He was willing to believe anything at this point.
Miles had decided getting Samantha home took priority over heading to the west coast to find the others on the list. From the plane, he had made an awkward call to Dorian and asked her to get back to that FBI agent. There was more than enough evidence now, Miles believed, for the authorities to step in.
“Okay,” Dorian said. “On it. Anything else?”
He wanted Charise waiting for him when he got back. He wanted to take one last run at Dr. Gold, press him even harder this time. Maybe it was time to take Charise—former bouncer and wrestler—up on her offer of assistance. He had a feeling she could be very intimidating if the circumstances called for it.
“Is everything okay, Miles?” Dorian asked.
“Is that a serious question, Dorian? Considering everything I’ve been through?”
“I know, but you sound … funny. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Miles wanted to fire the same question back at her, but not yet. The truth was, he still needed her help.
“No,” he said, and ended the call.
And then Miles called Chloe.
The call went immediately to voice mail. “It’s Miles. Please call me back,” he said. Then he added, “There’s been some big … developments. You’re still important to me, Chloe.”
For good measure, he sent her a text message saying basically the same thing. He watched to see whether the text was delivered.
It was not.
Miles decided to try again later.
He went back to his seat, across from Samantha, and asked, “What did you do after those two tried to kill you? Did you tell your mother? Did you call your dad?”
“There was this other person I was supposed to contact, a kind of middleman?”
“Do you know who that was?”
She shook her head. “I sent texts but there was no response. The last one I sent said everything had gone wrong. I couldn’t call Dad because he didn’t know anything about it. And Mom had told me not to contact her directly. And I knew she’d be mad, that the whole thing had fallen apart.”
Miles had been wondering when to break it to her. That the entire scheme was pointless. Now seemed as good a time as any.
“There’s new evidence, a new DNA test, that suggests I’m not Travis’s biological father,” he said. “He’s not in line for any windfall.”
Samantha, what with the roar of the jet engines, thought maybe she’d misheard. “What?”
“It’s got something to do with the doctor at the fertility clinic. So far as I know, I’m no one’s father, biologically speaking.”
She was stunned. “It never would have worked.”
“No.”
Samantha looked out at the clouds. “I couldn’t have gone through with it. Travis and I … we were in the back of his van, and … I couldn’t do it. I don’t think I could ever have done it. Not for all the money in the world. I mean, he’s actually a nice guy, you know? I was actually getting to like him, and that was why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to go through with it. If those two hadn’t come along, I think I would have found a way to end it, to walk away. Even if Mom went nuts on me.”
“I still don’t get why you agreed to do it. How your mom talked you into it.”
Samantha looked at her uncle as if he were a dumb two-year-old. “Because she’s my mom.”
Before they landed in New Haven, Miles persuaded Samantha to call her father and tell him what had happened. When they landed outside New Haven, Gilbert was waiting. Samantha ran into his arms. After they’d had a private moment together, Gilbert approached his brother.
“I had no idea,” Gilbert said. “I can’t believe she did this to our daughter. It’s unforgivable.”
“Samantha’s going to need a lot of support,” Miles said. “Maybe even therapy. It’s like she needs to be deprogrammed from what Caroline did to her.”
Gilbert looked like he’d consider stepping in front of a bus if one had happened to go by at that moment.
“There’s more,” he said. “And maybe it’s connected.”
He told Miles he’d seen Caroline heading into the Omni, that someone had slipped a key card into his pocket and told him where to find her. Caroline had been waiting for another man.
“She hasn’t come home since.” He hung his head, then looked up. “And when I got the call from the plane, I phoned her, confronted her with that. She didn’t even try to deny it. Normally, that’d be her default position, but I knew too much for her to say none of it was true. She started crying, said it was all for me. I’ve called a lawyer. I’m getting the locks changed.”
Miles said something his brother already knew. “There’s no telling what she might do. Maybe to herself.”
Gilbert nodded.
“Go be with Samantha. She barely scratched the surface when she talked to you from the plane.”
When Gilbert left, Miles tried to reach Chloe again. She didn’t answer, and another text went undelivered.
He tried to remember the name of the diner where she worked. Finally, it came to him. He opened a browser on his phone, found it, tapped the number.
“Paradise Diner,” a woman said. “You got Vivian.”
“Yeah, hi. I wonder if it would be possible to speak to Chloe.”
“I’m wondering the same thing. She’s not here.”
“When’s her shift?”
“Right now,” Vivian said. “She hasn’t shown up, isn’t answering her phone, and I’m shorthanded. If it’s not one thing with that girl it’s another. You wanna leave a message?”
Fifty-Five
New York, NY
Nicky had run a washcloth under very cold water in the bathroom sink, wrung it out and folded it into a compress. When Chloe was brought back from her meeting upstairs with Jeremy, she was crying. When she collapsed facedown onto the bed, Nicky could see streaks of blood seeping through the back of her blouse.
