Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [74]
“He said that to you?”
“Not in so many words.” Her eyes could not meet his. “He didn’t have to.”
“I’ll make us more tea,” he said gently.
“No. Stay here, don’t leave me.”
He settled back into the sofa cushions. It was getting toward nine; he knew they needed to get moving because the longer they stayed in Kiev the colder Magnussen’s trail would become. On the other hand, he was reluctant to make a move that would break the tenuous strand to Alli’s past she had begun to spin. Besides, with her wounded arm, Annika could use all the sleep she could get.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, as much to himself as to her.
She smiled at him, but it was thin and brittle enough to put him on edge. What could be coming? he wondered. What had she been bottling up inside her since her abduction?
“Emma knew him way before I did.”
Jack knew this, just as he knew she was speaking of Morgan Herr, whose name she couldn’t bear to say.
“Emma saw something in him—she never told me what—but I imagine they sat around and talked about how things were falling apart, how the center couldn’t hold, how chaos ruled everyone and everything.”
Jack wanted to interject a comment, but he bit his lip instead, trying to warm his abruptly chilled extremities.
“He was charismatic, girls especially were drawn to him—as you know. But with Emma it was different. She wasn’t sucked into his orbit, she never adored him or was fooled by his charming exterior. She knew what he was; in fact, I’m convinced now that was why she spent time with him. He was an Outsider on a level it would never occur to her to go. Emma would never harm another human being, but I think she wanted to know why he would.”
Jack was listening very carefully, even though Alli was talking about his daughter and not about herself. Or was she? He knew that whatever had happened to her during the week she had been under Morgan Herr’s control had had a profound effect on her, possibly even changed her, perhaps forever. Whatever this thing was she had been struggling with it for months, trying to understand it, or to see it for what it really was.
“I . . . I never told you the truth, during that time before the inauguration.” Alli stared at her hands. “He told me not to.”
Jack couldn’t help himself now. “Of course he told you not to, that was part of the brainwashing.”
She shook her head, slowly but firmly. “It wasn’t only the brainwashing—I mean I don’t remember that part. I wanted to do what he told me to do. I wanted to carry the anthrax, I wanted to hurt all those people. I hated my parents so much for all the years they didn’t—”
She broke down abruptly and Jack took her to him again, feeling her body wracked with sobs.
“I was weak. Emma would never have been so stupid to do what he wanted—she knew that beneath the charismatic exterior he was the worst kind of monster. I knew nothing, he hooked me when he got inside my head, he knew all the strings to pull, all the buttons to push. He knew where I was weak, which was easy, because, unlike Emma, I had no strength anywhere inside me, and he knew that, too.” Her sobbing had taken on epic proportions. “How do you fight someone who knows you better than you know yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said gently. “I don’t think anyone—”
“Oh, but Emma could, and that’s the point. I’m a product of privilege, there isn’t anything I wanted that my parents didn’t get me—every piece of crap, no matter how expensive. And what did that do? It made me soft—that’s what he said to me, ‘You’re soft as the underbelly of a sow, you wallow in money, prestige, privilege, and what have you to show for it? You make me sick to my stomach, but you can change that, you can become tough as nails, hard as a rock if you set your mind to it. Like your best friend, like Emma.’ ”
She clutched at him as if he were a lifeline, as if he were the only resource she had to keep her from drowning in the deep sea of her emotions. “And I wanted to be like Emma so, so much. He knew that, just like he knew everything else about me. He knew how much I envied Emma, he knew that