Wish You Were Here, page 19
“What about you?” Piper asked.
Freya stared out at the water. “I need to think for a minute.”
“Are you still leaving?”
Freya stayed quiet, not wanting to answer. She just wasn’t sure anymore, about anything. Which was part of the reason she wanted to go home, but now...
“Hey.”
Freya looked up to see Piper reaching into her front pocket. She pulled out a small purple velvet pouch. She held it in her hands for a moment, then opened it and took out a coin, which she handed to Freya.
Freya twirled it in her hand; it was an Irish half-crown. “Where’d you get this?”
“It’s a magic wishing coin,” Piper said. “What you do is you face east”—she pointed across the lake—“and you close your eyes and hold it over your heart and you make a wish. But the wish has to be really good, something you want more than anything, not like money or that some stupid team wins the World Series. It has to be important. Then you put it back in the pouch and keep it with you until it comes true.”
“Wow,” Freya said, handing it back to her. “That’s pretty cool.”
Piper didn’t take it. “I want you to have it.”
She held the little pouch out for Freya. Freya took it carefully. “Are you sure? Magic coins don’t come around every day.”
Piper held Freya’s eye. “Make a wish. See what happens.”
Freya smiled, holding the coin in her hands. “Thanks.”
At the path from the woods, Ruby stepped out, her arms crossed over her stomach, her stance protective and ready to pounce. Freya patted Piper on the knee.
“Go on with Ruby,” Freya said.
Piper stood up. “You coming?”
Freya smiled. “In a minute.”
“Okay.” Piper got up and started down the dock. Freya watched as she joined Ruby and disappeared into the woods, which were getting darker by the minute as the clouds above darkened, matching her mood. She stared down at the coin in her hand, wondering...
The wish has to be really good, she heard Piper’s voice saying. It has to be important.
What do I have to lose? She closed her eyes, put the coin over her heart, and made her wish.
“Talk about the luck of the Irish.”
Freya’s eyes flew open and she scurried to her feet to find a stocky, white-haired man standing behind her in a tweed coat with patches on the elbows, and a shot of fear coursed through her.
“You’ve got your mother’s eyes,” Malcolm Brody said as he moved closer. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
***
Nate watched from his bedroom window as Ruby walked back up the path with Piper in tow, breathing a sigh of relief as he heard the front door shut behind them downstairs. He kept his eye on the path from the lake; no Freya. He pulled back from the window.
She probably just wanted some time alone, and if that’s what she needed, he was going to give it to her. Judging by the sky, it was going to rain soon; she’d be back before it did. He’d get a chance to talk to her again.
Just give her some space, he thought, but doing nothing was making him crazy, so after a few minutes of pacing, he went to Piper’s door and knocked.
“Come in,” she called.
He poked his head in to see her bent over her desk, head half hanging out the window, the sound of clanging metal suddenly reverberating through the room.
“Piper?”
She pulled back in and looked at him, smiling, as the clanging quieted down. “Hey, Dad. Check it out.”
He stepped in and looked at the window. Over the sill were the hooks of a metal fire escape ladder. He poked his head out and saw the dangling chains and rods still swinging by the side of the house. He pulled back in and smiled at her. “Smart kid.”
“Ruby told me it wasn’t safe for me to sleep with the fire extinguisher, so she found these in the attic.” She motioned to three boxes sitting next to the wall of her room. “There’s another one for your room, and for Ruby’s, and one for the bathroom.”
“Good to know.” Nate sat down on the bed next to his daughter. “So, how are you doing?”
“Okay. I wish she wasn’t going, though.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “Me, too.”
“Do you think maybe we can go visit Freya in Boston?”
Nate stared down at his feet. “That’d be up to her.” He looked at Piper and smiled. “But yeah. Sure.”
“Good.” She smiled back. Nate pushed up from the bed and went to the window.
“Do you love her?”
He turned around. “What?”
