Chapter 31
31
FIONA
W hen Patrick comes back, his face looks like someone reached behind his eyes and switched off the thing that makes him human. Taking his seat with a belligerent air, he digs into his salmon with the determination of a marathon runner carbo-loading before a big race.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Just peachy.”
I think about asking if peachy is a word old men use when they want out of a social commitment, but I suspect I won’t like the answer. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot more fun to tease him about being ancient when we’re in the privacy of our own apartment.
I settle for putting my hand in his lap. I’m pretty sure the table has drapery in front of it, a modesty panel for everyone sitting up here on the stage. Fuck it, if it doesn’t.
He doesn’t react when my fingers slip beneath his napkin. He reaches for his water as I trace his inseam with one nail. But when I shift to the tab on his zipper, he says, “Stop. ”
He doesn’t raise his voice, so I figure I still have a little room to play. I shift my wrist so the heel of my hand rides the line of his stirring cock.
“Fiona,” he says. “Stop.” And this time, he reaches beneath the table and returns my hand to my own lap.
I shift my attention to Marjorie Hindman, on my left, spending the rest of the meal learning about the Corman’s building fund. That leaves Patrick to make small talk with the museum’s oldest living board member, Mildred Fuhrman, who just celebrated her ninety-fifth birthday. She falls asleep as dessert is being served, slumping against Patrick. He manages to hand her off to a waiter before she can drool on his tux.
There are speeches after the meal. Three different liars get up and say how much they wish they’d met my father, how certain they are that he would have loved tonight’s gala, how wonderful it is that I’m here to show my support.
A band starts to play at the far end of the courtyard, their cover of Donna Summer luring couples onto the dance floor. I tilt my head with an invitation for Patrick, but he says, “Not on your feckin’ life.”
One of the men who got between Uncle Aran and me asks for a dance. Patrick puts his hand on my wrist and says, “Not tonight.” I’m tempted to take the man—Nigel? Edmund? Oliver?—up on his offer, dancing with whoever-he-is just to remind Patrick that he’s not the boss of me. But good-old-whatshisname takes one quick look at my guard-dog’s face and remembers he has to finish an urgent conversation on the far side of the room.
I turn to Patrick, fury knitting my shoulder blades together. “You have no right?—”
“Say your goodbyes. It’s time for us to leave.”
“If you think I paid ten million dollars, just so I can duck out of here halfway through the night?—”
“You have fifteen minutes. And then I carry you out.”
The motherfucker will do it, too. So I make a quick tour of the room, interrupting a conversation between the mayor and the police chief, then kissing the cheek of the fire inspector like we’re old friends. I can’t bring myself to lean in toward the tax inspector, but we give each other chilly goodbyes. That leaves Marjorie—one more gush about her gold-and-black gown—before Patrick ghosts up to my side.
I’m too furious to speak as he marches me out to the valet stand. The Land Rover has been kept in the loop of the driveway—one advantage of being the guest of honor. A boy with terrible acne helps me into my seat on the passenger side. When I catch him craning his neck for a glimpse of side-boob, I figure what the hell, and I pretend to have an itch at the back of my head. The kid practically groans as he gapes at the extra flesh my stretch displays. Patrick has to remind him to close my door.
I wait for Patrick to tell me why it was so urgent for us to leave, but he’s busy managing the Land Rover like I’m administering a driver’s license exam. He comes to a complete halt at a four-way stop sign, looking left, then right, then left again. He uses his turn indicators when he changes lanes. He doles out his concentration between the road in front of him, the rear-view mirror, and both side mirrors.
He ignores me when I lean forward to turn on the radio. I think his jaw tightens when I flip away from the cool jazz stylings of some guy who was older than my father. Patrick’s back to the role of Perfect Driving Man by the time I find Metallica. I crank the volume.
When I kick off my shoes and hitch up my skirt so I can rest one heel on the edge of my seat, he does glance over at me. I see his eyes travel from my crotch to my ankle. A muscle twitches by his temple, and he clamps his hands around the steering wheel, his palms perfectly positioned at two and ten.
“You’re supposed to put your hands at nine and three,” I say.
He grunts .
“It’s safer with, you know, modern cars. Ones with airbags.”
The rear-view mirror captures his attention for longer than it should.
I say, “I guess they still taught the old way when you learned to drive.”
“Fasten your seatbelt.”
I ignore him.
“Fasten your goddamn seatbelt,” he says, splitting his attention between the rear-view and the road.
I wish I had some bubble gum. I’d blow a huge bubble and pop it just before it got to my hair.
“Goddammit, Fiona. This isn’t a fucking game. We’re being followed.”
I want to tell him to go to hell. But I fasten my seatbelt before I turn around. There are two lanes of traffic. There must be ten cars behind us. “How can you tell?”
“Hold on,” he says, and he cranks the wheel to the right, hard, without any warning, without slowing down.
I’m thrown against the door as Patrick handles the wheel with the casual grace of a Formula 1 driver. Flooring the accelerator, he weaves between cars, narrowly skating through three yellow lights in a row. Whoever’s behind us ignores the same lights, hurtling through cross-traffic as the June night fills with the sound of screeching tires and honking horns.
“Get down,” Patrick says, reaching over to cup the back of my head with his hand.
