Chapter 22

Emma

Once Viktor left, I tidied away our breakfast things, helped Nick clean up and get dressed, and did some reading practice with him before he went to play Minecraft. I got busy answering emails, making brief phone calls, and lying through my teeth when I needed to. My first call was to Darcy. She picked up practically on the first ring.

“Babe, I missed you!”

Trying to keep my voice calm, I started on lie number one. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, it’s just been such a crazy couple of weeks.”

“Crazy? That’s a fucking understatement!” she exclaimed.

“What did the news reports say?” I asked. I’d been too wrapped up in everything going on with my bastard uncle to check out any media websites. My life was enough drama for me.

“They were thinking gangsters of some kind. There were high-powered weapons involved. Maybe even a guy with a sniper rifle. Can you believe that?”

I nodded, and realized she couldn’t see me, “This is Los Angeles, so yes, I’m afraid I can.”

“So what happened next?”

I took a deep breath and let it go slowly, lie number two. “You know how well I sleep. I didn’t hear anything until the cops started knocking on my door. They took me and Nick to my uncle’s home while they investigated the shooting.”

“How’s Nicky doing? He must have been terrified.” Darcy asked.

I gave a dismissive laugh, I didn’t have to lie here, “He’s a tough kid, he’s taking it in his stride. Like me, he slept through it all.”

“I guess that boy has been through a lot in his life already.”

I took another steading breath, now for the final lie, the big one. “Yeah. My uncle didn’t take it so well though, you know how he’s always been so protective of me. He never wanted me to leave his home. I guess having the cops turn up in the middle of the night and finding that I could have gotten myself caught in the crosshairs of a gang fight was too much. He ended up collapsing and had to get rushed to coronary care. He’s still in hospital but he’s doing better.”

“That’s good news, hon. How long until I can see you? We need to have a proper catch up.”

“Um, maybe give it a week? I’m a complete mess and I won’t even be able to move back home until things are cleaned up and fixed up.” I paused, then added, “I miss our chats too, I’m sorry I’ve not been a good friend lately.”

“Don’t give me that! After what you’ve been through, honey I’m impressed you’re still keeping your sense of humor,” I heard her give an order, so I guessed she was at our favorite coffee shop. Her voice came back, “You’ll keep in touch daily until we can actually meet, right Emma?”

I smiled. “I’ll definitely keep in touch. It’s good to talk to you again.”

“You too, sweetheart. I was so relieved to hear from you. No slacking off on me, right?”

Of all my friends, Darcy was the one that I suspected I would eventually tell at least some of the truth to. But even there, I would have to be careful. I doubted she would have much tolerance for the whole kidnapping story. I wouldn’t have, in her shoes.

The housekeeper had to cancel, which nixed my first interview of the day. I spent that time with Nick, teaching him a little math and coaching him on what to tell his friends and teachers when he went back to school.

“So I have to lie?”

“No, you don’t have to lie, just don’t tell them everything. They don’t need to know that we stayed in Viktor’s special place. Just say that there was a family emergency with Uncle Charles and Mommy had to go away to help and you had to come too.”

“But why lie?” He gave me a sad, big-eyed look and I sighed, feeling guilty about putting all this on him at such a young age.

“It’s to protect us, and to protect Viktor too. He does a lot of secret work and people don’t need to know he was involved.”

I brought had brough Nick an apple and a glass of milk as a snack from the kitchen, and I sat there working on a tall glass of iced tea.

“Secret stuff? Like he’s a secret agent or something?”

“Kind of.” I smiled a little. “You’ve got the basic idea.”

“Okay” He took a mouthful of the milk.

“Are you excited to find out what the test says?” I asked him, trying to quash the surge of guilt that was threatening to engulf me. The sooner we were done with all the lies the better.

“Yeah, So I might have cousins? Jose at school has lots of cousins and I want some too.”

I wished I knew. Lucia had always been secretive about her lover. I had never gotten a chance to know him before he was gone. “Maybe. I guess we’ll find out.”

“Did you ever meet my dad?”

I bit my lip, wishing I knew how to answer that without outright lying to him. “I didn’t get the chance. Your mom was really in love with him, but she never wanted to talk about him much. I think he was a man with a lot of secrets.”

“Like Viktor?”

I stopped dead for a moment, then simply smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.”

***

James Layton showed up at eleven o’clock, technically right on time. I had everything ready, from iced tea on offer, to Nick tucked away in his room playing Legos. When I answered the door, I was a little startled by his appearance, and for a moment wished that Viktor was already back home.

Layton was a tall, blond man with a square jaw, bright blue eyes and a corn-fed military hero look to him. But his left arm was in a sling, surprising me a little.

“Dr. Martinez. It’s been a while. Not sure if you remember me.” He shook hands with me, and I remembered him, the closest thing my uncle had to a private bodyguard, and his local helicopter pilot. I was surprised that Uncle Charles hadn’t taken Layton with him.

“I do, Mr. Layton, though as you said, it has been a while.” He had a lightweight silk jacket on over his t-shirt, and I instantly knew he had a gun on him. Not that surprising for a professional security guy, but I was aware of it in a way I might not have before. “Please, have a seat. I have some iced tea if you’re thirsty.”

He smiled a Hollywood smile at me. “That will be just fine, Doctor. So, I hear you’ve taken over things in your uncle’s absence?”