Nicky had rolled up her top to reveal the belt marks on her back. Chloe winced as Nicky applied the cool cloth, moving it from one wound to another. Chloe’s bravado, her flip attitude, were gone. She seemed to Nicky somehow smaller, as though her encounter upstairs had diminished her, made her less of a person.
“I told them,” she whimpered. “I told them everything they wanted to know.”
Nicky dabbed her cheek. “Sorry I don’t have ice.”
Chloe said, “I think he knew most of it already. Someone had told him. He was confirming things.”
“Take it easy,” Nicky said. She took the cloth off Chloe’s back. “This is warm already. Let me make it cold again.” She went back into the bathroom and ran more water into the sink, holding her finger under it to test the temperature.
“He was kind of weird with me,” Chloe whispered when Nicky returned. Nicky had told her she thought their conversations were monitored, so they were talking as quietly as possible.
“Weird how?”
“He put his hand on my head for a long time. Just holding it there. He ever do that with you?”
“You mean like if he’s holding your head down on his—”
“No, not that. Putting his hand on my head, like—this will sound totally nuts—like he was feeling my life force or something.”
“I can honestly say he’s never done that with me,” Nicky said.
Chloe struggled to sit up on the side of the bed, letting her toes brush the carpet. “He really is going to kill us, isn’t he?”
Nicky sighed. “I keep thinking, because it hasn’t happened yet, maybe it won’t.”
Chloe said, “Suppose he opened the door tomorrow and told you to leave. What are you going to do? You’re going to go to the police, right?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t know. I’d be so grateful to get out, maybe I wouldn’t talk.”
“He can’t take that kind of chance,” Chloe said. “We need to get a message ou
t to someone, anyone.”
Miles, she thought.
“Closest I got was when I picked up a Wi-Fi signal by the window,” Nicky said. “But they found out before I could send a message.”
“If we could set off an alarm or something.”
“Thought of that,” Nicky said. “Was going to try to start a fire one day but couldn’t figure out a way to do it.”
“There must be something.”
Nicky went quiet for several seconds, and when she did talk, her whisper was almost inaudible. “I had this one idea, but I don’t know how to do it. But you’re older than me, so maybe you’ve got, like, skills I don’t.”
Chloe leaned in closer. “Try me.”
Roberta rapped lightly on the door to Jeremy’s office before entering.
“He’s here,” she said.
Jeremy, sitting at the computer, looked her way. “Send him up in five.”
Exactly five and a half minutes later, there was another soft knock on the door. Jeremy, not taking his eyes off the screen, said, “Come in.”
A man walked into the room and stood on the other side of the desk. Jeremy didn’t stand or extend a welcoming hand.
“Sit,” he said.
The man sat, settled into the chair, and crossed his legs. Jeremy entered a few more keystrokes, did one last, dramatic tap on the Enter key with his index finger, then turned and looked squarely at his guest.
“So,” Jeremy said. “You ran into some problems.”
The man nodded. “I can finish the job, but I’ll need a new partner. There’s someone I’ve worked with in the past. I’ll give him a call.”
“What happened to her?” Jeremy asked.
“You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”
“She was caught off guard by the subject’s girlfriend,” Rhys said. “We fucked up.”
“You see any way that we’re exposed?”
“No.”
“Her prints are nowhere on file?”
“No.”
“She had no record?”
“None.”
“No identifying marks? No tattoos?”
Rhys thought back to that night.
“No. When her body’s finally found, and they try to dig into her past, they’ll get nowhere. She has no past.”
Jeremy sighed. “As it turns out, we have one of them under our roof.”
Rhys, usually good with a poker face, could not conceal his surprise.
“Who?”
“Chloe Swanson.”
Rhys wondered if it was the Chloe from Todd’s trailer. When he heard her voice, he’d know.
“Plus, the one we were waiting for you to deal with when you returned,” Jeremy said. “Roberta’s been quite anxious for you to get this done. I didn’t want to bring in anyone else.”
“Sure.”
Jeremy placed his palms flat on the table. “I don’t want it done on the premises. Take them elsewhere.”
“Understood.”
Jeremy smiled. “Maybe tell them you’ve organized an outing. A reward for good behavior. An excursion to the Central Park Zoo. Feed them to the snow leopards.”
Rhys stood. “I’ll drop by, introduce myself as part of your legal team. Tell them we’re drafting some nondisclosure agreements for them to sign, after which their release will be expedited.”
Jeremy nodded. “It has the ring of credibility. Throw in some financial compensation.”
He turned back to his computer, signaling that they were done. Once in the hall, his back to a large black-and-white photo of one man mounting another from behind, Rhys took out his phone, entered a number, and waited. After twelve rings, a pickup, followed by silence.
“It’s me. We need to talk,” Rhys said, and ended the call.
He took his time heading down the hallway, checking out the pictures as though he were in a museum.
The world may think Jeremy Pritkin is normal, but he is one crazy motherfucker, Rhys thought.
His phone, still in his hand, rang.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s things?”
“Okay.”
“What’s your availability?”
“Depends. What’ve you got?”
“Two projects. In Manhattan.”
