He was busy. Too busy, apparently, to stick around the beach house with a man who understood what it was like to have lost his wife in the twin towers.
There were other things, though, that Daryl couldn’t possibly understand. Things Mack didn’t want to talk about, ever—not even with Allison.
At his insistence, she and the kids stayed at the beach with Lynn and Daryl and their newly blended family while Mack went home to work. She tried to make the best of it, but it wasn’t the same.
She wondered then—and continues to wonder now—if anything ever will be the same again.
Earlier, before heading up the stairs, Allison had rested a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “Don’t stay up too late, okay?”
“I’m off tomorrow, remember?”
Yes. She remembered. He’d dropped the news of his impromptu mini stay-cation when he came home from work late Friday night.
“Guess what? I’m taking some vacation days.”
She lit up. “Really? When?”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“This coming week. Monday, Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, too.”
“Maybe you should wait,” she suggested, “so that we can actually plan something. Our anniversary’s coming up next month. You can take time off then instead, and we can get away for a few days. Phyllis is always talking about how beautiful Vermont is at that time of—”
“Things will be too busy at the office by then,” he cut in. “It’s quiet now, and I want to get the sunroom painted while the weather is still nice enough to keep the windows open. I checked and it’s finally going to be dry and sunny for a few days.”
That was true, she knew—she, too, had checked the forecast. Last week had been a washout, and she was hoping to get the kids outside a bit in the days ahead.
But Mack’s true motive, she suspects, is a bit more complicated than perfect painting weather.
Just as grieving families and images of burning skyscrapers are the last thing Mack wanted to see on TV today, the streets of Manhattan are the last place he wants to be tomorrow, invaded as they are by a barrage of curiosity seekers, survivors, reporters and camera crews, makeshift memorials and the ubiquitous protesters—not to mention all that extra security due to the latest terror threat.
Allison doesn’t blame her husband for avoiding reminders. For him, September 11 wasn’t just a horrific day of historic infamy; it marked a devastating personal loss. Nearly three thousand New Yorkers died in the attack.
Mack’s first wife was among them.
When it happened, he and Carrie were Allison’s across-the-hall neighbors. Their paths occasionally crossed hers in the elevator or laundry room or on the front stoop of the Hudson Street building, but she rarely gave them a second thought until tragedy struck.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, when she found out Carrie was missing at the World Trade Center, Allison reached out to Mack. Their friendship didn’t blossom into romance for over a year, and yet . . .
The guilt is always there.
Especially on this milestone night.
Allison tosses and turns in bed, wrestling the reminder that her own happily-ever-after was born in tragedy; that she wouldn’t be where she is now if Carrie hadn’t talked Mack into moving from Washington Heights to Hudson Street, so much closer to her job as an executive assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald; if Carrie hadn’t been killed ten years ago today.
Yes, in the most literal sense, she wouldn’t be where she is now—the money Mack received from various relief funds and insurance policies after Carrie’s death paid for this house, as well as college investment funds for their children.
Yes, there are daily stresses, but it’s a good life Allison is living. Too good to be true, she sometimes thinks even now: three healthy children, a comfortable suburban home, a BMW and a Lexus SUV in the driveway, the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom . . .
The knowledge that Carrie wasn’t able to conceive the child Mack longed for is just one more reason for Allison to feel sorry for her—for what she lost, and Allison gained.
But it’s not as though I don’t deserve happiness. I’m thirty-four years old. And my life was certainly no picnic before Mack came along.
Her father walked out on her childhood when she was nine and never looked back; her mother died of an overdose before she graduated high school. She put herself through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, moved alone to New York with a degree in fashion, and worked her ass off to establish her career at 7th Avenue magazine.
On September 11, the attack on the World Trade Center turned her life upside down, but what happened the next day almost destroyed it.
Kristina Haines, the young woman who lived upstairs from her, was brutally murdered by Jerry Thompson, the building’s handyman.
Allison was the sole witness who could place him at the scene of the crime. By the time he was apprehended, he had killed three more people—and Allison had narrowly escaped becoming another of his victims.
Whenever she remembers that incident, how a figure lurched at her from the shadows of her own bedroom . . .
You don’t just put something like that behind you.
And so, on this night of bitter memories, Jerry Thompson is part of the reason she’s having trouble sleeping.
It was ten years ago tonight that he crept into Kristina’s open bedroom window.
Ten years ago that he stabbed her to death in her own bed, callously robbing the burning, devastated city of one more innocent life.
He’s been in prison ever since.
Allison’s testimony at his trial was the final nail in the coffin—that was how the prosecuting attorney put it, a phrase that was oft-quoted in the press.
“I just hope it wasn’t my own,” she recalls telling Mack afterward.
“Your own what?” he asked, and she knew he was feigning confusion.
“Coffin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
But it wasn’t ridiculous.