I smiled, I wasn’t sure how much to tell Mr. Layton about my uncle’s disappearance. If Uncle Charles didn’t want his head security guy to know his plans, then I didn’t want to raise his suspicions. It was clear my bastard uncle was involved in endless shady shit, and I was worried that as acting head of Graves Enterprises it might fall back on me. So, I kept it simple, “Well, until I can locate him, and ask him what he wants to do with everything, I have simply been trying to keep things running. Make sure everyone gets paid, insurance gets its payouts, all of that.”

He nodded, leaning forward and tilting his head. “So, uh… pardon me for asking, but before we get started, I wanted to ask you just one more question. What happened to you in that shootout at your house?”

“One of the bullets went through the window and I got hit.” I knew the whole being comatose in hospital story that Viktor suggested wouldn’t fly with my work colleagues or best friend, but I decided to use it now, rather than get into a conversation where I might have to reveal that my dear uncle was a murdering bastard—before Viktor had a chance to do anything about it.

His eyes widened. “What! You did?”

“Yeah, they had to airlift me to a private hospital over in San Diego. I still don’t know who called it in, or got me to the hospital. I don’t remember a thing, I only recovered enough to come back here very recently.”

He blinked and looked me over, eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Did they say what kind of bullet?”

“High caliber rifle, apparently. Someone started shooting directly at the house, and I was in the way.” I smiled at him very thinly.

His eyes got even wider than before. “A high caliber rifle.”

“Yeah, it nearly killed me outright. And I’m still not sure who any of them were, or what it was about, they think it might have been gang-related and I got caught in the middle.”

He went to pour himself some iced tea, his hand shaking enough to send droplets across the tray. “So, you uh… you’re handling pay in his absence?”

“He’s trained me thoroughly, in case he should become incapacitated for a while. I really do wish I knew where he was, but he’s completely cut me out of the loop on this one. I have no idea why and I’m a bit worried about him. They’re his assets. I’d really like to know how to proceed with them. But in the meantime, I’ll make sure everyone’s properly compensated, and that his businesses keep running.”

And I’ll be keeping the money, too.

He took another sip, his keen eyes flicking around to take in my face, my body language, everything. He reminded me of Viktor when I had first met him, calm but under that, with a hint of threat to him. It made me wary, and I was pleased I’d decided to be economical with the truth.

“Well, that sounds like a good deal to me,” he said in that same measured, pleasant voice. “And you say you’ve got no idea where your uncle has gone?”

“No idea at all, I wish I did. I’m sorry, if you’re looking for him too.” I sighed in what I hoped wasn’t a too over the top manner, and then deliberately dropped some bait, just in case he actually did know where Uncle Charles was hiding out. “Honestly, I’d pay good money to be put in contact with him at this point.”

The smile left his face, and he looked at me seriously, with a greedy interest in his eyes. “How good?”

“My uncle isn’t a well man, and I’m worried about him. To help me safeguard my Uncle Charles’s fortune and make sure he’s okay? Well, I figure that anyone who helped me with that could name his price.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Huh. Well, how about that. So if I, say, brought you a solid lead on where he likely is, you’d be interested?”

“I have to cover every lead, for his sake.” I gave him my most innocent, pleading smile. “Of course I’d be interested.”

Well, it looked like I finally had a bite, maybe Mr. Layton does know more about my uncle’s disappearance. I struggled to hide my exhilaration as I continued.

“So this whole time you were in a hospital bed, knocked out. And when you get out, instead of taking a vacation or something, you found out your uncle was missing, and you thought about him, first. Even us, his employees.”

I nodded, trying to appear the perfect image of a dutiful niece. “I promised my uncle I would take care of it all if he ever needed it, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. If anything, I feel like doing this is helping me recover.”

“Helping others.” He sounded skeptical.

“I don’t think my uncle would want any less—”

“Oh come on,” he said in sudden irritation, all trace of a smile gone. “Your uncle is a greedy prick. You’ve got to be naive as hell not to know that by now. He’s got a goddamn cash register where his heart should be, and no spine at all. I already know what he’d do in a crisis. He’s already done it!”

I blinked at him. “How much do you know about where he’s gone?”

He shook his head, a strange, stressed look in his eyes now. His expression was hard. “Look, I can tell you, but it’s not gonna do you any good.”

The sense of danger was increasing. I didn’t know why, but I felt suddenly that I had made a mistake in letting him in. Oh God, Nick was in the other room, and I had no idea when Viktor was getting back—

I took a deep calming breath and tried for false bravado. “Mr. Layton, if you know anything, I’ll make it worth your while, it’s imperative that I find my uncle, he could be very sick by now.”

“Goddamn it. Okay. Look, I guess I owe you that at least.” He sat forward a little bit. “The guy took as much of his money as he could and ran for it. Had me fly him out to the airport and took off. He’s…” He sighed. “He’s got a compound in Haiti. Petion-Ville, east of Port-Au-Prince, in the hills above the tent city.”

I stared at him. “Haiti?” Almost no infrastructure, hospitals low-quality and commonly at capacity, crime everywhere… “Do you know why?”

“Rich guy can get a lot more mileage in a place like Haiti, especially if he has no morals. It’s also pretty close to a major port and the airport.” He sniffed. “Look, the point is, somebody was after him. Someone dangerous enough for him to run and leave everything in a mess.” He stared at me, then hesitated. “You seem like a pretty nice woman. And way more loyal than he deserves.”

My heart was starting to beat fast. Did I hear the faint rumble of the elevator outside the door? Please let it be, I don’t feel comfortable facing this guy alone anymore. “Why… why do you say that?” I asked him in a faint voice.

He shrugged apologetically and pulled out his gun. “Because he sent me here to kill you.”