There were tears, at that point, and group hugs. Jack averted his eyes, until Vivi’s voice caught his attention. “Nancy, can I borrow your Jetta to drive into the city?” she asked.
Jack’s muscles seized up. “What? You’re going to just stick the sketches in your purse? Carry them right out on the street?”
“I’ll put them carefully into the table leg where they’ve resided for sixty-five years, put the leg into a big shopping bag. No one will know they’re there,” she soothed. “We’ll all breathe easier when those sketches are safe in a vault.”
“I’ll breathe easier when that son of a bitch is dead,” Jack said.
Vivi kissed the top of Jack’s head. “Afterward, we’ll drive out of the city. Find ourselves a hotel, okay? If Nancy can spare the car.”
“Sure, but it’s kind of unpredictable,” Nancy warned. “The window in the back’s come loose, so don’t even try to roll it all the way up. It got smashed in by crazed crackheads one too many times.”
“Can’t be more rickety than my van was,” Vivi said, wistfully. “My poor drowned van. I owe that van. It gave its life for me.”
Jack’s urge to fight drained away. Look at him. Pussywhipped as they came. Following that chick around like a panting hound, doing exactly as he was told. Jesus. Still, the thought of a night in absolute privacy with her alone in a hotel room was too inviting to resist.
He wanted to have that talk that she had promised him. To thrash things out between them, so he could relax, and buy her a goddamn engagement ring already.
He wanted to close the deal. Now.
But his pussywhipped patience reached its end when he realized that she intended to stop at Lucia’s house in Hempton on the way. “There’s something I need to pick up there,” she insisted.
“At a time like this? What in holy hell could be so important?”
“It’s a secret!” She frowned at him. “You’ll understand later! Now just take this exit, turn to the right at the bridge, and stop arguing!”
He snarled obscenities as he flicked on the turn signal, and guided Nancy’s battered, coughing little car off the highway, following Vivi’s directions to the quiet street where Lucia’s house was located.
He jerked to an angry stop in front of it. “So?”
“So what? So thank you,” she said primly. “You’re very obliging. So polite, too. Do you want to wait here while I run up and get it?”
“Fuck no. You think I’ll let you go into a dark, abandoned house all alone?” He pulled out his gun. “Bring those goddamn sketches.”
“As if I’d leave them in a car,” she scoffed. “Let alone one with the back window held together with duct tape.”
Jack kept hold of her arm. The street was quiet at this hour, just a few of the houses lit, the bluish flicker of televisions here and there. But his senses were buzzing, his hairs rising. No way could anyone know they were here—unless Lucia’s house itself was watched. But who would watch an empty house? For weeks?
Get real, he told himself, as Vivi pushed the door open.
She didn’t waste time in the sad, quiet house, just flipping on the light over the stairway, and then the light for the steep stairway leading up to the attic. Jack followed her up, fuming. His neck crawled. His discomfort grew as she pried open box after box. “What the fuck are you looking for, Viv? Christmas decorations?”
“Shut up and let me concentrate,” she replied calmly.
She finally found what she sought, although she would not let him see it. She hid it with her body, wrapping it in a big plastic sack.
“Okay,” she announced. “We can go now.”
He led the way down the stairs, muttering imprecations as they went back to the car. Vivi frowned at him as he opened the trunk for her. “I wish you’d relax a little,” she complained. “You’re making me tense.”
“I? I’m making you tense?” He opened the car door for her, and circled around, slid in, and started up the engine in one movement. “Let me tell you about my tension level, Viv.”
That instant, he registered the smell. Already too late. There was a rustling sound, like a flock of bats. Panic exploded inside him—
Vivi’s gasp choked off into a squeak. A heavy arm was clamped across her throat. A gleaming blade was pressed right beneath her eye.
John grinned from behind her car seat, a panting, stinking death’s head, his face swollen, bruised and shiny. The point of the blade traced its slow, cruel way down over Vivi’s cheek, leaving a thin red line in its wake. It ended up jammed against her throat. Point digging in.
“One move, and she bleeds out in forty seconds,” John rasped.
Vivi’s system was so burnt out from adrenaline, she barely reacted. She felt blank. Empty. No matter what she did, no matter how she fought, the way out of this trap was always barred.
“I’m sure it would be fascinating to hear about your tension level,” John said, with a wheezing, giggling laugh. “We can compare it to your tension level while you’re watching me cut your little fuck buddy here into bite-sized bloody pieces.”
Jack’s hand moved. John pressed the knife tip harder against her throat and clucked his tongue. “Not one muscle. Hands where I can see them. On top of the wheel. Now!”
Jack complied. Vivi wanted to look at him, but she was afraid the knife would jab right into her artery. Her voice box bobbed against it, stinging. “It’s too late to get the sketches,” she said, her voice thin and high. “I’ve told everyone. Curators at the art museums. Sotheby’s, the press. I’ve scanned pictures of them to the New York Times, to—”
“Don’t bother, you stupid bitch,” John hissed. “I know you haven’t done any of that yet. I watched you. I have vidcams all over Knightly’s house. What a bunch of careless, stupid fucks you all are.”
“Cameras?” She was startled. “At Liam’s house?”
He laughed, and the hot cloud of his foul breath made her gag. “All that time they spent in Denver with Liam’s dear old dad,” he said. “I rigged his house. Saw every minute. You never called the press. Just that curator bitch—what was her name? Jill Rosseau. Is she cute?”
She gathered her nerve. “You still won’t be able to sell—”
“You think I give a fuck?” His laughter was shrill and explosive. “If I can’t sell them, I’ll wipe my ass with them the next time I take a shit. I just want to make…you…scream.” He jerked her head back, dragging the blade over her tendons. He stank, of sweat, and worse.
“So with Haupt dead, there’s nobody left to pay you for the job, though, right?” Jack remarked, in a conversational tone.
“Oh. Haupt. That’s another bone I have to pick with you, slut. You killed the old bag of bones before I got a chance to do it myself.”
“You’re doing this for revenge?” Jack sounded casually interested.
Vivi’s hand clenched in the folds of the dress Nancy had lent her. It closed over the linked pendants that Nell had slipped into the pocket. She slid her trembling fingers inside, felt for the lever with her thumb.
“I’m doing it because you guys fucked me,” John snarled. “Nobody fucks me. You have to pay.”
His voice was shaking. So was the hand that held the knife. Vivi pushed the tiny lever of the linked pendants. The thin gold blade snapped out, pressing against her thumb, sharp as a box cutter.
“Must have hurt you quite a bit, with that head smash,” Jack said. “You must have one motherfucker of a chronic headache.”
“Fuck you,” John said sullenly. “Shut your mouth.”
“And that kick to the knee. Did I fuck up your knee? And don’t you have a bullet wound? Your arm, or your shoulder, or something? Has it gone septic? Smells like gangrene, man. You should have somebody look at that. You probably need IV antibiotics.”
“Shut up!” John shrieked.
“Come to think of it, you look like you’ve got a fever, too,” Jack offered. “You should pop some Tylenol. That smell is intense. Whew.”