A ham and cheddar omelet, English muffins and orange juice plus several cups of coffee at the Char Burger restaurant overlooking the Columbia River went a long way toward restoring Edie’s courage. Even so, when she took Kev’s cell and entered her father’s number, her belly fluttered as if she were about to jump out of an airplane.
In a sense, she was. But she’d jump holding hands with the most special, unique, sexy, incredible guy she’d ever dreamed of. She could do this. Self-administered pep talks aside, her finger quivered, not connecting with the button. “Can he track us with this cell phone?”
“Yeah,” Kev said. “There’s no GPS tag in it, but they could have the signal triangulated and get a fix on us. I should have turned the thing off last night, I guess, but I had no idea you’d given the number out to anyone until Marr called.”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Giving the number to Des, I mean.”
“No one could have guessed things would get so weird so fast.”
“Brace yourself,” she said grimly, and pushed CALL. “They’re about to get weirder.”
Her father picked up on the first ring. “Who is this?” he snapped.
That was a good sign. He was better. “Hey, Dad. It’s me.”
“Edith! Where are you?” he barked.
She hesitated. “I’m fine. How about you? Still in the hospital?”
“Of course not! How could I stay there when my daughter’s been abducted? Where are you? I’ll send someone to pick you up right away!”
Edie stared out the restaurant’s huge windows. Stray shafts of sunlight lit the shreds of fog draped across the high, dark mountains’ shoulders. Green and gray swirled and spun as she blinked tears out of her eyes. “No, Dad,” she said quietly. “Thanks, but I’m fine where I am.”
She could hear the gears grinding as he contemplated his next strategy. “Ronnie needs you, Edie. She cried all night. She’s not eating.”
Guilt was a classic, but he’d used it on her before. Betrayed her with it, too. She wouldn’t do Ronnie any good once they’d pumped her full of drugs and locked her up. “I need her, too,” she said, her voice thick. “You’re putting me in an impossible position.”
“I? I’m the one? Oh, for God’s sake, Edie! Don’t get me started! I cannot believe how self-absorbed you are!”
That touched off his tirade, but Kev was making a finger slicing over the throat gesture. She forced herself to cut over the stream of angry words. “One moment, Dad. I have to tell you something important before I end this call,” she broke in. “About an attempted kidnapping.”
“Attempted? Hah! It seems that he succeeded quite well!”
“Not Kev,” she said. “That’s not a kidnapping. That’s just me, hanging out with my new boyfriend. Which I have every right to do.”
“It’s all in the labeling, then?”
“Please, Dad, listen to me! Three guys jumped us outside my apartment last night! One of them held a knife to my throat!”
Her father was silent. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” he finally said icily. “But if you hadn’t deliberately eluded my security staff, they would have been there to protect you. How many times have I told you about how dangerous that neighborhood is?”
“Can we put aside the scolding and concentrate, please? They didn’t get me, but I wanted you to know about it, because the staff needs to be especially on the alert, to protect Ronnie.”
Dad clicked his tongue in that thoughtful way that never boded well. “A knife to your throat? How on earth did you manage to escape?”
“Kev saved me,” she said. “He fought them. And they ran.”
“I see. Really. A surprise attack, in the dark, from three brutal professional criminals, and he scared them all away singlehandedly? My, my! He must be quite the warrior, hmm?”
She didn’t understand her father’s tone. How could he be so sarcastic and cavalier about this? “Yes, in fact, he is!” she said heatedly.
“Bet he didn’t get a scratch, did he? Very impressive.”
“Dad, please. I’m telling the truth. I’m not trying to—”
“Don’t talk to me about truth, Edith. I’m sure you’ve been carefully coached in everything you say to me.”
“No! I haven’t! I was attacked, and it wasn’t a mugging! I’m telling you so you can be on the alert! This was a courtesy call, understand?”
“Courtesy? Hah! God, Edith! You are so innocent, you must be a changeling! You were never in any danger from those attackers! They would have killed him if you had been!” her father yelled. “They would have shot him! How stupid can you be? Don’t you see it?”
“But…but I…but he—”
“It was staged!” he roared. “This man is playing you! And you are making it so easy for him! I’m sorry if this hurts you, but this is not about you, Edith! It’s about what he’s trying to do to me! To punish me for what he perceives are my crimes! Whether I’m guilty or not, I don’t know and frankly, I no longer care. Do not let yourself be used in this way! It is so painful for me to watch!”
“Dad, stop.” He had it wrong. He hadn’t been there. He couldn’t know.
“I am embarrassed for you!” Charles Parrish raged on. “I can imagine your gratitude, hmm? What a bonding moment it must have been. It makes me nauseous just to think of it.”
