Fixed in Blood (27 page)

“I pledged my soul to him,” she continued. “As I now pledge mine to each of you. I would have died for him, as I am prepared to die for each of you. But he betrayed me. He took all I offered and in exchange offered me pain and death.” Allie stepped closer to the cage and gauged her whisper loud enough for the entire table to hear. “I love you, Vadim. With all my heart I love you.” She blew him a kiss, turned, and let a tear slide down her cheek. Three slow and heavy steps led her back to Staz. She took the gun from his hand and turned back to Tokarev.

The first shot, muffled through a silencer, went straight to Tokarev’s groin. Another, one heartbeat after the first, landed in his chest. The third, a half second later, smashed into his face. Tokarev collapsed, hanging by his wrists from the cell’s iron bars.

Allie handed Staz the gun and faced the stunned crowd. “As a mother I will love. As a czarina I will protect. As a woman I will lead.” She gave them a full minute of silence to inhale the bloody stench of disloyalty emanating from Tokarev’s corpse. “Give me your loyalty and be rewarded in riches untold.”

The room was silent. Staz was the first to move. He lifted Allie’s left hand and kissed the giant diamond Tokarev had intended to mark his promise to her. He stepped back and stood behind her. A few moments later the women came, mimicking Staz’s gesture of kissing her ring. Finally the men came, one by one, pledging their devotion with trembling lips. Ratchnikov came last. He stood tall in front of her, holding her in a long, measuring gaze. She returned his stare. At last, Fyodor Ratchnikov bowed and kissed her hand. He moved to stand behind her, but Allie stopped him.

“No, Ratchnikov.” Her voice was steady and strong. Her smile serene and regal. “You will stand beside me.”

T
WO MONTHS LATER

“I missed you.” Paul Bauer spooned his strong body behind her. He brushed aside her tousled hair and kissed her naked shoulder. “I’m allowed to say that, right? It’s not in violation of any boundary you’ve set?”

Lydia pulled an arm free from the tangled sheets and entwined her fingers with his. “I was only gone four days.” Her voice was soft and easy. Was it the lovemaking that relaxed her? Or her recent trip? “And I called you each of them.”

He kissed the back of her head. She liked the way his voice rumbled against her skin.

“I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Four calls from the lovely Lydia and not one of them a booty.”

“It’s rather difficult to engineer a booty call when you’re in Olympia and I’m up there on Whidbey Island.”

He hummed his agreement. “If you whistled, I’d have hopped in my car and been on the first ferry.” He traced his fingers down her spine. “You love it up there, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“What is it you do in the wilderness?”

“I read. Walk along the shore. Sit on the porch and watch the tides and the birds. If I’m lucky, a whale cruises by.” She wasn’t lying to him. At least twice a year she rented the cabin she’d first discovered when she was recuperating from her gunshot wound. Despite having a home overlooking Dana Passage, it was good to get away from the stress of her practice. Whidbey Island was a rural slice of heaven floating in the sea. “No one bothers me up there. The caretaker gives me the keys and I’m on my own.”

“Maybe we’ll go together sometime.”

That would never happen. She enjoyed Paul Bauer. On occasion even toyed with the fantasy of melting into his love and walking into the forever promise of his strong, open arms.

But she never would. The kind of life he offered was built on honesty and trust. That was something Lydia couldn’t offer anyone.

It had been easy this time. She thought about it on her drive down from Whidbey that morning. Maybe because this one wasn’t anyone’s hire. She wasn’t delivering anyone else’s justice.

This had been hers alone.

She’d found Vincent Feldoni thirty hours after he disappeared. Mort, the feds, and every jurisdiction up and down the coast had been searching for him. Mexican and Canadian authorities had their own agencies searching for the man who had killed four people. According to Mort they had all airports and docks under surveillance, and Feldoni’s photograph plastered the Internet. They got extra help in the first few days of their hunt from every media outlet with access to a set of eyes or ears. The story of a handsome actor, himself the son of a beloved action hero, wanted for multiple murders while his megastar father sat in jail for helping him escape was too juicy for them to ignore.

Still, no sign of Vincent Feldoni.

As the days rolled by, the story lost steam, pushed off the airwaves by a troubled teen singer creating an international incident by stripping onstage during a concert in São Paulo, right down to his Brazilian-flag jockstrap. The clueless rock star had an Alaskan politician to thank for taking the media heat off him. A clever high schooler had made his way into a private fundraiser and taped the senator saying some very nasty things about several racial minorities. The coverage of her tear-stained face decrying how she’d been a victim of gotcha journalism was in turn replaced with intense coverage of an abandoned bear cub afraid to climb down out of a tree on the grounds of an Atlanta courthouse.

