Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [72]
Alli said nothing. She stared out at the unfamiliar terrain, blindingly outlined against a sky so blue that without sunglasses it made your eyes hurt. Hardwood, pines, miles of granite, split and jagged. Not a hint of human habitation anywhere.
Jack could hear her breathing. “I’m so sorry. I’ll miss her.”
“Uncle Hank knew?”
“Of course. He was called to the hospital, as were Dennis and I. They tried to contact you, but by then Fearington was in lockdown.”
Alli’s breathing seemed to shorten, to quicken. “Why didn’t he tell me?” She turned to Jack, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. “When I was at his house, when he locked me into his study, why didn’t Uncle Hank tell me?”
“I can’t answer that,” Jack said softly. “But it’s possible that being angry at him isn’t the way to go at this moment.”
She didn’t respond.
“Alli?”
She shook her head fiercely. “I can’t think about them—either of them.”
“You will, sometime.” His voice was both soft and gentle. “The longer you wait—”
“Shit,” she said, and walked away.
Jack watched her for a time, a tiny, lone sentinel. Her back was ramrod straight, her stance as fiercely battle-ready as any soldier.
A stirring at his side alerted him.
“She’s an enigma, isn’t she, Dad?”
“That she is, Emma.”
“Even to herself.”
* * *
NAOMI SPENT a very frustrating day with Pete, collating all the information they had amassed, including the forensics on the knife found behind Alli’s room in Fearington, which indicated that it was, indeed, Billy’s blood on the blade. However, the handle had been wiped clean, which was consistent with both a premeditated murder and a conspiracy to set up Alli.
“The bloody knife is such a clumsy attempt to frame Alli,” she said. They sat at facing desks, close enough for easy conversation. “I don’t get it.”
He picked his head up from his paperwork. He looked neat and tidy. He was freshly shaved. It looked as if his nails had been waxed. “What do you mean?”
“First the vial of roofies with Alli’s fingerprints is found under her bed. Pretty damning, no? But then this bloody knife. Who in their right mind would dump a murder weapon behind where they live?”
“You forget, Naomi. She’s not in her right mind. Hasn’t been, apparently, since she was abducted.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You’re missing the point.”
“Which is?”
He seemed peculiarly disinterested, she thought, or unusually distracted. Maybe that amounted to the same thing.
“It’s as if she was set up, then given this loophole.”
“I don’t agree.” He shook out a cigarette, then, remembering he couldn’t smoke in the office, shoved it back into the pack. “Why should she care about us finding the murder weapon if her prints aren’t on it?”
She ran a hand distractedly through her hair. She was suddenly sick of him.
“What have you found out about Qershi Holdings, the company that rented out the space where the Stem was transacting their business?”
“Exactly zippo.” Naomi was aware of how flat her voice sounded. She bitterly hated failure. Whoever said that you can’t handle success until you’ve failed was full of shit. “It’s a shell corporation, doing business out of the Cayman Islands.”
“Which local bank does it use? The Cayman banks are more helpful to us nowadays.”
Naomi sighed. “If only. No, all I could pick up was a PO box.”
“So,” he said, “another dead end.”
She nodded. “For the moment, at least.”
They burned the rest of the afternoon writing their first report for Henry Holt Carson, not an easy assignment, considering both the lack of hard information and the one bit of news sure to bring out their ad hoc employer’s ire.
The more they worked on the draft, the more anxious Naomi became. “Let’s emphasize the increasingly cloudy picture the evidence is providing,” she said. “That’s sure to please him.” After a grunt from McKinsey, she plowed on. “And maybe we should omit the part about Alli being with Jack.”
“What?” McKinsey’s head snapped up. “Are you nuts? That’s about the only solid news we have for him. She isn’t lost and she isn’t on her own.”
“She’s with Jack; just what he doesn