From Manhattan with Revenge (The Fourth Book in the Fifth Avenue Series) (14 page)

He nodded his thanks to his contact,
pressed a button that lowered and locked the hatch, and got back into the car
to speed down A96. He drove until he came upon B979, slowed, and took a left
onto it.

The Kester farm was about sixteen
kilometers away. The photos he viewed of it online suggested it was of medium
size and used purely for the purpose of harvesting sheep’s milk, which they
turned into some sort of popular cheese sold around the UK. It was a year-round
operation and the sole way the Kester clan made its living. Though the sun was
waning, it still was bright enough that he expected to see sheep on the land,
and hopefully the Kesters, working with them.

Through Google Earth, he noted stands of
trees surrounding the property, which would be perfect for him to hide behind
to get his shots, particularly since the property they owned was large enough
to require a powerful lens. Even if someone did see him, he’d either have time
to get out of there or shoot them should they come after him with a gun for
trespassing.

He hoped for the latter. The latter would
send the best message, even if it wasn’t what he was hired to do.

It wasn’t long before he came upon the
farm, which he passed so he could have a long look before he pulled off to the
side of the road and stopped well beyond it.

His heart hammered with excitement as he
turned back. Hundreds of sheep were on the hills. Eight or nine Kesters were
tending to them, mostly men. He didn’t know who the men were, but Illarion
Katzev would. Likely the man’s brothers and cousins. Maybe an uncle, since an
older man lifted up his hand as he drove past.

But the one older woman he saw in the
field. The one with the white hair pulled away from her face. The one who stood
on the periphery, calling to the group.

He knew who she was. He was sent her
photograph when he took the job.

That was Katzev’s mother. And she was out
in full view.

CHAPTER SEVE
NTEEN

In the fog that wouldn’t lift, Chloe
Philips’s mind continued to drift.

In her unconscious state, which revealed
to her the blackest of blacks, she heard voices in the haze. Sounds in the
darkness. Thoughts of death crept in and she reached out to them, as if the act
of embracing them would make them real.

She didn’t want to live anymore. She was
tired of this life. She hated it as much as it hated her.

As time pressed on (hours, days, weeks),
she touched down upon memories she either savored or wanted to erase forever.

Mostly the latter.

She tried to steer around the uglier times
and linger on the few good memories her life had provided her, but wherever she
landed, in this amorphous landscape from which she couldn’t wake, there was no
controlling it. Her mind showed her what it wanted her to see, which ran the
gamut from the good to the awful.

She was seven. Sunday morning usually
meant church, though for some reason that was declining as her mother and her
boyfriend now only went when they weren’t so “tired.” Still, on that Sunday,
she woke in her bedroom in Queens and looked across to the other bed, where her
younger sister, Mia, was asleep.

“Mia,” she said.

Nothing.

“We should get ready for church.”

Nothing.

She slipped out of bed and sat beside her
sister. The action of the cheap mattress sinking low at its side woke her
sister and she looked up at Chloe, her eyes wide and startled. “Is it him?” she
asked.

Chloe shook her head. “I told you I
wouldn’t let him go near you again.”

“But what about you?”

“I don’t matter.”

“Yes, you do, Chloe.”

She shrugged. “Come on. We need to get to
church.”

“Why? We haven’t been in a long time.”

“It was better when we went. Everything
was better then.”

Her younger sister, just six but already
wiser than she should be because of everything he’d done to them, sat up in
bed. “Who’s going to wake them up?”

“I was thinking of making them breakfast.
Maybe it’ll put them in a better mood. Especially him.”

“You only know how to make cereal. And you
know they don’t like noise on Sundays. They yell if there’s noise. He’ll smack
us.”

“Then maybe just juice and coffee. I can
do that pretty quiet.”

“Are you sure?”

No, but she stood anyway. “Go find
something nice to wear. Something for church. Wash your face and do your hair
pretty. Like I taught you. Use those barrettes we bought at the dollar store
last week. The yellow ones that look like bows. Mama’s not going to help you
get ready for church, but she’ll expect you to look nice. ”

“If she goes.”

“We’re going to get them to go. Now, go
on. Be quiet down the hallway. Don’t shut the bathroom door all the way because
it’ll squeak if you do. You know how it squeaks. And don’t flush the toilet.
We’ll do that when we wake them up, but we’ll have to do it fast so the water
is clean when they go to use it. You remember what happened the last time we
didn’t flush. We don’t want him angry. All right? I’m going downstairs. Wear
that dress.”

“Which dress?”

“Mama’s favorite. The pink one Nanny gave
you for Christmas.”

“I hate that one.”

“Mia...”

“OK.”

They crept out into the hallway. Mia went
into the bathroom and closed the door just to the point before it started to
creak. Chloe went down the hall, past the closed door to her mother and
boyfriend’s bedroom, heard the faint sound of rushing water behind her, and
moved down the stairs as quietly as she could in a house that seemed to lend
itself to noise and interruption.

The house was a mess, but that was nothing
new. What was new is that the couch wasn’t empty.

He was sleeping there, breathing so deeply
that his snoring seemed to shake the room. She stopped on the second to the
last step and stared at him. Her mother gave birth to her when she was sixteen.
Now, she was twenty-three and with a man twice her age. Maybe even fifty. Her
mother took him in three weeks after her real father left. Not long after, she
found this one at a bar and by the weekend, his bags were packed, they were
hauled inside, and he was a fixture.

“We need him,” her mother told her and her
sister the night he moved in. “He’s a vet. Got a bit of money and he’s not a
bad guy. Don’t none of you screw this up for us, OK? We need him right now. He
gets a monthly check. Now, give Mama a kiss and remember to be nice to him.”

