Chapter 38
The men didn’t say much.
No small talk, no reassurances about my vintage engine. I recognized the driver now—one of Lyon’s bodyguards at the Xenakis opening.
My butterfly knife was already at hand, resting on the seat next to me. Still folded, but only a flick away from carnage. I slipped the flash grenade from my boot into a pocket.
I’d started to worry, back at the party, that I wasn’t clever enough to spot weaknesses in the midst of all this opulence. That the cult’s ragged edges would be tucked away this weekend, and I’d have no fresh ideas to present to Garrett and Arabella.
But this was kidnapping. Either his jealousy at work, or he’d had enough of outsiders testing him. Either way, my strategy was the same:
Hold my ground. Make the offer. Punish any slight.
We rumbled along back roads, nothing visible except the trees in our headlights. We’d driven more than a few minutes, beyond the grounds of the resort altogether.
Finally, we eased to a halt beside another Bentley. A lanky figure was waiting for us. I checked my door handle. Locked.
My pulse grew faster, lighter. The knife was a bird in my hand, ready to fly.
The figure walked around the car, got in the back seat with me. He was hunched even in the Bentley, and wore a tweed suit and tie.
“Dr. Lyon,” I said.
“Jessica Anderson. Or maybe someone else.”
“You’ll know my name soon enough.”
“How mysterious. May I call you Jessica for now?”
“That works,” I said, seeing why Hiromi and Garrett found him so disturbing. He was a daunting presence, his deep voice confident, intimate. But all I saw were angles of attack—the open flank, the throat, the glittering eyes.
Lyon tapped the seat in front of him, and the car started moving again.
I spoke first. “Nice party. Thanks for having us.”
“Thank you for convincing her to come. Whatever else happens, I owe you that.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
He turned away to stare out the window. “At first I thought law enforcement had taken an interest. The taps on my phone, the careful break-ins at my office.”
I didn’t answer.
“But then you appeared, insinuating yourself into Hiromi’s life. Not the sort of approach the IRS would take. Or the FBI.”
“We aren’t here to change what you do,” I said. “We’re here to do it better.”
He nodded, like a shrink taking notes. “Some sort of Mafia, I suppose.”
“You’ve heard of them. No one’s heard of us.”
“I’m concerned for you, Jessica. It won’t be long before Hiromi realizes the mismatch between you two. She’s a genius, and you are not.”
A laugh bubbled up in me, carried on adrenaline. He was going to psychoanalyze me. “I bring other things to the table.”
“An overdeveloped sense of your own power, perhaps.”
“Physician, heal thyself.”
He didn’t smile; he was a wall. There were three of them and one of me.
Start with the flash grenade, tossed into the driver’s lap. Cover my ears, press my face against the seat in front of me.
We kids had always been excited for Aunt Iris’s lessons in applied pyrotechnics, acting out explosions the whole day before. Gertie drawing hands with missing fingers.
Peter ecstatic.
“I’m sure you’re very tough, Jessica.”
Flash grenades on Wednesdays. First outdoors, then in the empty rooms of the guesthouse, and finally in the old jalopies in the barn—practice for this very situation.
“But the awful things that happen when we’re little only make us think we’re strong,” he said. “They leave us with broken parts. Tell me, Jessica, what awful things were done to you?”
Even through closed eyelids, the flashes dazzled us, left our vision bruised, like we’d stared at the sun. The boom would fritz our ears for a moment, until sound slowly leaked back in.
Peter’s laughter was always the first thing we heard.
“My childhood was idyllic.”
“You said that with anger. Are you sure it’s true?”
“I hope you’re not charging me for this.”
“I don’t care about money. I don’t care who you represent. All I care about is your pain, Jessica.”
I smiled. This wasn’t seduction—this was one power move after another, pure intimidation. Not the prelude to an offer, but to a beating. He thought he could scare me.
“We’re older than you, Dr. Lyon, by millennia. We have deeper pockets, colder hearts. We aren’t going away.”
“Abused as a child,” he said. “And you don’t even know it.”
With all of them stunned, blinded, I would stab Lyon. Three times in the stomach, survivable enough. Then reverse my grip and swing for the neck of the man in the passenger front seat. The driver, a flash-bang having gone off in his lap, would be an afterthought.
“What did your family do to you, Jessica?”
They taught me not to listen to strangers.
“Whatever it was, you still have something inside you, something wonderful that survived.” Another smile in the darkness, this one sad. “Do you love Hiromi?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.
