voice she thought was her father’s, but the roaring in her ears made it too difficult to hear.

Dig’s nostrils flared and she felt the hot breath on her face. He was taunting her. He had air, she had none. His fingers tightened on her throat, and she felt his fingernails dig into her skin. She punched at his body with both her hands, tried to reach up, to get past his forearms and elbows to scratch at those eyes that were burning into her, but she also knew that all of her flailing was hurrying the process.

“Yorick,” Dig shouted. “I’ve been waiting for this day. You didn’t get to watch me kill your son.” His spittle sprayed her face. “But this time, you’ll get to watch it all.”

Riley did not want to die. Not like this. Not staring at this man, her heart filled with hate. Her chest felt like it was going to explode, while at the same time she grew weaker. With no idea whether it would work or not, she unbuckled the big dive watch on her left wrist and laced the strap through the fingers of her right hand, the big glass and metal dial on the outside of her knuckles. Then, with every bit of strength she had left in her, she swung her fist at Dig’s head. Just as she struck, she saw her father standing, launching himself onto Dig’s back.

The pain in her fingers was excruciating, but Dig’s eyes went unfocused for a second and she saw blood smeared down from his temple. In the next moment, his face reddened with rage. He roared and flung her away. In the second before she hit the wall, she sucked in air before the impact knocked it out of her again.

The side of her head struck the wall first. The blow didn’t knock her unconscious, but she couldn’t move for several seconds. She was aware of lying there in a heap on the floor, helpless, but there seemed to be some disconnect between her brain and her limbs.

She opened her eyes and saw Dig’s back. He was leaning over her father’s wheelchair. Her father’s legs were twisted.

Riley heaved herself to her knees and crawled over to the couch. From that angle, she could see the hands around her father’s throat, just as they had been around hers. She saw her father’s red face, the fear in his eyes.

“Dad,” she croaked as she used the couch to pull herself to a standing position. She picked up the ceramic lamp, raised it above her, and brought it crashing down on Dig’s head.

He released her father and turned to face her. Another gash in his forehead dripped a jagged line of blood.

“You bitch,” he said before he went for her.

She didn’t have enough strength left to put up much of a fight. He knocked her to the floor again with one back-handed blow to the face. When she got up, she licked her lip, tasted her own blood. The room was tilting, her vision blurred. Where was he? She blinked her eyes, trying to clear them.

Then she saw him. He was standing behind her father’s wheelchair, now, his big palms gripping the sides of the old man’s head like a pair of earmuffs. Her father’s lazy eye shone white, while his good eye danced in the socket as he tried to see what Dig was doing.

She forced her body to a stand and started toward them.

Then her father’s good eye focused on her and he said, “I’m so sorry.”

Dig roared, “Yorick!” and twisted the head around to the right with a sickening crunch.

Riley screamed, “Dad!”

Dig released his grip and jumped back, his hands high in the air like those of a runner who had just won the race of his life. He danced back and forth from one foot to the other, his bloody face alight with laughter.

Her father’s head fell on his chest at an unnatural angle, the lock of white hair falling forward again. More than anything she wanted to run to her father, to fix him, to straighten his neck and brush back that lock of hair.

When Dig lowered his arms and looked at her, she knew he intended her to be next.

So she ran.

Riley made it into the hall before Dig reached the door. He was so much bigger and faster though, she could never outrun him. She would have to out maneuver him.

When she reached the top of the stairs, he grabbed the tips of her fingers on her arm’s backswing. She whipped around and smashed her free hand down onto his, breaking his grip. Dig howled with rage. He lunged after her, but she dodged his grip, pivoted around, and started down the stairs, taking them three at a time.

Dig was taking four steps with each of his strides, and when they reached the bottom, she felt the tug as his fingers closed around her shirt tail. She dug her shoes in even harder, thinking that if only she could make it to the door and scream, someone might hear her on the street and come help her.

That was when she saw something flash past her right side at the farthest edge of her field of vision. She heard a metallic clang and a crack at the same time. The pressure pulling at the back of her shirt released, nearly causing her to fall face first onto the floor. She slowed, glanced over her shoulder, then came to a complete stop inside the front door.

There, at the bottom of the stairs, was Cole Thatcher standing over Dig’s crumpled body holding the lid to Mrs. Wright’s soup pot in his right hand.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Washington, DC 

March 28, 2008

1:05 p.m.

All Cole could think of as he looked at her standing in the entry like a frightened fawn ready to bolt, was what has that son of a bitch done to her? Riley’s lower lip was swollen and split, her chin streaked with blood. Her neck shone with the imprint of fingers and thin red slits where fingernails had pierced the skin. A big knot of a goose egg swelled on her right temple. She stood there, unmoving, staring at him. He heard the sound of traffic outside, the ticking of a clock somewhere in the house. In the seconds that passed as he tried to think of what to say to her, her blank eyes filled, and tears dripped down her already wet cheeks.

