The Distraction Page 31

  “You’re all talk, Alec. Always have been. That’s why I never invited you to work for me. You don’t have the balls to follow through when things get dirty.”

  “What can I say?” he said. “I like being able to sleep at night.”

  A low hum came from across the van as the lights from the road slashed across his face then went dark. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, rat? Why your woman has to look over her shoulder. Why your friends are slowly bleeding out. Because you’ve always played it so clean.”

  Alec’s jaw tightened, just for a fraction of a second.

  “We all have our demons,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Reznik. “At least we agree on that.”

  Don’t listen to him. Amy wasn’t bleeding out. She was okay. She had to be okay. Because if she was hurt, it was my fault. I’d brought her into this because I couldn’t give up Alec. Not even after she’d warned me.

  The van slowed as we came to a stoplight. The windows were blacked out, but I could see through the front windshield that we were about to get on the freeway.

  My shoulders were starting to ache, and my fingers prickled, smashed behind my hips.

  “Let her go,” Alec said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  My gaze flicked to Alec. I wasn’t leaving this car without him.

  The van pulled forward, then picked up speed. We were on the interstate now, but I’d lost my bearings. I didn’t know which way we were going.

  “Drop her off here,” Alec said. “Let’s you and me settle this alone. Man to man.”

  Reznik lowered his gun. “As much as I would enjoy that, Alec, I have my orders, and I need my paycheck. Especially after this recent bind Ms. Rossi has put me in with the police.”

  “What’s the price?” asked Alec. “Your usual? Or could Stein not afford that now that he’s drowning in legal fees?”

  “More than you make working at the docks,” said Reznik.

  “We’re getting close,” called the driver.

  My heart rate kicked up another notch as the van tilted up an incline.

  “Not another goddamn bridge,” I said.

  The tires whirred beneath us, slowing their rotation.

  “Last chance, Reznik.” The tension was clear in Alec’s voice now. It should have frightened me, but instead I felt a strange kind of calm, as if he had transferred his strength to me.

  The older man placed one hand on the handle of the sliding door.

  “Here’s where we get out.”

  We stopped, and he opened the door. At his urging, I climbed out, nearly slipping as a gust of wind ripped past. The driver righted me with a rough hand on my upper arm. He was younger than I would have expected. Maybe not even eighteen. His dark hair was buzzed, and he had full lips, but his eyes were vacant.

  “Max,” muttered Alec as we were led to the walking lane, where a man and a woman stood in the shadow of one of the supporting beams.

  But it wasn’t Maxim Stein that stepped out into the light. It was a younger man, lanky, with golden hair. A man who didn’t belong here now, on this cold bridge with my best friend beside him.

  “Trevor?”

  Forty

  Trevor Marshall looked different than the last time I’d seen him. Not just because the bruise on his jaw from Alec’s right hook was fading, or because he was wearing a black jacket and slacks, a change from the casual clothes I’d grown accustomed to seeing him in. His posture was too rigid, and the muscles of his face and neck were too tight, as if he’d been in pain a long time.

  “Hi, Anna,” he said, voice raised over the wind. The suspender cables clanged against their anchors on the deck like a giant metallic wind chime.

  “What is this?” Alec asked, edging in front of me. His fingers brushed my thigh, but his arms were still trapped behind him by the cuffs.

  I glanced behind us to not just one, but two utility vans marked with a giant paint can and the words METALCOAT PAINT. Trevor must have come in the other one. They were spotlighted by the overheads posted on the beams above, the only vehicles in sight on this eerily empty bridge.

  A muffled scream came from a shadowed barrier on the edge.

  “Amy?” I launched myself forward but collided with Alec’s back as he blocked my way.

  “You bastard!” I shouted around him at Trevor. “What did you do to her?”

  Trevor ignored me now, refocusing his hate-filled gaze on the man attempting to protect me.

  “Alec Flynn.” He stepped onto the street, the soles of his shoes crackling over the asphalt, until he stood an arm’s length away. Angry red marks were now visible on his cheek—four parallel lines that were clawed all the way down to his neck.

  A second before he swung it was obvious what he was going to do, but though Alec jerked back, he had nowhere to go because I was standing too close behind him. Trevor’s fist cracked against his jaw, and the reverberation that went through his body shoved me a step back.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, my voice shrill.

  “You don’t deserve her, you stupid bastard,” Trevor said.

  Slowly, Alec righted himself, and for the second time that night spit blood on the ground. He took a step closer to Trevor, and lifted his chin, giving him the chance to strike again.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Stop it,” I said, fearing for a moment that all this was about me. I looked around again, but no one was coming. No one could see us, arms bound. See Trevor with his bloodied fist, or the two men standing quietly beside the open van, guns in their folded hands. We were all alone.

  “The bridge is closed,” said Trevor. “No one’s coming. Except maybe the painters.” He motioned to the utility van behind me.

  My stomach sank. Vaguely, I remembered reading something about this—the Sunshine Skyway bridge being closed for renovations.

  “Where’s Stein?” Alec asked.

  “At home, I suppose,” Trevor said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was being honest—if Stein was actually behind this or if he was acting alone.

