by David Pepper
“Were you guys romantic?”
When they’d spoken last night, the California professor—the other Marshall winner—had speculated that Razi and Katrina had been an item.
“This is all off the record, right?”
“Every word.”
He gazed up toward the ceiling, answering quietly. “I didn’t know her at Princeton until we hit it off during the interview process. Then, after we won, and in our early months in England, we spent a lot of time together. There was chemistry between us, maybe even some temptation, but we never became more than friends.”
“Were you—”
“We were never intimate, no.”
“You look a little wistful right now, I have to say.”
“Like I said, we spent a lot of time together, then life happened. Your questions are bringing back memories, that’s all. She was a special person.”
He was on the psychiatrist’s couch now, Cassie providing the therapy.
“Tell me more about her.”
The council member peeked at his watch, uncomfortable. “I believe we only set aside half an hour for this.”
“I don’t need every detail. Just the basics.”
His eyes brightened.
“I’ve never met a sharper person in my life. She ran circles around the rest of us, even if she hid it most of the time.”
“How so?”
“She had an encyclopedic mind and a photographic memory. But nimble, too. She could talk and debate any topic, from science to the arts. I told her it was a waste of her brainpower to go into coding and programming.”
“Why did you say that?”
“She was passionate about making the world a better place. And I didn’t see how immersing herself in coding would let her do that. But if anyone could figure that out, it was Katrina.”
Cassie smirked. She was on her way to changing the world all right.
“Do you know why she wanted to make the world a better place?”
“Well, doesn’t everyone?”
“Unfortunately, no. What drove that?”
“Oh. I think it was her past.”
“What about her past?”
“She didn’t talk much about it, but my impression was she grew up with almost nothing. Not middle-class like some of us, but poor. To the point of being hungry.”
“But she didn’t talk about it?”
He shook his head. “But it was the way she talked about the wealthy kids she’d been surrounded by, going back to prep school. She wasn’t rude about it, but she would comment that they had no idea how lucky they were. That they didn’t know what poverty or hunger were. And when she talked about those things, her eyes got . . . It seemed clear she was speaking from personal experience.”
There was so much Cassie wanted to ask, but time was short. “You mentioned a prep school. Do you know which one she went to?”
“Roosevelt School for Girls.”
Cassie wrote the name down.
“Is that a fancy one?”
His teeth glinted white as he flashed a friendly smile. “The fanciest. Imagine the daughters of New York’s rich and famous, with a few scholarships thrown in the mix. More than half end up at Princeton or the other Ivies.”
Three knocks rapped on the councilman’s door.
“Come in, Iris.”
A young Asian American woman, her black hair tied back in a ponytail, poked her head through the doorway. “Your next appointment is here.”
“Okay. Tell him two minutes.” He returned to Cassie. “You might’ve noticed, I like to stay on schedule.”
“It’s interesting you say she was poor. I found some later photos of her at Oxford. She was dressed in expensive clothes, tall heels, a Gucci purse and—”
“Katrina was?”
“Oh, yeah. She looked like a supermodel when she graduated.”
“At Princeton, she was as down-to-earth as you can imagine. It was one reason I liked her.”
As he mentioned Princeton again, Cassie recalled her own college days. Her parents’ accident when she was fourteen had forced her to spend her teenage years almost penniless. To get through Boston University, she loaded up on loans that still soaked up a big part of her paycheck. But beyond the loans, Cassie had always worked one or two jobs—in the dining hall, an off-campus waitressing gig, research for a professor. She remembered watching with envy all the kids who only had to worry about getting their reading and problem sets done. She used to pull her cap low over her eyes, trying to avoid the gawks that inevitably came when privileged classmates discovered her serving them food or clearing their trays.
No doubt Princeton financial aid kids had to endure the same thing.
“Do you remember if she worked to get through Princeton?”
“You mean besides schoolwork?”
“Yeah. To get through Princeton on financial aid, I assume you’re working the whole time.”
“I sure did. Luckily for me, they paid the tour guides well.”
“Do you know if Katrina worked a job like that?”
“I don’t think she did, at least when I knew her.” He looked at his watch again. “Cassie, I really need to—”
One more big question.
“You mentioned that things tapered out a few months after you got to England. Was there a reason for that? Are Cambridge and Oxford that far apart?”
He froze. For the first time in the interview, this jovial optimist frowned, his lips quivering.
“She stopped responding. And I haven’t spoken to her or heard from her since. The Marshall program hosts reunions every year; she’s never shown up for one.”
He lowered his head as he finished the sentence. They may have only been friends, but Razi Dallas was an open book. Her disappearance had wounded him.
The door cracked open again. Iris was back.
CHAPTER 82
MARBLEHEAD, OHIO
Jack, we have a problem.”
I’d just showered, replaced the bandages on both leg wounds, and dressed, when Chief Santini called.