“Then don’t think of it,” she said.
“Ah. So that’s how it is. I’ll add that to the long list of things I can’t bear to think about. Like my firstborn child, trying to poison me.”
Edie was speechless. She finally forced air through her vocal apparatus, and squeaked, “What? What are you talking about?”
“You heard me, Edith. The toxicology tests aren’t back yet, but Paul searched your apartment this morning. He found two vials of something called…Tamlix, I think it was? God knows where you got a designer poison like that. I certainly don’t want to. Dr. Katz did some research. He tells me the effects of a small dose are consistent with my symptoms last night. The amount that you splashed in my face would have sufficed. And a larger dose would have stopped my heart.”
She shook her head, as if he could see her. “I would never—”
“I know you’re angry with me, Edith. But I did not know how angry. I would never have thought you were angry enough to kill.”
“B-b-but I wasn’t!” she stammered. “I haven’t! I would never—”
“I would never press charges. I hope you know that. Particularly since you tried to stop me last night. I suppose I owe my life to that crisis of conscience.”
“No! Dad, I—”
“All I want is for you to get the help you need. For you to be safe and well, Edith. And away from that…that person. I know you would only do such a horrible thing if someone else put you up to it.”
She swallowed back the desperate, bleating denials. He couldn’t hear them. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry that you believe this of me. It’s not true. Please tell Ronnie that I love her.”
She let her arm drop to the table, and stared at the phone, still issuing a tinny squawking of frantic orders. She pushed the END button, and made it stop. Would that it were always that simple.
Kev took the phone from her without a word, and turned it off. Then he grabbed her hand, and held it. She pressed her other hand against her shaking mouth, as if her face were about to fall off.
“He thinks I was the one who poisoned him last night,” she whispered. “They found vials of poison in my apartment this morning.”
“Oh, shit,” Kev said quietly. “That’s bad.”
“And the kidnapping? He says you staged it,” she said. “Those guys, last night. To lure me into your wicked trap, don’t you know.”
His hand tightened around hers. “I would die before I would deliberately hurt or scare you,” he said. “You know that, right?”
The sincerity radiating from him was impossible to fake to her, with her kinky talents. But it wasn’t like she could explain that to her father. “I know,” she whispered. “Thank you. For being so truehearted.” The phrase was old fashioned, but so was Kev. It fit.
He kissed her hand again. “This is getting really wierd,” he said. “Who would set you up for that? The kidnappers? And why? Why would they give a fuck about framing you to kill your dad? His death would only complicate their ransom negotiations. It doesn’t make sense.”
She shook her head, hiding her face in her hands.
“I can see why he thinks the kidnapping was staged, though,” Kev mused. “I don’t get it either.”
“Well, I’m just grateful for it,” she flared. “So stop saying what a big head scratcher it is that they didn’t blow your brains out, because I don’t want to hear it again! Be grateful, OK?”
“OK.” His smile was wary, uncertain. “Sure, I’m grateful. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed being alive so much.” He turned her hand over, kissed her palm. “I want it to go on and on. Forever.”
She sniffed back tears, and stared out at the river. Trying to process it. Her father thought she’d tried to murder him.
“Funny,” he murmured. “About me staging the kidnapping.”
“Funny?” She snorted. “Oh, yeah. It’s just a big laugh riot.”
“No, about me luring you into my wicked trap. I was doing fine without going to insane lengths like staging a kidnapping.” Kev sounded disgruntled. “He thinks I’d have such a godawful time getting a date?”
His aggrieved tone set her laughing, but the laughter turned to tears. She grabbed a napkin. “He’ll never let me see Ronnie again.”
“I’m so sorry, babe,” he said. “I don’t know how to fix that.”
She shook her head, grateful for him for not offering false encouragement. Some things weren’t fixable. They had to be swallowed, and simply endured. She was sorry he’d suffered, but it was good to be with someone who understood that. So much didn’t need to be said.
She flung her head back, lifting her glasses to dab the tears out of her eyes. “We need a plan of action.”
“We’ve got a couple of options,” he said. “I’m still in favor of falling off the grid. It would be hard, but we could do it.”
“Reindeer, emus? Or goats in Crete?” She gave him a wobbly smile. “I can’t give up hope of ever seeing Ronnie again. I’m just not ready to do that. I feel like I’m betraying her already. And if we ran, it would make me feel guilty. Even though we’ve done nothing wrong.”
Kev gazed at her for a moment. “OK. That leaves plan B.”
“Which is?”
