Читать книгу Immovable Objects - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 9

“Missing? What do you mean it’s missing?”

The resonant voice bounced around the sleek, four-hundred-square-foot office on the top floor of the Williams Media Building. Not a man easily ruffled, Cole Williams found himself on his way to furious over this unexpected little bomb that had just been dropped in his lap.

These kinds of things did not just “happen,” they were orchestrated.

Ice-blue eyes, known to freeze people far braver than Jack Dobson, narrowed as Cole looked at the man who had come into his domain bearing the news. “A priceless statue doesn’t just walk away on its own.”

“No, sir, it doesn’t, but when we opened the crate it was supposed to be in—it wasn’t there.” His oversize Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a cork that refused to be sunk. “Mr. Hagen doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s looking into it right now.” Dobson’s voice cracked.

Taylor Hagen was the chief investigator kept on retainer by Cole. He had witnessed the statue being crated and then followed the van transporting it.

Terrific, Cole thought.

His new art gallery opening was in a week and Rodin’s statue, Venus Smiling, the artist’s tribute to his beloved late sister, Marie, was to be the centerpiece of the entire exhibit. Recognized as the artist’s first work and lost for thirty years amid the chaos of western Europe following World War II, it had found its way into billionaire Jonathan MacFarland’s private collection. After much negotiating, Cole had managed to secure the twenty-four-inch piece, but only for a little more than a week. Nine days to be exact. A sizable donation was being sent to one of MacFarland’s favorite charities in exchange for the showing. It was the first time the statue was to have seen the light of public day since MacFarland had acquired it fifteen years ago, and it promised to attract an even greater crowd than had originally been anticipated.

Because of his self-made stature and his ability to turn almost anything he touched to gold, Cole Williams, tall, blond and good-looking in a publicity agent’s dream sort of way, was the darling of both the business and the celebrity world.

His position was made that much more unique because of his strong ethical beliefs. He’d gotten to where he was today with no backstabbing, no character assassination. He always ran a clean campaign, fought a clean fight. Not an easy feat in the world of media or publishing, and Cole had a well-entrenched foot in both.

But clean rubbed some people the wrong way. There were those who would have liked nothing better than to see him fall from grace, and if they had to create the scenario in order to accommodate the situation, so be it.

Someone had it in for him. Trouble was, because of the businesses he was in, the list of potential character assassins was far from short.

But he didn’t have time to wonder who had done this to him. Right now, what was necessary was implementing damage control. And fast.

Cole frowned. Dobson was still standing in his office, still shaking without giving any signs of stopping.

“Get a grip, man, I’m not going to eat you,” Cole snapped. “Anything else missing?”

Dobson moved his head from side to side like a deranged windshield wiper. “No, sir, just the statue. We checked. All the other paintings are still there.”

Thank God for small favors. Cole picked up the phone receiver. “What about the surveillance tape?”

He had a feeling he knew the answer to that one, but there was no harm in asking. Sometimes, the best of thieves made stupid mistakes. And whoever had taken this statue had just made a colossal one.

Wide, watery eyes watched Cole’s every move. “The system’s down, sir.”

So much for luck and stupid mistakes. “Get it back up and running.”

Dobson looked relieved to offer a piece of positive information. “Already working on that, sir.”

“Good.”

Cole waved the man out. His mind was already on the next step. Being able to quickly anticipate all sides of a problem was what had brought him to the place he now occupied in the world.

That and a wide network of friends and acquaintances he knew he could rely on for their skills and discretion.

There was only one man he knew of who could handle the problem he was facing.

Lorenzo Manelli.

He didn’t keep the man’s number on speed dial, but it was a number he’d committed to memory long ago. Manelli’s talents were unique, as was his price. But there was none better. And he needed Lorenzo now.

Despite the calm facade he projected, Cole could feel the tension rising within him as he waited for the ringing on the other end to cease and for an unrecorded voice to come on.

When he heard a heavily accented voice murmur a greeting, Cole breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“Lorenzo, I have a job that requires your special talents.”

