I ran blindly. I saw the lighted exit sign ahead of me and nothing else. I was only vaguely conscious of elbowing dignitaries out of my way as I ran through the chamber and down the escalator. I burst onto the sidewalk and kept running down the street.
“Taxi!” I yelled into oncoming traffic. Luckily, a Yellow Cab stopped for me. I told the driver to “step on it” to Grand Central. He ran through two red lights with the promise of a fifty-dollar tip.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A warm breeze came through the window, blowing my hair around my head. It was a perfect late spring day as only New York could provide. I thought how odd it was to feel such terror, to have everything go wrong, when the weather was so beautiful. I should have been picnicking in the park, not going to risk my life to save my mother’s.
***
I bought a train ticket and ran through the station. I almost made it to the platform when I remembered that I hadn’t called the police. I found a public phone and dialed 911, which passed me to my mother’s local police station.
“Chechnya.” I enunciated as clearly as I could, but Sergeant Howard Cunningham had never heard of the place. “What does it matter?” I snapped. “My mother’s in danger. There are some very bad men heading her way. They’ll have guns. You must help her.”
“Hold on,” he said.
While on hold, I listened to a recorded message on the evils of parking in the white zone on Main Street. I tapped my foot and checked my watch. The train was about to leave, and I didn’t have time to waste on hold. I was thinking about hanging up and calling, again, when Sergeant Cunningham came back on the line.
“Sorry, but we can’t help you.”
“What do you mean you can’t help me?”
“I can’t tell you any more than that, Miss. We can’t help you. Sorry.”
I looked at the phone. It looked like it worked just fine. I must have been hearing things.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant, can you say that again? I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“You seem like a nice lady,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I didn’t want to say anything, but your mom is a real wacko.”
“I know she’s a little eccentric,” I started.
“No, she’s crazy. Crazy mean. She’s let loose her dogs on my men three times. I have a scar on my leg from one of her dogs.”
“One of her dogs bit you?”
“No! They ran after me, and I fell in one of her handmade ditches she’s dug around her place. We’re called out there all the time. She always thinks this person is after her and that person is after her. And then when we show up, she screams and goes after us with a pitchfork. Just be glad I haven’t put her away in a home. Don’t worry about this Chechnya guy. I’m sure she made him up.”
The Sergeant hung up before I could explain to him that Chechnya was a place not a person. “A lot of good that did,” I said. I rushed for the train and hopped on.
It was a twenty-minute trip to my mother’s town, and I managed to borrow a cellphone on the way. I called Detective Harriman, but his phone went right to voice mail. I gave him a short rundown on my mother and asked him to put pressure on the local police. I had no idea how to contact Brodie, and I prayed that I wouldn’t need him.
***
I stood at the bottom of my mother’s driveway, trying to catch my breath after the run from the train station. I had completely ruined my Stuart Weitzman sling-back pumps. They were covered in mud, and one of the heels broke about a half a mile back, making me hobble the rest of the way.
It was quiet as usual. A nice breeze blew the leaves on the trees, making a relaxing rustling sound. It was an idyllic location, if only it didn’t come with a batch of my mother’s crazy.
I didn’t see any cars, but that was normal, too. The house wasn’t visible from the street. I couldn’t see if someone was parked up at the house or if my mother was fighting for her life against Chechen kidnappers.
I wondered at the quiet. It could be a good sign. The absence of gunfire, screams, and grenades could mean that the Chechens hadn’t arrived yet. Even better, perhaps Gairloch lied to me, and Gurzhikhanov and his band were still nursing their wounds and had no idea about my mother.
On the other hand, the quiet could be a bad sign, like they came and went, and my mother was on her way to Chechnya stuffed in a burlap bag.
I limped up the driveway, taking peeks into the forest of trees, searching for masked gunmen as I passed. By the time I reached the top of the driveway without people shooting at me, I convinced myself that nothing was out of the ordinary, and my mother was perfectly fine, probably tie-dyeing her curtains or giving a bunny rabbit a tarot card reading.
