Текст книги "Blood And Bone"

Автор книги: William Lashner

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“It’s going to be tough for her to keep doing it from where she is now,” said Ramirez. “They put her in an asylum in North Carolina. We’ve been trying to speak to her, but they claim she’s suffering from shock and dementia.”

“The only dementia she’s suffering from is her own overblown sense of entitlement,” said Kyle. “She married a Truscott, her offspring is entitled to the presidency, and there’s nothing she won’t do to make it happen.”

“What a fun gal,” said Kat.

“Maybe sometime I’ll show the movie we found in Spangler’s apartment,” said Ramirez. “Puts the old lady in a whole new light.”

Kyle raised his beer. “Dudes, I have, like, a toast.”

Cutlery clanked against beer mugs.

“It’s been an insane couple of weeks, starting with my wig-out at the ball game—”

“We had that game won, bro,” said Skitch.

“Yeah, maybe, though it wasn’t exactly Willie Mays in the on-deck circle. But from the ball game through the violence of last night, I have to say, the whole experience for me wasn’t altogether horrible. You might have heard I lost my dad when I was twelve—”

“No, we hadn’t,” said Bubba Jr. “You ever hear that, Kat?”

“Not in, like”—she checked her watch—“the last ten minutes or so.”

“And my mom died last year,” continued Kyle, ignoring the sarcasm, “and I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, abandoned and alone, the poor little orphan boy.”

“You’re making me cry,” said Tommy. “Stop it. No, really, stop it.”

“But in the middle of the insanity,” said Kyle, “each of you guys came through for me when I needed it. Junior letting me use his bar for the meeting even after giving me the heave-ho, which I fully deserved. Kat getting me out of jail, staying in touch with the police, and keeping me grounded. My Uncle Max, who’s like family to me—”

“I am family to you, you putz.”

“For giving me his sage advice and his unflinching honesty.”

“Does that mean we’re good again?”

“No,” said Kyle.

“You let me know.”

“I also need to thank Lucia, who saved my life not once but twice from a homicidal maniac. And finally Skitch, who stood with me during the entire time and helped out in ways we won’t talk about with a cop present.”

“He’s just talking hypothetically,” said Skitch to Ramirez. “What I would have done if it wasn’t, you know, against the law.”

“You all helped, each of you, except for Tommy, actually, who didn’t do a thing except call a United States senator a pussy to his face.”

“I was right about him, wasn’t I?” said Tommy.

“Yes you were,” said Kyle. “So I just wanted to thank you. We all want to know we’re not alone in the world, and right now I feel less alone than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Which is good, since after Kat kicks me out, I’m going to need a place to stay. So here’s to all of you, even to Old Tommy Trapp. Thanks for taking up the slack in my life.”

They were clinking glasses, and Ramirez was ready to take her cue to up and leave, when she saw it, above the neon hanging in the window, a quick bob of gray hair passing to the left. And even as she saw it, she noticed that Kyle saw it, too, and reacted to it like a slap in the face. He stared for a moment, dropping his jaw like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and then he was on his feet and heading out of the bar without so much as a word to anyone else at the table.

“What the hell?” said Ramirez, as she stood to go after him.

“Leave him be,” said the pretty lawyer, smiling kindly at her as she put her hand on Ramirez’s arm. “Welcome to Kyle World.”

Ramirez sat down again, and Skitch leaned over to her. “Just a peek?”

“Forget about it.”

“There any other hotties like you on the force?”

“You mean,” she said, “hotties who’d be interested in someone like you?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

KYLE KNEW IT wasn’t his father. It didn’t even look right, and after his morning watching the new day dawn he would have been ready to bet that the sight wouldn’t affect him like it had in the past. But then the emotion rose in him, pure and full of its lovely pain, and he was up, and out of his chair, and out of the bar. He couldn’t help himself. He would never be able to help himself. Despite everything he had learned, he’d never be totally free of him, because it was his father, and as someone told him long ago, that’s just the way of it with sons and their fathers.

He looked left, nothing. He looked right, nothing. He ran to the other side of the street, climbed onto the roof of a car, scanned as far as he was able, and from there he saw it, the head of gray hair bobbing atop a bent figure that had just turned the corner.

He jumped down, chased the man around the corner, saw him, gained on him, grabbed his shoulder as he called out, “Dad?”