“Cole?” she said. She sounded confused.

He walked to her and put his arms around her, inhaling the scent of her. He touched her hair and attempted to lay her head on his shoulder, but her body remained rigid. He slid his hand from her hair to the silky soft skin of her neck, and he felt the flutter of her runaway pulse. His own heart and body were reacting to the closeness of her, and he felt the fierce heat of anger together with an overwhelming need to protect her.

Cole would have been willing to stand there for hours sheltering her in the safety of his arms, but from the kitchen he heard a dull thudding, like someone pounding on a door. A muffled voice called out for help. Riley’s body jerked away from him, ready to run.

He held her at arm’s length and moved his head back and forth as her eyes darted around the room. He tried to get her to focus on him. “It’s okay,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “She can’t get out. That’s the woman who came downstairs when I let myself in earlier. She tried to stop me, and we had a little disagreement,” he said.

He didn’t tell her there was a moment when he thought the old Amazon was going to get the better of him. She was a fighter, and she had both a height and reach advantage on him. But his high school wrestling career had come back to him, and he’d managed to force a biceps slicer onto her arm and got her elbow into a compression lock. The old gal did as she was told after that. “She’s in the pantry which, for some reason, has a bolt and hasp and a padlock on it. If you tell me to let her out, I’ll go do it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“We have to go,” Riley said.

He noticed she would not look at the unconscious figure on the floor. “What about your father?” he asked.

She jerked out of his arms and turned away to face the front door. “We have to go,” she repeated.

Cole decided not to ask again.

He rummaged in a coat closet in the entry and found a man’s heavy coat and a hand-knit scarf.  At his bidding, she threaded her arms through the sleeves. She was barely tolerating his ministrations, he thought as he wrapped the scarf round her neck, covering the purpling bruises. She was desperate to get out of that house.

Grabbing his duffel, he led her to the front door. He glanced back once at the still form on the floor. The man was still breathing. Cole considered tying him up, but he was afraid the man would regain consciousness at any minute. He wanted the two of them to be gone, their trail cold.

Cole hustled her down the sidewalk toward the major thoroughfare at the end of the block. At the intersection, he hailed a cab. When they’d both slid into the back seat and closed the door, the driver turned around and asked, “Where to?”

Cole was starting to consider the possibilities when Riley surprised him by speaking in a clear voice, “3410 Prospect St., Georgetown.”

The cab driver nodded and pulled away from the curb.

Cole turned to Riley and raised his eyebrows.

“It’s my sister’s place,” she said, and angling her body toward the window, she rested her cheek against the glass and closed her eyes.

Cole opened his mouth, then closed it. Sister?

When the cab pulled to the curb after what seemed like an interminable, silent ride through the city’s traffic, Cole peered out the window at their destination.

“Dang!” he said, staring up at the immense, five-story, brick Georgian mansion. The front of the home was festooned with white windows in different shapes from round ports to the large multi-paned sash windows on the lower floors. Next to the front door, he saw a bronze plaque with the date 1787.

Riley sat up straight, tucked her hair behind her ear and said, “Let’s go.”

She opened her door and climbed out, so Cole paid the driver and followed. Riley was already at the front door ringing the bell.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on? I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Before she could answer him, the door was opened by a young, slender African-American woman with close-cropped hair. She wore a black turtle neck sweater with black pants and black-framed glasses with narrow, rectangular lenses. When she smiled, her teeth were so white, they seemed almost to light up the gray day. Her smile faded when she got a closer look at Riley’s face.

“Miss Riley,” she said. “My gosh, are you all right?  Please, come in out of the cold. Oh-my-god, she’ll be so happy to see you!”

“Thanks, Kayla,” Riley said. “So she is here? I need to talk to her right away.”

“Of course. I’ll clear her calendar for the rest of the day. Just let me take your coats.”

From upstairs, a voice called out, “Kayla?”

The young woman rolled her eyes. “Hang on,” she said to Riley. “I’ll go tell her you’re here.” She hurried down the hall and disappeared around a corner.

“What is this place?” Cole asked as he hung his oilskin jacket in the entryway closet.

“I told you. My sister lives here.”

Riley had no sooner finished speaking than Cole heard shrieks from somewhere inside the house. When he turned to look, a tall, light-skinned African-American woman wearing a bright pink blouse and flowered pants came running down the hall, her sandals clacking on the polished wood floors.

“That’s Hazel,” Riley said.

“Mmm. I can see the family resemblance.”