I was near the first outbuilding when a large black-and-white bunny hopped by my leg. I recognized it as the kind my mother bred. Somehow it had gotten out of its cage. I weighed the pros and cons of trying to catch it, and I had come down heavily on the con side when three more bunnies scooted around the outbuilding and hopped up to me. It was the great escape. I bet my mother would make me help her round them all up. I stepped over the bunnies and walked around the outbuilding.
I found the cage, but all that was left were some flattened wires. Metal was strewn around the area, and the remains of a half dozen or so bunnies were mashed among the wires, grotesque mounds of bloody flesh and fur. Dread crept up my spine, and beads of sweat popped out on my forehead.
“Mom!” I called out.
Nothing. No mom. Not a peep from anyone. I called out again, but still nothing. “Dead bunnies aren’t a good sign,” I muttered. The house loomed nearby. I was reminded of Norman Bates. He had mother problems, too, and a house best not to enter.
I didn’t really have a choice. Looking for my mother meant going into her house. I decided on taking a roundabout route through the bushes to a little-used side entrance. There was no sense alerting anyone to my presence.
I hobbled through the weeds. My broken, dangling heel got caught on a patch of ivy, and I pitched forward, face-first into a bottlebrush buckeye brush bush. Thick and lush, it cushioned my fall. I rolled over. My pantyhose were ripped from my toes all the way up. Second time in two days. I took a mental note to stop wearing them.
There was nothing left of my shoe. The heel was gone; the sling-back was ripped. I pulled it off my foot, ready to throw it far away. That’s when I noticed my other foot was bleeding. There was a lot of blood, and a pool of blood beneath it.
I must have cut an artery. By the amount of blood, I only had a minute or two before I would lose consciousness. I had to stem the blood loss and fashion a tourniquet within a few seconds. I tried to calm my breathing. The faster my heart pumped, the less time I had to live.
My pantyhose would make a perfect tourniquet, I realized. I squirmed around, trying to remove them without moving my leg too much, but I wasn’t successful. My foot bounced up and down with my wiggling and hit the ground with a squishy sound that made my stomach lurch in protest.
I ignored the nausea and squirmed some more to get out of my pantyhose. Again, my foot smashed down on the ground. This time, along with the squish, a piece of bloody flesh flew up into the air and landed on my chest.
Somehow, I didn’t scream.
I peeled the flesh off my chest. I didn’t know if I should bind it to my foot. If I iced it, would the doctors be able to graph it back, like they did with severed fingers? I held it up. It was awfully hairy. No, not hairy. Furry.
I gave my foot a closer inspection. It was lying in a pool of blood, all right, and right next to the pool of blood was a tail. And a paw.
I flew back like a gymnast doing a floor routine at the Olympics. Removed from the puddle of blood and body parts, I clutched onto my foot and searched for wounds. I was completely intact, only covered in gore.
I gave the ivy patch more scrutiny. There were dog parts everywhere. Looking beyond the house, I spotted the carcasses of two other dogs, not as mutilated as the one I tripped over. I must have missed the dead dogs when I was concentrating on the dead bunnies.
“Dead dogs are not a good sign,” I muttered. I stood up and wiped my bloody hands on my skirt. Barefoot and covered in blood, I opened the side door to my mother’s house. I stood just inside the door for a moment, listening.
The house seemed the same as it ever was. It was a complete disaster, not quite a scene from one of those shows on hoarders but cluttered just the same, with weeks and weeks’ worth of dust lying on every surface. Totally normal.
But it was quiet. No cats padding across the floor. No Buddhist chanting from the den. I took a step, and a loud whistling from the kitchen broke through the quiet with an ear-splitting scream. A teakettle. My heart pounded in my chest, and I took a deep breath. My mother was making tea, and everything was all right.
“Mom,” I called. The sounds of tea pouring and teacups clanging answered me. I walked toward the kitchen.
My worries about her being on her way to Chechnya stuffed in a burlap bag were unfounded. There she was, in perfect health pouring tea in her kitchen, dressed informally in a gold brocade-covered blue velour caftan that had seen better days and was now worn in the elbows with threads dangling from the seams.
Unfortunately, though, she was not alone. Three gunmen, dressed more formally in black military garb, stood around her table, their machine guns pointing to the ground but their fingers on the triggers.
Sitting at the table was Makhmud Gurzhikhanov.