“No one’s shooting?—”
“Goddammit!” he bellows, shoving my head between my knees.
I can’t see where he’s going, but I hear the crash. Something splinters in front of us, wood and metal ripping apart. I sit up in time to see we’ve shattered a gate.
“Where—” I start to ask, but Patrick’s too busy steering across a recently painted parking lot.
There’s a low building to our left, walls of windows dark for the night. The Land Rover’s headlights pick up gently rolling hills in front of us. Green grass swoops to either side, trees carving out windbreaks.
It’s a golf course. Patrick’s driven us to the municipal golf course.
Correction.
Patrick’s driving on the municipal golf course. And the car that’s chasing us follows.
It’s a Cadillac Escalade. Black. Classic. Big enough for a grown man to sleep on the back seat. Or for a couple of bodies to fit in the rear compartment.
Patrick slams on his brakes, turning the wheel with practiced precision. The Land Rover spins in a perfect half-circle, coming to rest facing the torn-up greens and somewhere—beyond our line of sight—the shattered gate. Patrick cuts the engine, along with the lights.
The Cadillac brakes too, but its driver doesn’t spin the wheel. The Escalade barrels past us, hurtling toward a pitch-black shadow.
That’s not a shadow. It’s a water hazard.
The Cadillac stops with its front wheels on the edge of the drop-off. Its nose extends into mid-air. Its headlights beam into space.
Patrick reaches between my legs. I don’t have time to be surprised before he yanks open the glove box, and his fingers settle over the grip of a gun.
Looking up, I can barely make out the shapes of two men using the Cadillac’s back doors as shields. Someone calls from the driver’s side: “Let’s keep this simple, Cujo.”
Patrick’s jaw sets in concrete.
“Give us the girl,” the driver shouts. “And you won’t end up dogshite, like your da.”
The passenger probably thinks he’s being clever by howling like a mad dog. Patrick calls out, “Fuck you.”
“Dowd gave us orders. ”
Of course he did. I know the car poised on the edge of the water hazard—it belongs to Uncle Aran. And the man driving it is one of his favorite runners.
“Fuck Aran Dowd,” Patrick calls.
At the same time, I shout across the green. “You’re making a huge mistake, Kevin Joyce!”
Patrick flicks his attention to me for a heartbeat. “That gobshite’s still in the Crew?”
“Uncle Aran uses him for special jobs.” Which means that one of us—Patrick or me—isn’t expected to get out of this alive. Maybe both of us. But no… Joyce could have fired through the Land Rover’s back window by now if Uncle Aran wanted both of us dead.
Joyce has finally figured out a response. “Your man’s the one making a mistake. Now get out of the car, both of you. Slow and easy. And keep your hands where we can see them.”
Patrick reaches for his door latch, but he doesn’t open his door. Keeping his eyes on the Escalade, he says in a low voice, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” It’s one word. But it’s two months of thought. Two months of living on top of each other in the Back Bay apartment. Two months of this game we’ve been playing, Daddy and little girl.
“Good girl,” he says. “Get out of the car. Walk straight over to Joyce.”
In a twisted way, that makes sense. Joyce will have to focus on me, on dragging me into his car, on getting the back door closed. Patrick can come after him as Joyce backs up from the edge of the water hazard.
If the other guy doesn’t take out Patrick first.
Joyce is getting restless. He calls out, “I’m counting to three. One!”
Patrick nods toward the Cadillac. “Go on, then,” he says. He holds the gun in his lap, the one he took from the glove compartment .
The other guy will definitely take Patrick out first. He’ll have no reason not to open fire on the Land Rover, the instant I’m safely away.
I lick my lips. I don’t want to leave the car. I don’t want to leave Patrick.
“ Scáthach ,” Patrick says.
I have to delay, until I can come up with a better plan. “Tell me what that?—”
“Later.”
There’ll be no later.
I run my fingers under the halter of my evening gown, settling the seams in place. I try to think of another way to play this. Some way that doesn’t end up with me a captive and Patrick gunned down by my uncle’s soldiers. “Patrick—” I say.
“Go.”
I climb out of the car. It’s a June night. My brain knows that the air around me must be warm, hot even, and heavy with summer humidity. But the grass feels like miniature icicles under my bare feet. Goose pimples rise on my arms, and my back feels like it’s pressed against an iceberg.
I can’t see in the dark. The Land Rover’s lights are turned off, and the front of the Cadillac faces the water hazard. I squint, trying to make out some refuge in the darkness—a line of trees, bleachers for spectators, something I can run to.
This is wrong. This is a mistake. Patrick doesn’t understand. He’s forgotten that the Old Colony Crew takes no prisoners.
Except for me.
I’ll be their prisoner. I’ll belong to Uncle Aran, and he’ll use me any way he wants because Patrick will be dead.
I don’t have any delusions about my uncle’s plans. We’ll marry in front of the entire clan so he can claim he’s captain by right. He’ll throw out my packets of birth control pills my first night at the dún . He’ll have me knocked up by the end of July, but if it’s a girl he won’t let me keep it. I won’t be allowed out of the house until he has his heir. Maybe not even then .
I can’t do this.
Joyce calls out, “Two!”
I don’t have a choice. I jam a rod of iron through the ice that lines my spine. I close my eyes and take my first step toward the Cadillac.