by Anne McAneny
Aviva then got a clear look at, and full whiff of, Cesar. She crinkled her tiny nose in disgust. “What the hell, Cesar? Not real picky, is she?”
Cesar approached his wife. Despite the fact that he knew she’d hate his unkempt, malodorous body anywhere near her designer dress, he grabbed her tiny waist and pulled her in close. He lifted her at the same time he bent down, until their lips met and she succumbed to the feelings that overwhelmed her anytime he took charge. But the sensation evaporated quickly. She shoved him away and added a kick in the shin for good measure.
Cesar sat back on the bed to nurse his wound.
“The love-puppy routine ain’t cuttin’ it this time, buddy. Now come clean. You don’t just hole up in a hotel without some lovemuffin keeping you warm.” Tears flowed from Aviva, uncharacteristically, but not ineffectively.
Cesar’s heart sunk. “I can’t tell you, Viv. I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, baby. You will tell me. Right now.”
“I can’t. I will—but later. Listen, I’m going out of town for real. Tomorrow, I think.”
Aviva sank to the floor at his feet. “What’s going on, C? You losin’ it over this UltraVenus introduction? You’re working too hard. That’s it, right?”
It broke Cesar’s heart not to be able to comfort her by agreeing that yes, it was a simple case of work overload. He would love to spare her the truth: that he’d gone crazy; that he’d barely slept in days; that he’d sneaked into his office to retrieve his gun from its drawer; and, that the loaded gun now lay in his briefcase, a mere three feet from her shapely legs. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use it, but the choice no longer belonged to him. He had ceased to think of the thing in his head as a voice. It had mutated past that, into an all-embracing force.
He pushed Aviva away, for her own safety. If the force compelled him to shoot her, he feared he might.
“Go, Viv. Now. I promise this will all be over soon. I’m putting an end to it one way or the other.”
“Putting an end to what? A relationship with someone you claim you’re not involved with?” She reached up and grabbed him by both arms. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you, Cesar? You’re not going to kill her, are you?”
Cesar glared at Aviva with sudden suspicion. Did Aviva hear it, too? How could she not? Had she been hearing it all along and simply not telling him? Did she know about the gun?
His breathing grew sporadic as his heart started rushing through its contractions. He needed her to leave. “I don’t know how you’re involved in this, Kyra, but you’ve got to go. Before something bad happens.”
“What? You just called me Kyra, you bastard!” Aviva slapped him across the face with enough chutzpah to whip his head to the right. It forced his eyes to alight on his briefcase. His thoughts grew murky and dangerous, filling his mind with a storm of conflicting ideas. His body responded to the mental assault with a teeming fury, the wrath tightening every fiber of his rigid muscles.
Aviva, in her own rage, didn’t seem to notice. “Kyra!” she screeched. “I knew it! Damn, I should have listened to my mother. You’re nothing but a life support system for a throbbing penis, Cesar, you know that? Where is the little whore?”
As she tore the room apart again, Cesar’s last bit of sanity came to the fore. He scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder, and raced to the door. It was like trying to carry a squirming octopus through a tidal wave. He swung the door open, deposited her in the hall, and managed to slam the door shut. He pressed his full 220 pounds against it, as much to keep Aviva out as himself in. The ferocious series of kicks on the other side of the wooden slab felt like a battering ram, but he held his position, forcing his eyes away from the briefcase when he realized how hungrily he’d been staring at it.
Finally, through sobs, Aviva’s voice came through the door, almost angelic in comparison to the pounding that had preceded it. “I’m calling the police, you bastard. And don’t you even think about coming home. Ever.”
Cesar listened to her departing steps and then allowed his muscles to relax. Get your shit and go! It was his own internal voice this time.