“I’m in town.”
“What are you doing in an hour?” Rhys said.
“Usual place?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be there.”
Rhys put his phone away and smiled. It was good to have Broderick aboard. The guy was a pro, and he owed him one.
Chloe and Nicky were sitting on the bed, backs to the headboard, legs crossed, watching TV. Nicky had the remote and was going through the channels, spending little more than three seconds on each. There was nothing else they could do right now, but given how hard it was for them to actually focus on anything, they weren’t settling on any one show.
The door opened.
That gave Nicky more of a start than it did Chloe, because Nicky was used to the routine around here, and this was not a normal visiting time. Dinner wouldn’t be until later. Breakfast arrived at eight, lunch at half past twelve, dinner at seven. Every Monday, around nine, housekeeping arrived with fresh sheets and towels.
Rhys stepped into the room.
They both sat up a little straighter, but neither of them got off the bed.
“Relax,” he said, raising his right hand in a nonthreatening gesture. “My name’s Rhys. I represent Mr. Pritkin, and we’ve come to a conclusion about how to resolve our current situation with you two young ladies that I think you’ll find very satisfactory.”
He smiled reassuringly. “You’ll be coming to our offices to sign some papers. Nondisclosure agreements. I’m sure you’re familiar with those. Very common practice these days. You’ll sign, promising never to disclose to anyone what has happened here. There will be significant financial compensation for the inconvenience we’ve caused you.”
Nicky asked, “How much?”
Chloe shot her a look that said, Seriously?
“To be determined,” Rhys said. “But you’ll be pleased by the amount. Anyway, pardon the intrusion. We’ll see you shortly.”
He backed up a step, tapped the door, waited for someone in the hall to open it. When he was gone. Nicky turned to Chloe and said, “That’s good, isn’t it? I’ll sign anything they want if it means this is over.”
Chloe did not look encouraged.
“Did you see his hand?” she asked.
“His hand?”
“His pinkie finger. Most of it was missing.”
“So?”
Chloe sighed. “Big-time lawyers don’t hide under beds.”
Fifty-Six
Mount Vernon, NY
Martin Gold loved bridges.
His fascination—he supposed it was fair to call it an obsession—with them went back to his earliest childhood years. Using the most basic wooden blocks, little Martin would construct bridges to drive his cars and trucks over. His favorite toy, without question, was a Kenner Bridge and Turnpike Building Set. Inside that box were hundreds of tiny red plastic beams and girders and road pieces that could be used to build the most elaborate structures. There was even a motor for operating a drawbridge. By combining several sets, Martin made bridges with massive spans, long enough to go from one side of his bedroom to the other.
His father, a dental surgeon who shared his son’s love of bridges and probably would have felt more fulfilled had he become a structural engineer instead of someone who poked around inside people’s mouths, enjoyed indulging Martin. Whenever possible, when out in the car, they would take a route that included a bridge. One day, his father planned an all-day trip to New York that was built around bridges. They drove over the Queensboro, the Manhattan, the Williamsburg, the George Washington, but when it came to the Brooklyn Bridge, Martin’s dad had a special treat. They parked the car and walked it, starting on the Manhattan side, had lunch in Brookl
yn, then walked back, enjoying the view of the Manhattan skyline as it grew closer with every step.
Martin Gold remembered it as the best day of his life.
Throughout the years, wherever he and his wife vacationed, Gold would search out the most interesting bridges. When they went to San Francisco, he walked the Golden Gate. When they went to Australia, not only did he check out the Sydney Harbour Bridge, he did the climb, hooked up safety cables so he could traverse the top span. It was as close as Gold had come to a religious experience.
Gold remembered thinking, at the time, I could die right now.
But he didn’t, of course. He came back to New Rochelle and continued to run his fertility clinic. (His love of bridges had never turned into a career. Bridges were fine as a hobby, his parents said, but his destiny was to become a doctor.) He had managed, at least while in Australia, to forget that there was a metaphorical bridge always hanging over him, a bridge always on the verge of collapse.
It was a terrible thing he’d done, more than twenty years ago. He knew it was wrong. How could he not? But when someone had a hold over you, possessed incredibly damning information, you found yourself capable of unimaginable things. He’d made a god-awful mistake. He’d tried to rationalize his behavior. He’d taken these actions to protect not just himself, but his wife and their young son. If he were to be disgraced, they would be, too. Their lives would be ruined.
So he did what he believed he had to do.
He knew there had to be pictures, maybe even videotapes. If they were sent to his wife, that would be bad enough. Maybe, when she saw him getting it off with a girl who was barely old enough to vote, she’d seek a divorce. And he wouldn’t blame her. A divorce, as horrible as it would be, was something he could ride out. But what if the tapes were made public? Sent anonymously to the state medical board? He’d be ruined professionally. The clinic would be shut down. God, he might even face criminal charges. He’d be lucky to have a job as a Walmart greeter by the time the dust settled.
And as more time passed, it became harder to do the right thing. The noose around his neck tightened.
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