Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

He caught her by the wrists and held up her arms so that she had to breathe, and she felt like a little kid in the middle of a tantrum. She tried not to cry. She tried so hard, but still felt the tears hot on her cheeks.

“It’s okay, kid.”

She fell against her father’s chest, bonier than she remembered, smelling of smoke and stale sweat, and he stroked her hair, telling her to shush.

It was too much.

She pulled herself away. “I’m going to find out.”

A pained expression crossed his face. “I know.”

“Mattie recognized the key?”

He nodded.

“Did she say-”

“I didn’t talk to her.”

“But Nick did,” Dani said, knowing how the three of them-no, she thought, the four of them-operated. Mattie and Nick, their only son, their only granddaughter.

“He didn’t tell me anything. Or, I should say, he didn’t tell me everything he knows.”

She straightened. “I’ll call Mattie first, then Nick.”

“It won’t do any good,” her father said, “unless they feel like talking.”

“I don’t care-”

“Get some rest, Dani. Call them in the morning.”

“Pop, the other day when I was robbed, I called Mattie, and she acted strange. She must have remembered the key, but she didn’t tell me. And Joe Cutler and Zeke…” Dani ran a hand through her hair, trying to keep the threads of her scattering thoughts together. “They’re both from Mattie’s hometown.”

“Cedar Springs,” John said.

Dani stared at him. “You knew?”

“They came north that summer.” He wasn’t looking at her. “They stopped at my office in New York to find out where Mattie was, and I told them. But I thought Saratoga was too far for them to bother to go, and she never mentioned them to me-for years I assumed they didn’t connect.”

“You never asked her?”

He shook his head, tapping out another cigarette from a crumpled pack. “Mattie doesn’t like to be reminded of Cedar Springs. And Lilli was gone by then. I just didn’t think about it.”

Dani picked up the photograph from the bed where her father had dropped it. “So Joe Cutler could have taken this himself. He could have-”

But she stopped, unwilling-terrified-of speculating further.

She knew why Zeke was in Saratoga now, today.

He was there to find out if his brother had had anything to do with her mother’s disappearance.

“Take a hot bath,” her father said. “Let all this settle a bit before you get too far ahead of yourself.”

“Pop, if you find out anything,” she said, “if you know anything-”

“I’ll tell you.”

“You promise?”

He tucked his cigarette in his mouth and struck a match, lighting it, polluting the air. Exhaling smoke, he said, “I promise.”

She wondered-and expected he did, too-if that promise was as empty as all the others he’d made to her over the years. Or maybe it didn’t even matter anymore. Maybe it was just enough that he wanted to keep his promises.

Smoke or no smoke, she kissed him good-night.

“This Cutler character-you’re all right with him?”

She smiled. “You bet.”

By the time she settled into her hot tub, scented water swirling around her, Dani realized she had no intention of kicking Zeke out of the inn. It wasn’t a question of surrendering, although he clearly wasn’t going to leave unless he wanted to leave. He’d vacate his room, perhaps, but he wouldn’t necessarily vacate the premises. Dani preferred knowing where he was.

She opened Quint Skinner’s book to page one and began to read.

Zeke sat on the porch swing of the small Cape Cod house Quint had rented in a middle-class neighborhood about two miles from the center of Saratoga Springs. It was painted sunny yellow and had an herb wreath on the front door and a painted wooden goose tacked up under the porch light. Charming. It was dark out, and the swing creaked. Zeke had been there almost an hour, trying not to think about Dani, thinking about her anyway. She was a woman who could make a man dream again.

He heard a car door shut.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I like the herb wreath,” Zeke said. “The goose is a nice touch, too.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-soldier climbed the steps and didn’t put his gun away until he’d made sure Zeke saw it. It was a Smith & Wesson.38 that fit nicely into the shoulder holster under Skinner’s silk jacket.

Zeke gave the swing another little push with his feet. “You have that thing when you robbed Dani Pembroke?”

“Go home, Zeke.”

“It amazes me how a man of your limited mental capacity could win a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, that’s the only thing you’ve ever done, isn’t it? Tell me, were you tempted to blow Dani away when she came after you with her red high heel?”

Quint leaned against the railing and bent one knee, deliberately casual. There was enough light from the street and nearby houses that Zeke could make out his squinted eyes and blunt, shrapnel-scarred face, and he felt a wave of strong, mixed emotions-anger, envy, compassion. Quint had been with Joe when he died. He’d seen men die because of Joe. He’d served with Joe, had admired him. And he’d watched him transform from a kid from a small southern town who knew right from wrong into, in the end, a man who had betrayed his comrades and himself. In a way, it wasn’t Quint Skinner who’d made Joe Cutler, but Joe Cutler who’d made Quint Skinner. The passion and pain of Quint’s writing seemed incongruous with the big, red-faced man before Zeke now, a man who’d push a hundred-ten-pound woman across her own bedroom. But that was part of the power and the appeal of Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall. It captured the emotions of men too many thought weren’t supposed to have any emotions at all.

“What do you want?” Skinner asked.

Windows were opened up and down the street for the summer’s night, and Zeke could hear televisions, dogs barking, the cry of a baby. “You stole the two gate keys, didn’t you?”

Quint crossed his arms on his massive chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you tossed my room this morning. Find anything interesting?”

But he knew Quint wouldn’t answer, so he got up from the swing, stretching. He needed sleep. With Pembroke security no doubt on the alert and John Pembroke staying at the little purple cottage, Zeke figured he could skip keeping watch on Dani tonight.

He stood close enough to Quint to see the bulge of his shoulder holster even in the dark. “Did Joe show you the picture of Lilli and Mattie in the hot-air balloon before he died?” His voice was just over a whisper.

Quint’s eyes disappeared in the thick, scarred flesh around them. “Joe didn’t show me anything.”

“Here’s what I think,” Zeke said. “I think you’re in Saratoga to find out what happened to Lilli and pin it on my brother so you can revive your career.”

“My career doesn’t need reviving. But you go ahead and think what you want to think.”

“I’ll do that.”

He started off the porch, got halfway down when Quint grabbed his arm and pulled him around. His fingers dug in deep, in a grip that probably would have broken Dani’s arm. Zeke didn’t flinch. He met Quint’s gaze dead-on.

“You think you’re tough,” Quint said in a low voice. “You think you’ve seen action doing the work you do, but you haven’t seen anything. Nothing like what your brother saw.” He hissed his words, saliva spraying from his mouth. “You can’t make up for Joe. You can’t go through what he went through and prove you wouldn’t become what he became.”

He released Zeke and spun around and made the front door in two long steps. The herb wreath wobbled when he slammed the door shut behind him.