The woman scooped Riley up in her arms and shrieked, “Girlfriend!” Cole could not help but notice the woman’s voluptuous, hourglass figure and the low-cut blouse that revealed her ample cleavage. With black hair that fell in soft waves around her shoulders, he thought she looked like a human defibrillator – she could jumpstart the heart of a dead man. After she’d spun Riley around once, she set her back on the floor, held her at arm’s length and looked down at her.

“What happened to you?” Hazel’s voice had changed to a very businesslike tone. “Kayla, back bedroom bath. Get the kit.”

She glared at Cole. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

Riley patted Hazel’s shoulder. “No, no. He’s a friend. I don’t think I’d be here if it weren’t for him.”

Hazel nodded, then put her arm around Riley’s shoulders and began ushering her down the hall. Kayla took up position on the other side. Glancing back over the top of Riley’s head, Hazel said, “Come on. You, too.”

Cole followed the women down the hall, through a larger entry, and past a huge grand staircase with gilt banisters. They continued down another hallway to a small bedroom that overlooked an empty swimming pool. Hazel directed Riley to sit on the bed, while Kayla slipped into the bathroom. She returned seconds later with a large plastic case.

Cole sat on the edge of a plumped arm chair by the window leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees. He felt awkward and helpless as he watched Hazel rip open packets and swab at Riley’s facial wounds.

After examining the lower lip, the lump on her temple, and the bruises on her neck, Hazel said, “Looks like you were lucky, sister. The last woman I saw with marks like these on her neck was dead. Do you want to talk about it?”

Riley sighed. She wet her lips with her tongue. “Not really.”

“If you want me to keep on helping out here, you need to tell me what happened. I’ve got Kayla’s safety and mine to consider, too.”

Riley’s shoulders sagged even lower. “You remember Diggory Priest? He’s the guy —”

“I know who he is. The asshole from Lima.”

Riley nodded. “He claimed my father had had a stroke, but it was all a lie.”

Cole cursed under his breath.

 “Dig wanted to lure me back up here from the islands,” Riley continued, her voice even, almost a monotone. “This morning, Dad was saying a lot of crazy stuff.” She paused and closed her eyes, licked her lips. “Then Dig showed up. He said he’d known my dad for years, that they were both in Skull and Bones at Yale. He said –” She covered her mouth with her hand.

At the words Skull and Bones, Cole sat up straighter.

She lowered her hand to her lap and looked at Hazel. “My dad a Bonesman? I would have known. And he said –”

It can’t be that bad, Riley, he thought. Say it. He wanted to take her in his arms and tell her he would never let anything hurt her again. If she’d let him. But he was the outsider here, and for the moment, as far as the women were concerned, he might just as well be invisible.

She took a deep breath and continued in a monotone. “Dig said awful things. He talked about taking over and something about Operation Magic. The way he looked at my dad – it was awful. And he kept saying crazy things. About Michael. He claimed he did it, and Dad knew all about it.” She grasped Hazel’s arm and bit her lower lip. “That’s not possible, is it?” she asked.

Cole wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he couldn’t bear watching her suffer like that.  He stood, took a step toward the bed and called out her name.

Hazel waved him back. He clenched his fists, stepped back and perched on the edge of the chair again.

Riley shuddered and her eyes focused on something in the distance as though she were reliving the afternoon’s horror. “Dig told my dad he seduced me in Lima. Fucked me to get back at him. Said he was going to kill me and make my dad watch.” Her hands went to her throat and touched the bruises. “But I fought back. And he –” One tear rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes. “Dig killed my father.” The last three words came out without emotion.

Cole jumped to his feet. “I knew I should have killed that son of a bitch.”

Hazel’s eyes flashed him a warning. She turned back to Riley. “Shhh, baby,” she said, pulling Riley’s head to her chest and rocking her back and forth.

Cole strode to the window and looked out at the empty pool. He put his hand over his mouth and pulled it down across his chin feeling the rough stubble of his day-old beard. The trees on the grounds beyond the pool were black and barren against the gray sky. He turned back around to look at her. He had never felt so helpless in his life. He swore he would make this guy pay.

Riley’s eyes were wide open, staring, but unseeing.

“Shhh,” Hazel repeated. “There was nothing you could do.” He read her lips when she mouthed to Kayla, “She’s in shock.” Cole could see Riley’s body trembling, see the built-up tension in the taut tendons of her neck.

He was wondering how much longer he could just stand there, watching these women, doing nothing. He saw Kayla hand Hazel a couple of pills and a glass of water.  “Now, honey,” Hazel said placing the pills in Riley’s palm. “Go on and take these. It’ll help you sleep.”

Riley shook her head and turned away from Hazel.

 “You need to get some rest. Kayla will stay with you.”

