A Dark and Twisting Path Read online

  Little Athena Lazos stood in her crib, smiling and reaching for me.

  * * *

  * * *

  SAM CALLED VICTORIA after all. He told her he needed her to come to Allison’s subdivision. He would not tell her why, but said he needed to talk to her immediately. He hung up and turned to me. “I can’t have her crashing her car because she’s half crazed with excitement. Although that giant bodyguard will probably drive.”

  “Right.” I took his hand. “Are you okay?”

  He shook his head. “No. I put you in danger. I made stupid mistakes. I got Doug and Cliff shot!”

  “That wasn’t you; they both came running in like wild men. I’m not sure anyone was thinking clearly. It—it could have been much worse.”

  My eyes strayed to Allison, who was still giving her statement to a police officer on Agatha’s front lawn. They had already talked to Sam and me. Now we had to return a baby to her mother.

  Sam looked at his watch. “I need to get to the hospital, see how they’re doing. I’m not going to be able to rest until I know . . .”

  “Here she is,” I said as I saw a car pull up. “You talk to her.” I went inside, where a female officer sat playing with Athena, who was newly diapered and in fresh clothes. Her hair had been brushed into a gleaming silken skein and she had made quick work of the bottle we had found in the refrigerator.

  “May I take her?” I said. “Her mother is here.”

  The officer gave Athena a kiss on her pretty head and handed her to me. I tucked her against me, enjoying the surprising solid weight of her, the scent of her baby skin, the sweet sounds she made as she murmured in my ear.

  Eddie Stack must have heard her when he delivered the mail. I tried to imagine it. Perhaps he had a letter or package that wouldn’t fit through the slot. Perhaps Agatha had to sign for something. But she opened the door, and the baby was out of her soundproof basement nursery—playing upstairs with her aunt. Then the baby laughed or cried, and Eddie Stack must have looked surprised, because Agatha Wallace lived alone. Maybe it dawned on him slowly—her resemblance to the missing Nikon, and to the baby whose picture was in all the papers. He saw the truth, and Agatha knew that he saw. Unfortunately, Eddie hadn’t seen Agatha as a threat, but as his little secret.

  I shook away these thoughts and looked into the baby’s little face. “Your mother missed you very much. Do not pretend you don’t recognize her, okay? When you see her, you say ‘Mama.’” I wasn’t sure the baby would remember Victoria after all this time; it didn’t seem likely that she would, so I wanted to plant the idea.

  Athena giggled; it gave her two fat chins and made her irresistible. “Oh my goodness, I see why she missed you so very much. You are an angel. Okay, look through the window. I can see your mommy talking to her friend Sam. And he’s gently explaining about you. See her face? She looks disbelieving. Now she’s looking around. So here we go.”

  I opened the front door of Agatha Lazos’s house and Nikon Lazos’s lair. We moved toward Victoria, who did not spot us until we had taken three steps or so. Then she looked right at us and with some uncertainty said, “Athena?”

  Then, “ATHENA?” She screamed it, and cried, “My baby!” as she ran toward us as though she was floating above the cobbled walk.

  Athena was still smiling, and I was still murmuring calmly in her ear. “Your mama missed you,” I reminded her.

  “Mama?” she asked. Then she looked at Victoria, who stood before us with huge green eyes that were rapidly filling with tears. “Mama,” she said.

  I handed her over to her mother, who kissed her on every available inch of skin and made the baby giggle some more. “Thank you, Lena,” she said breathlessly. Sam joined us, and Victoria gave him a half hug with her free arm. Tears flowed freely down her face, but she was smiling. “Thank you, Sam. Oh God, I will never ask for another thing in my life. All of my prayers are answered.”

  She held the baby up and laughed into her face, and Timothy, her bodyguard, walked toward her, his face creased by a huge smile.

  Sam kissed her cheek. “I’m so happy for you, Vic. I hate to run, but I have to get to the hospital. Lena, are you coming?”

  “Give me one minute. I have to talk to Allison.”

