The Lucky Ones

  “Oh, I—” Letty stopped dancing first, and then Grady stopped, as well. They must have looked strange, with all those bodies moving busily around them, but she couldn’t think about that. The feeling inside her was so strong that she wasn’t sure she could articulate it, and she stood there for another few seconds, meeting Grady’s gaze and feeling the sadness that had kept her features pinched and hard for the last few days begin to thaw.

  Before she summoned words, a thunder broke out somewhere to the south. A collective gasp went up under the tent, and everyone turned toward the sound. Screaming followed, and that was when she realized it wasn’t thunder at all. Stunned, she stepped in the direction of the gunshots. The first car to speed up the hill didn’t bother following the curving path of the gravel drive, and she stared, mesmerized by its blinding headlights. By then her heart was pounding, and she thought what a good thing it was that she and Grady were together, and that he had already told her what he needed to tell her. But when she turned she saw only the black jacket of Keller’s suit as he rushed toward her, scooped her up, and carried her into the house.

  25

  ABOUT THE TIME THE SECOND CAR CAME SCREECHING through the gates of Dogwood, Astrid still had both arms looped around her husband’s neck.

  Then headlights flashed across his face, and he undid her arms and picked her up by the torso. She would have yelped in pain, but the way he was holding her compressed her lungs so that it was impossible to make noise. With his free arm, he pulled a pistol from its hidden holster and waved it in the air, firing a bullet at the arc of tent above them. At the sound of a gunshot at close range, the nervous murmurs of the guests became a frightened uproar. Couples who had stopped dancing and whose anxious eyes had been darting around to see what other people were doing scattered now, running in every direction. The bass player dropped his instrument, which made a sick, crunching sound when it hit the parquet dance floor.

  Astrid, being held sideways at an awkward angle, looked around wildly for Victor, but she didn’t see him. It occurred to her that she was simply too panicked to recognize anybody or really know what was happening. But there was Cordelia, being hustled toward the house by Anthony, and Billie kicking over a table—which had been laden with ice and citrus and mint leaves and a great pyramid of crystal glassware—and urging a group of girls whose mouths were wide with fear and whose faces were streaked with tears to get behind it. Meanwhile Charlie was shouting instructions to his men. A third car arrived, blocking another side of the tent. Those who hadn’t already fled fell to the dance floor in terror, and boys in white jackets who had never had to fend off anything more dangerous than the judgmental eye of a maître d’ threw their arms over their dates protectively.

  They had come around to the other side of the house when Astrid realized that her grandmother’s tiara had fallen off, and she screamed at Charlie to put her down. But if he heard her, he didn’t respond. Right then that tiara seemed to represent her whole life till now.

  “Charlie!” she shouted as he carried her up the steps of the verandah. He had her over his shoulder now, and she kicked her feet to get his attention. “Charlie!”

  “What the hell happened?” That was Charlie—she knew because she could feel his body rise and fall with every word—but it wasn’t a voice she recognized. They passed a row of Charlie’s men, standing with machine guns raised, as they went into the ballroom, where the chandelier blazed against the empty, polished floor.

  “Three cars,” Jones said. “Joey was coming out of the guardhouse to tell them to park on the side; well, they shot him and drove on through. The boys positioned on the fence, they fired on them—some of theirs must be hit, but I don’t know how many. I watched it from the roof—after the first car came through, the others started speeding onto the property.”

  Charlie cursed. “Who are they?”

  “Must be Mink’s men.”

  “Charlie!” Astrid shrieked. His fingers were digging into her side.

  “What?” he demanded angrily as he heaved her onto the floor.

  His eyes were big and savage, and she was briefly more frightened by the way his chest seethed than by whatever chaos ensued beyond the walls of the house. She stepped away from him. A breeze came through the open French doors, lifting her magenta ruffles, which had felt very soignée earlier but seemed ridiculous now. The men on the verandah were ready and waiting for an attack, but they didn’t make a sound.

  “What?” Charlie demanded again.

