So change the MO: Don’t let the body be found at all.
That was the key. Nash had left Marianne’s body where they could find it, but Reba would simply vanish. Nash had left her car in the hotel lot. The police would think that she had gone there for an illicit tryst. They would focus on that, work that avenue, investigate her background to see if she had a boyfriend. Maybe Nash would get extra lucky. Maybe Reba did have someone on the side. The police would zero in on him for certain. Either way, if no body was found, they would have nothing to go on and probably assume that she had been a runaway. There would be no tie between Reba and Marianne.
So he would keep her here. For a while at least.
Pietra had the dead back in her eyes. Years ago, she had been a gorgeous young actress in what used to be called Yugoslavia. There had been ethnic cleansing. Her husband and son were killed before her eyes in ways too gruesome to imagine. Pietra was not so lucky-she survived. Nash had worked as a military mercenary back then. He had rescued her. Or what was left of her. Since then Pietra only came to life when she had to act, like back in the bar when they grabbed Marianne. The rest of the time there was nothing there. It had all been scooped out by those Serbian soldiers.
“I promised Cassandra,” he said to her. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Pietra looked off. He studied her profile.
“You feel bad about this one, don’t you?”
Pietra said nothing. They put Reba’s body in a mixture of wood chips and manure. It would keep for a while. Nash did not want to risk stealing another license plate. He took out the black electrical tape and changed the F to an E-that might be enough. In the corner of the shed, he had a pile of other “disguises” for his van. A magnetic sign advertising Tremesis Paints. Another that read CAMBRIDGE INSTITUTE. He chose instead to put on a bumper sticker he’d bought at a religious conference entitled The Lord’s Love last October. The sticker read:
GOD DOESN’T BELIEVE IN ATHEISTS
Nash smiled. Such a kind, pious sentiment. But the key was, you noticed it. He put it on with two-sided tape so he could easily peel it off if he so desired. People would read the bumper sticker and be offended or impressed. Either way, they’d notice. And when you notice things like that, you don’t notice the license plate number.
They got back in the car.
Until he met Pietra, Nash had never bought that the eyes were the window to the soul. But here, in her case, it was obvious. Her eyes were beautiful, blue with yellow sparkles, and yet you could see that there was nothing behind them, that something had blown out the candles and that they would never be relit.
“It had to be done, Pietra. You understand that.”
She finally spoke. “You enjoyed it.”
There was no judgment. She knew Nash long enough for him not to lie.
“So?”
She looked off.
“What is it, Pietra?”
“I knew what happened to my family,” she said.
Nash said nothing.
“I watched my son and my husband suffer in horrible ways. And they watched me suffer too. That was the last sight they saw before dying-me suffering with them.”
“I know this,” Nash said. “And you say I enjoyed this. But normally, so do you, right?”
She answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
Most people assumed that it would be the opposite-that the victim of such horrific violence would naturally be repulsed by any future bloodshed. But the truth was, the world does not work that way. Violence breeds violence-but not just in the obvious, retaliatory way. The molested child grows up to become the adult molester. The son traumatized by his father abusing his mother is far more likely to one day beat his own wife.
Why?
Why do we humans never really learn the lessons we are supposed to? What is in our makeup, in fact, that draws us to that which should sicken us?
After Nash saved her, Pietra had craved vengeance. It was all she thought about during her recuperation. Three weeks after she was discharged from the hospital, Nash and Pietra tracked down one of the soldiers who’d tortured her family. They managed to get him alone. Nash tied and gagged him. He gave Pietra the pruning shears and left her alone with him. It took three days for the soldier to die. By the end of the first, the soldier was begging Pietra to kill him. But she didn’t.
She loved every moment.
In the end, most people find revenge to be a wasted emotion. They feel empty after doing something so horrible to another human being, even one who maybe deserved it. Not Pietra. The experience just made her thirst for more. And that was a big part of why she was with him today.
“So what’s different this time?” he asked.
Nash waited. She took her time, but eventually she got to it.
“The not knowing,” Pietra said in a hushed tone. “ Neverknowing. Inflicting physical pain… we do that, no problem.” She looked back at the storage unit. “But to make a man go through the rest of his life wondering what happened to the woman he loved.” She shook her head. “I think that is worse.”
Nash put a hand on her shoulder. “It can’t be helped right now. You understand that, right?”
She nodded, looked straight ahead. “But someday?”
“Yes, Pietra. Someday. When we finish this up, we will let him know the truth.”
22
WHEN Guy Novak pulled back into his driveway, his hands were at two and ten. His grip on the wheel turned his knuckles white. He just sat there, foot on the brake, wanting so much to feel anything but this tremendous impotence.
He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His hair was thinning. He was starting to let the part in his hair drift toward his ear. It wasn’t a noticeable comb-over, not yet, but isn’t that what everyone thinks? The part moves so slowly south you don’t notice it on a day-to-day or even week-to-week basis and the next thing you know, people are snickering at you behind your back.
Guy stared at the man in the mirror and couldn’t believe it was him. The part, however, would continue to drift. He knew that. Better the wisps of hair than that shiny chrome up top.
He took one hand off the wheel, shifted into park, turned the ignition key. He took another glance at the man in the rearview mirror.
Pathetic.
Not a man at all. Driving by a house and slowing down. Wow, what a tough guy. Show some balls, Guy-or are you too afraid to do anything to the scumbag who destroyed your child?
What kind of father is that? What kind of man?
A pathetic one.
Oh, sure, Guy had complained to the principal like some tattletale baby. The principal made all the right sympathetic sounds and did nothing. Lewiston still taught. Lewiston still went home at night and kissed his pretty wife and probably lifted his little girl in the air and listened to her giggle. Guy’s wife, Yasmin’s mother, had left when Yasmin was less than two. Most people blamed his ex for abandoning her family, but in truth, Guy hadn’t been man enough. So his ex started sleeping around and after a while, she didn’t really care if he found out or not.
That had been his wife. Not strong enough to hold on to her. Okay, that was one thing.
But now we were talking about his child.
Yasmin. His lovely daughter. The only manly thing he had accomplished in his entire life. Fathering a child. Raising her. Being her primary caretaker.
Wasn’t his first job to protect her?
Good job, Guy.
And now he was not even man enough to fight for her. What would Guy’s father have said about that? He’d sneer and give him that look that made Guy feel so worthless. He’d call him a sissy because if someone had done something like that to anyone in his old man’s inner circle, George Novak would have punched out his lights.