Light of Day (21 page)

Arrow licked her hand in farewell, and Lila turned quickly away. As she reached the car, he howled eerily, mournfully, the sound an exact replica of the pain in her heart. Blinking back tears, Lila whirled and ran back. Arrow raced toward her, gleefully jumping at her as she closed the distance. “Can I take him with me?” she asked the hermit.

“I reckon Arrow already made up his mind about that. He always howls for days after you go.” He whistled at the other huskies and headed back into the woods.

Looking into the yellow eyes of her dog, Lila felt an unexpected pang of regret that she had never seen how much this animal loved the human he’d adopted. It seemed careless, the way she’d left him behind so often. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, kneeling in front of him. “I didn’t understand before.”

He moaned softly in forgiveness. They walked back to the car.

“Good for you,” Allen said. “You always miss that dog so damned much when you get back to Seattle that you drive me crazy.”

Lila looked over the seat. Arrow sat up straight, shoulders squared, huge chest thrust out. His tongue lolled out cheerfully.

Allen shifted his hands to the steering wheel, as if to adjust his next words. “I think there are a few things you need to know.”

She frowned. “What?”

“When The Shell and Fin was bombed, people were looking for you. They came to see me, both the police and somebody else. The police just wanted to talk to you, because they talked to everyone connected with the restaurant. When I told them I didn’t know where you were, they went away.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “But these other guys came back a couple of times, and once I saw them following me.”

“What did they look like?”

“Young. Arabs.” He cleared his throat. “And one other thing. Somebody tore your house to pieces.”

Stunned, Lila could only stare at him. “When?”

“Had to have been the night before last, because I was there to water your plants earlier in the day, and by the time I got there yesterday, it was destroyed.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean pillows sliced open and drawers on the floor and everything out of the cupboards. Like they were looking for something.”

“Looking for what?” Lila shouted.

“You tell me.”

His voice was just dull enough that she realized he thought she knew something. “I don’t know.” And then her eyes closed in sudden fear. “Maybe,” she said slowly, “they just wanted to know where I was.” She licked her lip. “There wasn’t an older Arab man, sort of dignified looking, very tall?”

“No. These two were young, like I said.”

Of course, she thought. Hassid would hardly do legwork himself if there were others who could do it for him. Fear filled her mouth, nameless and vague.

“Do you know who they are?” Allen asked.

She nodded. “I saw them, I think, at the airport.” She didn’t know how much to say, how much would be a betrayal. But she trusted Allen completely, and she needed to talk. “I think they were there to kill him. That’s why I took him to my cabin, to protect him.”

“God, Lila.” Allen expelled a hard breath. “Did he blow up the restaurant?”

“No. We were here already.”

“Good.” He shook his head. “What a mess.”

They lapsed into silence after a time, and Allen turned on the radio. They rounded a bend in the highway, coming around a sloping hillside into which the road had been cut. Below was the sea, pounding hard against black cliffs. Allen suddenly shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake. “Whoa,” he said. “They might have given us a little more warning.”

Several police cruisers were clustered in a line along the road, gathered in a hollow around another car. Seeing it, Lila shrieked, “Stop the car!”

“I can’t, not right here!”

As they passed the flashing lights and milling officers, Lila’s voice caught in her throat on a sob. “Allen,” she cried. “Stop!”

He slowed just beyond the line of cruisers, and pulled over. “They won’t let you near that—”

But before he could finish, Lila opened the door and ran toward the black Mercedes, still smoking, at the edge of the road. Dry grasses and the skeletons of wildflowers had been singed black by the fire in the car, and between the shoulders of two uniformed policemen, Lila could see the peeled paint, bubbles outlined by the bright morning sun. It had burned virulently, leaving nothing but the unmistakable shell. Her first thought was that Samuel had worked so hard to restore it, and now it was destroyed.

She frantically grabbed an arm of the man in front of her. “Was anyone in there when it burned?”

“No ma’am. Weirdest thing. Nobody saw the smoke till this morning, but it burned a while.” His young eyes sharpened. “You know who it belongs to?”