A soft, distant chuckle told him he need have no further concern. Whatever the request, it would be handled.

And then a melodic voice instructed, “Go ahead.”

She’d never been alone before.

In her thirty-one years, Elizabeth Caldwell had never really been on her own, never walked into an apartment, closed the door and just taken in the silence, knowing that if she didn’t do anything to change it herself, the circumstances would remain this way.

She’d be alone.

Without Anthony. Without Danielle.

Of course, there was still Jeremy Solienti, the man she thought of as Fagin to her Oliver. Their Oliver, she amended, because whatever had concerned her had also concerned Anthony and Danielle, and they were all connected in ways that went beyond the normal connections experienced by triplets. It was as if, psychically, there was an open telephone line that connected the three of them, night and day, to one another.

Except that Danielle had chosen to hang up.

First Danielle and now her. Or Anthony, depending on which side of the heated argument you looked at. And it had been a doozy, she thought, kicking off her shoes and sinking onto the newly purchased sofa bed that took up residence in the middle of the room.

Danielle had opted to strike out on her own years ago, to leave the world of con games, teetering on the brink of falling over the invisible line that separated the right side of the law from the wrong. Jeremy, their once unofficial guardian, now employer and eternal mentor, made sure that the jobs they hired out to do always kept them a hairbreadth within the law, even if some of the methods they used in getting the jobs done could certainly not stand up to close scrutiny.

But then, laws had not been passed to accommodate those who had been “blessed,” she thought with an enigmatic smile. She reached for the remote to turn on the television set, then decided against it.

Decided to absorb the silence a little longer.

In her case, the blessing had come in the guise of telekinetic powers that allowed her, when she concentrated very hard, to move small objects and make them do her bidding. When she and Dani and Anthony combined their powers, there was nothing they couldn’t do. For a price. The price went to line Jeremy’s coffers.

Not that the man, in his own way, wasn’t good to them. In a move that made life stranger than fiction, Jeremy Solienti, a one-time mercenary, had wound up being their salvation. They were runaways on the verge of getting into serious trouble when he’d come across them. On the street with no money, they’d been reduced to becoming common pickpockets. Dani had picked Jeremy’s pocket at a carnival and the man had chased after her, finally cornering all of them as they attempted to flee.

Once he’d taken back what was his, he quickly assessed the situation. Childless, with a soft spot for kids and an eye out for talent, he’d offered them a home. His.

They’d been leery of him, but because they had nowhere else to go, they’d looked at one another and silently agreed.

Jeremy had been sharp enough to pick up on their unique ability to communicate with each other. And their other abilities as well, as time went on. Comfortably wealthy with a vast network of informants and people who owed him favors, Jeremy set about incorporating the latest addition to his little “family.” He saw to it that they got a good education, both academic and otherwise.

Because of Jeremy, they didn’t become just more statistics in an endless stream of runaways. They could pass themselves off as anything they wanted to with ease and poise. And in exchange for food, shelter and education, Jeremy availed himself of their unique powers, turning them into a new kind of team.

Her mouth curved in a smile. She supposed what they eventually became was something akin to the X-Men meet the A-Team. Granted, they didn’t have superpowers, but they were definitely not the average person on the street, either. Because the average person on the street couldn’t move objects with his or her mind, couldn’t control things without lifting a finger or connect to other human beings and hear their thoughts.

The latter was a connection she had with Anthony and Dani, or rather had had, until Dani had gone “off-line,” so to speak.

But then a couple of weeks ago, Dani had come “on-line” again. Out of the blue, her sister had touched her thoughts because she needed help. She wanted her to promise to take care of her son, Alex, if anything ever happened to her.

She’d told Anthony about it. And then all hell had broken loose.

The confrontation had taken place in their apartment, the one that Anthony insisted they share so that he could “look after her.”

“Look, she walked out on us, we didn’t walk out on her,” he’d railed, furious, when she tried to get him to talk about Dani. To mend broken fences so that they could be a family again.