  “Where’s Victor?”

  “What?” Charlie’s eyes were furious slits. He grabbed her wrist, bending her arm back terribly. “What does that matter?”

  She supposed that she should have counted herself lucky that he didn’t persist in this line of questioning, but the way he was pulling on her arm, she was afraid he might wrench it out of its socket. Already he was back to shouting orders—that Keller and Anthony should get Cordelia and Letty to the roof, that the doors should be blockaded—and then he was pulling her through the ballroom, down the hall, to the enclosed porch, where the great glass walls perfectly framed the ruins of her birthday party.

  The tent sagged in the middle; Charlie’s bullet must have knocked down some of the supports. Or perhaps Coyle Mink’s men had done it. Three cars surrounded the tent, their headlights still on, creating pale cones of light in the darkness. The doors of the cars stood open, however—the men who had driven onto Dogwood in those cars had disembarked. Earlier, Astrid had been frightened, but she was beyond that now. Her stomach was tight and her face was cold, and she was no longer afraid something bad might happen, because she knew it would.

  Charlie was pulling her across the room, past its worn sofas and potted plants, toward the glass.

  “Charlie, don’t you think we should—”

  “Shut up,” he snarled.

  That was when she saw the cake. It was resting on a table, between the tent and the wall of the house, where the caterer must have been keeping it until the time came to light candles and sing. She flinched when she realized what the cake was supposed to be—the frosting was yellow and pink and metallic; it was decorated to look like her, wearing a silver dress and golden crown. An Astrid cake. Just as this was sinking in, one of the caterers was hurled through the curtain that obscured the inside of the tent, and his body hit the table with such force that the cake went flying.

  “Oh!” Astrid gasped when she saw the red velvet insides burst open against the lawn.

  But she didn’t have time to mourn the sugar-and-flour version of her, because the curtain was ripped down, and a phalanx of men wearing dark suits and hats and holding machine guns as comfortably as they might hold the kitchen cat advanced toward the house, their faces turned up to the big glass wall of the enclosed porch above them.

  “Charlie—what in hell are you doing there?” Jones called from the doorway to the hall.

  “Come on, Charlie,” Astrid whispered.

  But Charlie’s grip on her was firm, and he seemed to want to go on staring down the invaders, his face warped with furious challenge, as long as he could. The six-shooter was still in his other hand, but he didn’t raise it. He was, apparently, not interested in futile gestures of that kind. He held his stance until the first man fired.

  Then, all of sudden, she felt the weight of his body as he pushed her, and they both went flying. The floor came up suddenly beneath her, smacking the side of her body, the fibers of the Persian carpet scratching against her skin. Charlie was half shielding her, half dragging her away from the glass wall, behind the dubious protection of a stuffed armchair, but she managed to shove her hair out of her face in time to see the wall of glass yield to the first hail of bullets, shatter, and come crashing down. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she felt the glass anyway, a sharp pain against her bare calf.

  After the glass came down, the machine-gun fire ceased briefly, and she felt Charlie’s heart going ga-dunk ga-dunk ga-dunk against her back. But the silence wasn’t to
tal. A chuckle rose up on air that smelled of gun smoke.

  “Hey, Charlie,” someone shouted, in a voice that was both hateful and laughing at the same time. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! Coyle Mink wants to say hello.”

  Astrid’s eyes, feral with fear, went to Charlie, but he appeared strangely calm. His large brown irises were directed at her, and the corner of his mouth twitched, giving her a sad, private smile.

  “Hey, baby,” he whispered. She shook her head, confused but beginning to realize he hadn’t had some grand escape plan prepared when he brought her in here. Jones had been in the doorway before, but he wasn’t there now. “Till death do us part, right?”

  26

  “WHERE’S ASTRID AND CHARLIE?”

  Anthony, blocking the way into the third-floor hallway, flicked his gaze to meet hers. “You can’t go down there,” he said.

  “But we’re trapped up here!”

  He glared at her and didn’t answer.

