Violets & Violence (5 page)

“Why?” I asked. “Why me?”
Of all the regular people in that audience, what made me so special when I don’t even have what it takes to keep a woman that promised to stick by me ‘til death do us part?

She laughed out loud as if she had read my cynical thought. “Were you absent just now? Don’t you
feel
what I have felt while we kissed? Why not you? Why not trust fate or whatever it is?”

Safe from embarrassment at last, I pivoted on my heels and walked back toward the sofa. I didn’t sit next to her, though. I wouldn’t risk that because I knew that getting close to her would result in another kiss, regardless of whether I knew her.

“I see what you’re looking at,” I told her, sliding my hands along the length of my slim build and stopping up at my face. I gave her a sleazy eyebrow wiggle, which aroused sloppy laughter from Violet, the kind that caused her to cover her face with her hands.

“You are one hell of a sexy beast, aren’t you, Carter?”

I threw my sleaziest wink at her next. More chuckling. “I know you have better eye candy, better offers, better opportunities. I’m just…well, a numbers geek who drives a Camry and has a mortgage payment every couple of weeks. I’m about as special as the Chinese food we’re about to eat.”

Once she lowered her hands, I discovered that optimistic beauty of hers hadn’t wavered, even after my comment about the Chinese. She made it easy to feel insecure, just by sitting on a sofa and showing her nice teeth and hazel eyes.

“What?” I asked, ready to start laughing for no reason. I would have blamed it on the wine, but Violet was far more intoxicating. “Say it!”

She shook her head, and then finally admitted. “I think you’re pretty much perfect the way you are, Carter.”

“Okay, now I
know
you’re full of shit.” I grinned to the point of laughing.

“I mean…” She waved at me, her hand moving from my toes to the top of my head. “Visually, I see nothing wrong with you. You’re a guy, you’re not awkwardly large or too skinny. You have substance, you have presence.” She shrugged. “You’re sophisticated and not exactly hard to look at.”

It seemed like a silly conversation, talking about my appearance like this was some kind of test or audition.

“But what really made me notice you, Carter?” The grin seemed to drip off her face, replaced by a nervous honesty. “That night at the Fisher when you walked onto my stage, I felt we had an incredible yet familiar rapport. I wouldn’t normally poke fun of my guests like I did with you, but once I got started, I couldn’t stop. It felt like we had done that a million times, like it was natural for us to be up there together, holding hands and joking around. That night, I was incredibly nervous. I’m looking to make changes with the show, so you’ll probably remember that night started a little awkwardly. I know it did. I was preoccupied.”

I had been as well. But seeing Violet on the stage, the way her muscles flexed with each step she took in those tall heels, the way her face lit up whenever the overhead lights washed over her…Any man would have been distracted that night. I hadn’t been alone in that department.

“The best thing that happened to me and the show that night was calling you onto the stage.” She nodded as if to reinforce this.

Something of a staring contest ensued. It made no sense why I could be the best part of anyone’s anything, so her words stripped me of a response. Luckily, it didn’t last long; the phone rang, two quick rings to indicate the lobby downstairs.

“Chinese food’s here,” I said, my voice coming out raspy. I had to clear my throat and repeat what I had just said.

She giggled again, her earlier happiness returning. No more seriousness.

We were back in the world of magic.

The alarm woke me. Fifteen minutes earlier than normal because Violet knew what time I normally set it. I forced my eyes to stay open, stared at the light blaring through one of the windows around the bed; I had left the automatic blinds open on that one specifically because at eight in the morning, it accommodated the sunshine better than any of the other five.

I flopped over onto my other side and noticed the space next to me was empty. She hadn’t come home. First last week, and now again last night. Groaning, I snapped the sheets away from my body to stay cold and awake.

I missed Violet, even though I hadn’t noticed her absence in bed until just now. She was my favorite color, my favorite flower, my favorite girl.

As I had suspected when I set the alarm last night, I heard the Rover’s engine outside, followed by the door opening and closing, and finally, her silhouette in the doorframe. She had timed her arrival to precede my alarm, and I wondered why.

I pushed myself up on my elbows and glared back at her shadow.

“What time’s your flight?” she asked, her voice coarse from a night without sleep and who knew what else.

“Eleven.” I reached for the remote on the bedside table and raised the remaining blinds. “I’m going to work out,” I told her, sitting up. “What’re you going to do?”

“Sleep,” she answered, pushing away from the doorframe and heading upstairs to one of the guestrooms.

“I hate when you do this,” I whispered once she was long out of earshot.

