Ace Is Wild (34 page)

“I—”

“No, it’s my turn to talk.” Vivi tried to take the argument to Daniel. She was brought up short by a couple of plastic garbage ties, but she managed to get her point across. “I’m sick of hearing about how you don’t trust me, and you don’t believe in my ability—until you need a miracle, and then you expect me to race in and save the day.”

Daniel snorted. “If I didn’t trust you and believe in your ability I wouldn’t be asking you to save the day, but you can’t even drum up a halfway credible premonition.”

“Because I love you, you jackass.”

They both froze, just their eyes cutting to each other.

“Uh . . .” Daniel wheezed.

“That’s right, you moron, I love you,” she yelled at him. “That’s what happened to my ability to read situations like this. It’s supposed to be a gift, so I can have a regular relationship, but it doesn’t seem like such a gift to lose my insight so I can be stuck with a pigheaded throwback like you.”

“Uh . . .” Daniel said again, his mind racing but nothing coming out of his mouth.

“Speechless,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm, “now my day is complete.”

“It’s not exactly what I was expecting to hear,” Daniel said when his vocabulary reappeared in his brain. “Give me a minute to process it.”

“I’m tired—”

“You’re going to be dead, and so am I, if you don’t get your sixth sense tuned back in.”

“Again, not helpful.” She’d been about to say she was tired of beating her head against the emotional wall he kept between himself and the entire world, but heartbreak shouldn’t be her focus right now. Becoming a permanent addition to the bottom of Boston Harbor was more the issue.

Flip returned before they could come up with a way to get free, short of chewing off their own wrists wolf-style. “The boss will be here soon.” He put one hand to his stomach, the other to the wall to brace himself against the pitching of the boat. And he was beyond green. “At least I hope it’s soon because the wind is kicking up and I’m not such a good sailor. I like a good sailor,” he added without much real enthusiasm, “as long as we’re on dry land.”

“What’s going to happen when your boss gets here?” Vivi wanted to know.

“I’m sure you can imagine,” Flip said. His cheeks puffed out and he swallowed several times, fighting his stomach back into submission. “I hope to hell Tony Sappresi never finds out, although the way I feel now, death would be a relief.”

“What’s Sappresi have to do with this?” Daniel asked.

“Clearly he’s behind the hit,” Vivi said, “just like I’ve been telling you all along.”

“Oh, puh-leeze,” Flip said. “If Tony the Sap was behind this why would I care if he finds out?”

“Good point,” Daniel said. “So why do you care?”

Flip rolled his eyes, then pressed a hand to his stomach. “Isn’t it obvious? Everyone knows he’s the most superstitious bastard on the East Coast. If we put a bullet in Tony’s personal psychic and he finds out, our lives won’t be worth spit. Especially since you won’t be around to put Tony in jail.” The boat listed heavily from one side to the other and Flip escaped above deck, both hands over his mouth.

Daniel didn’t say anything. His eyes had locked on Vivi. She could feel him staring at her, and that wasn’t all. The temperature in the galley had gone up several degrees, or maybe it was his anger burning through the no-insight rule.

“Sappresi’s psychic,” he ground out.

Vivi winced, and not just because he sounded like he was chewing rock. His eyes, when she forced herself to meet them, were so dark and cold. They’d never been that cold before, even that first day when she’d interrupted the bachelor auction.

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” she said, giving him points for not just taking Flip’s word about it. “I used to read for Tony Sappresi.”

“Used to?”

“I quit when I discovered he’d had an FBI agent killed.”

Daniel went silent, so she took the chance to tell him the story and hoped to hell he was listening. “Tony was one of my first regular customers,” she began, “back when I was barely out of high school and I’d just begun to work with my grandmother. I didn’t have much control over my ability then. I couldn’t watch the news or read the paper without some . . . emotional overflow, and Tony wasn’t as high in the Mafia as he is now. I didn’t know who he was or what he did. As soon as I found out, I refused to read for him anymore.”

“He just let you go?”

“He wasn’t happy—Flip was right about his superstition level, but it actually worked in my favor. I convinced him my readings would be worthless if they were forced.”

“You lied to him,” Daniel said.

“No. I meant it. I can’t force things, and reading for someone like Tony . . . Knowing what he’d done . . . The readings would have been negative, and there was no way I could have been sure if I was seeing what I wanted or the real future.”

“Why didn’t you come forward when Zukey was killed?”

“Right, you would have believed me,” she said. “You would have put me on the stand to testify against Tony.”

“Of course not, but—”

“But what? You’d have patted me on the head and sent me on my way—that’s if you didn’t have me put in the cell next to Tony’s for being in cahoots with him.”

“Cahoots?”

Vivi rolled her eyes. “You still don’t entirely believe me and God knows I’ve given you enough proof. No one would have believed me except Tony.” And he’d have had her killed. Vivi knew Daniel was thinking it, just as she knew he wouldn’t say it and justify her . . . omission of the truth. And her death would have been for nothing, since the U.S. attorney’s office never would have indicted Sappresi on the word of a storefront psychic.

“I warned Tony that a friend would betray him,” she said. “I gave Tony his description. I know I didn’t pull the trigger, but I felt like I was responsible for that man’s murder.