He hadn’t changed much since I had last seen him. In fact, I thought he was wearing the same shirt and pants. His long, ragged, dirty fingernails clanked against his cup when he grabbed at it. He brought it to his cracked lips and drank it down in one gulp, unmindful of the hot liquid. No one took any notice of me. I stood there, invisible or “obsolete” as Gairloch said.
“Mom? Are you okay?” I asked against my better judgment. She looked up from her teakettle, as if noticing me for the first time. At first glance, she seemed carefree, but I noticed the sweat beading on her forehead and her hands shaking slightly.
Never one to remain quiet when words were possible, my mother stared at me, her mouth agape but no sound escaping. “Mom?”
Gurzhikhanov said something I couldn’t understand, and my mother nodded.
“We have company,” she said. “Mr. Gurzhikhanov says we should be leaving now.” I didn’t know how she could understand him. She once spent a summer taking a course in Elvish, but besides that, I didn’t think she understood any foreign languages, let alone a Chechnyan dialect.
“The police are on their way,” I said, crossing my fingers and hoping I wasn’t lying.
“They’re taking me to Chechnya,” my mother said. She held on to the kettle, and her eyes darted around, her breath coming out in little pants.
“I’ll go instead. Don’t worry. You can stay here,” I said.
But there was no way in hell I was going anywhere with Gurzhikhanov. My burlap days were over. I was prepared to pull off a Houdini any way I had to, even if I had to chew off my own leg. My words weren’t total bravado. I was stalling for time. Detective Harriman wouldn’t let me down. He was sure to send somebody to help.
Gurzhikhanov growled something, making the gunmen shift around uncomfortably.
“He says you’re too skinny,” explained my mother. “He likes me better. He likes fat women.” She choked out the last bit, her eyes wet and round.
“He didn’t say you’re fat. That was totally uncalled for.” I folded my arms in front of me and gave him my best scowl. He held his cup out to my mother for her to pour more tea. “Did he really say I was skinny?”
My mother was fast. She removed the lid from the kettle and shook it, splashing hot liquid on his face. She spun around, splashing the gunmen and then threw the kettle like a shot-putter, hitting the largest gunman splat on his head.
Gurzhikhanov screamed, and the largest gunman swayed back. My mother bolted out of the kitchen, grabbed my hand and pulled me along as she ran out the side door.
We ran full out through the forest to a small, rickety outbuilding, which didn’t look like it had been used for years. She pulled me inside and bolted the door, which was no more than four slats of wood clumsily nailed together, leaving big open spaces between them.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, looking through the door’s gaps. “We’re not safe in here. We have to go into town and get help.”
She ignored me, more content to dig in the dirt with her hands. I got down on my hands and knees next to her. “Mom? Can you stop digging for a minute? We have to get out of here.”
“I can’t stop digging now,” she screeched. She dug faster, making big swipes at the dirt with her hands. I tried to argue with her that digging our way to town wasn’t the best option, but she ignored me.
“Mom, this isn’t the best time to have a psychotic break,” I reasoned.
Abruptly, she stopped digging. She poked around the dirt until she found a metal ring. She looped her finger through it and pulled for all she was worth, groaning with the strain. Just when I thought she had lost her mind completely, she managed to open a large door in the floor.
“How’s that for a psychotic break,” she said, pointing to the hole in the floor. I leaned over and looked down. The hole was deep and lined with concrete. It was also filled with enough weapons to win a small war in Southeast Asia.
“What are you planning on doing with this?”
“What do you think I’m planning on doing?” she said. “I’m going to mow them down with bullets, blow them up with grenades, and cut out their hearts with a hunting knife.”
Her eyes were wild, her pupils dilated. I had never seen her like this. She was rosy with bloodlust. I gripped her shoulders. “But Mom, you’re a pacifist!”
She swatted my hands away. “I gave up pacifism with crop circles, Abby. Deal with it.” She shoved a machine gun at me.
I didn’t take it from her. “I don’t think I can kill a human being,” I said.
“I can,” she said. She put a thick military vest over her caftan and stocked it with assorted guns and other weapons. She tucked the machine gun under her arm. “Are you sure you don’t want a weapon?”
“Maybe a small pistol,” I said.