  I left Victoria and the baby in Tim’s arms, and walked across the street, where Allison stood with John, still trembling slightly as she finished speaking with a police officer. The cop thanked her and moved away, and she looked at me with wide, disbelieving eyes. “They were across the street from me, Lena! I can’t believe that your enemies were right across the street, and I never saw anything, never noticed . . . I’m so sorry!” John slung a big arm around her.

  “How could you have known?” I said. “She was just a pretty, friendly woman who kept to herself and had a nice garden. What would make anyone think she was Nikon’s sister? That was the beauty of their setup.”

  Allison looked at me uncertainly, and then at John. “But when she moved in, we should have noticed—oh, except she was here first, wasn’t she, John? She lived here when we moved to this block.”

  I nodded, patting her arm. “She’s been here for more than a year, keeping tabs on Sam. I hate to think how many times she must have walked or driven up our bluff, like some spider surveying her web.” I folded my arms against myself. “Agatha Lazos didn’t move into your territory,” I said. “You moved into hers.”

  Allison shivered. “That’s even worse, somehow. Oh, God.”

  John gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Babe, it has nothing to do with us. All murderers live somewhere. She just happened to live there. Poor Eddie,” he said, his expression sad.

  I nodded my agreement. “You guys will be okay, right? I have to run to the hospital with Sam. Doug is there, and Cliff—” To my surprise, I felt tears building, and something caught in my throat.

  “We’ll be okay. You go, Lena!” Allison said. “Please tell us how they’re doing.”

  I waved and jogged toward Sam, who had pulled his car up and waited with the engine running.

  I looked back once to see Victoria West leaning against Timothy, a man as solid as a tree trunk, and singing to her baby, who laughed. They all seemed to sparkle in the spring sun.

  Back in Sam’s car, I realized that only about three hours had gone by since we’d arrived at Allison’s, but it felt as though it had been two days. Exhaustion hit me like an anvil, and I leaned back against the passenger seat with my eyes closed. “What happened to Agatha?”

  “I don’t know. It’s one of many things we need to ask Doug and Cliff. Lena, do you think Cliff will be okay?”

  “I hope so,” I said. I opened my eyes and turned to him. “Sam—listen, I might be wrong about this, but—I think I figured something out back there, in that instant after all the guns went off, when I was kneeling next to Cliff.”

  “What’s that?” His eyes were on the road. His body was alert, stiff, but he was clearly as spent as I was. He had looked death in the face, and now, his adrenaline gone, he was fading.

  “I don’t know—I’m not sure if it’s the best time to tell you.”

  He stopped at a red light at the intersection of Rowland and Green Glass Highway. “Lena, please. We can’t have any more secrets. Just tell me, and we’ll deal with whatever it is.”

  “Okay. It dawned on me, while I was stroking his hair—I mean, not just that, but I was thinking about all the weird pieces that didn’t make sense until I put them together, and then suddenly this picture just emerged.”

  “Just say it.”

  “I think Cliff is your brother.”

  Sam’s eyes grew so wide he almost looked like a different person. He sat through two more red lights, silently processing what I had said. Luckily, there was no traffic behind us on this relatively secluded road.

  Then, in a very delayed reaction, he began to laugh. At first I was
worried, thinking he was hysterical, but he was merely amused. Finally he wiped his eyes and said, “You know what’s funny? I think you’re right. And I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. “On two different occasions, when I was at Doug’s office, he absently called me ‘Cliff.’ Then he would apologize and say he didn’t know why he did it. And two different times Cliff asked me something about my mother. I thought he was just being sympathetic, but he was being curious! And the other thing is—he looks like me. I see it now, but I didn’t before.”

  I smiled at him. “I used to think he was disapproving of you, or us, or both. But now that I think back, it was a totally different expression on his face. He was proud of you.”

  Sam stiffened in his seat. “What if he dies? What if he’s dead now?”

  “He’s not. He won’t. We won’t let him, Sam.”

  He nodded and pulled onto the highway.

  19

  She feared he would never wake to learn the truth that she had only just discovered herself, sitting bereft at his bedside: she loved him.