She came to her senses with a wash of cool fear, seeing ahead of her a dozen questions she couldn’t answer. She stepped back, shaking her head. “No. I thought it was a different car, but it isn’t. Thank you.”

She ran back to the car. “Let’s go.”

Allen complied. “Is it his?”

“Yes.” Her mind raced with possible explanations, a deep illness growing in her stomach. Nothing she came up with boded well for Samuel. All she could think of was that he had been kidnapped for some reason. But they had wanted to kill him, so why would they bother to take him from the car?

Unless they hadn’t wanted the body to be found.

She swallowed. Hassid had obviously engineered the bombing of The Shell and Fin, then attempted to connect Samuel to it. Perhaps there was more violence in the works, violence for which the missing Samuel would be blamed.

She felt suddenly hollow, as if all the vital portions of her body had drained out through her feet. Her hands trembled, and her stomach churned. “Allen,” she said weakly. “Please stop again.”

One glance at her face was all he needed. Lila jumped out of the car a second time, and rid herself of the bitterness in her belly.

* * *

They reached Seattle late in the afternoon. Allen would not hear of her staying in her own house, and headed for his own.

“Did you get my car, Allen?” she asked, suddenly remembering her station wagon.

“It’s at my place. You were right. It had a bad starter. It’s fixed.”

“I’ll pay you tomorrow. I don’t have any cash on me.” They climbed the hilly territory that had once cradled The Shell and Fin. “Allen, I want to see the restaurant.”

He frowned uncertainly. “No, you really don’t.”

“Will you stop trying to protect me?”

“All right. It’s your life, after all.”

Lila didn’t bother to comment that it had always been her life, for as he drove along the boulevard toward the site, she was remembering the first day she had seen Samuel in his beautiful car, was reliving the drive back to her house that evening, when she’d been enveloped by violins and the sound of rain. How safe she had felt in that car, she thought. What an illusion it had been.

Police tape encircled the former Shell and Fin, and Allen pulled up alongside it. “There it is,” he said. “Or rather, there it was.”

It wasn’t a pile of crumbled rock, as Lila had expected. The roof was mainly gone, doors had been blown outward and several walls leaned at dangerous angles. But that made it all the worse. An unexpected pang of loss touched her at the sight of the broken building. “I worked there a long time,” she said quietly.

Then, in the parking lot, she spied a crushed bit of metal and glass beneath a huge chunk of roof. “Oh, no! My bike.” It had been sitting there since the night Samuel had taken her home—thousands of years ago. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would have been the point?”

She looked at him. “I guess you’re right.”

“I know it’s hard to believe at this point, but things will work out, in time.”

Lila closed her eyes, leaning her head against the seat as Allen turned the car around and headed for his house.

Things would not ever be the same again. Not ever again.

* * *

In a city thousands of years old, Samuel waited in an alleyway. A rooster crowed, impatient for the sun to appear, and not far away a car maneuvered along the narrow street. It was cold.

Beneath his coat the comforting bulk of a .45 automatic rested against his ribs, heavy and cold—and deadly, should the need arise. He wished for a cigarette but did not light one, preferring to keep himself hidden. From a window two stories above, a harsh argument in a guttural tongue rang out.

He shifted, rolling his shoulder against the stiffness that was setting in after the long wait. It had healed, but the strength of it was still small, and the cold made it ache. Like Lila’s back.

He wondered what she was doing now, if she had left the cabin or stayed there, if she had seen the bombed-out car at the side of the road, and what she had thought of it. It had disturbed him to do that, to leave the car so conspicuously, for in sending a message to the assassins, there was a chance Lila would have received it, too. And she would believe him dead.

It pained him to think of her sorrow. But perhaps it was best. Perhaps the accident that had joined them was a cruel joke, and the sooner it ended the better.

And yet he wanted to live more certainly than he ever had. Lila had renewed him, giving him back his wonder and his hope, a hope he clung to even in this dim place with the sound of an argument over his head. For her, for his love of her, he wanted to live.