  Trevor held his hands out to his sides. “You know what’s crazy about this part of the bridge?”

  No one answered.

  Trevor’s arms lowered. “It’s the only place not covered by a video feed.” He pointed in the direction we’d come. “That way is covered.” He pointed the other direction. “That way is covered. Pretty much every inch of this bridge is covered, except for a width of fourteen feet where we’re standing right now.”

  Trevor shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

  “Do you know how I know that?”

  Amy cried out again, and it took everything I had not to fall to my knees and beg for him to free her.

  “Because there’s a one-point-eight-second blackout on the security footage that doesn’t show Robert Calloway hitting my sister’s car. But he did, of course. And that caused her to swerve”—he was motioning with his hands, moving them back and forth like a swimming fish—“and eventually crash through the barrier and free-fall four hundred and thirty feet into the water below.” He stared at the new concrete on the barrier twenty yards away.

  I didn’t have to close my eyes to see the woman’s face as it was in my dreams. Trapped beside me in the seat of the car, red hair floating in the water as the car dragged us farther and farther under.

  “You’re Charlotte’s brother,” said Alec.

  My head was spinning. Stein wasn’t here. Trevor wasn’t Trevor, nor was he Amy’s date, Jonathan. He was someone else. Charlotte’s brother.

  “She broke her neck on impact with the water,” Trevor continued, so quietly I barely heard him. “But it’s hard to say if she survived that and drowned. I can’t imagine anything worse than not being able to fight for your life while
your lungs are filling with liquid. Actually feeling yourself die. Can you imagine that, Alec?”

  “Trevor . . .” I swallowed, starting to tremble so hard my knees were knocking. “Let Amy go. Let us go. We’ll straighten this out.”

  “Yes,” said Trevor, dazed now. “Yes, we will.”

  He strode back to edge of the bridge. Terrified, I watched as he untied Amy. Now that she was in the light I could see the gag across her mouth, and the glistening tear streaks that ran down her cheeks.

  I tried to shoulder past Alec again, but he twisted into me, taking me to the ground. The impact radiated through my hip as I fell hard on my side.

  “Stay down,” he commanded.

  “He’s going to push her over.” I scrambled to my knees. “He’s going to . . .”

  Trevor dragged Amy over by the wrists, bound in front of her. She thrashed against him, eyes bright and wild.

  I climbed to my feet. The relief was only temporary; he hadn’t thrown her over, but he still hadn’t made his plans clear.

  “Please, Trevor,” I begged. “She has nothing to do with your sister.”

  “You should stop calling me that.” Pain slashed across his face. “My name’s not Trevor. It’s William. William MacAfee. I’m sorry I lied to you. I know how much you hate that.”

  He didn’t know the meaning of hate. It cut through the horror like a knife.

  “Let’s talk, William,” said Alec, steering the focus back on him. “You obviously went through a lot of trouble to get us here. Why don’t you let the ladies go, and we’ll hash this out?”

  Trevor—William—jerked. He was strung too tightly, not at all the hardened criminal Reznik was.

  “If I wanted to talk, I would have scheduled an appointment with our lawyers. No, I don’t want to talk. I’m done talking.”

  “Then what do you want?” I asked.

  The man I’d once thought of as a friend tilted his head to Alec. “I want justice.”

  Amy tried to shake free, but he seemed completely unfazed. His grip held fast while she wriggled like a fish on a line.

  Alec stepped forward reactively, and we both stilled at the harsh metal slide of the gun behind us.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Reznik.

  “She talked about you,” William said, still glaring at Alec. “She said you were going to help her. But you weren’t, were you? You knew the plan was to ruin her, kill her, all along. That’s why you weren’t there the night she died.”

  No. Alec wasn’t with Charlotte the night she died because he was with me. Making love to me.

  Alec’s shoulders fell, as if William had just increased the load he carried tenfold.

  “I tried to help her,” he said.

  William MacAfee shook his head hard, as if refusing to believe what was said.

  “You didn’t try.” His voice was loud enough to make me jump. “You may not have pulled the trigger, but you killed my sister, and now you’re about to walk free. No consequences. No punishment. It makes me sick.”

  “There are consequences,” Alec murmured.

  I stared at Amy, who was trembling so hard I could see it. She stared at me, pleading and terrified. Not for her own life, I knew, but for her daughter’s.

  “Yes,” said William. “There are consequences.”

  Eye for an eye, he had once told me. That woman on the news that was driven off the bridge? Someone should make the guy who’s responsible jump.

  I knew then what he intended to do.

  The driver grabbed Amy and hauled her to the van. My black hair whipped across my face as I turned to watch him toss her into the back and slam the door shut.

  “What are you doing with her?”

  “She’ll be fine,” William answered. “We have a deal. If she keeps her mouth shut, her daughter will be safe.”

  A wave of hopelessness descended over me. Paisley wasn’t safe for long with Mike. And what did Amy have to defend them? A thin apartment door with a dead bolt? A single visit to a women’s self-defense course?

  This was my fault.

  My fault.

  I’d let this happen to my friends because I was careless. Because I loved Alec. And because I still loved him, the guilt fogged my senses, so thick I could barely breathe.

