The Red Hunter(105)

Claudia saw the headlights of an approaching car and recognized the sleek lines of Ayers’s Mercedes as it came to a stop and he burst out of the front door.

“Daddy!” Raven shrieked, pulled away, and shimmied herself out of the truck, ran for her father. He grabbed her and held on tight, but he was looking at Claudia.

“What happened?” he said. “What on earth happened here?”

What had happened?

One minute she was young and beautiful and happily married, trying to have a baby with her handsome, sweet husband. The next minute, she was sitting in the back of a pickup truck, watching the house she’d been trying to renovate go up in flames. How had she gotten here? How many accidents and mistakes and choices had she made? How many of them had been wrong or right, good or bad? Maybe that’s all life was, this impossibly complicated helix of choice and accident, things you could control and couldn’t. And when the day was done, the only measure of success was how happy you were, how much you loved and were loved.

“Is he her father?” asked Troy. The kid seemed stunned. They’d wrapped him in a blanket, and she swore he looked just like he did when he was seven years old, curled up in his X-Men sleeping bag. Claudia remembered that it was the whole reason poor Troy was here, because he was trying to help his friend uncover the mystery of her identity. Poor kid.

Claudia looked at the sweet boy who loved her daughter. It was so obvious. She touched the still soft skin of his cheek, felt with surprise the stubble on his jaw.

“Of course, he is,” she said. “Look at them.”

Ayers and Raven walked over toward the truck, their steps wobbling as Raven clung to Ayers and he held her with a strong arm. She could hear Raven talking—tunnel, bag of money, these men came, locked us in. We were trapped. She was rambling, not making sense. Ayers looked confused, worried. Claudia shifted herself out of the truck, came to stand before Ayers.

“Let me tell him,” said Claudia. Raven looked between them and nodded. She went to Troy, and the two of them walked off.

“Don’t go far,” Claudia called. “Stay away from the fire. And the woods.”

Raven nodded, for once without snark or comment.

“What in God’s name happened?” whispered Ayers. “Claudia.”

He put a gentle hand to the bandage on her nose, to her jaw.

She sat, and he sat beside her. And she told him everything.





forty-three


Still lying on the ground, I stared at the gun he had pointed at me. I had to admit, it was disappointing.

“You’re going to shoot me?” I said. “What a cop-out.”

I literally didn’t have the strength to lift myself up. I always figured it would end like this, with me on the ground, bested by some thug with a gun. Maybe Beckham or Didion, maybe some thug on the street. I didn’t expect it to be a man I trusted and loved. But that’s the statistic, right? A leading cause of death in young women is homicide. Most of which were perpetrated by men they knew.

“You’re a good fighter, Zoey,” he said. He was breathless and, I could tell, hurt. I’d gotten some good strikes in. “I taught you well—a little too well. And you have youth on your side.”

He chuckled, as if we were just on the dojo floor discussing a sparring session.

“So how do you want this to go?” he said.

“How do you want it to go?” Another voice.

He came out of the darkness, resting heavily on his cane. He had a portable oxygen concentrator in a sling around his chest, the nasal cannula in his nostrils. It emitted a strange rhythmic squeak like a hamster slowly turning a wheel. In his free hand, he held his revolver.

Paul.

He did not look well, pale and sweating. Seeing him gave me the strength I needed to get up. I limped over to him, wrapped him up, and he held on tight. He felt so thin.

“Zoey,” he said. He kissed my head.

“Christ on the cross,” said Mike. “How did you get here, man?”

“In all these years,” said Paul. “I never once suspected you. You know that?”

“So when did you figure it out?”

“I heard you on the phone,” said Paul. “You thought I was sleeping. I heard you talking, and it all clicked in. Stupid. I was blinded by friendship. I never dreamed you’d hurt them.”

“How’d you get here?” Mike asked. “From the hospital.”

“Car service,” he said. “I came to get my girl.”

Mike bowed his head. When he looked up, I expected to see regret. “Where is the rest of the money?” he asked instead, his face blank.

“You got your pay,” said Paul. “That was always the deal. A hundred grand for an hour’s work. Why did you want more?”

“We always want more.” He laughed a little.

“Not all of us,” Paul said. “I told you that money was for Zoey and Heather.”

“The woman you loved and her daughter.”

“That’s right.”

Mike nodded in my direction. There was a coldness to him I’d never seen. I’d seen him angry, worried, sad. But I’d never seen what I saw in him tonight. You need it to win, to really win. You have to be willing to kill—or die.

“Does she know?”