After a moment of self-reflection, I slid out bed and changed into my workout gear before heading into the basement (or
dungeon
as I called it) for a quick hour-long workout before heading to the airport.

By this time of year, New York City’s colors had changed from green to yellow and orange, which seemed odd because Detroit was marginally farther north and our colors hadn’t changed this noticeably. And the air in New York felt colder too, at least compared to what I had left behind, which I blamed on an unseasonably warm Fall and the recent abnormal weather systems. The chilled wind whipped at my face and numbed my exposed fingers as I surfaced onto 7
th
Ave from the subway station and headed for Times Square. I steered right, cutting through the crowds at the Bank of America building, then continued along 46
th
, passing the Edison and a long line of yellow cabs.

The Imperial Theater didn’t look like the happiest place in the world. A brown-brick building with bars protecting its street level windows and dented, steel doors that were supposed to look like gold, this theater looked like the homeless kid on the block. The Paramount across the street with its elegant, white-stone façade looked rich in comparison.

I glanced up and spotted the third floor balcony, more of an escape route than a luxury, and wondered how Les Misérables had enjoyed such a long run here. It wasn’t the type of place whose exterior left much of an impression.

“Mr. Kemble?” I heard behind me.

I pivoted on my heels as Lindsey from the Shubert Organization pushed open the back door of a Lincoln Town Car. She wore a conservative skirt, not the sexy style that Violet would wear tonight at the Fisher, but that didn’t take away from Lindsey’s youthful and somewhat plain yet familiar attractiveness. She didn’t wear much makeup, but given her slim build, big brown eyes, and long straight hair that she had pulled back into a bun of some sort, she didn’t need much help in the prettiness department. I held out my hand to help her out of the car and onto the sidewalk, averting my eyes as I considered this woman.
Where have I seen you before?

“Thank you,” she said, smiling.

And that was when I noticed her smile, too perfect to be as natural as the rest of her.
It’s coming back to me, my memory of you, but it’s still a little too deep to touch.

“How was your flight?” she asked

“Perfect,” I told her, then made a show of checking the time, holding my sleeve away from the Patek watch a little longer than necessary. Yes, I wanted her to notice, wanted her to start a conversation about the watch. “You’re early.”

“That’s a beautiful watch,” she said dismissively—but she noticed and that was what counted because only someone exposed to this kind of watch would notice it—then stepped up to one of the large, metal doors. She used a key to unlock it, then waved me inside before locking it up again once we were in the dark, employee-only entrance. “We’ll make our way to the front of the house,” she said. “Follow me.”

I followed her, noticing the hallways still reeked from the warmth and activity of the previous show.

“As you know, Les Mis occupied these facilities for quite a while,” she explained. Once we reached the front lobby, she stopped and waved at the vast space. The cliché about not judging a book by its cover applied when it came to the Imperial; this theater’s interior was the polar opposite of its exterior. “Very little work is needed here,” she said while I admired our surroundings with a tilted gaze.

“It’s not an issue for our type of show,” I assured her. “I’m more interested in seeing the stage, below the stage, the accommodations and, most importantly, the lighting capabilities. Lighting is extremely important to what I do.”

“Ah, yes,” she said with a grin that failed to convince me that she knew what really mattered to a show like ours. “Lighting. Whatever we’re lacking, we can easily accommodate so that our facility aligns with your specifications, Mr. Kemble.”

“Luke,” I said.

She chuckled and placed a hand on top of mine. “Of course. Luke.” The way she said my name had a seductive and classy appeal. It reminded me of something, but I didn’t have much time to think about it because we started moving again. “Follow me, Luke.”

I followed her down an aisle all the way to the stage. A few lights flicked on, illuminating the barren stage and allowing me to inspect some of the equipment above us. The Imperial’s lighting inventory seemed fairly standard. Still, once I saw the specs and determined whether Violet’s show needed additional equipment, I agreed with Lindsey that the theater could accommodate us.

“Didn’t believe me, did you?” she asked.

I smiled back, then indicated the stage. “We’ll need a trap door.”

She shrugged. “No problem. Would you like to see what’s underneath? You’ll be adequately impressed with just how spacious it is.” She stepped closer to me and lowered her voice. “I bet someone could scream and moan during a show and nobody would ever notice.”

I gulped.

When she pulled back, she winked and led the way onto the stage and then behind the curtains to a wooden stairwell that lacked any luxury whatsoever. I followed her, watching as she activated the flashlight on her iPhone to illuminate our path.

“It’s dark,” I said.

“Here, hold my hand.” She reached back and swiped her palm up my thigh. I laced my fingers between hers before she could get too close to my crotch.