Elizabeth tried very hard not to take his outburst personally, not to let his yelling affect her. She knew better than anyone how Anthony felt about things, how sensitive he actually was. When Danielle had left them abruptly to go off on her own, their brother had taken it as a sign of abandonment. Another in a long line of abandonments, beginning with their mother.

Of course, that hadn’t exactly been of their mother’s own volition. Deanna Payne had been killed when they were only three, strangled in their living room. When the commotion had begun that awful, sticky summer night, Anthony had shoved both Elizabeth and Danielle into the closet to keep them safe. He’d stayed with them, telling them to be quiet as the clothes around them cocooned the sounds of raised voices and then the screams.

And then there was silence, an awful silence that ate into the darkness. Anthony slipped out first, telling them to stay where they were.

She’d stayed there as long as she could. Until she couldn’t anymore. When she ventured out, holding Dani’s hand in hers, she saw her brother kneeling on the floor beside the lifeless body of their mother. Her beautiful face was bruised, beaten. And there was blood, so vividly red against her pale, pale lips.

Her little heart hammering, unable to take in the full meaning of what she saw, she’d knelt on one side of her mother while Dani had knelt on the other. They’d each taken one of their mother’s hands and tried to will her back to life.

She wasn’t sure when her brother had gotten up to call the police, but she knew he had. Just as, somewhere in her heart, she knew that it had been their father who had killed their mother.

But Anthony had never confirmed it, never said yes or no when she asked. It was a piece of himself he’d kept locked away from both her and Dani. The police took him at his word when he’d told them he didn’t know who had done this. People didn’t waste too much time questioning a three-year-old.

Whether or not their father had killed their mother, Benedict Payne had disappeared from their lives that night. It was the second abandonment.

The foster system they found themselves catapulted into was fraught with abandonments. They were yanked from one home to another, sometimes taken in all together, sometimes taken in separately. Throughout it all, they’d managed to maintain their silent connection.

Until now.

Dani had used a conventional method, the telephone, to connect with her, calling her several days ago to reconnect. Her sister had called to tell her things Dani felt she needed to know. Unique though they thought themselves to be, they were far from alone. That there were others like them, others with “gifts” that did not belong to ordinary people. In addition, the DNA test results which Danielle had undergone to prove the link and which had involved samples from each of the fellow “gifted” individuals were now unaccounted for at the private lab where they had been processed and stored. It wasn’t a case of misplacement, but something more. Something, Dani confided, far more sinister.

It had been a great deal to assimilate and Elizabeth wasn’t a hundred percent sure she believed all of it, even though she knew that Dani did.

Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She had no idea if Anthony believed any of it. He’d been too busy yelling at her the last time she’d seen him to discuss it.

They’d just finished up a job, and instead of going out to celebrate, Anthony had insisted they come back home and turn in early in preparation for the next assignment. She remembered being resentful that Anthony constantly controlled her life.

When she’d told him about Dani’s call, he’d turned on her, livid. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to hear anything about Dani.”

She couldn’t make herself believe that he meant what he said. “Anthony, please, just listen—”

His green eyes had darkened. “No, you just listen. Dani made her choice. She left us. Fine, she’s gone. We’re here and we have a job to do. Now go to bed, we’ve got an early day tomorrow.”

It was then that she’d decided enough was enough. Looking back, she realized she should have taken a stand a long time ago, before Anthony had become so accustomed to controlling her life. “No.”

He’d looked at her, astonished, angrier than she’d ever seen him. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

She’d turned her back on him, heading for the front door. Beyond that, she had no clue where she was going.

“It’s a two-letter word,” she’d said over her shoulder. “You figure it out.”

Anthony had grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “What’s gotten into you?”

And then the dam broke inside her. “What’s gotten into me is that I don’t want to live this way anymore. I don’t want to go from job to job, jumping when you say jump.”

Anthony looked as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Hey, Jeremy is the one who gives the assignments—”

She’d gritted her teeth together, refusing to cave in the way she always did. Her position may have been peacemaker in the family, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t above making a little war herself. “And you’re the one who acts as gatekeeper.”