And the beat went on. In a few weeks the search for Feldoni was viewed as a pointless waste of resources. Authorities speculated he, too, was probably lost at sea. It was a matter of time before his body, like that of Delbe Jensen and Eddie Yaz, would wash up on a beach somewhere. And if it didn’t, well, some critter of the deep had a Hollywood hot dog for dinner.

But while the authorities were searching the coasts for Vincent Feldoni, Lydia worked her hunch that a movie star on the run would reach out to someone who had a history of coddling, forgiving, and enabling him. She put a phone trap on Vincent Feldoni’s agent.

Sure enough, the murdering movie star used a pay phone in Lincoln City, Oregon, thirty hours after he disappeared. The agent sputtered his shock at first, warning Feldoni he shouldn’t have called. He asked for the number and told his client to sit tight, he’d get back to him. Within ten minutes the agent made good on his promise. Lydia tracked down the number scrolling across the screen in her communication center. It was a burner. The agent had probably hung up from Feldoni, gone to the nearest convenience store, and bought a prepaid cell. Maybe he felt a little like James Bond or maybe he thought it would make a great scene, but the agent called back to tell Feldoni his own phone had been blowing up with inquiries about what was going on with the hot-ticket son of the once-great Anthony Feldoni.

“I got three studios itching to assign writers to the project.” Lydia shook her head as she listened in on the conversation. “Including…” The agent paused for dramatic effect. “Heather Crane.”

Vincent Feldoni blew out a gush of disbelieving breath. “No! You’re bullshitting me.”

“I am not, buddy.” His agent sounded pleased with himself. “I got them to assign last year’s fucking Academy Award winner to the project. It’s already green-lighted. I got you a three-hundred-thousand up-front deal with a guarantee of another half mil when you’re acquitted. Do I work for you or what?”

Lydia listened as Feldoni’s agent outlined the need for him to stay out of sight. “We wanna build the story. Create suspense. Line up the best legal team, yadda yadda. Just lay low.” His agent promised to get back to him within the hour with the address of a cabin he was having his assistant scout out and rent for him. “Under an assumed name, of course. She thinks it’s for my mistress,” he promised. “It won’t be long. Get a lot of sun, will ya? No SPF. Lay off the moisturizer. Grow a beard. Lose about ten pounds. Don’t get your hair cut. I see this as a you-in-the-wilderness thing. Fighting for survival while you try to make it back to civilization and clear your dad’s good name. Figuring out how Eddie Yaz stole your identity and killed those girls. Finding a way to keep your abs in shape while foraging for berries and leaves or whatever shit it is you eat out in the woods. That first photo of you coming out of hiding is going to be epic. All over the world. You gotta look the part.”

Two phone calls later Vincent Feldoni had not only an alternate story sure to produce plausible doubt in any jury, but his agent found him a small by-the-week apartment over a tackle shop in Garibaldi, Oregon, a small fishing town on Tillamook Bay. It was a place where people were more interested in what was biting than who was who. Feldoni’s agent promised weekly deliveries of cash and weed. “For God’s sake,” his agent warned, “stay out of trouble. Keep away from people…especially the ladies. Catch up on TV, Vince. Take long naps. Behave yourself. One call to the cops and this is all over, buddy. You’ll miss the entire payday. Not to mention your ass will be in jail till Corey Feldman wins an Oscar. You understand me?”

Vincent told him he did.

“Good,” his agent said. “If you play nice, who knows? Maybe I’ll send you a present from time to time.”

Just like that Vincent Feldoni was safe. Lydia continued to monitor the twice-weekly phone conversations between Feldoni and his agent. Vince complained about the weather, the boredom, and his agent’s casting suggestions for the role of his father and him. “At least the chow’s good,” he’d said. “I’m eating the best seafood ever. The Ivy’s got nothing on the sea bass I’m getting here.”

Lydia held Feldoni’s enjoyment of Garibaldi’s cuisine in her mind while she sat next to Roz and Bud Jensen at Delbe’s funeral.

For two months Lydia monitored the calls while life began to resettle into structured normalcy. She saw her patients. She gave a guest lecture at Saint Martin’s University for a woman who taught psychology there. The woman thanked her profusely, saying her lecture on borderline personality disorder gave her students a clear understanding of that complex diagnosis. She wondered if they might meet for coffee or wine sometime.

Lydia thanked her, but begged off the invitation for a closer social connection.

She’d visited Mort twice on his houseboat. Once for clams and fried potatoes with Aggie. The second time, Mort drank his Guinness while she sipped an Adelsheim merlot. They talked about Allie. Lydia ached for the sadness in Mort’s words and eyes. He’d invited her to come back for a cookout Jimmy was hosting. He promised the whole team would be there. Robbie would be bringing Claire and the girls.

She told him it sounded lovely, but she had other plans. He didn’t look like he believed her, but was kind enough not to press.

