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A woman cradling an infant in her arms.
Rhett snorted, blinked his attention back to the road. When he glanced back at the blood-smear he no longer saw the circular motif resembling that wall-hanging.
“Please don’t become one of those people who sees Jesus in cloud formations and Mary in tornado funnels,” he’d muttered with a strangely nervous sneer as he finally got to his darkened driveway and gunned the engine down the tree-lined path to his well-hidden house.
He’d pulled into the four-car garage, relaxing as the heavy wood-paneled doors closed behind him. But as he opened the Suburban’s back door and prepared to haul his hostages out, Rhett caught another glimpse of that blood-smear on his glove.
“For fuck’s sake,” he growled, whipping off the glove and tossing it at the garage wall above the trash cans. “Soon you’ll be seeing your grandma’s ghost reading fromGone with the Wind, her favorite part, where Rhett Butler is inconsolable after his darling Bonnie tragically dies.”
“It shows that even a rascal pirate like Rhett Butler has a heart,” his grandma had informed him. “Even a cold-hearted snake is vulnerable to human emotion, to the bonds of family, the love of a father for a daughter.”
Rhett stopped as the memory came back with sonic vividness.
Then suddenly, out of some deep place inside him, exploded a single sob.
Rhett staggered like he’d been shot. He blinked with shocked amusement, shaking his head to get the reverberation of that single sob out of his mind.
“What the fuck was that?” he muttered, shaking his head again as his heart did that weird wrenching thing, like there was some emotion it was trying desperately to serve up, something it had stored away for safekeeping, hiding it from the coldness that Rhett had cultivated so he could survive in the shadows, thrive in the shadows,becomethe fucking shadows.
Rhett stayed silent for what felt like a long time, waiting for the wrenching feeling to go away, forcing his mind back into sharp focus, reaching for that familiar coldness which had always been with him, whichwashim, as far as he knew, as far as hewantedto know.
Soon enough Rhett was back in cold control, and with a grunt he dragged Mercy’s still-woozy body out of the backseat. He slung her over his shoulder like a sack, then grabbed Cari around the waist and tucked her under his arm against his side.
Cari’s body quivered against Rhett’s, and although that disconcerting wrenching didn’t take over again, it seemed to have done some damage to his cold resolve.
Because when Rhett got them to his basement with its thick concrete walls which could smother a thousand screams, he couldn’t bring himself to do what needed to be done.
Not yet, at least.
He locked them in the self-contained cell he’d built adjacent to his basement office. It had a toilet and sink, a couch and chair, a small table on which Rhett placed a couple of water-bottles and a few snack-bars. He untied Mercy and Cari, gestured with his head towards the couch, then sighed and stepped back, hesitating before closing the heavy steel door, asking himself again why he wasn’t just doing what had to be done eventually, should be done now so he was committed to this path.
“I know you will not let us go because we have seen your face,” came Mercy’s trembling voice as she cradled her daughter in her arms, huddling back on the couch. “But you do not need to kill Cari. She does not know what she saw, will never be able to identify you. Please. She is just a child. Just leave her somewhere safe where she will be found quickly by the police so they can put her in foster care.” She blinked, then swallowed. “Or if he . . . Diego, I think you called him . . . if he does what you want and gets in touch with you, then give Cari to him. She will be safe with him.”
Rhett stared, then snorted. “You didn’t even know his real name until you heard me say it. Do you have any fucking idea what kind of a man Diego Vargas is?”
Mercy met his gaze with a strikingly confident look in her dark eyes. “Yes. I know exactly what kind of man Diego is. I saw it in him. He will not hurt Cari.”
Rhett chuckled, shook his head as he backed out of the room. “You’re delusional if you think a man like Diego Vargas gives a flying fuck about either of you. It’s fifty-fifty that he even shows up tomorrow—and if he does, it’ll be because he sees it’s in his best interest to join forces with me.” He began to close the door, shaking his head again at the pitiful delusions caused by romantic love—if that was even possible with a man like Diego.
Mercy said nothing as the door closed, but through the closing crack Rhett caught a glimpse of the two prisoners looking up at him, mother cradling her child against her body, the downwards angle of Rhett’s view making the scene look oddly reminiscent of that circular motif he’d seen in the blood-smear, like it was a sign from some unknowable force, a reminder that even a cold-hearted snake was vulnerable to human emotion.
The thought stayed with Rhett as he went upstairs and brewed a fresh pot of coffee.
It stayed with him as he drank cup after cup of the thick black coffee, watched the sunrise through the large picture window in his empty living room.
A room with no pitter-patter of little footsteps.
No touch of a woman’s love.
No dog-bowl in the corner.
No family pictures on the walls.
All day he stared out the window as the clock counted down the seconds to that evening meeting, that looming showdown, that approaching endgame which Rhett had figured would most likely be a nonevent but wasn’t so sure about now.
Not after seeing that strangely confident look in Mercy’s fiery dark eyes, like maybe the woman wasn’t delusional, like maybe shehadseen some glimmer of human emotion in Diego’s hardened heart, his twisted soul.
Shit, maybe Diego Vargas would come through after all.