Read Online Any Minute Now by Eric Van Lustbader - Free Book Online

no. What do you take me for?” St. Vincent tapped his lips with a forefinger as if just now struck by a thought. “It’s only that … well, Marilena had another child, didn’t she?”
    Orteño swallowed. His mouth was suddenly dry. With his good arm, he reached for the plastic pitcher of iced water, but St. Vincent beat him to it.
    â€œHere, allow me.” St. Vincent filled a plastic cup, handed it to Orteño, watched him circumspectly while he drained it. When he was finished, he continued. “No disparagement meant, but this child—her name is Lucy—she was two years Leo’s elder, is that right?” He waited for a response, but when none was forthcoming, he went on. “According to the records I’ve seen, Lucy ran away from home when she was fifteen.”
    Just like my grandmother, Flix thought.
    â€œThat was, what? six, seven years ago.”
    â€œSix years, nine months, seventeen days,” Orteño said dully. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach was expanding. Almost a year of trying to find her had left him eager to join up with Whitman, get the hell out of the country, work off his frustration.
    â€œNaturally Marilena tried to find her. So did you, as a matter of fact.”
    â€œLucy’s gone, lost to us,” Orteño said. “We’ve all but forgotten her.”
    â€œOh, I doubt that.” St. Vincent stood as he had when contemplating the print, with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “I doubt that very much. After all, family is family, am I right?”
    Again, Flix refused to answer what was obviously a rhetorical question.
    St. Vincent cleared his throat. “In any event, the good news is that Lucy has been found.”
    Orteño’s heart began to pound. This was not at all what he had expected. “She has? Where? Where is she? When can she be brought back to us?”
    â€œNot so fast, Felix. There are, um, complications. She’s been charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell. In the state where she was picked up, that’s a mandatory twenty-five-year sentence if she’s convicted, and believe me when I tell you that she will be.”
    â€œWhat?” As fast as elation had come upon him, it was plowed under by dread. He felt as if he were choking. “They can’t—”
    â€œI’m afraid they can, Felix.” An artfully arranged expression of sorrow and pity arrived on St. Vincent’s face dead on schedule. “And they surely will.”
    â€œDon’t tell me. You know both the state police chief and the chief prosecutor well.”
    â€œTrue enough.” St. Vincent studied his nails, which were as perfect and shiny as a runway model’s. “But I’m also very well connected in the FBI. I can send in the feds and, well, you’re a smart guy, you know the rest.”
    There was nothing more to say, so St. Vincent simply checked out the monitors Orteño was attached to. He had made his pitch. The rest was up to the patient.
    Orteño put his head back on the pillow. He became aware that he was sweating. He hated sweating; he almost never did, unless he was sufficiently ill to warrant it. He closed his eyes, as if to blot out the man standing beside his bed. He remembered with vivid clarity his sister’s almost unimaginable loss. How she had been inconsolable, how, had it not been for him, she would have slipped into a deep depression, a downward spiral from which there might very well have been no returning. He had gotten her into counseling, then to a meds psychiatrist, and slowly but surely she had righted the ship. But always in the back of her mind was the loss of her beloved Lucy. He imagined now how the news would hit Marilena. The joy that would suffuse her face, her entire being. Then he imagined keeping the news from her, keeping Lucy from her, Lucy in jail, and he knew that he couldn’t allow any of that