The sound of boot heels on the street alerted him, and he faded more deeply into the shadow of the doorway, waiting until he could see the face of the man who had entered the alley before he showed himself. In the darkness it would be impossible to pick out anyone but Mustapha.

But even in the darkness Mustapha was unmistakable. His long stride and broad shoulders could have belonged to any number of men, but the quirky double click of his heels on the stones of the alley told Samuel it was his brother. It had annoyed Samuel as a child, but he was glad of it now.

He emerged from the shadows to stand in Mustapha’s path. “You’ve come.”

“Alone, as you asked,” he said. “This is very dangerous for you, Samuel. There are assassins who have been paid to kill you.”

“You knew.” Samuel turned, gesturing for his brother to follow as they walked.

“Only recently. Surely you do not think I would hire them?”

“No.”

“Then why are we here?” Mustapha paused in the alleyway. “I apologize for the actions of the League, but it will not help if you are shot.”

Samuel drew out a cigarette and lighted it. “You have been marked, as well,” he said.

Mustapha had grown cagey over the years. He glanced away, down the alley, then back the other way before he looked back at Samuel. His eyes showed nothing. “If that were true, what would your people offer me?”

Samuel shrugged. “What do you want?”

“Asylum. In America. A hidden place, a new name.”

“And in return?”

“The names of the others.” Now his eyes were bleak, and Samuel felt much the older of the two. “I did not know the real truth of the League when I became involved, Samuel.” He bowed his head. “I have been a fool, but never a murderer.”

Impatiently Samuel wanted to ask,
What did you expect?
but he knew it was a futile question. Mustapha had expected power. It made him sad. “I wish,” he said quietly, “that you could have lived in France with me. It would have helped.”

“Perhaps.” He sighed. “We all have a fate we are meant to fulfill. Perhaps this is mine.”

Samuel dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his heel. Fate. The word disturbed him. “All right,” he said. In a quiet tone he outlined the plan to spirit Mustapha to America, a plan that had been worked out in advance with Organization leaders. “I will not see you until you are cleared for immigration.”

Mustapha nodded. “Thank you, my brother.”

In the split second it took to turn from Mustapha toward the end of the alley, three shots rang into the stillness. One tore into Samuel’s right arm. Another thudded into the stones of the ancient building behind him. Samuel scrambled for his gun with his useless arm, but in the slow motion reserved for such moments, saw Mustapha draw and fire.

The third bullet caught Samuel in the chest, and the explosion of pain knocked him down. For long moments he felt nothing but the roaring fury in his chest as he struggled for air. Nothing but one more breath mattered, one more breath to sustain him.

Slowly he became aware of Mustapha kneeling over him. “The chain,” Samuel choked out. “Give it to her.”

“Be quiet. The police will be here to take you to a hospital.”

“No.” With an enormous effort of will, he moved his hand to the chain Lila had given him, feeling along the edge of his fingers the blood that stuck his shirt to his chest. “Give it to her.”

“Be quiet, fool.”

Samuel gasped, unable to find the next breath at all, as if he had no lungs. The edges of his vision blackened. “Promise,” he whispered, feeling life leave him. But he didn’t know if Mustapha had answered. The black turned to red, and then there was nothing at all.

T
he night before Allen’s wedding, Lila was alone, decorating his cake while the wedding party rehearsed. The cake was a beauty, both traditional and unusual. There were the usual tiers and terraces of a wedding cake, and the frosting was as white as new snow, but there the resemblance ceased.

She stood back to admire her handiwork, feeling a glow of pleasure too real to ignore. “Well, Arrow, what do you think?” she asked the dog watching her. His tail thumped on the carpet. “One of the best I’ve done, if I do say so.”

It was a strange sensation to feel the flickerings of satisfaction in her work, to finally see a tear in the gray cloak of hopelessness she’d known the past week. And it made her feel oddly treacherous to feel happy about anything, even for an instant.

And yet, for the past two days, a lightness had been growing within her. As the moon approached its zenith, she ordinarily felt bloated and uncomfortable, a sure sign that her period would plague her in a day or two. Tonight the full moon glowed silver in a clear sky, and all she felt was sleepy.