“And what’s that?” I asked, scratching the itch on my right calf that refused to go away. Overnight, the wound had become a bit infected, so even with the new bandage it stung at my touch.
“Your jail buddy? The hit man?”
“What about him?”
“He’s heading our way.”
“How do you know that?”
“A cleaning lady in a motel off I-90, east of the Indiana border, found a young woman cut to pieces, stuffed in a closet. A really bloody scene that had all the markings of our guy’s handiwork.”
“Does the motel have video?”
“We checked them. This guy avoided every camera. And he didn’t park in their lot.”
“So when you say east of the Indiana border, do you mean near Chicago?”
“Jack, I mean he’s in Ohio.”
I took a deep breath. Less than two hours away.
“Jesus. How the hell does he know where I am?”
“I’m guessing it’s your phone.”
“Right, which means he’ll keep driving to Youngstown and end up at that locker down the hallway from you.” We had left both my and Tori’s phone with the chief in case they were being traced.
“And we’re ready. But let’s plan for the worst case.”
“Which is?”
“That he’s heading to Marblehead.”
“Chief, that’s not the worst case.”
“Well, then what is?”
“That he’s already here.”
CHAPTER 83
MARBLEHEAD, OHIO
Keep climbing, Arman. Keep climbing.”
The Butcher shuddered as high-pitched, boyish voices whispered in his ear. On this perfect morning the view o
f Lake Erie from behind the white Marblehead Lighthouse was unleashing sounds and images from long ago.
The three boys had been tracing their small fingers along the stone walls of the medieval monastery nestled on the peninsula’s edge, when they’d come across the thick wooden door. It didn’t budge but was cracked open enough to allow them to slide their skinny bodies through.
Once inside, they tiptoed through the darkness and the musty air, past the clutter and the cobwebs, to a rickety, circular stairwell. Each wooden step creaked as he put his weight on it, the fifth one shaking as if about to break loose. He hesitated, peering up at his brothers, already at the top, ambient light framing their small heads like a dim, collective halo. Sensing his fear, they urged him to keep climbing.
After reaching the top, each boy found a gap in the brick wall where sun rays beamed through. Those gaps became their windows to the most wondrous view of their short lives. The clear blue waters of Armenia’s Lake Sevan shimmered below them, small waves lapping up on golden beaches on the mainland shore while green- and white-tipped mountains loomed in the distance. The brothers, whose only view until that day had been the ground-floor dust and dirt of their war-torn town, sat motionless, in awe, for close to an hour. They chattered like birds, describing out loud the shapes of the clouds overhead, the curves and angles of the land as it stretched from shore to mountain peak, the colors they had never before seen. And they wondered aloud if this was what heaven looked like.
Less than a week later a bullet pierced the skull of the Butcher’s oldest brother, killing him instantly. Weeks after that, his other brother stepped on a land mine. Ever since, when he remembered his brothers, the Butcher pictured that ancient monastery perched on the water’s edge. The flimsy stairs. His brother’s heads surrounded by light. Their eyes lined up with the gaps in the wall. The joyous chatter. The breathtaking view. Their heaven.
This morning there were no mountains in the distance, just low islands. It was not balmy but windy and cool. But the lighthouse, the water, the rocky point—so much was the same, it chilled him.
He’d ended up here because the old brick building where his targets had spent the night was less than a mile away. As he approached that building minutes before, a black SUV was idling in the parking lot. He drove past slowly, head facing forward, but his rearview mirror reflected a man sitting in the SUV’s driver seat. Security of some sort. So he kept driving until he spotted the lighthouse, pulled over, and parked in its lot.
With at least one bodyguard posted outside, and with the targets armed with the weapons they’d secured at the old man’s farm, a frontal assault on the inn would be too risky. Far better to attack once they were in transit. So he found the bench with the best view of the lighthouse and sat down.
He pushed the last joyous memory of his brothers aside, took out his phone, and reopened the app that was tracing his targets’ every move.
CHAPTER 84
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Razi Dallas wasn’t exaggerating: the Roosevelt School for Girls definitely educated the who’s who of New York City.
Once back at the Republic offices, it had taken Cassie all of ten minutes to locate the school’s yearbook from fifteen years ago. Over the years she’d used two websites to dig up old yearbooks, and they did the trick here as well.
But this yearbook stood out from any she’d researched before.
First was the school itself. The regal redbrick colonial building and its attached clock tower looked like the centerpiece of an elite college campus as opposed to a high school. Sitting at the water’s edge at the southern tip of Manhattan—fittingly close to Wall Street—the school enjoyed equally stunning views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the new World Trade Center.
Then came the students’ names. Tessa Helmsley. Ashley Vanderbilt. Penelope Astor. Izzy Hearst. Heiresses to some of the nation’s great fortunes. While all the girls in the yearbook wore the same uniform—blue skirt and white button-up shirt—the big names knew how to stand out. Designer handbags and sunglasses and expensive jewelry were on full display among the many cameo shots included in the yearbook’s eighty pages, reminding her of Katrina’s Oxford photo.