Cole saw her shoulders lift and then fall. “All right,” she said and then she tossed the pills into her mouth.

The two women stretched Riley out on the bed, removed her shoes and covered her with a blanket. At first, she lay there eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, but within less than a minute, her breathing slowed and her eyes closed.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Washington, DC 

March 28, 2008

1:25 p.m.

Dig groaned when he brought his right hand up and touched the knot on the right side of his skull. What? He opened his eyes, but all he saw was a white ceiling. He rolled his head to the side and tried to focus his blurry vision on the stairs and a doorway beyond.

Pain stabbed at the back of his eyes when he tried to sit up. He screwed up his face and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids, then he looked up and shook his head trying to clear it. He remembered where he was: the Riley house. He spread the fingers of his right hand, then squeezed them into a fist. Yorick. He flexed his hand again. Dig remembered the satisfactory loud crack the old man’s neck made when it broke – and the intense pleasure that had flowed through him from his head to his groin. He stared at his fist. He had felt the power pass into him. Then he’d seen Riley, and he had never wanted a woman as much.

But she ran – and he chased and nearly caught her. Then it was a blank.

He should have finished her in Lima. That was how he had planned it. Then, he was going to squeeze the life from her as Yorick watched. And again, she had thwarted his plans.

There was another noise in the house. Pounding. Cries. He was not alone.

When he stood, the dizziness made him wobble, and he reached for the banister to steady himself. The nausea was so strong he thought he was going to vomit.

“Help! Somebody get me out of here!” He could understand the words when he stood in the kitchen doorway. He recognized the voice. It wasn’t Riley.

She was gone. Again. He would find her and finish this now.

He walked to the front door, opened it a crack and looked out into the front yard. The bright light seared his eyeballs. It had stopped snowing. He looked both ways. No sign of her. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious.

Back inside the house, the shouting was louder.

“Hold on,” he said.

Inside the kitchen, he found a door with a hasp with an unlocked padlock hanging loose. He lifted the lock and the door swung into him hard. He stepped aside and Mrs. Wright tumbled out. She caught herself and lifted a hand to push back the gray hairs that had fallen loose on either side of her head.

“What happened to you?” he said.

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“That fella. You were upstairs and I went down to see who was at the door. Fella came barging in asking to see Riley. I tried to stop him —”

“Describe him.”

“Shorter than you. Brown hair, stocky build. Wearing a yellow and blue rain slicker. Like to broke my arm before he locked me in there.” She pointed to the pantry. “Had to put a lock on that door to keep old Mr. Riley from eating all the cookies. I found him drinking maple syrup from the bottle once. Crazy as a loon, that one.” She pulled at the tails of her shirt and straightened her sleeves. “Never expected I’d be the one shoved in there.”

“Shut up,” he said. The woman was getting on his nerves.

It had to be Thatcher. In Washington. He was more resourceful than Dig had expected. So, they were together now, Riley and Thatcher. The son was turning out to be even more of an irritant than the father had been. He would see to both of them.

“You’ve got no reason to talk to me that way,” the housekeeper said. “Not after all I’ve done for you. That fella’s gone, then? Is the daughter up there with her father? I’m surprised the old man’s not hollering down here for his lunch.”

This woman talked too much. Then, in another one of those serendipitous moments, his mind flitted to the elder Thatcher, then back to Yorick. Dig smiled.

“Follow me upstairs,” he said.

Just over an hour later, Dig pulled off his gloves and surveyed the scene in Yorick’s bedroom, imagining the ideas that would be running through the minds of the rescue workers who would be called to the scene – by the smell if nothing else. He flexed the fingers of his right hand and nodded, pleased with his work. This was getting to be a theme for this whole affair. A signature. But he was so much more adept at staging than those yokels in Cornwall. Yorick was thin enough, he’d almost fit in Riley’s underwear. It didn’t matter, though, that the panties and bra had ripped when he’d dragged them on the old man’s corpse. It was all part of the scenario. And Dig had been surprised – and not a little disgusted – to find that the Wright woman had drawers full of black lacy things and various electric apparatus. He hoped it would make the press. He could see the headlines now. Murder-suicide death pact between former ambassador and housekeeper.

At the bottom of the stairs, he looked around, thought back over his entry. No, he hadn’t touched anything else. Before going outside, he pulled his gloves back on and checked the coat closet for a hat. He found a black cap with a short bill that he pulled down over his eyebrows, and he turned up the collar on his jacket.

He exited the house at a fast steady pace and turned right, following the street to the end of the block, where he turned right again. There idling at the curb where he’d told him to wait was the black Lincoln with his driver reading a newspaper behind the wheel. Dig opened the back door, slid inside, and leaned his aching head back against the warm leather.

“Georgetown,” he said.