“I’m not really afraid of the dark,” I chuckled.

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and rolled the flashlight over a thick wooden door. There was nowhere else to go except behind the stairs. Squeezing my hand, she whispered, “I wouldn’t expect you to be scared, Luke. But once I’m done with you, you won’t want to be in the dark ever again.”

Still gripping my hand, she twirled herself into my arms. I could smell her breath—
sushi?
—and she closed her eyes.
I know those eyes.
I felt I could easily get lost in those eyes.

“Are you ready for the craziest thing you’ll ever know?” I felt her hand slide out of mine and heard it fumbling with the doorknob behind her back.

Before I could answer, she shoved the door open.

Light, the brightest light I had ever seen, poured into the dark stairwell. It took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust, and that was when I noticed that Lindsey had disappeared, apparently an amateur magician herself. Squinting into that brightly lit room underneath the Imperial’s stage, I made out one of those temporary folding tables, the ones they use for trade shows or at hotel conferences, the kind they cover with white linens and fancy skirting. But there was no fancy fabric here. Only a single chair behind that table.

And that single chair was occupied by a man I had hoped to never see again; I just didn’t know it was him until he spoke.

“Well, well,” his familiar voice announced, and my stomach not only dropped, but imploded on itself. I felt like vomiting.

“No,” I breathed, shaking my head.

“Ah, good, you remember me.” As the man finished speaking, his tall, slender figure appeared as a shadow with the bright lights as its backdrop. Like Violet’s silhouette earlier this morning, I couldn’t see his face.

But I didn’t need to.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey whispered somewhere behind me, and I heard that wooden door slam shut, locking me inside this room with no means of escape. Locking me in here with Henry Rinker. The banker from Quotient Financial Services, all those years ago, pre-financial crisis. Judging by his tone, he hadn’t aged a day since I last saw him.

If anything, his rage and appetite for vengeance had rewarded him with a tyrannical youth.

And then all the lights went out, and I saw nothing.

Nothing.

Poof
.

It seemed to me that time didn’t heal all wounds. If anything, I concluded with the taste of iron, or rust, or blood in my mouth, and an angry throbbing at the base of my skull, time only aggravated those wounds, spawning rage and hatred and chaos. Now it burned like the quiet ache that follows a broken bone, always there and waiting for the right climate or scenario or motion to come out and play.

Henry Rinker was my quiet ache.

“How’s your head?” he asked without the slightest hint of empathy as he entered the room and came into the light so I could finally see him. Despite my earlier assessment, it now appeared that Rinker had indeed aged. The long lines on his face had not only multiplied, but deepened. His hair had thinned and greyed completely. His eyes had tightened and taken on something of a demonic quality. He was one pissed-off old banker.

“What’re you after?” I asked from my perch – a cross, or something with a tall back and shorter limbs for arms where my wrists had been tied with plastic fasteners, my body held up with belts looped underneath my shoulders – at the front end of this bright room underneath the Imperial’s stage.

This cross-like thing had obviously been a stage prop at some point. Rinker and his unknown, unseen party had decided to bind me to it.

“I know those papers arrived in your office,” I told him through the dull haze in my head, revealing my only piece of information right away, my only weapon. Dumb move, but it was my only defense, it seemed. And I wanted that annoying pain my head to go away.

“Is that right?” Rinker asked, stopping at the bare, skirtless table. He removed his Hugo Boss jacket, rolled up his sleeves and carefully slid his jewelry—a couple of rings, a bracelet on the right wrist, a watch on the left—off his body and placed them on that table. “Tell me about the money, Luke Kemble. How’d you put that money to use?” He stepped toward me. “All those years ago, hmm?”

Before I could answer, he balled his hands into fists and pummeled me with a rapid succession of violence. By the time he finished, he was struggling for breath, and I laughed. I spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor and laughed. His assault hadn’t hurt so much as robbed me of my own breath.

Once Rinker stopped huffing and puffing, he stepped up to me and gripped my chin with his hand. He squeezed so tightly that my head started aching within seconds. Sadly for him, it was more effective than his punching-bag exercise.

“Tell me about the money, Luke,” he hissed, squeezing harder and harder. “So I don’t have to kill you.”

It took four days for me to start talking. Four days with nothing but water to drink and bread to eat, and not a whole lot of either one. On that fourth day, I noticed the plastic restraints at my wrist and ankles had begun to feel loose. But as if Rinker had read my mind, the moment I pretended to fall asleep in my upright position, he slipped out from the naked table (he had worked on a laptop for most of the day) and approached me to tighten them.