‘Dry your eyes, Alisha. People are starting to notice you.’
Sitting looking at his wife, Luke Rickard wondered what to do with her. Right now she was baggage that he could do without. Ordinarily he fed off the fear in her, but now it was too damn inconvenient. Her snivelling had grown so annoying that he considered doing her right there and then in front of the breakfast crowd in the diner.
She used a napkin to dab her eyes, lifting her sunglasses one lens at a time. ‘I… I’m sorry, Luke. I just can’t get those men’s faces out of my mind.’
Rickard took her wrists in his hands. ‘Don’t speak about that here.’
‘When can we speak about it? You haven’t answered any of my questions.’
Rickard took a less-than-surreptitious look round. At a nearby table an elderly man was eyeing him back over the top of his coffee mug. Rickard stared directly at the man until the guy got the message and returned his attention to his eggs and ham. Rickard turned back to Alisha. ‘We can talk about it later.’
‘You’ve been saying that for hours.’
Rickard lowered his voice. ‘They wanted to kill me, Alisha. Would you rather it was me lying dead back there?’
Her face went rigid. ‘No. Of course not. But… well… maybe they weren’t coming to kill you.’
He expelled a breath. ‘Why else would men with guns sneak into our apartment?’
Alisha turned her face away. It was only a momentary dipping of her chin, but Rickard caught it. It was a sign of deception. He recalled the smell of the lead assassin’s cologne and how he was sure that it had lingered in his apartment on his return home. Maybe he’d been scoping the terrain a little closer than was expected.
‘You knew him, didn’t you, Alisha? The one with the grey hair?’
Alisha shook her head with just a little more exaggeration than was necessary.
‘He was in my home,’ Rickard said. ‘You must have let him in.’
‘I didn’t…’ Her voice was a child’s whimper.
‘What lies did he tell you?’
‘He didn’t… I mean… he wasn’t there.’
Rickard was still holding her wrists. Not in a supportive manner now.
‘Luke,’ Alisha said. ‘You’re hurting me.’
He squeezed harder. ‘He came to my apartment, Alisha. He spoke to you. What did he say?’
‘N… othing.’ Alisha tried to pull her wrists free, but Rickard wouldn’t let her go. ‘I haven’t ever seen him before, Luke. I promise.’
Staring at her, Rickard thought back. There were a few details about the entire episode that he did not like. Below his private floor, he didn’t have sole right to the elevator, so it wasn’t unusual to find another person on board, but the manner in which the man had reacted when the doors opened and he found Rickard standing there was a little over the top. He hadn’t expected Rickard to return home so soon. He’d been mid-conversation on his mobile phone: someone warning him that Rickard was back in town. Where are you, Rickard? Had the man been talking with his employer, or was he having a final conversation with someone much closer to home?
Then there was the fact that the man had gained access to his private floor without causing damage. Rickard had first thought that he had entered via the fire escape door, which made sense as he’d need a key to manage the elevator. The trouble was, although the fire escape gave easy access from the hall outside his apartment, to gain egress he would need to have punched in a code that only he and Alisha knew. There were ways round electronic locks, but Rickard had checked the dead man and found no devices.
Then there was the door to his apartment. As the man had entered on cue with those coming from the roof, the door had been thrown open and had crashed against the wall. But Rickard had an eye for details, and thinking back, he couldn’t remember any sign that the latch had been broken loose. He hadn’t thrown the locks, but a key was still needed from the outside. That or a lock-pick, but that had been conspicuous by its absence as well.
One more point was troubling him, but that was something to be considered later.
‘I believe you, honey,’ he said. He slowly released her wrists, transferred his fingers to her hands and patted them gently. Beneath her sunglasses she was blinking very fast. He caught flashes of her blue eyes like strobes going off.
‘You do?’
‘Of course, babe. I love you, don’t I?’
‘I love you too. It’s just that… well…’
‘What is it?’
‘The way you killed those men…’
‘I was lucky.’ He smiled at her. ‘No. That isn’t true. There was something very precious to me that I just had to protect. You, babe. I didn’t think about my own life. I just didn’t want them hurting you. Given that kind of motivation, no one could have stood in my way.’
Up until now she’d been as pale as death, but colour pinpricked her cheeks. But she wasn’t flattered. She had picked up on his lies. And by the way she withdrew her hands from under his fingers, she knew that he knew it too.
‘Now, babe, I’ve been thinking. We can’t go to the police over this. I don’t trust them to find the people responsible for sending those men. Others might come. We have to get out of here first. Go somewhere safe.’
Alisha nodded at him, even though by the trembling of her jaw she was buying none of it.
‘What I want you to do is go to the restroom back there. You need to freshen yourself up. Fix your hair and make-up. You’re so pretty other people can’t help looking at you, but I don’t want them to see your tears.’
He made a play of searching his pockets. His hands came out empty. ‘I must have left my phone in the car. Here,’ he said, reaching for her purse, ‘give me yours. I need to make a couple of calls, find us somewhere safe until we can figure this thing out.’
He took out her phone and passed the purse back to her. Alisha stared at the phone like it was a lifeline.
‘Go on now.’ Rickard nodded towards the back corner of the building. ‘Go make yourself pretty again.’
Alisha got up, looking unsteady on her feet. Those expensive Prada shoes weren’t the best in which to make a run for it, but they matched the rest of her designer ensemble. Training shoes would have attracted undue attention. Rickard had told her to wear them. Now he wasn’t so sure it had been his best idea. They made her legs look as long as a boring week. Two or three men in the diner watched her progress towards the restrooms, including the old guy from earlier. She was so beautiful that she was distinctive. She’d be recalled, and so would the man who was with her.
‘Can’t let that stop me.’
She’s baggage. That’s all. He should have left her in the gutter where he’d found her, instead of wooing her and making her his wife. He’d allowed his desire to totally control a woman to overwhelm his best senses. In hindsight she’d always been a liability, and one that could ultimately have led to his downfall.
As soon as she was through the restroom door, he opened up her phone and checked her incoming calls. Withheld numbers. He checked her outgoings. Withheld numbers again, but one of them coincided with his arrival back at the parking lot at his apartment. He closed the phone and placed it in his pocket alongside his own phone. He flicked some dollars on the table to pay for the food they hadn’t touched. Took out his ceramic knife and cupped it in his palm.
He stood up and walked towards the restrooms.
Just baggage, he thought again.