But nothing captured the rarefied air of the school more than its high number of foreign students, easy to spot because the photographs listed each student’s city of origin. Olga Smirnova, Moscow. Ah Lang Huam, Beijing. Fang Li, Guangzhou. Jia Chen, Shanghai. Irina Mazur, Warsaw. Nicoletta Rossi, Rome. No doubt the world’s oligarchs ponied up to provide their daughters the best educational path to America’s Ivy League.
Cassie opened the section for graduating seniors. Each senior entry included a photo, a summary of activities and accomplishments, and personal comments by the student. And at the side of each student’s photo was a short, playful entry: “Most Likely to . . .” with the next words reflecting the consensus of the class.
As Cassie leafed through the pages to get to R, she recognized a few names that were already making good on their classmates’ predictions: “Most Likely to Get Elected to Something” was now a well-respected second-term congresswoman from Virginia; “Most Likely to Lead Troops in War” was now a high-profile Chicago prosecutor; and “Most Likely to Star on Broadway” was a pop star.
And then she got to the name she was looking for.
Katrina K. Rivers, Brooklyn, NY
The photo displayed a skinnier, paler version of the somber young woman in the Daily Princetonian. No makeup. Straight brown hair. Large-rimmed round glasses. Expressionless face. She appeared intimidated by her elite surroundings. Out of place among the world’s richest girls.
Most of the other students proudly listed multiple sports and activities, including high-society organizations and clubs beyond the school itself. Katrina listed only a few activities, all within the school.
Cross Country
RSG Coding Club
Model United Nations
Service Club
But the list of her honors and awards showed where her real talents lay.
Salutatorian
Summa cum laude
National Merit Finalist
The school’s valedictorian must have focused on the humanities, because Katrina was listed as the winner of the school’s Vanderbilt Prize for Outstanding Math and Science. And classmates recognized her scientific prowess, naming her “Most Likely to Invent Something That Will Change the World.”
Cassie grinned. How prescient.
Each entry closed out with the senior’s own comments. Most of the girls gushed about their friends and family, bragged about what college they’d be attending, or unleashed a burst of school spirit about “RSG” or some fancy club they were part of. A few included short poems or a favorite song lyric.
Not Katrina. She kept her comments short.
“Princeton, here I come” was the first statement, idle chatter similar to her classmates’.
But then came two revealing quotes.
“If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.”
“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
Her entry closed out with three final words.
“Thank you, Dyadya.”
CHAPTER 85
LAKE ERIE
Two minutes after I drove onto the odd-looking orange ferryboat, its engine already humming, the ramp lifted behind me. A minute after that, the long, flat ferry pulled away from the dock, maneuvered around an anchored barge, then motored away from Marblehead. Just as we’d hoped, I was the last car to board.
“Nice work,” Santini said over our three-way conference call. “You move fast when you need to.”
“I move fast when I’m freaking out! Any sign of him at the ferry station?”
“Nope,” the gruff undercover guy said, s
itting on the VFW’s patio to watch everything play out. “You timed it so no one could have gotten on if they’d wanted to.”
“And no one tried?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
Either the hit man was on his way to Youngstown or he was already in Marblehead. If the latter, it meant he was somehow tracking me, an alarming possibility we needed to ferret out right away. For several days the ferry had shuttled in and out on the half hour to a nearby island, so this was our best move.
“So what next?”
“I’ll keep an eye out here,” the undercover guy said.
“And you’re sure there’s no other way he can get to the island?” Santini asked.
“The other ferry only runs on weekends off-season,” I said. “What do you think he’ll do?”
“Hard to say. If he’s there, my guess is he follows you over.”
I agreed. “He lost valuable time in Wisconsin. And we’re days into early voting, so his bosses must be losing patience.”
My phone beeped with another incoming call. Cassie. I switched over.
“Jack, Katrina is Russian.”
“Russian?” I laughed nervously. Just the mention of the country unleashed haunting memories.
“Well, not from Russia. But she has Russian roots—”
“Well, that’s different,” I said, relieved. “I’m English, with some German.”
She ignored my joke.
“Yeah, but I’m talking recent. And she may have been supported by a Russian most of her life.”
“And how the heck did you figure all that out?”
“First, she’s from Brooklyn, and my guess is not the nice part.”
“Millions of people are from Brooklyn.” I really didn’t want her to be Russian.
She ignored me again.
“Maybe so. But who else quotes Pushkin and Tolstoy in their high school yearbook?”
“Wait, you got her yearbook?”
“Oh, yeah. She went to the fanciest school in New York, studying with daughters of the world’s wealthiest people. I tracked down the yearbook.”