  A growl of frustration escaped Cordelia’s lips as she spun in the other direction. Several of Charlie’s other men had ascended to the roof—as though that would do them any good if Coyle Mink’s army really did lay siege to the house. She was still wearing the white dress, but she had lost her shoes somehow. On the threshold of the balcony stood Keller, and beside him Letty, whom he’d scooped up in those first moments of terror and confusion. Her arms were wrapped around her body, and she trembled as she peered around the corner and down at the scene on the grass. Cordelia was walking toward her when she heard the explosion of gunfire below and knew she couldn’t stay cooped up here and wait for Anthony to tell her it was all right to go.

  Without looking at Anthony she strode back across the floor, to the bed, where she fell to her knees. She reached underneath the dust ruffle, into a box she had hidden there, and felt around until she encountered the curved handle of her father’s revolver. By the time she was standing again the gun was tucked into the folds of her dress, and she pushed through the doorway before anyone could question her actions. Another of Charlie’s men was at the top of the stairs, his rifle rested across the railing and pointed down below, but she didn’t acknowledge him, either, as she hurried forward on silent feet.

  She moved carefully, with her back pressed to the wall. The shooting below had ceased, but the ensuing quiet was charged with danger. She continued to slip down the steps, feeling the weight of the gun now in her hand, telling herself that this time she wouldn’t be afraid to shoot. As she put one bare foot and then the other onto the second-floor landing, a jolt of shock traveled through her spine. Someone had reached out and put their hand on her shoulder, and she had to be fierce with herself not to scream out.

  “You know how to shoot that thing?” It was Victor, his forehead creased with worry. There were a few agonizing seconds when she wanted to demand of him who he was, really, but then she remembered the way he looked whenever Astrid was in the room, and she knew that all that mattered now was that he would do what was necessary to protect her.

  “Yes,” she whispered back.

  They kept to the shadow by the wall as they continued their descent toward the location of the last round of gunfire. When they reached the first floor Victor motioned to her to get down, and they moved at a crouch from there, to the half-opened door onto the glass-enclosed porch. She put both of her hands around the gun and used her thumb to cock it; Victor lowered his chin at her in silent approval.

  At the door, she saw how bullet holes marred the furniture and the wallpaper of the room where she’d first met her father. The room where her father had died. Planters had been knocked over, and smoke wafted from upholstery, the smell of burnt fabric mingling with the loamy spilled dirt. Then she realized that her view of the night sky was much clearer than usual from that vantage, and saw that the whole glass wall was gone. It had been shot out; the shattered remains were scattered across the floor. Nothing seemed to move, and Cordelia experienced a few moments of tranquility. But the calm was short-lived—a dark, shapeless form, halfway between the entrance and the place where the glass used to be, began to shake, and she realized that it was Astrid and her brother in a heap.

  Victor saw them, too, but before he could communicate to her what they ought to do, Charlie had leapt to his feet. “Coyle Mink wants to say hello?” His back was to them, his suspenders drawing a large X across his broad shoulders, and he was shouting at someone down below on the grass. “Well, where is he?”

  This time Cordelia didn’t wait for Victor. She crawled forward, not making a sound, knowing he would follow.

  “Oh, I get it!” Charlie went on, his voice twisted with furious irony. “The famous Coyle Mink can’t show his face. He gets you jokers to do his dirty work.”

  Until that moment, Cordelia hadn’t really known what she would do. But now her course was clear. She prayed. She took a deep breath and asked for a miracle. Just a small one. The men outside wielding machine guns wouldn’t disappear, she knew that; and she knew, too, that Charlie wasn’t going to come to his senses. So she didn’t pray for any of those things. The only miracle she wanted was for Astrid to glance up from the place on the carpet where she lay, and, in the next moment, she did.

  “Come here,” Cordelia mouthed, scooping the empty space with her hand.