That was six months ago and still, she
only knew the man as Eddy. Didn’t know his last name. Didn’t care to ask for
it. And if it was offered, she didn’t remember it. He was just Eddy, the old
man with a violent streak that rivaled her father’s.

On the coffee table beside him was a
half-empty bottle of Moonshine Clear Corn Whiskey, which he liked to say was
“cheap but it sure as shit does the job.” Cigarette butts filled the ashtray
next to it, along with the stub of a lone, thin cigar, with the crinkly plastic
wrap next to it.

Did they have one of their fights last
night, or did he just pass out here and she went to bed alone not wanting to
drag him up with her? Chloe never knew where they stood in their volatile
relationship, but right now she knew he was sleeping deeply and she might be
able to pull off this juice and coffee thing if she hurried.

The kitchen was just beyond the living room,
where Eddy slept on his pleather sofa as if he was in a coma, and she crept
toward it, nearly seizing up when the floor ached beneath her feet in such a
way that the wood groaned. She stopped once out of fear that she’d wake him if
she continued, but he was so out of it, he was unfazed and kept rattling as if
death had rented space in his throat.

She wished it had.

The juice was easy. She put out four short
glasses, pulled the carton of Tropicana from the fridge, and filled them. The
coffee was more difficult. She’d made it a few times before for them, but right
now, she forgot how many scoops he liked. Was it five? Six? How strong did he
like it? She couldn’t remember. Since a safer bet was smack in the middle, she
went with that and started the brew.

The smell of coffee started to fill the
humid air. It smelled deep and rich and satisfying, just how they liked it. She
removed two mugs from the cupboard, no-brand creamer her mother bought and
no-brand sugar, both purchased at the same dollar store
 
where they found Mia’s yellow barrettes.
She put two spoons next to the mugs and let the coffee maker do its thing.

It gurgled. It spit. She looked down upon
it as it dripped. She was thinking that she’d hit a home run, that they might
actually come together and go to church today—maybe even have a normal
day—when she felt a disturbance in the air behind her.

She didn’t turn. Knew it was him. Kept her
eyes on the coffee. Drip, drip, drip. She heard him say, “Wake me up for this
shit,” before he slammed the side of her head with a frying pan and she fell to
the floor, unconscious.

“Chloe...”

She heard her name being called, but she
was in the in-between. Floating. Turning. Hanging on for the ride. She saw a
vision of herself fall when the pan whacked the side of her head, and she
wondered how she could see that since she never saw it coming.

Mind tricks.

She didn’t see him hit her, but the moment
before she blacked out, she did see him standing above her with the frying pan
held out at his side. She remembered him yelling at her for waking him up. She
remembered him apologizing for striking her later, upon orders from her
distraught mother, who had to rush her to the emergency room with Mia, who was
in her fancy pink dress from Nanny and who wore the yellow barrettes in her
hair.

She remembered her mother lying to the
doctors, saying her daughter fell on the pavement outside their house, and in
that moment she knew that’s how it always would be. Her mother would choose men
“with a bit of money” over the welfare of her two daughters every time. And so
on that day, with the doctors looking doubtfully at her mother, Chloe Philips
changed her life for a new one—just not necessarily the better one she
hoped for.

“That’s not true,” she said to the
doctors. “Her boyfriend hit me with a pan. And it’s not the first time he’s hit
me or my sister. Or done other things.”

After much debate and accusations, she and
Mia were taken away from their mother that day. Chloe hadn’t seen her since.
She didn’t know if that was true for Mia.

“Chloe. Wake up.”

Mia was younger and adopted from St.
Vincent’s within four months of being accepted into its services. It was done
quietly. No one wanted to have a scene with Chloe, who was about to lose her
sister, and so when she awoke that morning to find her sister gone, she was
told the truth by one of the social workers who worked there.

Mia was adopted into a nice family. The
same would happen for Chloe—they knew it would, but things take time for
older children, even slightly older children. The important thing is that Mia
went into a good home, but before she left, she wrote her sister a note on a
piece of plain white paper. Chloe knew her sister didn’t know how to write yet
and she also knew an adult’s handwriting when she saw it, even if they did try
to make it look juvenile.
I’ll love you forever,
the note read
.
Please don’t forget me. Love, Mia.

Chloe tore the note in half and her stay
at St. Vincent’s began its long stretch into self-imposed isolation, anger, and
loneliness. She began first grade in the fall. Her grades were low, but she
didn’t care. The social workers at St. Vincent’s encouraged her to make friends
and to try to reach out to others during recess.
 
Maybe music would suit her. Or dance.
Chloe ignored their advice and drew inward. Sometimes, she wondered if she made
a mistake turning her mother in the way she did. Which was worse? Being in an
abusive family, or being here with no family? She wasn’t sure of the answer. It
upset her that she wasn’t sure.

“I’m not asking again,
Chloe. Wake up.”

It was a year later, one afternoon in
September, when she met Carmen.

She was watching television with five of
the other kids when Carmen entered the building. Chloe looked over at her and
couldn’t help but stare. She thought she was seeing a movie star. Or maybe a
model. The woman had that kind of presence. Long dark hair that shined as if it
caught the light and tossed it back. Black leather pants and a form-fitting
white blouse. Beautiful skin, tall and slender, and so, so pretty. For a while,
the woman spoke to two of the social workers. Chloe saw her hand them a check,
she listened to their gracious gushing, and because the woman obviously knew
she was being stared at, she looked over at Chloe and gave her a little wave.
Chloe, oddly wanting to meet her, found herself waving back.