Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

Without hesitation, Jack said, “She’s my surrogate daughter.”

This sentence, spoken to a person Alli didn’t know, had the same effect as Aladdin rubbing the grime off the magician’s lamp. The real Alli, or rather the Alli Jack knew in their quiet, private moments together, appeared like a genie with the power to charm whoever laid eyes on her.

“My name’s Alli. Jack’s my father,” Alli said, taking off her midnight blue parka and plopping herself down on the seat across from Annika.

“I’m Annika.” She held out a hand, which Alli took briefly.

She looked Annika over critically, analytically, as if she were Anna Wintour interviewing a potential assistant. “But, really, you are thinking of him as a fuck puppet, aren’t you?”

Annika appeared not to have taken offense at any of Alli’s deliberate provocations. Not yet, anyway. “What makes you say that?”

“Look at you, I’d get a nosebleed in those fuck-me pumps. Look how you’re dressed with the tops of your boobs popping out, look how you’re made up with lips and nails the color of blood. And, my God, you smell like a well-used whorehouse.”

“My friend and I were going clubbing,” Annika said mildly.

Alli leaned across the aisle and leered at her. “Oh, yeah, that explains it.”

“You know, I think this is your problem, not mine,” Annika said. “You’re acting like a jealous lover.”

Alli recoiled as if bitten, which, in a sense, she had been. “What the fuck?”

“Yes, you have the best of both worlds. You have a father who isn’t really your father.” Annika pressed her advantage in a way that, though not quite cruel, led Jack to believe that in fact she had been stung, or at the very least had been made to feel that she had entered a field of battle. “It’s okay to have a crush on this man, isn’t it? To have fantasies about him, sexual and otherwise.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Alli said as stiffly as a soldier addresses his superior.

“On the contrary,” Annika replied, relentless, “I know you quite well. Unlike Mr. McClure, your real father is a constant shadow looming over you. You prefer to think of him as an impostor, even while you crave his approval and his love.”

“Hello, ladies,” Jack said, stepping between them, both literally and figuratively, “getting to know one another?”

“Fuck no,” Alli said, standing up. “She’s a stone-cold psycho.”

Jack put his hand on her shoulder. “Sit down, Alli, we have some things to talk about.”

“Mr. McClure,” Annika said with a certain urgency, “it would be prudent to leave, don’t you think?”

“In a moment,” Jack said as soothingly as he could. “This situation has to be straightened out before we can take off.”

“What situation?” Alli said. “Let’s go. I’m ready, the psycho-bitch is ready, what’s the problem?”

“You,” Jack said. “You’re not going with us.”

Alli crossed her arms over her breasts. “Oh, but I am.”

“Alli, be reasonable—”

“Not my strong suit.”

Despite himself Jack allowed his anger to spill over. “Don’t play the damaged girl card with me.”

“I am damaged. You know that better than anyone else.”

“You’re too smart to be damaged in the way your doctors and your parents fear.” Jack stared her down; someone had to be the alpha dog, otherwise things would remain out of control. “You know it and I know it, so let’s cut the bullshit. You know the rules. Whatever mind games you play with other people you don’t play with me.”

She broke off the staring contest and gazed down at the floor. “I’m dying back in that hotel room, Jack.” Her voice had shrunk to the size of a grain of sand. “I can’t go back. Please, I’m begging you.”

“Where I’m going is too dangerous—”

“Not too dangerous to take the psycho-bitch, is it?” she said acidly.

“Apples and oranges,” Jack said sternly. “Alli, set your mind to it, you’re going back. I can’t let anything bad happen to you.”

She rose again, facing him, her face imploring. “But, don’t you get it, if I stay one more night in that hotel room something bad will happen to me. I’m not kidding, no bullshit.”

Jack hesitated, which was when Annika made a tactical mistake.

“Surely you don’t believe her, Mr. McClure,” she said. “You’re not seriously considering letting her stay on board.”

Alli remained silent, which was the smartest thing she could have done. In fact, thinking about it afterward, Jack suspected that she had played him and Annika perfectly. She knew how to get what she wanted in all kinds of weather, the heavier the better. At the moment, however, he was otherwise occupied. He knew her well, better than her parents and certainly better than her doctors, whom she delighted in tricking. The desperation in her eyes was genuine. He’d seen it before when he’d rescued her from the house where Morgan Herr had kept her imprisoned.

That look—the desperation—was utterly naked, unbridled, elemental, a world unto itself, and as such it had the ability to stop time, or, in a less fanciful description, to make the past manifest itself in the present. With that look she and Jack were hurtled back in time to the moment when he’d rescued her, when danger was as palpable a presence as a hand on the throat or the plucking of a sleeve from out of a nighttime crowd. There was an understanding between them that at that moment nothing was safe, nothing was certain, that all around them lay peril and the gaping unknown. There is no more powerful situation in which to forge true intimacy, a bond that cannot, or perhaps more accurately will not, be broken.

Which was why Jack now turned to the waiting aide and said, “Close the door and let’s get under way.”

Alli didn’t look at Annika, she didn’t gloat as she might well have done. Instead, she kissed Jack chastely on the cheek and murmured, “Thank you,” in his ear, before returning to her seat and strapping herself in.

“Don’t make me regret what I’ve done,” he said in return, but in truth part of him was already regretting it. He was ready to ignore his promise to the First Lady. Even as they began to taxi out onto the runway he felt the urge to call the aide over, tell him to stop the plane. As he took a seat, he told himself that Wilde must have already departed in the limo, but whether this thought was a form of consolation in order to lessen the burden of guilt that was already beginning to weigh on him or an actual fact he never found out because he quite deliberately kept himself from looking out the window to see if, in fact, the limo had left and, with it, his other option. He’d made his choice, now he’d have to live with it.

SIX

“WHAT’S UP with you?” Jack said.

“What’s up with the psycho-bitch?”

“Please don’t call her that.”

“I’ll stop calling her a psycho-bitch when she stops acting like one,” Alli said. “Which will be never.”

Jack had taken Alli to the rear of the aircraft as soon as it had taken off and reached cruising altitude.

“Jack, what is she doing here? I mean, who is she, anyway?”

Jack glanced over her head, checking to see that Annika was still in her seat. “She and I got into some trouble, which is why she’s here. She can’t go back to Moscow, to her old life.”

“You mean she fucked up her life, now she’s going to fuck up yours.”

“It’s not that simple, Alli.”

“Okay, then explain it to me.”

“The less you know about this, the better, believe me.”

“Now you sound like my father.”

“Low blow,” Jack said, and they both laughed at the same time. “Still,” he said, sobering quickly, “two men were killed tonight, two criminals.”