Chapter Forty-Four
I am dazed, standing at the base of the Potter Building, having descended eleven stories and bursting into this cool night.
My cut foot throbs, my wrists and throat burn.
The zealots and the paparazzi crowd a group of police officers, shouting questions.
Many of the socialites join them, eager to tell their tale.
Dizzy. Sick with worry. I should sit.
A hand steadies me at my elbow. I turn and it’s Pax.
Not Pax. The Pax-in-a-tuxedo. The darker, angrier, scruffier, less genteel Pax. It must be his brother. He pulls me into a shadowy alcove, removes a glove, and reaches for my hand. In a daze, I offer it to him.
His palm is tattooed. Black, segmented by digits, as if he’d dipped his hand in ink and made a childlike handprint on paper.
“This is goodbye,” he says, and kisses the arch of my wrist. The zing of his whiskery, soft lips jolts my core, flips my stomach. I am shown the most horrific images imaginable: a bullet zipping through the air. A body slumping. Hundreds of bodies on a scorched battlefield. Bombs. Smoke. Wars.
“Why are you here?” I whisper.
The Pax look-alike considers this. He leans in and whispers, his accent more lush than Pax’s.
“When I read things in the newspapers, the words? They shift. Some leap out at me. Others hide. The message rearranges itself to show its true meaning. A code, just for me. Others do not see it; they are too blind. Do you know this gift?”
Words rearranging themselves to reveal a code. A gift, he says. Madness, I say.
“Yes, I see encryptions.” He edges his handsomely tailored tuxedo jacket aside and flashes the butt of a gun, sticking out of his waistband. It gleams, then it’s gone. It’s not a threat; it’s a confession. “It’s why I’m here.”
He fired the gun?
“And as it turns out, I also set up a meeting of my own. My next assignment…” He lifts a vial containing one small grain of rice to eye level. He rattles it and grins, his dimple the mirror opposite of Pax’s.
My every instinct tells me to back away.
He tucks the vial into his tuxedo pocket. “We both must leave, yes? Go!” he hisses, and he folds around the backside of the Potter Building.
I am a whirlwind of emotion. I try to tamp down my confusion.
Our meetup spot. Yes. I weave quickly through night to the far corner on Park Place, dodging pools of light and crowds of people pushing toward the scene of the crime.
As I approach the corner near the Woolworth Building, I see William and Nirav. And Pax.
My heart drops—what is he doing here?—then soars—he’s here! It’s a feeling rather like a carnival ride.
I cannot stop myself. I cannot stop my tears. I run to him, throw myself into his embrace. His hug is tight, secure, protective.
“How are you here?” I ask. “Why?” According to our plan, he is supposed to be executing the next stage of our plot, meeting up with the “officers.”
I study his face. All their faces. How are they all smiling?
Pax takes both my hands. Snick.
Everything is okay. I know this, and the information is not from Spirit. It’s from Pax. From his touch, from his gaze. I understand, now. I thought everything had gone so, so wrong, but that is not the case, Pax’s silver eyes tell me.
“Everything is okay,” he whispers, confirming this. He hugs me to his lean chest, warm and firm. This is it. This is where I’ve wanted to be all evening. All my life, maybe. I hug harder. His heartbeat is a balm.
Finally, after his heart has calmed mine, I pull back to look into those magical eyes. “But Kiyoko—”
“She’s okay.”
A sob breaks free. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
“But the window, she broke it, and—”
“Stella, she escaped,” William says. “I saw her leave from the main stairwell door.”
“You saw her?” My head is shaking. My hands are shaking. “That window was eleven stories high!”
William leans closer, takes my hand. “Stella. I saw her. I promise.” He smiles gently. “The chutzpah, that one.”
I droop with relief. Pax adds, “But we’re not sure where she is. And she has the haul. At least, I hope she does. I’m hoping she can meet the connection quickly and join us.”
I step back and lock eyes briefly with Nirav, then William. “Kiyoko? She’s the touch?”
Pax nods.
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“It became the plan.”
“When?”
“Recently.”
“How recently?”
“Very recently.”
The picture of how this played out becomes clear.
Kiyoko—that’s who was in the restroom with him.
The “other woman.” Him tapping Kiyoko for this task at the last minute, her unable to say no.
Why the hell wasn’t I let in on this change of plans?
Does he not trust me? Was I stupid, silly, to trust him?
And how can I swing so wildly from love to anger?
Ah, but Stellar.
You said this felt like family.
Ain’t that how you love family?
Through the successes and the failures?
Through the good choices and the bad?
Nirav approaches us. Spirit highlights him with sparkles and light beams. He appears as if in a spotlight, just as I saw him last. He slips his hand into mine. A silent tear rolls down his cheek, but he’s smiling. He experienced quite a lot in that apartment filled with greed and avarice.
William tilts his head, Let’s go. Pax takes the handle grips of William’s chair and we walk north.
“We pulled off the muda labudova,” William says. “That’s Croatian for something impossible.” He begins to chuckle. “It literally translates to ‘balls of a swan.’ ” He’s laughing harder now, tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. “Swans don’t have external testicles, you see. Impossible.”
Despite my anger and frustration at being cut out of Pax’s revised plan—or maybe because of how anxious I feel at the thought of being left out, behind, alone yet again—my pent-up emotions get the better of me, and I explode with laugher.
Tears and sore cheeks and belly cramps—the whole bit.
And once I start, Nirav starts, and at long last, Pax joins in.
There’s that coffee laugh, strong and intense.
“Revenge is never going to be enough,” I say, gasping for breath.
“You’re right,” Pax says. “But it’s damn close.”
More laughter. Perhaps we laugh so we don’t cry. Pax’s strong, warm hand wraps around mine and we walk.
At last, I manage to say, “Your brother was there?”
He nods but says nothing.
“He tried to murder Blanck.”
He nods but says nothing.