She remembers feeling Jerry’s eyes on her as she told the court that he had been at the murder scene that night. Describing how she’d seen him coming out of a stairwell and slipping into the alleyway, she wondered what would happen if the defense won the case and Jerry somehow wound up back out on the street.
Would he come after her?
Would he do to her what he had done to the others?
Sometimes—like tonight—Allison still thinks about that.
It isn’t likely. He’s serving a life sentence. But still . . .
Things happen. Parole hearings. Prison breaks.
What if . . . ?
No. Stop thinking that way. Close your eyes and go to sleep. The kids will be up early, as usual.
She closes her eyes, but she can’t stop imagining what it would be like to open them and find Jerry Thompson standing over her with a knife, like her friend Kristina did.
An Excerpt from
SHADOWKILLER
Chapter 1
May 10, 2012
Saint Antony Island
It’s been a while since Carrie’s spotted someone with enough potential, but . . . here she is.
The woman in the orange-and-pink paisley sundress is about Carrie’s age—forty, give or take—and has the right features, the right build. She’s a few inches taller than Carrie; her hair is much darker, and she’s wearing glasses. But, really, those things don’t matter. Those things can be easily faked: a wig, some heels . . .
What matters far more is that the woman is alone. Not just alone in this particular moment, but alone as in socially isolated, giving off an indefinable vibe that any opportunistic predator would easily recognize.
Carrie’s natural instincts tell her that this is it; this woman is her ticket off this Caribbean island at last.
Always listen to your gut, Daddy used to tell her. If you tune in to your intuition, you’ll find that you know much more than you think you do.
A part of her wanted to mock t
hat advice later, when he’d failed her.
The words didn’t even make sense. How can you know more than you think you do? Whatever you think is what you know. Knowing . . . thinking . . . it was all the same thing.
Anyway, if she really did know more than she thought, she wouldn’t have been so shocked by his betrayal.
That was what she told herself afterward. Even then, though, she heard his voice inside her head, chiding her, telling her that she’d ignored the signs; ignored her gut.
Well, she’d done her best never to make that mistake again.
Right now, her gut is telling her that this woman is the one.
Unaware that she’s being watched closely from behind the bar, she’s been sitting on a stool at the far corner for almost an hour now, nursing a rum runner and looking as though she’d like some company.
Male company, judging by the wistful glances she’s darted at other patrons. But that’s obviously not going to happen.
It isn’t that the woman is unattractive; she’s somewhat pretty in an overweight, unsophisticated, patchy-pink-sunburn kind of way.
There’s someone for everyone, right? Some men are drawn to this type.
Not these men, though.
Not here at Jimmy’s Big Iguana, an open-air beach bar filled with tanned and toned, scantily clad twentysomethings. Island rum is flowing; the sporadic whirring of bar blenders and raucous bursts of laughter punctuate the reggae beat of Bob Marley’s “One Love” playing in the background. Lazy overhead paddle fans do little to stir heavy salt air scented with coconut sunscreen, deep-fried seafood, and stale beer.
Beyond the open-air perimeter of the bar, against a backdrop of palm trees and turquoise sea, tourists browse at vendors’ tables set up on the sand. Fresh from shore excursions, those with local currency to burn are pawing through tee-shirts and island-made trinkets, snatching up cheap souvenirs before their ships set sail for the next port of call.
The woman at the bar darts a look at her watch as she slurps the last inch of her rum runner, and Carrie realizes it’s now or never.
“Ready for your second drink?” She reaches across the bar to remove the empty glass, with its gummy pink film coating the inside.
“Oh, that’s okay. I don’t want another—”
“It’s a freebie. Two-for-one happy hour for cruise ship passengers.”
“Really?”
No, not really.
Carrie nods, already reaching for the bottle of Tortuga Rum. “All you have to do is show me your ship ID. What’s your name?”
“Molly.”
Carrie nods, smiles, points to her own plastic nametag. “I’m Jane.”
As in Doe.
Well, not quite. Jane Doe had translated, in her clever mind, to Jane Deere—Doe, a deer—and that’s the name she’s been using for years now. Jane Deere. Before that, she was Carrie Robinson MacKenna, and before that . . .
Before that doesn’t matter.
“Nice to meet you.” Molly’s face glistens with island humidity, and moist strands of her dark hair are plastered to her forehead. She glances again at the Timex strapped around her thick wrist.
“Don’t worry. You have time.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been working here a long time. I know the sailing schedules.” That is most definitely not a lie.
Such is life in this harbor town: the same-but-different routine every day, set to the rhythm of the cruise lines’ itineraries.
Carrie has always appreciated the precision with which she can see the gargantuan vessels begin to appear every morning out on the turquoise sea, an hour or two after sunrise. From the window of her rented apartment above the bar, she watches the same ships glide in and out of Saint Antony Harbor at the same time on the same days of the week, spitting thousands of passengers onto the wide pier.