“Freya,” Piper said. “I told her you loved her and she said you didn’t and I think I’m right. Am I right?”
Nate took a breath. “It’s complicated. I like her a lot. I don’t want her to go.”
“Well, maybe she won’t go,” Piper said. “Or maybe, if she does, she’ll come back.”
Nate stared out the window at the path from the woods, which was still quiet, with no sign of Freya. “That’s what I’m hoping for, kid.” He turned to face his daughter, and in that moment, she wasn’t a kid anymore. He saw the woman she’d become just for a moment, just for a flash, and his heart clenched. Not enough time. He had to look away, and so he shifted his gaze out the window.
“You think I should go down after her?”
Piper thought for a moment, angling her head to the side, then said, “Give her a little while. She has to come back for her car. You can talk to her then.”
Nate smiled; he had raised a smart kid. And if Freya needed space, he needed to give it to her. Crowding her would only make her run faster.
“When did you get so smart, anyway?” he asked.
“I’ve always been smart,” Piper said. “Duh.”
***
“Get a load of this,” Freya said, looking around the dank old RV as she stepped inside. “If it isn’t Hell’s Winnebago.”
Behind her Malcolm pushed the gun into the center of her back and she stumbled inside and turned on him.
“Watch it,” she said.
Malcolm smirked, checking his cheap digital watch. “I’m an hour early, but I could hardly pass up the opportunity, could I? Richard Daly’s eldest, sitting out at the end of the dock, like ripe fruit just waiting to be plucked.” He smiled at her. “Can I offer you a bit of Irish whiskey?”
Freya stared at him. On the one hand, drinking with the man who had almost killed her, and probably still wanted to, didn’t seem like a great strategy. On the other hand... keep all negotiations friendly. And hostage situations, like real estate transactions, were just another negotiation.
“Jameson’s?” she asked.
Malcolm pulled a bottle out from inside the tiny oven and held it out for her. “Tullamore Dew.”
“Eh.” She shrugged and sat down at the tiny kitchenette table. “What the hell, right?”
“That’s what I say,” Malcolm said. He grabbed two short rocks glasses from a cabinet over the sink, set them down on the table, and poured two fingers of whiskey into hers. Then he went into the mini-fridge, pulled out a Coke, and poured that into his.
“You’re not drinking?” Freya asked.
“Not yet.” He held up his glass for a toast. “May we get what we want, may we get what we need—”
Freya raised her glass. “—but may we never get what we deserve.”
They drank and Malcolm eyed her for a moment. “Your father teach you that one?”
“My name’s Daly and I grew up in Boston,” she said. “I learned that one doing Yoo Hoo shooters in nursery school.”
Malcolm motioned toward the bottle. “Would you like another?”
Freya looked at him; maybe he’d be easier to handle if he had a few. “I would, but I don’t like drinking alone. Are you sure you won’t join me?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Need to keep my head. But you’re welcome to as much as you want. I have a feeling things are going to get rather unpleasant this afternoon.” He refilled his glass with Coke. “Please, understand it’s nothing personal. Not against you, anyway. You simply had the sad misfortune of being born to a right son of a bitch.”
“It happens.” Freya sat back. Malcolm was short, with a round face and ruddy, Irish cheeks. He had a bald spot and a bulb nose that had reddened, most likely, from years of drinking. He didn’t look that dangerous, but he’d set her on fire, and as long as he had that gun, she guessed she’d best take him seriously.
“So, what’s the plan here?” she asked. “You can’t get the plate, so you’re gonna use me to get money out of my father? Is that it?”
“Something like that,” he said, the Irish lilt trailing out of his voice. “The plan has, of necessity, evolved.”
A shot of ice went down Freya’s spine at the sudden hardness in Malcolm’s eyes. “What do you mean, the plan has evolved?”
“I mean,” he said, the anger suddenly showing in his taut face, “that he ruined my life, and now I’m going to ruin his.”