We ran to another outbuilding, careful to stay clear of the Chechens, who were searching for us, tearing up the house from the sound of them. My mother rigged a grenade to the door of the next shack and sprayed something on the handle.
“What’s that?”
“Chanel Number Five. Strong scent, long lasting. Come on.”
We skulked around to three more outbuildings. Each time was the same setup, a grenade and a spritz of perfume. By the time we finished, the Chechens were done with the house and were outside, looking for us in earnest.
Gurzhikhanov screamed orders at his men, which helped us to avoid them. As long as we could hear them, we could stay clear of them. My mother was a woman on a mission. With the outbuildings rigged to blow, she turned her attention to a homemade pit that the police sergeant had complained about.
It was deeper than my mother was tall, and she climbed down gingerly. She rummaged through her vest until she found what she was looking for. It was disorienting to see my space cadet, New Age worshipping mother in a pit, battle-ready and rigging a booby trap to kill Chechen militants.
My life had gone topsy-turvy lately, but I never thought my mother would change. She was always stalwart in her crazy belief system of ancient astronauts, cayenne pepper vinegar cleansings, and eco-communalism. She was all about the peace, love, and joy and nothing about the torture, maim, and kill.
Just as my dreams had shifted, my mother had seemed to shift from one extreme to the other. She had started way to the left, but somewhere along the line, she made a sharp right turn.
“Mom,” I hissed. “Where did you get the weapons?”
“Huh?” She looked up at me from inside the pit. In her hands was a large, ominous-looking metal disk.
“What’s that?” I demanded.
“This? It’s an anti-tank mine. What did you think it was?”
“I didn’t think it was an anti-tank mine! Where did you get an anti-tank mine?”
“I got it from a traveling anti-tank mine salesman, of course. Do you think I’m a complete idiot? Where do you think I got it? I got it from the gun show. It’s totally legal.”
She shook her head and grunted. After fiddling with the mine, she put it on the ground and held up her hand out to me. “Help me up, Abby,” she said.
I grabbed her hand and pulled while she scaled the wall. Large clumps of dirt fell as she climbed, landing precariously close to the mine. With each soft thud, I gasped.
“It’s an anti-tank mine, Abby, not an anti-dirt mine. Don’t worry, it doesn’t go off so easy. Let’s cover this up.” We covered the pit with a leaf-covered tarp that my mother had handy under a nearby tree. She spritzed the Chanel up a path to the trap and stood back, a proud smile on her face. I had to hand it to her. Not many middle-aged women knew how to make a deadly booby trap with a sexy scent.
“Martha Stewart would be proud of you, Mom. Now what do we do?”
An explosion coming from one of the shacks ripped through the air. The noise was deafening, leaving a ringing in my ears. I dropped to the ground in a defense posture, but my mother kept standing, pleased as punch at her handiwork.
“And then there were three,” she singsonged. One of the outbuildings she had rigged was now a crackling fireball. “Time to lay low,” she added and skipped toward the trees.
I searched around for my gun, which I had unconsciously thrown into the air with the grenade blast. Finding it not far away in the dirt, I began the search for my mother in the thick grove of trees. “Dirty Harry,” I called, softly. “You there?”
Her hand came out from behind a tree, clutched my blouse, and pulled me behind her. From that vantage point, I had a pretty good view of the house and a good chunk of the backyard, which went on for acres.
A black SUV was parked at the back entrance of the house, which was obviously theirs, since my mother didn’t believe in the internal combustion engine. I would have seen it if I hadn’t gone through the side of the house. I wondered optimistically if they left the keys in it. I fantasized for a moment of taking it for a drive to the closest law enforcement agency. It probably had satellite radio and seat warmers.
“They’re probably trying to put their friend out and trying to figure out what caused the explosion,” my mother mused. She checked her nails and then her ammunition supply.
“I’m having déjà vu,” I said.
“You’ve hidden in a grove of trees while Chechen militants ran around getting blown up?” I thought of it as a rhetorical question. When wasn’t I hiding in a grove of trees while someone was getting blown up or burned alive? It was de rigueur in my life.
My mother raised her finger against her lips. “Shh,” she whispered. “The big one’s going to the other shack. It’s going to get interesting now. The suspense is killing me.”