“Gatekeeper?”

“Yes, gatekeeper. To my prison. Anthony, we don’t do anything but the jobs that Jeremy gives us. We don’t socialize, we don’t go out. Just because we have these—these gifts doesn’t mean we have to hide like freaks.” More than anything, she desperately wanted to spread her wings and fly.

“We’re not hiding.”

“Well, you certainly try to hide me.” One word was leading to another and she couldn’t seem to stop. “When have I had a single relationship? You won’t let me out of your sight.”

“We don’t have time for relationships.”

“That’s just my point. It’s always what you think is best. There’s never any discussion, never any room for another opinion, just yours.” His expression had remained impassive. Stony. She might as well have been making her case to a wall. “Damn it, that’s why Dani left. You were suffocating her. She wanted to be her own person.”

“Fine,” he’d shouted. “She has what she wants. She’s her own person.”

“But that doesn’t mean cutting her off, dead.”

His eyes were cold, steely. “Can’t have it both ways, Lizzie.”

Suddenly, the argument was back in her court. It wasn’t Dani they were arguing about but her again. And she was fighting for her life. “Why? Why can’t I have it both ways? Why can’t I work for Jeremy, be your sister and still have a life of my own? Why can’t Dani have a life of her own?”

For a moment, there had been genuine concern in his eyes before the wall went up again. “Because it doesn’t work that way. Because we’re different. Because things can hurt you out there.”

“I’m thirty-one years old, Anthony. You can’t keep me in bubble wrap forever.”

And then he’d taken the ball out of her court. In typical Anthony fashion, he’d made the decision for her, even though he probably hadn’t realized it at the time. “You want to be free? Fine, be free. Go off on your own, just leave me the hell alone.” The words echoed in his wake as he slammed the door behind him, storming out of their apartment.

At the time, she’d been incensed—and hurt. She ran about, collecting her things and tossing them into the suitcase they used when they went out of town on jobs.

And all the while, she’d filled the spaces in her head with snippets of songs she knew. So that Anthony couldn’t tune in and discover what she was up to.

The wheels had been set in motion. She needed her space.

She’d left.

Once inside her car, she placed a call to Jeremy on her cell phone. To say he was surprised when she told him she was going on a much needed vacation was an understatement, especially since she said she was going alone. She’d lied and added she wasn’t taking her cell along.

“How can I get in contact with you?” he’d wanted to know.

“I’ll call you,” she’d promised.

But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t going to. Not for a while.

When she’d finally let her guard down, she’d discovered that there were no communal thoughts for her to let in. No feeling that something that Anthony was experiencing was touching her.

Like smoke on the wind, Anthony was gone, out of her life, as if he’d never been there.

It felt wonderful to be normal, to be alone with her thoughts.

Wonderful and strange and lonely, she slowly discovered.

So this was what everyone else experienced. After being part of a trio and then a duo for so long, she wasn’t all that sure she liked this change completely.

No, she silently argued with herself as the temptation to call Anthony one more time rose within her. Anthony’s terms were total surrender.

She sank back against a pillow. It was high time she took the training wheels off her life and rode on her own. Maybe not in a straight line, but at least unassisted.

The apartment she’d gotten was a studio. She had enough money in her account—Jeremy had always been generous with their cut—to get any sort of living accommodations, but she wanted to start out small and see how she liked it.

There was always time to get something bigger later. But she wanted to take baby steps because baby steps guaranteed that you didn’t fall flat on your face the way you might if you leaped.

Her attention drifted toward the newspaper she’d picked up earlier. She noticed a large, splashy article about the grand opening of Cole Williams’s new gallery. It promised to be a major event with a great many celebrities there, rubbing elbows with the CEOs of industry.

She smiled.

Just the kind of stomping grounds a newly released sparrow was looking for, she thought.

Beside the article was a rendition of the invitation that had been sent out to legions of people who periodically made the news. The article said that the party was “by invitation only.”

Her smile grew wider as she reached for a sketch pad. “Not a problem.”