  The van’s engine revved, and then the driver made a turn in the middle of the street. Slowly, it disappeared down the steep incline in the direction we’d come. While I watched it, I thought about running out beyond the fourteen-foot window that William had mentioned, but it would only waste precious time.

  Before I could think of another option, Reznik kicked Alec behind the knees, and he hit the ground at William’s feet.

  He didn’t beg. He didn’t cower. He strained against his cuffs, hands white and wrists red.

  “Your sister was a good woman who tried to do the right thing,” he said calmly. “And your project—the Green Fusion project—it was brilliant. If I’d been in charge I would have paid any price you asked to be a part of it.”

  “Shut up,” said Trevor.

  “Let Anna go.”

  Reznik raised the gun to the back of his head.

  “No!” I raced toward him, and found myself on my knees as well. I leaned into his body, feeling his labored breaths. His muscles flexed so hard, I thought he might be able to break through the cuffs.

  “Wait. William, think about this.” The words jumbled out. “You need Alec to win the trial, that’s the only way Maxim Stein stays behind bars.”

  Jacqueline Frieda had told us Charlotte’s brother’s case was at a standstill. Surely he had to know that Alec was his best shot at beating the man responsible.

  From the determined look on his face, William didn’t care.

  There was nothing familiar left about him. This wasn’t the guy I’d met at the gym, who’d joked about my dance classes and come to the salon for massages to help his marathon running. This was a desperate, sick man who’d carefully planned every meeting with me, and every meeting with my best friend, just to get closer to Alec.

  How had I been so blind?

  The gun cocked.

  “Anna, close your eyes,” Alec said quietly. “You’re going to be all right, baby. Just close your eyes.”

  Forty-one

  “It hurts already, doesn’t it?” William asked. I glared up at him, hating that he could possibly feel anything remotely close to what I felt right then. But he’d lost his sister, and there was no hiding how deep a hole she’d left.

  “It never stops,” William said. “You’ll understand in time.”

  He reached beneath my arm and hauled me to my feet.

  “No,” I shouted, just as Mike had taught me. I hoped someone could hear me. Anyone.

  I kicked. I bit. I threw myself into him, and then away, trying to throw him off balance.

  “Anna!” shouted Alec. “Anna, listen to me. No more fighting.”

  William elbowed me in the throat, effectively shutting my windpipe. My mouth opened, but nothing came in. Not for what seemed like minutes.

  With a roar, Alec rose, charging toward us. There was a shot, and the gravel at my feet sprayed across my legs. If I’d had the breath, I would have screamed, but as it was only a tight groan slipped out.

  It was a warning, one that stopped Alec in his tracks, shoulders heaving. His head dropped, and that scared me more than anything else had on this awful night.

  He was giving up.

  “I’ll shoot him if you don’t stop,” William hissed.

  “You’ll shoot him anyway,” I said.

  “No.” He shook his head. “You were right. I need him for the trial. I’ve lost, I understand that now. I don’t even have the money to keep it going after I pay Mr. Reznik. Alec’s testimony is the only thing that will keep Maxim Stein in jail.”

  I t
ossed my hair back, but the wind blew it forward again.

  “Testify, don’t testify. You have a hard time making up your mind.”

  Trevor laughed at this, then his expression turned grave.

  “He had the choice to keep his mouth shut and serve time for what he did. He chose the easy way out.”

  I stared at Alec, teeth bared in a tight grimace. His arms were still bound behind him, and the wind billowed beneath his shirt to show a strip of skin above his pants. The barrel of Reznik’s gun was still pressed between his shoulder blades, but he hardly seemed to notice.

  It didn’t exactly look like the easy way out.

  “Let her go,” Alec repeated.

  William dragged me over to the edge. My side smashed against the concrete as I tore my eyes away from Alec’s to look out over the black water beyond. It seemed to catapult toward me, destroying my sense of depth. Dragging me down.

  Four hundred and thirty feet, William had said.

  My arms were bound. I couldn’t even hold on to this cold stone ledge.

  I turned back at the sound of a scuffle on the pavement. Alec must have tried to escape again; he was now lying on his back on the ground, bleeding from a gash at the top of his forehead. Reznik was yelling something I couldn’t make out over the drumming pulse in my ears. His knee was digging into Alec’s broken ribs, but there was nothing Alec could do with his arms stuck behind him.

  “He needs to watch,” said William. “If he doesn’t, this was all for nothing. There was no point in dragging him away from the FBI.”

  My world slowed.

  Alec would live, but I would die. That would be his punishment. As if Charlotte’s death wasn’t enough. As if losing everything he’d worked for—his job, his self-respect—wasn’t enough. William MacAfee would make him suffer this as well.

  I thought of all the times William could have taken me. We’d been alone at the salon, at the gym, in parking lots and out in town. But it wasn’t enough that Alec just hear about what happened to me. No, Alec needed to experience it, firsthand.

  William turned toward me and I was filled with a strange sense of calm.

  “If it’s any consolation,” he said, unable to meet my eyes, “I did like you, Anna. I wanted you to leave him. I asked you to, remember? At the salon?”