Kev gazed into his coffee, apparently reluctant to go on.
“Just lay it on me, OK?” she begged. “Don’t leave me hanging with the significant silences. I can’t stand it. My nerves are shot.”
He nodded. “Last night, a strange thing happened to your dad,” he said. “A strange thing also happened to you, and to me. So let’s take a closer look at what all three of us have in common.”
There was an odd inevitability to it, as the name popped out of her, like it had been waiting to be let free. “Osterman,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“But…but he’s dead,” she said helplessly. “Three years ago, now. He was burned to a crisp. A fire in his lab. It’s a dead end.”
Kev shook his head. “Osterman murdered and tortured people for decades. I don’t buy the fire in the lab. There’s more to it than that.”
“So you’ll take Des up on his offer to look at the archives?”
Irritation flashed across Kev’s face. “I don’t look forward to having him in my face, but it’s a start. He might be in cahoots with your dad, so that’s a risk.” He grimaced. “I’ll call him. I guess.”
“Call him,” she suggested. “Call him now. Let’s get started.”
Kev shook his head slowly back and forth. “I get started, Edie. Not you. You stay guarded in a safe, remote place.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. No more, no less.” His eyes were hard as flint.
Her spine straightened. “No,” she said. “We do this together.”
“Don’t start.” She’d never heard his voice sound so cold. He sounded like a different man. “This is an argument that you will lose.”
Well, she was a different woman, too. “No, Kev,” she said. “I have not exchanged one prison for another. Or one warden for another.”
“I’m sorry that you see it in those terms.”
“Those are the only terms there are to see,” she said. “Consider this. To make this work the way you want, you would have to genuinely abduct me. Right here and now, in this restaurant. I refuse to comply. I am done with that bullshit. Now and forever. Understand?”
His eyes closed. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Christ, Edie.”
“You can’t do it, Kev,” she said quietly. “It’s just not in you. You’re not like my dad. And thank God for that.”
He buried his face in his hands. “Shit,” he muttered.
Several minutes passed while she let him digest that. He finally lifted his face, his eyes blazing with intensity. “A compromise,” he said.
“I’m not compromising about this,” she told him.
“Please,” he said. “I can’t tell you why I feel this way, but I sense it so strongly. You’re in danger. You, specifically. Those men were trying to abduct you. Your father is trying to control you. Somebody’s trying to frame you for murder. Des Marr wants to fuck you. Everyone is after you, babe. Just let me do this one thing alone. The archives. Just that. Just stay off the screen for just a couple of days, while I get a clearer sense of what we’re dealing with. Please, Edie. I love you.”
“That’s not the issue!” she snapped. “Do not use that against me!”
“I just found you!” His voice was rough. “Let me keep you safe for a couple days, at least! I’m so afraid of losing you. I came so close last night. I can’t stand it. It would kill me. It would fucking destroy me.”
“What about my fear of losing you?” she yelled back. “Isn’t that just as valid? This is not fair! Why aren’t we arguing about me giving you permission to traipse around alone, huh? Explain that to me!”
His mouth hardened. “Sure, I’ll explain it. Extensive martial arts training, three guns, five knives, and a roll of garotte wire. Sorry, correction. Four knives, since I left one in that fucker’s leg. That’s why I go, and you stay. Just a couple days. That’s all I’m asking, Edie.”
“And then? What happens then?”
“Then we renegotiate,” he said smoothly.
She tilted her head and regarded him through slitted eyes. “Like hell we do. You think you’re so slick, don’t you?”
“Slick ain’t even the word for it,” said a harsh, gravely voice from behind them. “Watch out for Kevlar, the mystery man, honey.”
Their heads whipped around. Three people were arrayed near the table. An older man led the phalanx, about seventy, broad and thickset, with a scowling bulldog face, a grizzled crew cut and glinting silver stubble. A woman of roughly the same age built like a large brick flanked him. Same down-turned scowl, same bulldog face, but her hair was a bouffant helmet of curls dyed matte black, and she wore a paisley polyester caftan and lots of clashing plastic jewelry.
On the other side of the old man was a muscular, dark, extremely handsome guy who was grinning crazily, from ear to ear. She recognized the dimples from the Lost Boys magazine article.
Wow. This was Kev’s adopted family.
Kev let out a sigh of resignation. “Edie, meet the Ranieris.”
Kev would never have dreamed that he could be grateful to that motley crew for interrupting, but he could’ve kissed them. Even Tony.
“I coulda shot your ass up ten times over for how you wasn’t paying attention, kid,” Tony scolded, and then he and Rosa trained squint-eyed stares on Edie as if she were a heifer being considered for purchase. Bruno just scoped her shamelesly, waggling his eyebrows.
