Trophies (49 page)

"Yes, that's it: Rainwater." Jacob paused for
breath, possibly to think. There was an edge beneath his pretended
anger that I was fairly certain was genuine worry. "He left the
reception early—"

"What reception?"

"For Uncle Hubert's award ceremony." For a
flash real exasperation punched through his poor acting. "You
didn't want to go, remember? But I was there. Who knows, if you had
gone instead of me, it might have been you."

Not ruddy likely. I eased closer again. "What
did you do, Jacob?"

He backed further. Another step and he'd be
into traffic; pity it was such a quiet street.

"Rainwater gave me a phone number and a
quarter, and told me to call him when Uncle Hubert left." He
paused, again for either breath or thought. "And that's all I did.
I swear."

I traded glances with Sherlock again; his
lower lip jutted out. "How much?" I asked.

"What?"

"How much did he pay you?"

"He didn't—"

I snaked out an arm and grabbed the front of
his shirt. "How much?"

He flushed but didn't even try to pull away.
"A hundred dollars."

"A lot of money just for making a phone
call," Sherlock said.

"Right." I shook him. My fury, I was certain,
was perfectly believable. "And that's how Uncle Hubert's murderer
knew when and where to go after him. He was a good man and he
didn't deserve that."

"I didn't know!" Now he really was
frightened, or at least I found his portrayal to be suddenly
credible.

"And that's where you got the idea, isn't
it?" Sherlock said, "to go after Robbie here with a vehicle."

"I never—"

I let him go. He staggered back and grabbed a
parking meter.

"No matter where you go," I said, "no matter
how fast or how far you run, you will never escape me. Go on for
now, Jacob. Just remember: I'm coming for you."

He straightened his suit. "That's what
she
said."

Sherlock and I stepped forward in unison, as
if we were on the parade ground. Jacob flinched. We passed on
either side of him, and I couldn't resist brushing his shoulder
with mine.

"What are your plans for him, Robber?"
Sherlock said as we entered the garage.

"I don't know. I have to think of something
appropriately evil." My anger hadn't diminished. I doubted it would
any time soon.

"Just remember what he said there at the
end."

I stopped at the passenger door, waiting for
him to flick the locks. "What do you mean?"

He leaned onto the top of the car facing me,
unaccountably serious. "Maybe that's how Edith got started
blackmailing, by being furious with Jacob. Are you going in the
same direction?"

I stared, feeling the blood drain from my
face. It had happened so subtly, I hadn't even seen the trap
opening in my path. "No, I'm not going in that direction."

"Then get in. You've got one more
conversation ahead of you."

I was still counting on my fingers — I'd
spoken with Langstrom, Father, William, and Jacob; who was left?
Rainwater? Uncle Preston? the man in the moon? — when Sherlock
pulled the Camaro over into the parking lot of a fast food
restaurant, tucked it into an out-of-the-way spot, and killed the
engine.

"All right, I give up," I said. "Who's
left?"

He powered down both windows, pushed his seat
all the way back, twisted behind the wheel, and gave me the
binocular version of that cobra stare at full power. "Me."

It worked. I froze, hypnotized. "I don't
understand."

One big scarred hand reached into his front
fatigue pocket and pulled out a U.S. Army presentation case. He
opened it and looked inside, his face solemn. Then he handed it to
me, still open.

"Why don't you ever wear that?"

I could argue, I knew. I also knew I'd lose.
Reluctantly I took the case. Without a glance I flipped it shut and
slid it into my own front pocket. Someday I'd figure out a way of
telling this man to butt out and have it stick.

"Because I don't deserve it," I said
simply.

"And how do you figure that?" The scar on his
right temple was puckered and confusion darkened his brown
eyes.

Finally he'd gotten around to asking his
difficult questions.

I turned back to the dashboard. The clouds
that had threatened outside the bed and breakfast lowered overhead
in a businesslike manner; a summer-evening thunderstorm was coming
to call. It was a good symbol for my rising tantrum.