The man spun around, old, decrepit, his pocked face marked with fear. The man raised his gnarled hands to ward off Kyle’s attack.

“I’m sorry,” said Kyle, backing away. “I didn’t mean. . . . I’m sorry.”

He felt deflated as he walked back to the bar, when he saw it, resting against the wall of Bubba’s, right by the door. An envelope. He stared at it for a moment before picking it up. No address, no postage, just his name scrawled across its surface. Kyle Byrne. With shaking hands he opened it, reached inside, pulled out a piece of paper wrapped around something flat and rectangular, bound with a rubber band.

A few moments later, he opened the door, leaned into the bar, and motioned for Ramirez to come out. She glanced around, puzzled, as if he were surely looking for someone else, but then grabbed her pocketbook.

“What happened?” said Ramirez, outside now. “Your jaw dropped as if you saw a ghost.”

Kyle laughed. “I have something I need to give you.”

“Flowers?”

“Better,” he said as he handed her the tape that he had found in the envelope.

Ramirez stared at it for a moment before glancing up at Kyle, who beamed at her, like a hunting dog who had just retrieved a dead quail. She gave him a questioning look, he nodded. She took a tissue from her bag, wrapped the cassette carefully.

“Where’d you get it?” she said.

“I found it right there on the street.”

“Just sitting there, outside, just like that.”

“Strangest thing,” said Kyle.

But he didn’t tell her who the tape was from, he didn’t tell her that there was no reason to dust the cassette for fingerprints because he had wiped them off on his T-shirt, he didn’t tell her anything. He just stood there for a moment, smiling and letting the emotions that blossomed from the envelope, all good and all surprising, rise through him.

“My father once told me,” he said finally, “that life was about seizing glory. I didn’t know what he meant then, but I think I know now.”

“And what’s that?” said Ramirez.

Without any preamble or his usual grab bag of feints or tricks, he leaned forward and kissed her.

HE LEANED FORWARD and kissed her, and she kissed back, closing her eyes and letting her body fall into his, and they each felt something happen that was both startling and new.

Ramirez felt the cold hardness at the core of her ambition, a hardness that lived like a tumor in her gut, soften and slowly begin to melt. And Kyle felt something stiffen—not just that which was always stiffening from a kiss or a look or a stray thought, but something else, some resolve that had for most of his life been airy as a fog. And her hurry, her worry, her innate brutal competitiveness, it all seemed to float from her. While he wanted to shout, to dance, to do something, anything, to grab hold of life in a way that was far beyond his usual meander to nowhere. She suddenly didn’t have anyplace more important to be, and he suddenly was in a rush to get there. She had no priority other than to feel his lips on hers, his large body pressed against hers, and he wanted to take her to the moon.

“I feel like I’m on a tropical island,” said Ramirez after they slowly pulled apart to catch their breaths.

“You make me want to put on a suit,” said Kyle.

“I liked you in a suit.”

“Except for the tie. Nobody likes the tie.”

“It is a little grim. What would you do in a suit?”

“I don’t know. Something bold.”

“I like the sound of that. You want to go back in with your friends?”

“No. Let’s go someplace.”

“Where?”

“Anyplace. Let’s just get in a car and drive.”

“Okay.” She laughed. “I guess that means my car.”

“I guess it does.”

“Can we kiss again first?”

They kissed again, and then she took his hand and led him down the street to where her car was parked. She led, and he let her lead him, and all the time he felt as if his heart were imprinted with the words of the note he found wrapped around the tape.

“I couldn’t be prouder, boyo. I could be richer, sure, and wouldn’t that be a pretty thing, but I couldn’t be prouder. Partners on the tape? I’ll be waiting.”

He would never fully understand their power, the first five words of the note, never understand why they mattered so, coming from a man who hadn’t said an honest word to him in decades, but they did, beyond measure, and as he held tight to her hand while she pulled him down the street, he felt his feet skip across the cement as if he were flying.

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner is the author of seven suspense novels that have been published in more than a dozen languages throughout the world. A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, he lives with his family outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

www.williamlashner.com

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ALSO BY WILLIAM LASHNER A Killer’s Kiss

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Credits

Designed by Rosa Chae

Jacket design by Ervin Serrano

Jacket photograph © by LOOK-foto/Wildcard Images U.K.

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BLOOD AND BONE . Copyright © 2009 by William Lashner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-177001-2

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Table of Contents

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52