Vicki Pettersson - The Given

The old man turned his head and squinted against the headlights. Bound and tied in place, Kit thought, shivering in the winter night with only a thin sweater to keep him warm.

But then he lifted his hand to shield his eyes.

And then he pushed from his wheelchair and strode to the passenger’s side of the car without even a hint of weakness or old age.

Yanking the door open, Zicaro hemmed Kit in, and all the blood in her head fled to her toes. Justin chuckled beside her, his voice a razor in her ears. “Hiya, boss.”

The world is such a dangerous place,” Evie repeated, her fingertips tightening in Grif’s hair. He was still on his knees, bowed over as if for absolution, and he was suddenly so damned tired. He wanted to shut his eyes and curl up right here until . . . well, until it was time to die. Because Evie was right. He would leave this dangerous place now via his own wings . . . if only it weren’t for Kit.

Evie’s fingers moved down to his neck, her palms on either side of his cheeks. How many times had she held his face like this before? Too many to count. It was the way she had held him when he grumbled about a long day, or when she wanted him to listen to what she really had to say. The familiarity must have struck her, too, because when he finally looked up, she was no longer soft-gazed or staring at him with furrowed brow; no longer looking right through him, but studying him with sincere appraisal.

Evie leaned forward and continued to caress Grif’s cheeks with her thumbs. Her eyes darted as her fingertips played over his stubble, taking in his features like a sponge, and Grif did the same. He truly saw her then, he knew her beneath this new flesh, and for that, if nothing else, he sent up a prayer of thanksgiving before his gaze finally fell to the thin gold chain swinging lightly around her neck. It took him another moment to recognize the charm hanging from it. It kept disappearing into the shadows as it swung, glinting and falling back, leaving and returning again.

A ring. One that was inscribed with both of their initials, the slanting font also marking the date they were married. Grif reached up, needing to see it, and stilled it with his fingertips. This time, though, when the table lamp caught its edge, a memory sliced through his mind like a hot blade, the back of his head throbbing, then the sound of a vase crashing to the floor. He shook his head and refocused. Ignoring the chain, he slipped the ring over the fourth finger of his left hand. So that’s what happened to his wedding ring. He hadn’t seen it since . . .

The ring notched into place with a finality that spiraled up his arm and swerved back down to drop into his belly. A wave of nausea rose to his throat, and the throbbing of his skull again clouded his mind. The sound of Evie’s long-ago scream whipped through him, acting as a battering ram against his brain.

He saw again the moment Evie fell to the floor. He even felt the blood splash on his cheek as she landed, saw it dotting his forearm like end points on a map.

A map . . .

But no, he was still stuck in the past.

Evie’s dark eyes were again pinned to his, but in a face taut with youth and filled with tears, and once more he heard her say, “Damn it, Griffin. No . . .”

Blood pooled in the cupping shell of his ear, obscuring her words. Still insistent, desperate to be heard, she reached out and curled her fingertips around his left hand.

“Griffin . . .” she said, squeezing tight. He remembered feeling that.

And this time he also remembered her using her bloody fingertips to slip that cherished ring off his hand.

Grif’s eyes followed Evie as she pushed to her palms and then her knees, fingers glinting with glittering polish and his blood. She was talking again, but Grif was having a hard time making out what else she said beyond his name, and she paused abruptly as if she knew it. Then, leaning close to his blood-filled ear, she pinned that hard gaze on his, and enunciated her words so that there could be no mistake. “Griffin, dear . . . why do you have to make everything so goddamned hard?”

Grif could only shift his eyes as she reached for the doll with the diamonds tucked neatly into its face. She stared at it for a moment, greed curling the corners of her lips, then pressed it tightly to her chest, like a little girl. She caught him watching.

“What?” she said, giving him the sly smile he thought he loved so much. “You’re good at hard, I’ll give you that. But hard isn’t the life I’m looking for.”

Pocketing his ring, she began to rise just as a voice rang over the cold courtyard outside. “Tommy!”

Fear swept over Evie’s face, blanching it, but she bit her lip, stilling it again as she made a quick calculation. Glancing from Tommy’s lifeless body back to Grif’s, she cursed beneath her breath, placed the doll back on the floor, facedown, then reached behind him. What the hell was she doing, he thought, feeling her fumble at his pant leg. She was going for his ankle, he thought. She was going for his . . .

He must have whimpered.

“Shhh,” she said, and they locked gazes as she wrestled with the gun at his ankle. “Don’t talk anymore, Griffin. Just die already.”

And she pulled the piece from its holster, pointed it at his chest, and screamed, “Help! Oh, my God! Help me!”

Then she fired.

And then he was dead, wrapped in the wings of his Centurion.

“Why?” Evie rasped now, as he blinked himself back to the present, thinking the same thing. Gasping, he dropped the ring like it burned. “Why do you always have to make everything so goddamned hard?”

And just as she had fifty years earlier, she blindsided him with something else that was harder and denser than his skull, and rapped him soundly over the head with it.

Though her mind had once again been set reeling by Zicaro’s appearance—his health and vigor—Kit was already figuring it out. After all, if anyone could piece together a fifty-year-old mystery, it was the old stringer sitting next to her. A man who’d always been obsessed with the made and the powerful in the Las Vegas Valley.

“My dear, you look so confused.” He smiled, running his tongue over yellowed teeth. Kit wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone looking so healthy in her life. “And you call yourself an investigative reporter.”

His snort, and Justin’s answering one, had her clenching her teeth. “When did you start working with Barbara DiMartino?”

“With her?” Zicaro’s barked laughter was like a slap in the small confines of the car. “I’m not working with her. She shows up out of the blue last year with questions about a story I first broke decades ago. A fairy tale about diamonds in the desert.” His eyes twinkled just as brightly while he explained how those questions got him to thinking again about the last time she’d lived in town, and about the letter he’d sent Marin regarding Kit’s father.

He was supposed to take care of Gina, I got the map. Apparently, you received something as well.

So when Barbara showed back up in the valley this year, the cagey old newshound went on point.

“But what about the scam at Sunset? The insurance fraud? The trust-fund thefts?”

“Just a grift I’ve been running.” He shrugged and grinned. Even his smile was stronger. “One of many. Isn’t that right, Justin?”

Justin just nodded, and kept his eyes straight ahead. He was more relaxed and more reserved now that his boss was with them.

“I’m actually sorry to see this one end. The Sunset scam was almost beautiful in its simplicity. All I needed was one person in sales and another in accounting to oversee things.” Larry and Eric, who were not headed to Sheboygan. “Justin here is the only one who ever knew who I was, and that I was watching over everything from the inside.”