Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [76]
* * *
ALLI, SURROUNDED by the high crags of the Korab mountains, the wheeling hawks and black kites, her cheeks scrubbed by the harsh wind and grit of the increasingly steep trail, felt that week rush back at her like a tidal wave of rot. She began to retch, and almost vomited up whatever was in her stomach. But all she could expel was acid and bile. She felt abruptly dizzy and so ill she wanted nothing more than to lie down on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted to take a pair of pliers and pull her destroyer’s tongue out by its roots; she wanted to press her thumbs into his eyes until they turned to bloody jelly; she wanted to willfully ignore his pitiful pleas for mercy.
She wanted to go back to her parents seeing them as she does now, in the fullness of time. Did she ever tell them she loved them? She couldn’t remember, and this, in itself, frightened her. She missed them now, but in a way that was unfamiliar and inexplicable to her. Can you love people only after they’re gone? she asked herself. The possibility sickened her and she doubled over again on a boulder, though there was nothing left to vomit up.
She cried now for them, for herself, for the normal childhood she desperately wanted and never had. She hated them, forgave them, and loved them all at the same time. Dizzy and confused, she labored on, out of sight of the others. She couldn’t bear anyone to see her like this, even Jack. She wished she could talk to Annika, because Annika could understand how you could love and hate a parent at the same time. And if she could understand it, maybe she could explain it to her.
So she wept for the loss of her parents, for herself, but also for Emma. Because, most of all, she wanted to change the moment Emma had asked her for help—asked Alli to come with her in the car that crashed, a crash that had taken her life. She wanted Emma back. Billy had been an experiment. It had been nice—he’d really cared for her, and he was gentle. But the relationship had only underscored how much she missed Emma.
She wanted Emma back. My best friend, my only love.
Then Jack was there.
“I’m fine,” she managed to get out. “Please…”
But his strong arm holding her close undid her, and, sobbing, she buried her face in his chest.
“I don’t…”
Her words were muffled; Jack felt them more than he heard them.
“Alli.” He bent his head. “It’s all right.”
Her tears were bitter in her mouth.
“I don’t deserve to live.”
* * *
“I DIDN’T think you’d ever come back here,” Naomi said.
Annika gave her a sharp look.
“I saw the e-mail you sent Jack. I know you killed Senator Berns.”
A shadow passed across Annika’s face and vanished.
They were still in Naomi’s car. Across Cathedral Avenue, the entrance to McKinsey’s apartment building had come alive with residents on their way to work. The dampness was all but gone from the concrete and macadam.
Annika laughed. “Someone sent an e-mail accusing me of murdering this senator—what did you say his name was?”
“Amusing,” Naomi said, though she thought it anything but.
“You have no proof.” Annika stroked the poodle’s fragile back. “That e-mail can’t be traced.”
That seemed like an opening, and Naomi jumped on it. “How do you know that?”
Annika shrugged. “Only an idiot would make herself vulnerable to an electronic trace.”
At last Naomi dropped her gaze to the muzzle of the .25. “What do you want, Annika?”
“Where’s Jack?”
For an instant, Naomi’s mind went numb. When her vision cleared, she said, “Jack doesn’t want to see you.”
“What are you, his mommy?”
In an instant, the flash of anger was gone, but it had existed long enough for Naomi to realize that there was something powerful enough to crack Annika’s armor.
“I know where he is.” Though she suspected it was both foolish and dangerous to lie to this woman, she’d had enough of feeling helpless.
“Then you’d better tell me.”
“What is that, a threat?”
“Listen, Naomi, it’s already out that Jack killed Arian Xhafa’s brother.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, Naomi, I