"Look," I said, fighting to keep my voice
steady, "I understand things like maintaining morale, and keeping a
unit together, and supporting the weakest link, and all that. I
understand why you and von Bisnon threw this my way. But I will not
willingly
—"

"Shut up and just explain what in the hell
you are talking about."

I leaned my head against the rest, closed my
eyes, and counted to ten. Thunder rumbled in the distance. "I am
talking about that spotter."

"What about him?"

I risked a glance. There wasn't a trace of
humor or sarcasm in Sherlock's face or voice. His jaw was square.
The weal across his temple had deepened and flared a violent red
against his windblown tan. The bags beneath his eyes could carry my
entire wardrobe.

"Robbie, I'm sorry this happened to you. I
feel responsible, not least because I pretty much trapped you into
joining my unit. But that spotter was the enemy. He was good, too
damned good for us to let him live. That's why I gave you the job.
Don't get me wrong, MacElsa's good, too, but when I need to be
certain the job's done right, well, you're better in that regard. I
know it's hard to look a man in the eye across a battlefield and
kill him in cold blood, but that's what had to happen."

Somewhere during that little speech his
meaning hit home. "Are you saying I got that spotter?"

His stare narrowed for one clinical moment.
Then he looked away and ran a hand through his hair. "Gonna need
headlights driving back," he said, apropos of absolutely nothing.
"What's the last thing you remember?"

I stared at him. Hope sang through me, high
and clear, like a violin note thrumming on and on and on. "Being
injured. I remember the pain. Then I remember not being able to
lift the rifle, Kenny radioing for a medic, fainting—" I fell
silent and waited.

I knew Sherlock would never let me down.

"I gave you the job to do." He stared across
the hood of the car toward the lowering sky. His eyes were
unfocused; in a rare empathic flash, I realized he, too, sometimes
relived that scene, if not in an actual flashback then at least in
his conscious thoughts. "You lined up for the shot but before you
took it, the spotter saw us and called down machine-gun fire on our
position. You jumped back. The kid beside me was hit in the face
and started screaming." He paused and in the silence I heard that
echo. Or was it thunder?

"Sometimes," I admitted, "I still hear
him."

"Me, too." He ran a hand back through his
hair. "Anyone would. You lined up a second time, but the enemy
gunners were still firing and one of them got you in the back."

"That I remember."

"You lay over the sandbags, not moving. There
was blood all over the place and I thought you were dead." He
rubbed his eyes; when he looked back up, they were bloodshot. "Then
you pushed yourself up straight. You moved real slow, like it hurt.
But your face was set. You picked up that Mauser and took aim a
third time. I raised my binoculars and located the spotter, just as
he tried to duck down behind one of those emplacements. I think he
knew his number was up. He didn't make it. You drilled him, and the
shot threw him back against one of those artillery pieces, and he
hung there for a minute and then slid down into a heap. And you
stared through that scope as if you couldn't believe what you'd
just done. When you looked around at me—" He stopped and rubbed his
eyes again.

I couldn't remember a bit of it. I wondered
what he was glossing over, what was so terrible that he couldn't
bring himself to tell me. I was afraid to ask.

"When you looked at me, I knew something was
wrong, and I'm not talking about your back. I've watched you
fighting this, Robbie, the same way you fight everything else that
gets in your way. It's part of what makes you such a valuable
member of the team."

Finally he faced me again. The depth of
sadness in his expression shocked me. For the first time in our
acquaintance, I believed he had a twenty-year-old son.

And I knew that finally he'd come to the
point.

Finally.

"Don't you think it's time to start picking
your battles a little better? I mean, do you have to fight
everything?"

He was asking me to surrender. I didn't want
to. I never would. But as I swiveled back to face the dashboard,
the presentation case in my pocket pressed against my chest. I
pulled it out, flipped it open, and looked at the decoration I had
earned. Even in the dimming light, the bronze five-pointed star
glittered like gold. Despite the seriousness of his message, I felt
rather giddy.

Of course, I'd face a dozen machine gunners —
with spotters — before I'd tell him that. No matter how wonderful
he seemed just then.

"I got that spotter?"

"Yep." His voice was deadpan.