“She wants you to say it first,” Lyon said.
He sounded as certain as a Morton. But he was pretending.
“All you have to do is sign a piece of paper. You can keep your patients, your Kandinskys, your parties.” Houses, horses, tuition, Paris. “You can buy all of Hiromi’s robots. And you won’t have to worry about the law anymore. We’ll fix that.”
“She’ll leave you soon. You aren’t worth the risk. You’re someone who vanishes one night, driving away and never coming home. Like her parents, crashing on an icy road.”
Bind up Lyon’s wounds. Put the other two in the trunk. Meet Uncle Orrin halfway to the estate. Let the elders do the rest.
Once Lyon had struck the first blow, we would take it all. But he hadn’t yet.
I needed him to hurt me. I wanted very much for him to try.
“Hiromi’s nothing special,” I said. “A second-rate artist, for third-rate collectors.”
“Oh, dear. You’ve got it worse than I thought.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Is she your first true love?”
My hand went tight around the knife. I’d pushed too hard, become transparent, like when I tried to be witty for Hiromi’s friends.
The flash grenade first, the blade in his stomach. Reverse my grip, swing for the throat. The driver an afterthought.
“You’ve made me an offer,” Lyon said. “Now let me make one.”
“Any deal ends with you signing your name.”
“I’ll fix her for you,” he said. “There’s no need for her to suffer.”
I stared at him.
“She’s flourishing at this party. You’ve already seen it.
All those fans, all that attention—all of it comes from me.
Tomorrow, driving home, she’ll start to wonder if I’m really so terrible.
You two will have exciting new friends, who will sing my praises.
All you have to do is nudge her onto my couch, and I’ll fix her.
You can have her then. All I want is to fix her. ”
I saw it at last—the thing that had made Hiromi flee the gallery that first night. The thing that made Garrett and Arabella shudder.
Underneath his storefront psychic’s guesses, this man had a true hunger.
“Why do you care so much about her?” I asked.
His dark eyes were triumphant. “Why do you, Jessica?”
The calluses on her fingertips, rough against my skin. Her lips on the muscles of my arms. The scent of her night sweat, when she said the words knife-thrower in the dark.
“She’s just a way to get to you.” Prey.
“She was,” he said. “But now you see what I see.”
Flash grenade, stab, reverse grip. Let the family have them.
“What happens when you stop believing in your strength, Jessica? What are you left with?” His questions came faster now, with the cadence of a mantra.
“What remains of you? Did you keep enough pieces to remake yourself? Do you have the patience for being healed, the heart for it? How could you not realize that Hiromi has been calling? That she’s been wondering where you are? ”
He leaned back, glancing at the glow in my pocket.
I pulled my phone out. Four texts.
Where did you go?
I feel weird. Happy, though.
Okay, I need you to come back.
Still weird. Maybe there was alcohol in these?
The special drinks for Hiromi, the flavors of tropical citrus, candies in a glass—and something stronger. That glow in her eyes.
That was when they struck.
The driver floored the gas, pressing me back into the seat. Dr. Lyon plucked the phone from my hand, reached across to open my door, and shoved me hard. I fell from the moving car.
Rolling through the flaying underbrush, first from momentum, then gravity. Down the slope beside the mountain road I spun, until brush and thorns brought me to a halt.
I tasted dirt and blood in my mouth.
My training had stuck—my hand still grasped the butterfly knife. Folded, so I hadn’t stabbed myself.
I sat up slowly. Everything hurt, the pain pounding with my heart.
Classic intimidation. Kick someone out of car in the middle of nowhere, the middle of the night. No phone, no idea where they are.
Except we Mortons carry our family in our pocket. Careless of them, not checking for a second phone.
Hiromi’s pulsing blue dot was still at the resort, five miles away. Uphill and through the brush—at least two hours’ hike.
I stood up carefully. My legs didn’t give way.
Arabella answered on the first ring.
“How’s the party?”
“Nothing broken.”
“What?” A pause. “Where the hell are you? There’s not even a road nearby.”
“It’s some kind of trail. Lyon dumped me out here, but I’m headed back up.”
“He came at you? Perfect.”
“Yeah, lovely.” I spat out a mouthful of blood. “Have we got a tracker on the Aston Martin?”
“Uncle Orrin’s baby? Foolish question.”
“Meet me there. Bring body bags.”