  —From Death at Delphi

  THE NEXT MORNING Doug Heller spoke to us from his hospital bed, looking impatient. “They found Sam’s stationery in a drawer in her house. She was your note writer and our ninja, too. Back when she was a kid, it turns out, her wonderful eldest brother taught her a bunch of lock-picking tricks, and she got really good—the student exceeded the master. So Nikon hired a former thief to train her. They would go to the parties of wealthy friends just so that little Agatha could try out her skills on their house safes. She had the perfect cover because she was literally a child—only twelve or so when they started. The two of them, richer than the gods, pilfering from friends just for the thrill of it all. And they never got caught. She was particularly proud of that part, they tell me.”

  “So that English reporter was right. He had an accomplice, and it was Agatha. She’s caught now,” I said with deep satisfaction. “They both are. Tell me they’re in really tiny cages.”

  Doug grinned. “They’re safely locked up, with about six agents on each one of them. Agatha has been charged with the murder of Eddie Stack, but soon they’ll both be flown to New York to face a bunch of charges there. Little Agatha has been busy with her false identity, traveling around and doing misdeeds for her big brother.”

  “Why?” Sam asked, shaking his head.

  Doug took a sip of the water in his hospital mug. “My guess? Rich and bored.”

  “They’re disgusting, the two of them. Why was she even in Blue Lake?”

  Doug pointed at Sam. “To keep tabs on him. Weird, right? This was way at the beginning, after Nikon boarded a yacht with Victoria and all was well with the world. He wanted Sam watched, because Victoria had loved him.”

  Sam still looked pale; he leaned his head back on the little armchair he had pulled close to Doug’s bed. “I can’t take it all in.”

  Doug sighed and adjusted his covers, then touched his forehead gingerly. “Ouch. Sometimes I forget it’s there. I’ve mostly been distracted by the bullet wound.”

  “God, don’t remind me,” I said. “Are you in terrible pain?”

  He smiled. “Nope. I’m on some drug that erases pain. I wonder how long they’ll let me stay on it.”

  I pointed to his forehead. “So what happened there? You were gushing blood when you burst in on Sam and me in that basement.”

  “I got your text and realized I had very little time. I didn’t want to ring the bell and alert them to my presence. My best way in was through those big picture windows in the living room. I broke one of them with a rock, and when Agatha came running I held up my gun and told her to be quiet. She was so submissive I guess I assumed she had given up. Then she pointed me toward the basement and whacked me with some big ol’ bottle of wine or ouzo or whatever the hell those two drink. Blood? Souls, maybe?”

  Sam laughed rather bitterly.

  “That’s attempted murder!” I yelled.

  Doug nodded. “With which she has been charged. They read quite a list to her.”

  “So what happened after she hit you?”

  Doug pursed his lips. “I got rough with her. I had to wrangle her hands together to cuff them before I ran down the stairs.”

  I shook my head. “Can you believe that insane plan? Like that ever would have worked!”

  Doug looked troubled. “I’d like to say it wouldn’t have worked. But we didn’t know he was there, and somehow Agatha Lazos was under the radar. That’s on the FBI. The fact is that, hard as we try, people get past us. And Lazos has a lot of money and connections.” His face brightened. “But they’re in custody now. I only wish Cliff hadn’t been hurt.”

  Cliff’s name had us all feeling bad again. He had spent most of the night in surgery, and his prognosis was unknown; he currently lay unconscious in intensive care. We had been avoiding talking about him.

  Doug shook his head. “I still can’t believe that guy. I had called him with my location, but I didn’t know where he was. Then he just leaped out of nowhere and took a bullet. Saved all our butts.”

  “He’s a hero, and so are you,” I said.

  Doug shook his head. “I underestimated Lazos, and it almost cost us all our lives. I can’t believe how strong that guy was.”

  Belinda came in, holding an overnight bag. “Hi, guys,” she said. She smiled at Doug, who was looking at her with a longing expression.

  “Hey, cutie,” she said.

  “Hey. Did you ask them when I can get out of this place?”