“You sound awfully gleeful about this, Mom. You’re responsible for blowing someone up. You’re a vegan, but you have no qualms about blowing people up.”
“He wasn’t hurt. He died instantly. He didn’t scream. I didn’t hear him scream. Did you hear him scream?”
“I didn’t hear him scream, but that’s not the point.”
I didn’t get to make my point. I was interrupted by another explosion. It wasn’t as strong as the first, but the sound of the screams made up for the muted noise. The big Chechen was still alive but rolling around the ground screaming and moaning.
“I rigged each door differently,” my mother explained. “He didn’t see it coming. It’s the Chanel. It clouds their judgment. They can’t fight their attraction.”
Her pleased expression changed suddenly. She pursed her lips and tapped her finger against her temple. “But the grenade was a dud, not enough powder. Damned gun show.” She tapped her head against the tree trunk, a penance for shopping at the wrong grenade kiosk.
“Mom, we’re going to die if we stay here. You’re making them mad, and they’re going to kill us. Besides, you have had a psychotic break, and I need to get you to a doctor.”
Her crazy eyes doubled in size, and her nostrils flared. “I’m not crazy, Abigail, and you know I would never go to a Western doctor.”
I tried to talk her down. “There’s nothing wrong with crazy. I understand crazy. It’s contagious. When crazy is all around, you become crazy. Remember when every man decided to grow a goatee at the same time? Wherever you looked there was a man with a hideous configuration of facial hair? It was global insanity. Contagious. Crazy is like that. You caught crazy like other people catch the flu. It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“You have a cache of weapons.”
“I needed those weapons,” she insisted.
“For what? For an alien invasion? For the eventual PETA uprising? For what?”
“For this, Abby. For this.” She indicated the Chechens, who were helping up the injured big one.
“For what?”
“For the Chechens. I knew they would find me eventually. I tried to hide, but I knew they would find me someday. I had to be prepared.”
She was completely earnest, but she wasn’t making sense. I didn’t understand how she could know that Chechens would be after her.
Suddenly, she dropped the topic. “Your mouth doesn’t stop. It’s like an outboard motor,” she told me.
“Oh, here they come,” she said. “Please don’t go single file. Please don’t go single file. Please don’t go single file,” she muttered, crossing her fingers.
They didn’t. The two henchmen were first, walking side by side, and Gurzhikhanov followed them. They were heavily armed, and they didn’t look happy. The big one limped, and he clutched his side as he walked.
It was painfully obvious where they were headed. I was tempted to warn them. They walked right along the Chanel path to their doom. My mother mimed the spraying of perfume, in case I doubted the power of manufactured pheromones. Quietly, she lay on her belly and put her hands over her ears. I followed suit. I suspected an anti-tank mine would be on the loud side.
The last thing I saw was the smaller henchman going over the side. In the split second he realized he had made a life-altering mistake, he tried to remedy the problem by clutching onto the big guy. But the big guy had little strength left and no balance, and they toppled over like synchronized swimmers in an Esther Williams movie. I pushed my face into the ground and pressed hard on my ears.
Luckily, my mother dug a big hole, and most of the explosion was contained within it. So, there was no heat, no fire that went anywhere. Even so, I felt the boom travel through my body.
I let the silence descend on us for a few minutes before I allowed myself to move. My mother’s curiosity got the best of her. She jumped up and ran to the hole. I followed her for safety, forgetting my gun on the ground by the tree.
The hole was bigger now. The two henchmen had vaporized, their existence erased from the planet. Gurzhikhanov was luckier. He lay on the ground outside the hole, stunned and unmoving but conscious.
My mother and I stood over him. “Die,” she told him.
“Mom, leave him in peace. He’s dying. Can’t you see that?”
She spoke in Nakh, in Gurzhikhanov’s language. She spoke passionately with a fiery hatred, and when she was done, as if on command, he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.
It left me cold to watch the life run out of a man. I couldn’t help but feel that some of my life ran out with his. I felt alone and lonely. I had seen a lot of death lately, but I had a child’s view of it: It wasn’t fair. Why did people have to die?