“Once I started getting visions about your death, and I realized who you were, I couldn’t just ignore the situation. I guess in some way, I felt like saving your life would atone for my part in Tom Zukey’s death.”

“So you did all this out of guilt.”

“At first, yeah.” “No” would have been the safe answer, but despite the third degree she was feeling pretty good, not eager to let weight settle back on her chest now that she’d gotten it off. “I’d like to think I would have sought you out and warned you regardless, but knowing you were prosecuting Tony for the murder definitely made it more pressing to keep you alive.”

Daniel’s eyes rose to meet hers, and she felt a chill, down to her very bones.

“You should have told me,” he said.

“No, I did the right thing.”

“You didn’t exactly prevent my death.”

“You’re not dying tonight,” Vivi said. She expected him to ask her how she knew that. He didn’t. She’d betrayed him, lied to him, consorted with the enemy. Any one of those put her on the wrong side of the law-and-order line, as far as Daniel was concerned with his uncompromising, black-and-white point of view. He’d shut her out completely, and if they survived this boat trip, he’d cut her from his life like a tumor.

Well, Vivi thought, the hell with him. Better a clean, surgical separation.

“Where’d Flip go?”

Vivi flinched, the sound of his voice cutting through a silence cold enough to raise gooseflesh. “Upstairs to wait for the boss, I guess.”

“Who’s not Sappresi.”

“Which I’m beginning to regret,” she said. “I could probably talk Tony into keeping me alive. But you’d be toast.”

Chapter 23

THE WIND CONTINUED TO SHARPEN, MAKING THE
boat dip and sway. It wasn’t long before Vivi heard Flip groaning between bouts of retching. Aside from Flip’s gastrointestinal distress, and the slap of the waves against the wooden hull, it was quiet in the tiny galley belowdecks. Deathly quiet.

Daniel was sitting with his hands on the table curled into fists—wishing they were around her neck, Vivi figured. He wasn’t talking, but she could feel his fury: a still, cold pool of black water that was a lot scarier than the rolling expanse of harbor outside the boat.

The muscles in her arms were screaming, and she realized she was straining against the plastic tie around her wrists. There was no way it would break, she told herself. She bought it, but it took another minute before she could relax, her fingers tingling as the blood rushed in. As long as she stayed loose, the tie wasn’t tight enough to cut off circulation, but she couldn’t slip a hand free.

The clinking of metal caught her attention. She looked over and saw Daniel holding the length of chain.

“It’s about time you decided to do something besides sit there sulking.”

Daniel ignored her, studying each of the eighth-inch-thick links. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but he apparently didn’t find it because he moved on to the brass railing it was looped through. Each section of railing was bolted to the table, which was a slab of wood about two inches thick. Daniel tested each section, grasping them one by one and giving a good experimental shake or two to see if there were loose bolts. He put some muscle into it, too, biceps cording, jaw knotting. Nothing budged, and nothing relaxed on Daniel. He looked like he was an inch away from chewing his way through the side of the boat. All he needed was a little more incentive . . .

“No ideas?” she said, loading her voice with sarcasm. “Next you’re going to ask me to do something, right?”

His eyes shifted to hers. She wasn’t fazed.

“I lied to you, I betrayed you, you shouldn’t have trusted me, blah, blah, blah. Since you’re going to hate me for the rest of your life, it’d be a real shame if your life only lasted a few more minutes.”

He didn’t reply, but Vivi could tell he was seeing red. Good, she thought, he’d need the anger.

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t listen to my explanation,” Vivi said, poking at what she knew must be a sore spot. God knew it was one for her. “You would’ve walked away and now you’d be dead.”

“Right, it would have been terrible to miss this experience.”

“If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

“Save the propaganda. I just want to get out of here.”

“Away from me.”

“As far as I can get.”

“Then do it,” she shot back. “You always want to muscle your way out of things. Now’s your chance.”

Daniel surged to his feet and took hold of the chain, white-knuckled, on the edge of a full-out, Mel-Gibson-against-the-Redcoats berserk episode. Perfect. Of course he might turn on her once he was done tearing the boat apart, but it was a chance she had to take.

“You can’t keep waiting around for me to save the day,” she said.

Daniel lost it, straining against the chain for all he was worth. Vivi heard the shriek of metal—the railing, she thought—pulling away from the table. Instead, the entire table ripped away from the side of the boat with enough force to spring a couple of the dry-rotted seams in the ancient wooden hull. Daniel, his wrists still tied together, dragged himself up the hatchway to the top deck, dragging the chain and the table along behind him.

Vivi stood there for a minute, staring open-mouthed at the water leaking between the boards, feeling it pool around her bare feet like the cold hand of death. Then she yelled for Flip. Sure, he had a gun. But he hadn’t used it yet, and drowning was pretty much a sure thing.

It was Daniel who showed up in the doorway, hands free.

“Go away,” she said, yelling for Flip again.

“Flip is still draped over the railing, adding to the poor water quality of the harbor. On the upside, he’s a lovely shade of chartreuse.”

“Once he realizes what’s going on, he’ll get me out of here.”

“I’ve got his pocketknife.”

She ignored him.

“You’re pissed at me?” he said.

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“I’m not the one who’s been lying about everything.”

That hurt, because she knew he was saying he didn’t believe she loved him, either. “My lie helped keep you alive.”

“All you did was postpone the inevitable.”