Chapter 5 - The Anatomy of a Wolf
From the doorway above, Eleanor appeared on the landing. She was holding her wine glass by the stem, her tailored silk blouse perfectly pressed, but her eyes were wide, hard as flint.
"Mark? What is that noise?"
"She has a safe," Mark yelled back, his voice climbing an octave, his hands trembling as he pointed down at the foundation hole. "Under the floor! She had a phone in it, Mom! She’s been sitting on a phone!"
Eleanor’s wine glass tilted. A thin red drop fell onto the top step, soaking into the pine. She didn't call down; she descended the stairs with terrifying, deliberate speed, her leather heels clicking with military precision.
Courtney followed behind her, clutching a linen napkin to her chest, her face pale beneath her heavy makeup.
"What do you mean, a phone?" Eleanor hissed, reaching the bottom of the stairs. She didn't look at the shattered tea mug. She looked directly into the safe. Her hand darted inside, pulling out the remaining documents—the yellowing land grants, the old tax receipts from my grandmother’s estate. "Where is she?"
"She’s in here somewhere," Mark said, his breath pluming white in the freezing air. He began kicking the plastic tubs aside, sending old holiday ornaments and garden hoses clattering across the floor. "She couldn't have gotten out! The exterior door is deadbolted from the outside!"
I didn't move.
I lay pressed beneath the heavy canvas tarp between the upright steel posts of the rear shelving unit, my face three inches from the cold concrete foundation wall. The pain in my femur was no longer a pulse; it had become an icy, motionless block that had deadened my right hip entirely. I couldn't feel my toes. I couldn't feel the edge of the metal shelf digging into my ribs.
All I had was the small black phone clutched against my stomach, its screen dark, its microphone live.
"Find her," Eleanor commanded, her voice dropping into a vicious, rhythmic rasp. "Find her right now. Courtney, check behind the snowblower."
"Mom, I don't like this," Courtney whined, her hands shaking as she peered behind the metal housing of the tractor. "If she called the police—"
"She didn't call the police!" Eleanor snapped, turning on her daughter with the savagery of an alpha wolf. "If she called 911, the sirens would have been here in eight minutes. Harold monitors the municipal dispatch frequency from his study. He would have called my cell."
She turned back to Mark, her eyes burning.
"She called Rossi."
Mark stopped kicking the bins. He looked at his mother, his jaw working silently, his face turning the color of curdled milk.
"Angela Rossi?"
"Who else would she call?" Eleanor said, stepping toward the center of the garage, her gaze sweeping over the racks. "Rossi holds the original trust indenture for the West End building. If Rossi sees the conservatorship petition before Harold can enter it on the docket, the whole family is finished. Do you understand me, Mark? The bank will call the note on the warehouse by Friday. Courtney’s lease will be canceled. We will be bankrupt before the end of the month."
"She’s right there," Courtney whispered.
Courtney wasn't looking at the workbench.
She was looking at the bottom of the canvas tarp.
The corner of my gray thermal sleeve had slipped out from beneath the hem of the canvas, three inches of frayed cotton resting against the dusty slab.
The silence that followed was absolute.
The fluorescent bulb overhead gave one long, dying buzz, then stabilized into a cold, hum-less white glare.
Mark didn't run. He walked toward the shelf with slow, deliberate steps, his loafers crunching over the shards of the broken mug. He stopped two feet from where I lay.
He reached down, took the corner of the canvas tarp in his right hand, and yanked it backward with a single, violent motion.
The cold air hit my face like a bucket of ice water.
I looked up from the floor.
Mark stood over me, his silhouette blocking the light, his hands hanging at his sides, his chest heaving beneath his cashmere sweater. Eleanor stood three paces behind him, her arms folded across her chest, her expression completely wiped of all maternal pretense.
"Hello, Emily," Mark whispered.
I didn't cower. I didn't reach for my leg.
I pressed my back against the foundation wall, pulled myself into a sitting position using the steel shelf for leverage, and looked my husband dead in the center of his eyes.
"You missed a tie-rod," I said.
The color completely drained from his face. His fingers twitched, curling inward toward his palms.
"What did you say?"
"The mechanic in Newark," I said, my voice hoarse, dry as bone, but perfectly steady. "He kept the duplicate receipt, Mark. He kept the work order where you signed your own name to the torque release on the secondary knuckle."
Eleanor took half a step back, her hand flying to her throat, her manicured fingers catching the gold chain of her locket.
"She’s lying," Eleanor said, though her voice lacked its earlier iron. "She’s guessing. Mark, tell me she’s guessing."
Mark didn't answer his mother. He stared down at me, his eyes wide, the pupils dilated until the dark brown irises were almost entirely black.
"Where is the receipt, Emily?"
"It’s not in the safe," I said, a thin, bloody smile touching the corners of my mouth. "It’s been on Angela Rossi’s desk for forty minutes. Along with the wire transfers to Courtney’s boutique. And the offshore accounts in the Caymans."
Courtney let out a ragged, choking gasp, stumbling backward against the snowblower. "Mark! She knows about the boutique! She knows about the LLC!"
"Shut up!" Mark roared, not taking his eyes off mine.
He dropped to one knee beside me, his heavy hand coming down on my fractured right thigh with deliberate, agonizing precision.
The pain didn't detonate this time; it was a cold, suffocating wave that took the air completely out of my lungs. My vision blacked out at the margins, narrowing to a tiny, vibrating tunnel through which I could see only the small, white scar above his right eyebrow where he had caught a foul ball in college.
"Give me the phone, Emily," Mark whispered, his fingers sinking deeper into the soft tissue above the titanium plate. "Give me the phone, and we’ll go inside. We’ll call the doctor. I’ll give you the Norco myself."
"No," I choked out, blood bubbling on my lower lip.
"You think Rossi can save you from a closed room?" he hissed, his face three inches from mine, his breath hot, sour with panic. "By the time anyone gets out to this street, you’ll have suffered an accidental fall down the basement steps. A secondary fracture. An embolism. People die from femoral embolisms all the time, Emily. The orthopedic surgeon warned us about it at discharge."
"Mark," Eleanor’s voice came from behind him—not stopping him, but checking the room. "The neighbors."
"The garage is insulated, Mom!" he screamed without turning around. "Nobody hears anything out here!"
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He reached for the pocket of my sweatpants, his fingers tearing through the cheap fleece to find the phone.
And then, through the double-paned glass of the small garage window facing the street, the world turned blue and red.