Freya took in a breath, suddenly deathly curious to see her father from a new angle, even if it was a hostile, mentally unstable one.
“Ruined your life? How, Malcolm?”
Malcolm held up one finger and closed his eyes. “Say my name again.”
Freya glanced around the area, looking for something to hit him with while his eyes were closed, but the only potential weapon was the whiskey bottle, and he had his hand on the base, so she just sighed and said, “Malcolm.”
“Ah.” He opened his eyes, which had gone misty. “You even sound like her, you know? She had that same note of exasperation in her voice when she said my name.”
Freya went still. “Who?”
“Why, your mother, of course.” Malcolm’s eyes trailed heavenward. “Veronica Jensen, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, before or since.” He looked at Freya, a light, sad smile on his face. “I killed a man for her, you know.”
Freya felt sick as the realization came to her. “The security guard?”
Malcolm’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Your father told you, did he?”
She leaned forward. “My mother was there?”
Malcolm nodded. “She found out the three of us were going to break into the exhibit. She came to stop Richard. She didn’t give a good crap what happened to me, or Mick. It was Richard. Always Richard.” He sighed. “When she showed up, she found me out idling the van, and she cried, begged me to get Richard out of there. And I thought my heart would break. A man can handle anything except the sight of the woman he loves in pain.”
The woman he loves... Freya reached for her glass and downed the last drops.
Malcolm slowly, carefully twirled the whiskey bottle at its base, staring at it as he talked. “I sent her home and went in to get Richard for her, but a security guard caught me, and asked about Veronica. He’d seen her.” Malcolm raised his eyes to Freya’s; they were red-rimmed and dreamy. “I had no choice, you see. It would have ruined her, being placed at the scene like that. So when the alarms went off—Mick denied it, but I know he tripped them, the clumsy bastard—I shot the guard. For her.” He lowered his eyes again. “And she repaid me by running off to Boston with your rat bastard father.”
He opened the whiskey bottle and absently poured them both two fingers. Freya took hers and sipped it, while Malcolm just stared into his, sniffing it.
“I told her, you know,” he said, more to his glass than to Freya, although she listened intently. “I told her I loved her and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life making her happy.” He laughed bitterly. “And she told me that she loved Richard. So, I said some things that were maybe not so flattering to her, and she told me... I will always remember it... she said...” He closed his eyes again and Freya eyed the whiskey bottle in his hand. “‘Malcolm, if you ever thought there could be anything between us, you were deluding yourself, you crazy fuck.’” He opened his eyes, and Freya looked up to see that his cheeks were ruddy with laughter. “She had a mouth on her, your mother. I always loved that about her.”
Freya leaned forward, fascinated despite herself. “Really? I don’t think I ever heard her swear.”
“Well, you wouldn’t,” Malcolm said, seeming offended at the idea. “You were just a child. Veronica was a lot of things, but she was always good around children.”
Freya sat back and reached for her glass. As hungry as she was to hear stories of her mother, this woman he’d loved didn’t sound like her mother at all. She sounded, honestly, more like Freya herself.
“All these years,” Malcolm went on, stuck in his own reverie, “I’ve wanted revenge on your father for stealing Veronica from me. And then come to find, Mick had that plate with your father’s precious prints on it, all these years.” Malcolm laughed. “Can you believe that? He’d been saving it just in case the murder ever came to light, he could pin it on your father. And then your father made all that money and my brother got an idea.” Malcolm held up one finger, then reached across the kitchenette and pulled open a drawer. He withdrew a stack of envelopes and dumped them on the table in front of Freya. “Five thousand a month. Pitiful. The man had no vision, I tell you.” Freya picked up an envelope; it was a bank statement under Mick’s name, with a five-thousand-dollar direct deposit from Daly Developers, Inc., showing on the fifteenth of the month. She picked up another one. Same thing.
“Son of a bitch,” she said.
“Yes, quite,” Malcolm said, pushing up from the table. “Time to go.”