And all the while Lydia planned.

First she needed a verifiable alibi. Whidbey was the logical choice. Both Mort and Paul knew her love of the island. Mort had even visited her there once. The cabin caretakers knew she didn’t like to be disturbed. It was not unusual for her to speak with them upon arrival and not again until she departed. And so it was this time. She had a pleasant conversation with Denny Niles, the local grocer who helped load her car with her purchases.

“Looks like you’re holing up for a while. Running away from the world,” he’d said. Lydia assured him that was her intent.

Denny saluted her as he closed the trunk on her groceries. “See you when you come up for air.”

She put timers on lights and appliances for intermittent activation. It was unlikely anyone would walk by her cabin, but if they did, they might hear a television in the early evening or a radio broadcasting NPR in the afternoon. They might stroll by just in time to see a light click off in her kitchen two seconds before one in the living room clicked on. Lydia had arranged enough supporting evidence that should anyone raise a question, she’d have witnesses who’d swear she’d been right where she said she was. She called Paul Bauer every evening and for good measure she phoned Mort once. She shared updates and colorful stories of island activity. She’d called on her own cellphone, allowing her identification to show on their screens. She’d also taken the portable access to her communication center with her and programmed the routing of cell towers to reflect the origin of her calls as always being from Langley.

Even when she was calling from Oregon.

Getting to Feldoni was just as easy. On her second day on Whidbey, after the sun went down and the island was cast in a deepening blue twilight, Lydia left her cabin via the back door. She’d packed costumes for three characters. The first was weary traveler. This woman was in her late fifties, salt-and-pepper hair nearly hidden by a broad-brimmed canvas hat, brown eyes, and trying to hide extra weight around her midsection with baggy sweatshirts and loose-fitting sweatpants. An oversized pack was strapped to her back. She strolled away from the cabin, headed down a small lane, retrieved the bicycle she’d stashed prior to checking into her cabin, and rode to the ferry landing. She bought a ticket on the 8:45 and walked on with her head down, thwarting any cameras that might be checked later. She spent the ride huddled alone in a booth, engrossed in the newspaper. As they neared Mukilteo and her fellow passengers began to move toward the exit stairs, Lydia folded her paper, grabbed her gear, and went to the restroom. In the stall she lifted her sweatshirt to remove her second costume. She pulled contacts, wig, and mirror from the pack around her waist and set about transforming herself. When the ferry was fully docked, Lydia walked off as a fashionable green-eyed thirty-something in skinny jeans, hot-pink cashmere sweater, and a deep blue pashmina draped over her head to shield her long blond hair from the misting rain. Her knee-high boots clicked across the asphalt to her waiting car, the one with Idaho license plates registered to Vicky Vonderask of Boise. Lydia carried a Fendi wallet that held a driver’s license issued to the same name.

She headed south. When she passed the Olympia exit on I-5, she didn’t even think about turning off, heading home, and aborting her plan. She simply glanced at her gas tank. She had plenty to make it through Portland.

It was nearly 3:00
A.M.
when Vicky Vonderask pulled up to the Pelican’s Perch Bed and Breakfast in Garibaldi. She’d called ahead, complaining of traffic and saying she didn’t want to keep the proprietor awake.

“That’s okay, hon,” the woman taking her call had said. “You paid in advance. Tell you what, you’re in room 4. That’s across from the kitchen. Can’t miss it. I’ll leave the door open and your key on the nightstand. Take care not to bother any other guest when you get in.”

Lydia promised no one would even know she’d arrived.

She got to her room, pleased no one had been awake to cross her path. She locked the door behind her, stripped off the wig and clothes that had made her Vicky, and got a good night’s sleep. She stayed in her room most of the day, practicing yoga, reading various newspapers on her tablet, and nibbling food she’d packed. At five in the afternoon she showered and reassembled herself as Vicky Vonderask, the green-eyed, long-legged blonde. This time she topped her skinny jeans with a low-cut T-shirt and wore sandals.

It was time to visit Vincent.

She heard tinny voices and laugh track after she knocked the door of his apartment. She waited a few moments and knocked again. This time the television she could hear so clearly through the flimsy door went silent. She knocked a third time.

“Donny G sent me,” she said through the door. Lydia hoped using his agent’s name might allay his fears. “Remember he said he’d send you a present if you were good? Well, you musta been good, ’cause baby, here I am.”

There was no peephole in the door. No way for him to see she was alone.

“Look, it’s not like I can leave my package under the mat and walk away.” She kept her voice husky, laced with sultry promise. “You want me to count to three or somethin’ and disappear? Shame to miss what Donny’s paid for.”

She stood with one hip thrust to the side. “One…two…”

A lock turned before she could get to three. The door opened less than an inch. Lydia looked into the one eye peeking through and gave him a big smile.