“There, it’s done,” I said. Despite the horrors of death, perhaps it was fair in his case. Just deserts. Eye for an eye. If cheaters never prosper, killers must be destined for all kinds of pain.
Gurzhikhanov was dead and with him went the threat against me. I no longer had to worry about being kidnapped. My ties to a band of militants in the mountains of Chechnya were severed. I could go anywhere I wanted without fear. I was Abigail Williams, girl reporter, once again.
Funny, though, I didn’t feel like Abigail Williams, girl reporter, anymore. I felt like my journey wasn’t over, and the euphoria that I should have felt at the moment was waiting for the moment when Brodie would be free, as well. I had to face the facts. It wasn’t Stockholm syndrome. I suffered from stupidity.
“It’s not done. He’ll send more men now that he knows I’m here,” said my mother.
“He’s dead. He can’t send anybody anywhere.”
“Not him.” She waved her gun in Gurzhikhanov’s direction. “You don’t understand.”
Our attention was solely on Gurzhikhanov, and that’s why we didn’t notice the new visitor until she was standing within range, a black gun in her hand, pointing at us, her finger on the trigger.
She was dressed in what I gathered was her normal style. It was a wonder how she ever got on a plane in her getup. She must have spent ten hours in security. The tight vinyl jumpsuit with the vampire collar was scary enough, but the lethal stiletto boots and razor wire belt might have set off some bells at the X-ray machine.
Amy was visiting.
She had survived the fire with Gairloch and had somehow found me at my mother’s house. For years my mother didn’t have any visitors. She lived by her own wits. She rigged her own generators. She dug her own septic tank. She lived completely off the grid. If she had known what Google was, she would have insisted that they keep her off Google Maps. And yet, her house had a revolving door with visitors today. There was no end to armed assassins out to get her. And get me.
“You keep getting in the way,” Amy told me. She motioned to my mother with her gun. “Drop your weapons. Take off that vest. Nice and easy.”
“I think I can take her,” my mother assured me in a stage whisper.
I had seen Amy in action. I knew the only chance we had was to stall for time and try to escape. A shoot-out would leave us all dead. I unhooked my mother’s vest and struggled with her to get it off.
“She’ll kill us, Mom. Let it go.” I tugged, but she put up a good fight. Amy got involved, and with a couple swift moves, the vest was in Amy’s hands, and the machine gun was resting comfortably at her feet. Amy studied us, deciding, I imagined, how she would kill us.
“It’s over.” I tried to reason with her. “Gurzhikhanov is dead. The Chechen deal is over. There will be no arms shipments to Georgia. You don’t want to do this, Amy.”
“Don’t call me Amy. That’s not my name.” She spoke through her teeth, hissing. Her face was bright red, even through the layers of makeup. Her gun was pointed right at me, and her hand shook a little. I was tired. Exhausted. I was fed up with people trying to kill me. Now they were following me to my mother’s house and threatening her, too. It made my blood boil.
“Evelyne Wilhelmina Glod is a ridiculous name,” I shouted. “Whoever heard of such a name? I can’t believe you’re doing all this—murder, kidnapping, torture—for a business deal, for better trade routes. What’s wrong with you people?”
“It’s not for a business deal. How dare you say that? It’s for the Big Picture.”
I threw my hands up and paced in a circle. “Oh, not the Big Picture again. I’m sick and tired of Gairloch’s Big Picture.”
“No, not Emmett’s Big Picture,” Amy said. “What he’s doing is important, but what I do is for my Big Picture. Don’t look confused, Abby. I’m talking about love. You should know a thing or two about love. Don’t give me that look. I know the truth. Wittle Wabby in Wove with wittle Iain. You’re sick with it.”
My mother’s jaw dropped. “You’re in love, Abby?” she asked. A tear ran down her cheek. She looked at me differently, as if I had grown a second nose or something. Her head leaned to the side, and she nodded her understanding, of what I didn’t know. She caressed my cheek and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.
“That’s wonderful. I always hoped you would fall in love,” she said, softly. “But I wasn’t sure it would happen. I’m so happy your karma is good.”
“It’s complicated, Mom.”
“It’s always complicated,” Amy noted. “But you know what it is to do everything possible to make your man happy. You protected your man, even though he was your kidnapper.”