The same passengers, it sometimes seems: waddling Americans in shorts and fanny-packs; hand-holding honeymooners; chain-smoking Europeans in open-collar suits and dresses with high heels; multi-generational families of harried parents, tantrum-throwing toddlers, sullen teens, silver-haired, scooter-riding grannies . . .
Carrie serves them all; knows them all. Not on a first-name basis, but by type and, often, by ship. Sure, some crowds of passengers are interchangeable—on, say, Tuesday, when megaships from Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Princess are simultaneously in port. They all cater to middle-class Americans—families, retirees, and honeymooners alike.
But today is Thursday. Three different cruise lines; three distinctly different crowds.
“Which ship are you on?” Carrie asks. “The Carousel?”
Molly raises an eyebrow. “How’d you know?”
Easy. It’s a singles cruise out of Miami. There are two others in port for the day, but one is a Disney ship favored almost exclusively by families with young children; the other, a small luxury line popular with wealthy South American couples.
This woman is definitely single, U.S. born and bred . . . and U.S. bound, or so Molly thinks. Little does she suspect that if all goes according to Carrie’s plan, the Carousel will be setting sail in a little over an hour, at five o’clock sharp, without her.
“How’d I know? Lucky guess.” Carrie shrugs. “Like I said, I’ve been working here long enough.”
“It must be hard to be inside on the job when it’s always so beautiful out there.”
“Sometimes.” Much easier to agree than to explain that she prefers it this way.
Carrie’s never been an outdoorsy girl—not by choice, anyway. After all those childhood summers working the fields in the glaring, burning sun of the Great Plains, she welcomed the architecture-shaded canyons of Manhattan. And yes, she had regretted having to leave New York behind so soon. Given proper time to plan her exit strategy a decade ago, she’d have opted for a fog-shrouded city like London or San Francisco, or perhaps rainy Seattle or Portland.
But at the time, her objective was to get out quickly—in the immediate aftermath of September 11, no less, when public transportation was at an inconvenient standstill. Had she been trying to enter the U.S., she’d have been out of luck, given the sudden, intense border scrutiny on incoming travelers.
But she only wanted to leave—and hitchhiking was the only way to go, from truck stop to truck stop, down the East Coast. Riding high in the cabs of eighteen-wheelers along an endless gray ribbon of interstate brought back a lot of memories. Good ones, mostly.
As she made her way to Florida, she perfected her cover story: she was supposed to meet her terminally ill fiancé in the Caribbean to marry him that Saturday.
People were in a shell-shocked, help-your-fellow-American mode. Every time she mentioned that she’d escaped the burning towers in New York, strangers bent over backward to help, giving her rides, food, money.
Eventually she encountered a perpetually stoned, sympathetic trucker who was more than happy to connect her with a man who was willing to help her complete her so-called “wedding journey.” For a steep price—one she could easily afford, thanks to years of stockpiling cash—she was quite literally able to sail away on a little boat regularly used for smuggling illegal substances into the country, as opposed to smuggling people out of it.
She’d chosen Saint Antony for its relatively close proximity to the United States and for its unofficial “look the other way” policies when it comes to just about everything. She figured she’d stay awhile—six months, a year, maybe two—and then move on. Once she was here, however, complicated post-9/11 security measures made it a challenge to return to the States.
She could have gone elsewhere—Europe, maybe, or the South Pacific—but she wasn’t really interested in doing that. America was home, and someday she might want to go back.
As always, she’d done her homework and figured out how she would eventually be able to get around the new security obstacles. She came up with the perfect plan, but she wasn’t in any hurry to put it into action. Maybe she’d stay he
re forever. Maybe not. It was just good to know she could escape if she wanted—or needed—to.
She didn’t, until the morning six months ago when she turned on her television and was blindsided by her own face staring back at her. There she was, in an old photograph that accompanied a news report from suburban New York.
“So do you like bartending?” the woman at the bar, Molly, asks her. “I bet you meet a lot of interesting people.”
“Sure do,” Carrie agrees, but of course that’s another lie.
These people don’t interest her. At times, they just bore or frustrate her, but mostly they merely remind her that there’s a world beyond this island. A world Carrie is ready to rejoin at last.
A generous shot of rum splashes into the blender, and then another for good measure, along with ice, mixer—and the powdered contents of a packet Carrie surreptitiously pulls from her pocket, where it’s been waiting for months now. Waiting for just the right opportunity . . .
About the Author
New York Times bestseller WENDY CORSI STAUB is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels. Wendy now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and their two children. Learn more about Wendy at www.wendycorsistaub.com.
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Also by Wendy Corsi Staub
Hell to Pay
Scared to Death
Live to Tell
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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