“So you’re going to pay me if I go and shoot me if I stay?” Charlie asked.
His smile grew, appreciating her observation. “The world works by two principles, the carrot and the stick.”
“If you know Odette, then you know sometimes the carrot is the stick.” But despite the remark, and despite her certainty that going with him was stupid, she was aware of how few choices she had.
Getting shot the last time had sucked, and this time was likely to kill her.
“Come along,” he said. “We’ll have a little lunch. In public. Very civilized. We can discuss what you’re going to do for me, and how much time you’ll have to accomplish the task.”
Without quite agreeing, she moved in the direction of Salt’s car. There might be no getting out of going for this ride, but she reminded herself that she’d gotten away from him once, and would again.
Oh, and this time she really would make him pay. For the past, for the gun he had on her, but most of all for sending in Hermes and wrecking a perfectly good relationship built on perfectly good lies.
The elderly man with the umbrella—small and wiry, built like a jockey—opened the door to the back seat.
I told you my grandfather was strict, right? He taught me lots of stuff. He believed in the improving power of work, no matter how old you were. He didn’t believe in excuses. And he had a limo that broke down sometimes.
There was no way Salt had taught Vince to fix cars himself. But he could have insisted that someone else did.
“You liked Edmund, didn’t you?” she asked the driver.
He didn’t look particularly pleased to be spoken with. “Everyone liked Edmund, Ms. Hall,” he answered, low-voiced.
She slid into the car.
Even with sunglasses on, the woman occupying the seat on the other side of a large center console was unmistakably the one from the photos of galas in New York. Salt’s daughter and Edmund Vincent Carver’s aunt, though so alike in age she looked more like a sister. She wore tight black pants tucked into suede boots, a patterned blue georgette blouse, and a shearling jacket. Her blond hair was much lighter than Edmund’s, duckling gold. They must have cut a swathe through Manhattan’s elite hearts—and beds.
“I’m Adeline,” she said as Charlie slid in. “Sorry about Father. He can be a terrible bully.”
Carrot and stick.
Salt said something to the driver in a low voice, then got in the front passenger seat.
The smell of leather and expensive air freshener made Charlie’s head spin.
“Let’s get some coffee,” Salt said, turning to look back at her. “You look as though you could use some.”
“And fresh clothes,” Adeline said, wrinkling her nose, then smiled at Charlie. “No offense. I’ve woken up plenty of mornings in last night’s party rags.”
Party rags? It wasn’t that she couldn’t picture Vince spending time with her, because he had a deep well of patience. What she couldn’t picture was Vince being like her.
The car pulled out onto the road, swinging away from the bar, Charlie’s Corolla, and any hope of an easy escape.
A few minutes later the car stopped in front of The Roost, a coffeeshop at the edge of Northampton’s downtown. An employee came out with a tray of coffees and a bag that the driver accepted through the front window.
Charlie wondered if there was a sign she could give that she was being kidnapped, like those clever women who manage to signal that they’re in trouble during pizza deliveries.
If there was something, though, Charlie’s hangover prevented her from thinking of it. The car pulled away from the curb, in the direction of I-91. The wipers swept across the windshield like a metronome.
She took a nervous sip of the coffee. Adeline had gotten some matcha concoction, which left a trace of green foam on her upper lip.
“I am a person who is used to getting what I want,” Salt began, an understatement if ever she’d heard one. “And what I want is a book returned to me. Liber Noctem, The Book of Night. Look for a book that Edmund is keeping under lock and key, with a metal cover, and that will be it. There are no words on the cover. It may appear like a journal.”
Charlie nodded, unwilling to agree to get it for him, and took another sip of coffee. She waited. Sometimes silence kept people talking. Sometimes if they talked enough, they wouldn’t notice when you didn’t.
In this case, it worked. Salt went on. “My grandson can be charming, but selfish. It’s not his fault that he uses people; he grew up with an addict for a mother. She put him into situations and left him among people with whom no child should associate. They lived on the street, even slept in cars. From a young age, he had to learn to survive, and to shape-shift into whatever pleased the people he was around. By the time I got hold of him, he was thirteen and practically ruined.”