“He saved my life,” I pointed out. “He’s a good man. Gairloch is psychotic.”
“He’s a genius, a prophet. Emmett created an organization that spans the globe. He commands respect in every quarter. He’s going to change the world, if miscreants stop getting in his way.”
“He’s not going to do anything,” I said. “Brodie already figured out that he killed Taylor. His days as a free man are numbered.”
Amy broke out in hysterics. She giggled wildly. Tears streamed down her face, and she clutched onto her side with one hand. I was disappointed to see that her other hand still held on to the gun.
“You’re thick. You don’t know a thing,” she said, finally. “Emmett didn’t kill Taylor. Emmett never ordered a hit on him. But he should have. Taylor was a spineless weasel.”
Amy spat out the words with new anger. “Emmett went to Taylor in person and told him that we could start business with Georgia,” she continued. “Do you know what that means? We could arm Georgia enough to destabilize Russia. Russia would be so busy with Georgia that it would leave the whole playing field open. Russia would be dead in the water, too distracted by Georgia to take any action anywhere else.”
“So, you start a war to knock out a competitor in whatever game you’re playing?” I asked, incredulous.
“Don’t be naïve, Abby,” she spat. “You don’t think Georgia wants those weapons? Georgia begged us for those weapons. We were doing a service. A good deed. Taylor was too stupid to see the value in what we were offering. Emmett offered to do all the work. Taylor only had to turn a blind eye, but he refused. He didn’t want to take any chances. The weapons weren’t earmarked for Georgia. It was criminal to siphon off some of them to sell on the side without approval, he said. It was stealing from the people of Britain, he said. He wouldn’t be party to treason, he said. Duty to the crown and all that.”
Amy put two fingers in her mouth and gagged, illustrating her feeling for the crown. “Emmett was very generous. He offered him a fifteen percent cut right off the top, but Taylor said no on all counts. He called Emmett names, very disrespectful names. You know something? Emmett didn’t care. He said he could find another way. He didn’t need Taylor.”
“But he killed him anyway?” I asked.
“No! I told you Emmett didn’t kill Taylor.” She waved her gun at me to emphasize her point. “He came home from work and told me that Taylor was out. Later that night, while Emmett was busy in his study, I paid Taylor a visit.”
Amy smiled, and I noticed her lipstick had smeared onto her two front teeth. “You see, Taylor wasn’t as angelic as he let on. His grandfather invented stainless steel or some such thing. So, he didn’t have use for money. He was a coward. That’s why he wouldn’t commit to the Georgia deal. He was afraid of getting caught. But Taylor welcomed my invitation to meet at his office.”
Amy smiled again and looked far off, as if she was remembering the evening with fondness.
“Taylor had certain tastes that he thought I could satisfy,” she said with a smirk. “We had met in several social settings, I as Emmett’s escort, of course. I noticed Taylor’s interest. He couldn’t keep his eyes off me.”
We were entering the realm of too much information. Amy was silent for a minute, lost again in her reverie. “Skip to the murder” was on the tip of my tongue, but it was my mother who spoke.
“Go on,” she urged the thoughtful Amy. Amy had my mother’s rapt attention. She hung on every word, obviously thrilled and fascinated by whatever tastes the S&M queen standing in front of us could satisfy.
“I called him,” said Amy. “I told him that I couldn’t stop thinking of him, that I wanted to get my hands on him, or some such nonsense. Thinking back to it, it was the truth. I couldn’t stop thinking of him. I couldn’t stop thinking how disrespectful he was to Emmett, how he let him down. He was a little weasel, a nobody, and he thought he could muck up the works without any retribution? I wanted to get my hands on him but not for what he had in mind.
“He asked me to wear something special. We met at night when the offices were empty. He practically jumped up and down when he saw me. He couldn’t believe his good luck. Evelyne Wilhelmina Glod coming to him. It was inconceivable, really. I was way out of his league, and he knew it. He was married with three grown children. I think he was a grandfather, as well. No matter. He had desires, and they weren’t being met by mainstream methods. Oh, well.
“He went on and on about my outfit. Thigh-high boots, chastity belt, vinyl corset, ankle length leather coat, and gloves, of course. He ate it up. First, I had him kiss the pointy toes of my boots. He bent down, thrilled to do my bidding.”