“Nice, Kevlar,” he said, in admiring tones. “Sweet.”
Tony sat next to Kev. Rosa sat next to Edie. Rosa’s fixed, hungry stare made Edie squirm in her chair. Bruno took the last chair.
“So this is her,” Tony said heavily.
“Edie, this is Tony Ranieri, Rosa Ranieri, his sister, and Bruno, their grand-nephew,” Kev announced.
Edie nodded with a shy smile, and murmured a greeting.
“So you’re the billionaire’s daughter,” Tony announced.
Fucking ouch. Kev hissed through his teeth. Tony had the grace and subtlety of a jackhammer. “Tony, goddamnit—”
“You ain’t what I expected,” Tony sounded faintly miffed.
“What did you expect?” Edie asked, bemused.
“A fluffhead socialite,” Bruno offered helpfully. “Gidget goes to Paris. You know, pearls and heels and ringlets and a big dress.”
She laughed. “I’ve got the big dress, at least. It’s at the hotel.”
Kev thumbed the cell on, and pulled up the photo he’d taken of her in the dress. He handed it to Tony. “Get a load of the dress.”
Tony peered over his glasses, staring into the little display screen, and let out a grunt of cautious approval. “Hmmph. That’s more like it.”
Rosa grabbed the phone, and let out the exact same satisfied grunt. “Nice dress. Now that looks like a billionaire’s kid.”
They stared at Edie again, trying to cross-reference the big dress billionairess image with the flesh-and-blood girl, but he could see that they were struggling with it. Edie had dressed down again, bigtime. Back were the dark rimmed, awkward glasses, the long mop of concealing hair, the faded jeans, the loose, knee-length button-up sweater. Strange, though. Trying to disguise her beauty made it all the more poignant for him. It also made him want to grab her, peel it all off. Wallow in her splendor. God. So pretty. She glowed.
“I actually don’t have anything to do with the billions,” she blurted out.
Tony and Rosa looked at her blankly. “How’s that, honey?” Tony asked.
She looked uncomfortable. “I was cut out. I’m just your average starving artist now. No billions. In fact, my bank account’s overdrawn.”
Tony grunted. “Yeah, we heard your daddy was a real hard-ass.”
She slanted Kev a glance. “Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that in my life lately.”
“So what’s wrong with you? Why’d he cut you off?” Tony demanded. “What did you do?”
“That’s Edie’s private business, Tony,” Kev said.
“No, it’s OK,” she said. “There are a lot of reasons, actually. I embarrass him. I say whatever I’m thinking at the wrong times, I don’t dress appropriately, I chose the wrong occupation, and I, ah…I don’t follow orders well.” She shot Kev another hard look.
He gazed back. She wanted a challenge? He’d let the Ranieris loose on her. Let them tear and rend. He’d be damned if he’d intervene.
“And now he’s pissed because of Kev,” Bruno concluded. “It’s a real Romeo and Juliet scenario. Super romantic. Man, I go for that.”
“I wasn’t expecting all of you to come out here,” Kev complained.
“You weren’t thinking,” Bruno said. “Fortunately, you’ve got me to think for you. Zia Rosa’s the person least likely to be associated with you in a cyber-search, so we had her rent the car. And once she knew, you think she was going to stay behind? With a new girlfriend to grill?”
“I guess not,” he said, with ill grace. “Jesus. What a circus.”
“So me and Tony and Rosa go back to the city in my car, and I go back to work this afternoon, since some of us poor slobs actually have to work. Remember work? Or has it been too long, for you?”
“I know all about work,” he muttered.
Bruno snorted. “And I come up to the cabin tomorrow morning bright and early to spell you and do my pit bull imitation, so that you can go do your Osterman archives searching bullshit in santa pace.”
“Ah! Really!” Edie’s tone made Kev’s stomach sink. “So you two have already organized everything! How helpful of you!”
Everyone promptly found something else to look at. Bruno looked up at a wall full of Indian artifacts, whistling. Tony and Rosa became deeply absorbed with the tugboat going by on the river outside.
In fact, Kev had taken great care to discuss this aspect of the plan with Bruno while Edie was in the shower. For simplicity’s sake.
“This stuff takes some advance planning,” he muttered lamely.
Her elvish eyebrow tilted up to a dangerous angle. “It would have been nice to be invited to the planning session.”
“So, ah, Edie!” Bruno broke in, his voice big and fake and hearty. “How’d you like the rose petals and the candles?”