  Astrid’s eyes were flooded. Black eye makeup was smeared across her face. Her chin quivered when she saw Cordelia, and she glanced at Charlie and then back again. Was she shaking her head, or just shaking? Cordelia didn’t have time to find out. She waved and mouthed, “Come here,” again.

  Quietly, cautiously, Astrid began to slither across the floor. She was bleeding, but not severely—it seemed only to be from shards of glass, not the kind of big wound that a bullet leaves. Once she was moving, Cordelia became aware of Victor beside her—he was sweating with nervousness over Astrid, and she knew how badly he wanted her to make it to them without Charlie noticing that she was gone.

  “Come with us, Charlie,” a man somewhere down on the grass yelled. He had a mean, hard, nasal voice, entirely devoid of fear. Though she couldn’t see the other men, she knew they were there—she could hear them breathing through their mouths, shifting on their feet. “If you want to meet Mr. Mink so badly. Then you won’t have to die in front of your girl.”

  At the words your girl Astrid froze. To Cordelia’s great relief Charlie didn’t turn around, and Astrid again began her slow journey across the floor.

  “Oh, yeah?” Charlie snarled.

  As Astrid crawled closer, Cordelia and Victor exchanged a look. Though the worry was still there in his face, she could tell he thought that Astrid would reach them, that they could sneak to safety, that perhaps, despite the desperate twist in her belly, they might leave this room unscathed.

  The men below hadn’t responded to Charlie, at least not with words. He was staring at them, and they were surely staring back at him, the whites of their eyes huge, their trigger fingers tensed and ready, everybody itching to know how the thing would go down. Then, suddenly, the panic in the atmosphere was given a sound as sirens came wailing onto the property.

  Charlie’s head snapped in their direction, and he briefly seemed to forget about Coyle Mink’s men. Cordelia’s heart leapt, and Astrid’s must have, too, because she scrambled to her feet as the sirens echoed against the walls. She must have been a bright flash of magenta in Charlie’s peripheral vision, because he spun suddenly and stalked after her. It was too late for Victor and Cordelia to hide; they were on their feet, backing to the door.

  “Hold up right there.” Victor didn’t raise his voice much, but it held an authority she’d never observed in him before.

  In the corner of her eye, Cordelia saw that he had raised his gun at Charlie. They were all frozen, Astrid hanging like a vision halfway between them. Outside everyone was shouting again. She heard tussling bodies, men ordering other men, wheels against grass, doors being slammed, motors starting up. All that was like a radio playing in the next room
—mostly she heard the strained breathing of her brother, his wife, and her lover.

  “Astrid, come here,” Victor commanded. She did as he said, limping forward and throwing herself into Cordelia’s arms, resting her blond head against Cordelia’s shoulder. “Charlie, put your gun down.”

  “What is this?” Charlie barked. The gun was still in his hand, and though it wasn’t aimed at Victor as pointedly as Victor’s was at him, he showed no interest in letting go of it.

  “Put it down, Charlie.”

  Charlie took two forceful steps toward the door, and the other three shrank back. The whole weight of Astrid was against Cordelia, who glanced worriedly at Victor. His eyes were dark and hard when they met hers, and she knew what he was telling her: that Charlie meant them harm, and Victor was asking her permission to do something about it. She squeezed her eyelids hard and tried to swallow her sorrow, and she clutched Astrid to her. The gun was so loud when it went off that she couldn’t even hear her own cry, and Astrid just twitched once in her arms.

  “Ouch!” Charlie exclaimed, as though he’d given himself a paper cut.

  When she opened her eyes, she was overcome with curious relief. Charlie was bleeding, but from his hand. His gun was knocked across the floor.

  “Get her out of here!” This time Victor didn’t glance her way. He had cocked his gun again and was aiming it at Charlie just as he had before. “This is between me and Charlie. Go on. Get her upstairs.”

  By then the sirens were so loud they must have been right up next to the house, and though Cordelia’s temper flared briefly to be ordered around that way in her own house, some part of her knew this wasn’t her house anymore, that the boy with the bleeding hand over there wasn’t really her brother.