“Oh, my,” my mother blurted out. “Why would he do that?”
Amy’s eyes snapped into focus, and she stared at my mother, as if noticing her for the first time. “What do you mean?”
“Why would he kiss your toes? Is that an English thing?” My mother was the picture of innocence. They didn’t teach S&M at New Age retreats. This was a whole new world for her, a world devoid of chamomile tea and aura readings.
“Yes,” Amy said. “It is an English thing. Where was I? Oh, yes. I asked him why he refused to work with Emmett on the Georgia deal. It was a matter of semantics. I knew why he didn’t cooperate. But his antennae shot up. He was at once suspicious of my presence. He said he wasn’t opposed to Emmett, that he would help him in any way he could. I knew it was lies. People lie when they are afraid, I’ve found.”
She motioned to me. “You’ll lie to me later, when you know you’re going to die and there’s no way out of it.” I shuddered, and my mother wrapped her hands around her middle.
“I told him I believed him. I flattered him, told him he was a man of honor,” Amy continued. “He at once relaxed. He thought he could fool me! I had him sit at his desk. ‘I like a man in power,’ I said. ‘The desk turns me on.’ I told him to separate his legs. I said I would crawl under the desk to reach him, to touch him. He was beyond excited. His face turned red, bloated like the rest of him. Slowly, I moved as if to take off my coat, but I didn’t take it off. Instead, I took out my pistol, or Iain’s pistol rather, and shot him in the gut, a kill shot but slow. I watched him for twenty minutes. The conversation was pretty dull after that.”
I heard my mother gulp. It was hard to tell if she was horrified or impressed. After all, my mother knew something about killing adversaries, too.
“That’s murder,” my mother said, the irony lost on her.
“Why did you frame Brodie?” I asked Amy.
“That worked out very well, don’t you think? I killed two birds with one stone. You may have a rosy picture of him, but I wasn’t happy with Iain. Emmett had given him everything.”
Amy’s voice rang out through the quiet with a new vehemence.
“First, Iain threw away his military career,” she screeched. “He gave his reasons, but I suspected he didn’t want Emmett’s influence in that arena. He blocked Emmett’s authority in the military after Emmett had spent so much time and effort on strategizing his position there. Iain went private, and Emmett used him in that capacity but not with the same advantages he could have enjoyed if Iain stayed in the SAS and rose as far as he could. In Emmett’s eyes, Iain could do no wrong. He thought it a happy accident to have Iain watch over Montou and the rest of his mercenary ventures. But I had my eye on Iain. I knew he would betray Emmett sooner or later, and he didn’t disappoint. After a couple of years, he announced his retirement. There’s no retirement plan at Sabre S, Abby.”
“Brodie didn’t want to work for Gairloch. He didn’t like Gairloch’s Big Picture,” I said more to myself than to Amy. It meant a lot to me. Brodie was happiest in the SAS. He loved it there. But he gave it all up because he didn’t want to give Gairloch influence in the military. By giving up what he cherished most, Brodie blocked Gairloch from gaining control of the military and possibly the country.
“I’ll deal with Iain later,” Amy said. “He’s laying low, necromorphous, but he’ll come up for air sooner or later. I’m otherwise engaged. It’s time to kill you both.”
“W-what does that mean?” I stammered.
“What do you mean, ‘what does that mean?’”
“Necromorphous. I mean, there are certain words I can never remember what they mean,” I said. “Like ‘hyperbole.’ What the hell does that mean? I’ve looked it up a million times, but nope, I have no idea what hyperbole means. It sounds important, though.”
Amy opened her mouth to no doubt berate me for my stupidity or to tell me to shut up when a clod of dirt hit her face with surprising force. She spat dirt, but it had gone down her throat. She gasped for air and another clod hit her, harder this time. I turned to see my mom in her best baseball pitcher pose. Her aim was true. Strike two, right in the kisser.
“Come on!” My mother hitched up her caftan and ran like lightning toward the house. I was fast on her heels. I expected to hear the bullets fire around me any second. We had no chance. “Serpentine! Serpentine!” my mother yelled.