Edie couldn’t help but smile at that transparent, bouncing clown. “I loved them,” she said softly. “It was wonderful. The food was marvelous, too. Thank you. It was a lovely thought.”
Well, hell. Bruno’s instincts and timing were better than his own, but that reflection just irritated the shit out of him. Sweet-talking punk. “Breaking into my apartment was somewhat less wonderful, though.”
Bruno gave him an indignant look. “Just trying to help you out, buddy. You would never have thought of rose petals on the bed in a million years. Watch and learn.” He waggled his eyebrows again. “A guy gets amazing mileage out of a little gesture like that.”
Kev was so grateful for the giggle that burst out behind Edie’s hand, he decided not to come down on Bruno after all. For now.
Edie turned her attention to Tony. “I’ve been so curious to meet you, after what Kev told me,” she said.
Tony looked intensely suspicious. “What did he tell you?”
“How you saved his life,” Edie said. “And chased that guy away who was beating him, and left your job to hide Kev. That was brave.”
Tony grunted. “Stupid, more like,” he said gruffly. “Real nice ’83 Cadillac Escalade I had to get rid of after I put him in the backseat. He was more like raw hamburger than a man. Shoulda seen that damn car. Had to bribe someone to bury the sorry piece of shit in a landfill.”
Kev winced. “Jesus, Tony! Too much information!”
But there was no stopping Tony. “It ain’t like you can take a car to an auto detailer and say hey, man, can you get a couple a quarts of human blood outta this thing? Fuck, no. Had to ditch the whole car for this crazy punk. He cost me money from the start. Shit, he still does.”
“And sewing him up, ah, madonna santa,” Rosa flapped her hands expressively. “His face. Like sewing wet tissue paper.”
Kev slanted Edie an apologetic glance. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s OK,” Edie replied. “I saw you in that condition, too.”
That was a shocker, and required lengthy explanations about Edie’s presence at her dad’s office that fateful day eighteen years before. But Kev was getting antsy. “We need to move,” he broke in.
Tony and Rosa hovered next to Edie while he paid for the meal, eyeballing her as if she were some exotic animal. They were going to embarrass the shit out of him. The price he had to pay for their help.
Zia Rosa opened fire. “You want babies, honey?” she demanded.
Edie turned pink. “Yes,” she admitted. “Very much. Someday.”
Zia Rosa snorted. “Someday? What’s this someday crapola? You ain’t getting any younger.” She glared at Kev. “He certainly isn’t.”
“You don’t even know how old I am, Zia,” he reminded her, as he stuffed his change into his wallet.
“Old enough.” Zia Rosa dug in her imposing shiny black plastic purse, and tossed him the keys to a rental. “Old enough.”
“Edie’s twenty-nine,” he informed her.
Rosa was unimpressed. “My nonna back in Brancaleon was a grandmother by the time she was twenty-nine!”
“You can’t be recommending that as family planning,” Kev said.
Rosa gave his good cheek an admonishing pat. “You wait too long, your sperm’s gonna get old.”
“My sperm is fine, Zia. Back off.”
Edie embraced the older woman, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Give us a little time. We need to work out some things first,” she said. “But we’re already talking about it.”
“Talk?” Rosa’s mouth quivered as she sternly refused to smile. “I know what makes babies. It ain’t talk. You don’t start now, Tony and me’ll be too feeble to be good nonni. The babysitting, the diapers—”
“I ain’t changing no fuckin’ diapers,” Tony said darkly.
Zia Rosa spat something at him in that language Kev often cursed in. Edie glanced at Kev. “What did she say?”
Kev hesitated, but Bruno leaped into the breach. “She said, ‘shut up, dickhead,’ he translated cheerfully. “Very grandmotherly, huh?”
“Good-bye, Zia,” Kev said loudly. “Thanks for the car. I owe you.”
Tony and Bruno each took one of Zia Rosa’s elbows, and hauled her toward the door.
“Eat my pork tenderloin!” she called. “Rice pudding, too! It’s in the trunk!” She jerked her chin at Kev. “Strong sperm! Eat meat!”
Tony and Bruno led Rosa out to the parking lot. When Bruno’s BMW pulled away, Kev looked over the garish yellow Nissan Xterra that had been parked beside it. An eye-jarring, memorable color, but what the fuck. That was Zia Rosa for you. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Edie said. “She’s impatient. She wants grandbabies. She thinks of you as her son. I think she’s great. I think they’re all great.”
He glanced over at her, startled. “Really? You do?”
“So direct,” she said. “You know where you stand with them.”
It was the God’s own truth, but it had certainly never occurred to him to be grateful for it. “Huh. Glad it works for someone. Let’s move.”