“What?” Freya said. “Go where?”
“Up to the house,” he said. “You’re going to fetch me that plate.”
The house. Piper. Freya pushed herself up from the kitchenette table. “No, I’m not.”
He looked surprised and raised the gun. “Say that again?”
“What do you even need the plate for? You’ve got me.”
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “I do. But you won’t ruin your father’s reputation forever, now will you? My plans have evolved, they haven’t changed entirely. I still want that plate, and you’re going to give it to me.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not taking you to the house. I won’t.”
She got up and started toward the door, but stopped when she heard Malcolm’s voice behind her, cold as ice, saying, “Maybe take a moment to think this through, girl.”
She turned to find him standing, the gun pointed at her, and for the first time since he’d approached her on the dock, she felt stark fear.
He smiled coldly. “If I shoot you now, then the next best hostage for me to take would be the little girl, would it not?”
Freya took a step toward him. “You touch her, and I swear—”
“Your ability to protect her will be seriously limited,” he said, “if you are dead.” He paused for a long moment and when Freya didn’t move away from him, he smiled. “That’s my girl.”
“I am not your girl, you miserable piece of shit,” she said, and walked out in front of him.
Behind her, Malcolm chuckled.
“I see you got something else from your mother besides her eyes,” he said.
Eighteen
Nate slapped the pile of cards in the middle of Piper’s bed.
“Illegal slap!” Piper called, picking up his hand and going through the cards underneath.
“That was perfectly legal,” he said, reaching into the card pile as well. “Look, seven of clubs on the six of hearts.”
“No,” she said, going through the cards. “That’s wrong. I put down a three of spades after the six. They got mixed up.”
“Looks right to me,” Nate said. “Nobody likes a sore loser, Pipes.”
“Nobody likes a big, fat cheaterpants, either!” she said, and plucked a card out of the pile. “Ha! The three!”
“Oh, sure!” he said, laughing. “Pulled from the middle of the pile!”
“It’s not—” Piper stopped suddenly and went quiet. Nate listened, and heard the sound of the front door opening. They looked at each other, and Piper smiled.
“I bet it’s Freya,” she said, and patted Nate on the knee. “Go talk to her, and if it doesn’t work, call me down and I’ll cry.”
“What?” Nate said, laughing.
“Go, go, go!” she said in a stage whisper, urging him on. He grinned and hopped up off the bed, just as the phone rang.
“Shit,” he said. “I’m expecting a call from the guys at the restaurant.” He looked at Piper. “You go down and keep her here until I get there, okay?”
Piper saluted and hopped off the bed. She ran out of the room and darted down the stairs, and Nate hurried into his bedroom to get the phone. “This is Nate.”
A man’s voice he didn’t recognize said, “Nathan Brody?”
It wasn’t either Clint or Eddie. “Yes?”
“This is Richard Daly. I need to speak to my daughter. Is she there?”
“I think she just came in,” he said.
“I’ve been calling her cell phone all day,” Daly said. “There’s been no answer.”
“Yeah, her cell phone burned up in the fire,” Nate said.
There was a stark silence, then Daly said, “Your uncle Malcolm. Have you seen him?”
“Not in almost ten years,” Nate said.
“You need to keep Freya with you at the house,” Daly said. “Don’t let your uncle in, under any circumstances. I’m about an hour away. I’ll be able to deal with him when I get there.”
“What’s going on?”
“He’s threatened Freya,” Daly said. “He wants her to get to me.”
Nate’s body tensed. “Threatened how?”
“Is she there?” Daly said. “Put her on the phone.”
Nate listened for the sounds of Piper and Freya talking downstairs; there was silence.
“I’ll have her call you,” Nate said, and hung up, then shot out of the room and down the stairs to see Uncle Malcolm leaning over Piper, pinching her cheek. Behind him stood Freya, looking tense and drained.
“Well, aren’t you just the loveliest thing?” Malcolm said. “And how old are you now, girl?”