  Belinda frowned. “This place took very good care of you. But they said tomorrow.”

  Doug sighed noisily, and Belinda bent to kiss his forehead; she did this very tenderly, and suddenly I wanted to cry. “You two are so sweet,” I said.

  Sam reached across to hold my hand. “Lena’s been through a lot.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve been through a lot. And now this. Sam, I know you’re worried about Cliff, but I just know he’ll be okay. You guys will have plenty of time to spend together, and—” Too late I realized that I had said too much.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Doug said, looking irritable. “Why do Sam and Cliff need to spend time together?” It seemed almost as though Doug were jealous at the thought that Sam might prefer Cliff’s company to his.

  Belinda, too, looked curious. “Sam is worried about Cliff?”

  “Yes—well—he was shot. He took a bullet for Sam and saved his life.”

  Belinda was far too smart to be in the dark for long. “Oh my God!” she said. “Why did I not see it sooner? I’ve had meals with the man. It’s as plain as the nose on Sam’s face.”

  Now Doug looked downright thunderous. “If someone doesn’t fill me in I will arrest everyone in this room.”

  I looked at Sam, who still wasn’t feeling very talkative. He nodded at me. I turned to Doug and said, “Belinda did some research for us about Sam’s family. She found out that his mother had given birth to a child years before Sam was born. With another man. So we knew that Sam had a sibling somewhere in the world.”

  Doug nodded, and then his eyes widened. “Cliff!”

  “I think so. Apparently we all think so. But I didn’t realize it until he leaped in front of that gun. He yelled ‘Sam, no!’ and there was something about his tone, and then about his face as he lay there, and about the gray stripe in his hair. Sam is starting to get one, too, in the same place. His mother’s father had the same stripe.”

  “I am the worst detective in the world,” Doug said, looking depressed.

  “No, you’re not. You’ve been amazing ever since I came to this town.”

  “Cliff even told me that he had family in the area he hoped to reconnect with. But people say stuff like that all the time. I didn’t know he meant that h
is long-lost brother was Sam West!”

  We all looked at Sam, who had not really been himself since we arrived at the hospital. “If he dies, it’s my fault,” he said.

  We all talked at once, assuring him that this was not true, and a nurse appeared in the door. She frowned at Doug. “Detective Heller, you should not have this many people in the room. Your doctor instructed you to rest.”

  “I am resting,” Doug said. “They’re helping me rest.”

  The nurse frowned again, then turned to Sam. “Mr. West, you asked for an update on Mr. Blake’s condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “He is awake now and asking after his friends.” She consulted a piece of paper in her hand. “He said we should not let Nikon hurt Sam.”

  Sam stood up. “Can I see him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “For a few minutes.”

  He exchanged a hopeful glance with Doug and Belinda; then he took my hand and pulled me with him out of the room.

  * * *

  * * *

  CLIFF WAS SITTING up in his bed; he was white with pain, but alert and alive. His eyes widened when he saw Sam. “Oh God. I’m so glad you’re all right,” he said.

  Sam moved closer to him, pulling a chair up next to his bed. I sat down near the door. “I should be saying that to you,” Sam said. “I’ve been worried out of my mind. You took a bullet for me, Cliff. Where was your gun?”

  He shook his head, almost smiling in his disbelief. “I came in the broken window and heard Allison calling. I went to the room where she was and let her out, and then that lunatic woman attacked me from behind. Doug had started to cuff her, or had cuffed her, but somehow she only had a cuff on one hand. I pinned her down and redid the cuffs, but she was crazy, spitting threats at Allison and saying wild things. I had cuffed her hands in front, and she got my gun out of the holster. Not my best moment. I struggled with her and got it out of her hands, but then she kicked it away and I couldn’t find it. I saw the open basement door, and then I heard a gunshot. Thank God Doug had left the door ajar, so I could follow the sound. But then I got there in time to see you taunting an armed man. I couldn’t believe it! I just jumped without thinking. I didn’t come all this way to—” He stopped and coughed. “I didn’t spend all this time trying to find this guy just to have him kill innocent people.”