That made me suspicious. "Are you lying?"

He opened his eyes wide. "Would I lie to
you?"

I looked at him.

"Okay, would I lie to you like this? At a
moment like this?"

He had a point. I refused to admit it. The
medal's glitter and its red-and-white ribbon, a narrow strip of
blue down the center, was the most beautiful thing, short of Caren,
I'd ever seen. Most of all I valued its message, with my name
engraved on its reverse. "I'd just about talked myself into some
sort of treatment even without your interference."

"Seriously?"

My cell phone chose then to ring.
"Seriously," I said, and flipped it open. "Ellandun here."

The signal wasn't clear. But even through the
static, I could hear the caller's breathing. For a long moment, I
heard no reply, and was about to repeat my greeting when he finally
spoke.

"I thought you were her son, you know."

The voice was raspy and ragged, as if its
owner didn't use it often enough or it had been destroyed with
nicotine. In that first second of my public nightmare, I closed my
eyes, listened to Glendower's heavy breathing and my own pulse
pounding in my ears. I gripped the car seat with my spare hand.

"Well," I said, forcing my voice to remain
light, "that explains the care you used searching my condo."

"Your decorator is rather overrated." His
tone was equally dry and his accent even more confused than my own.
In that insane second, I wondered how many languages he spoke. "If
I'd known whose son you were, I would not have been so
careful."

My cultivated calm frayed at the edges. "I'm
as close to a son as she had." The car seat I gripped didn't have
enough texture and the demons in my brain were closing in. I needed
something rougher. But everywhere I looked was smooth plastic,
smooth cloth, smooth fiberglass. Nothing, there was nothing.

The voice in my ear kept speaking, a
nightmare voice with a nightmare message. "And you look just like
her, which fooled me for a long time. If it weren't for the little
heart-to-heart chat you had with your dear father an hour ago, I'd
never have known."

Those two chairs, the ones facing the
windows, in full view of any lip-reader sitting outside in a car,
watching through binoculars. My pulse accelerated. Mist dissolved
the borders of my consciousness.

Then something gripped my forearm, hard. I
started. It was Sherlock's hand, big and scarred and delicate, and
he held onto me as if he could stop me from fading into the fog of
my damaged brain. I let go the car seat and held his wrist in
return, and didn't even begrudge him the moment.

"What do you want, Glendower?"

"You know what I want. No police, and none of
your military friends, or the bastard dies as he should have died
years ago. Bring the jewelry to the art gallery in two hours and
come alone."

Even with Sherlock's death grip on my arm the
mists crept closer. My hand trembled until the cell phone vibrated
against my ear.

"You really should have walked him to his
room, you know." Glendower rang off.

current time

"Stick with me, Robber."

"I'm still here." I didn't add, only barely.
I didn't need to.

A phone call to Uncle Preston had interrupted
their quiet family dinner, caused a panic amongst everyone present
that was audible on my end of the line, and confirmed that Father
really was missing from the bed and breakfast. Finally I believed
Glendower's threat: only by trading off the jewelry — the jewelry
Aunt Edith had died to protect — would I protect Father's life.

Cold-bloodedly, I wondered if it would bother
me so much if I hadn't had that heart-to-heart with Father just an
hour ago.

"Yeah, you seem okay. So call Prissy Carr."
Sherlock cut the lights and glided into a parking spot several
blocks from the gallery. "Have her meet us here. I'm not maligning
your abilities, but right now it would be an advantage to have the
codes to the security system."

I punched the buttons and listened to the
phone's electronic beeps through the growing mutter of thunder. It
cut immediately to her voice mailbox; when it stopped speaking, I
started. "Prissy, it's Charles. Call me as soon as you get this
message." I hung up. "No answer was her loud reply."

"Damn." He paused, staring into the rearview
mirror, then opened the car door and stepped out, waving down an
approaching taxi. Through the backwash of the headlights I watched
him lean onto the rear passenger's-side door. The window lowered,
Sherlock spoke a few words, then the window rolled up and he backed
away. William stepped from the cab and joined him. Together they
returned to the Camaro and got in.