He had planned to wait one more day, to pinpoint Kyra’s precise location, but he could do that from anywhere now that the heavy lifting was done. Besides, moments before Aviva’s arrival, he’d gotten a lead. One of his email recipients had logged in and highlighted the message’s subject line twice, from locations in Virginia. He’d been fooled for about seven seconds into thinking she lived there, but after he’d hacked the recipient’s laptop and traced the forwarding of the message to a police department in Philadelphia, he went in a different direction. He had completed similar steps with other prime suspects and eliminated all but one—an archaeologist in Philadelphia: Zoey Kincaid. Even the syllabic stresses and hard “c” sound matched. The profession fit her to a tee. Not only did his conclusion feel right, but the internal voice agreed with him, urging him forward.
A quick favor called into a government friend, along with the promise of five thousand dollars cash, had given him his final confirmation. A copy of Zoey Kincaid’s driver’s license picture had filled his laptop. This time, he’d been glad for the high resolution of his screen because in the picture, she was smiling—the unmistakable, dazzling grin he’d fallen for years ago.
He had every intention of seeing that face, if not the smile, at least one more time.
With a single call to the airport, he could be on his corporate jet in thirty minutes, and in Philadelphia by midnight. He made the call and shoved his meager belongings back into his suitcase. Then he confirmed the presence of his two weapons: his laptop and his Magnum. He exited the room and headed for the distant bank of elevators just as security personnel stepped off the other set. He wondered quickly if he’d left anything incriminating in the room. Nope, only his sanity.
Chapter 34
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ironically, relief washed over Zoey as she saw the sign for the Ben Franklin Bridge that would take her back to the City of Brotherly Love and to the comforts of her messy home. Relief should have been the last thing on her mind since the bridge spanned the Schuylkill River, the predicted site of her demise, but she warmly anticipated the familiarity of her apartment.
Unable to get an immediate flight home, she’d kept the rental car from Virginia. She knew she’d pay dearly for dropping it in Philadelphia, but she enjoyed the drive. During the traffic-jammed, five-hour trip, she had decided to radically change her life to minimize the probability of the foretelling. She believed in its veracity fully now, but after rethinking her conversations with Dora, Bernadette, and Elena Baxter, she believed she could foil it. At the very least, she wouldn’t give it an open invitation. As a no-brainer, she would avoid the Schuylkill. And just in case Cesar was onto her, she would change her name again, this time choosing something ethnic and gender-neutral. Lastly, she would confront Jake with the truth. If he couldn’t convince her he wasn’t the killer, as well as demonstrate a drastic change in attitude, she would break up with him and move on. The thought made her ill, and it felt all sorts of wrong to abandon the father of her baby and the city she loved, but staying around to get killed wasn’t an option.
A glance at the car’s digital clock showed 5:13.
“Five thirteen!” she shouted, nearly rear-ending the U-Haul in front of her. “Oh my God, it’s a time, not a year!”
She pulled over as soon as she got off the bridge and searched through the papers in her back seat. She found the foretelling letter from Dora, flipped through it, and read one section aloud: “On the far bank across the river hangs a huge, painted banner from a rocky ledge. It reads, ‘For Kraft Crew we cheer! This is your year! Win that shirt green! In 20—’. The last part of the banner has come loose and folded over itself, but after much thought, I believe it must be 2013.”
“Not the date, mom, but nice try.” Zoey clutched the letter to her chest. “It was twenty minutes and thirteen seconds. 20:13.” Zoey r
ecalled a recent article about Kraft’s crew team; 20:13 was the time they hoped to achieve on the new route for the upcoming regatta. She had seen similar signs over the years, urging the team on to faster times. With the course change, the times would be higher, so a sign with 20:13 on it would make sense. But any exultation she felt over resolving the discrepancy quickly faded. While it helped explain the tardiness of the foretelling’s delivery—Susan had thought she was giving Zoey a year’s notice—it meant Zoey’s first guess was right all along. The foretelling could take place any moment, before the pregnancy showed, and while Zoey remained without a ring.
She started her car back up and entered the city, a decided pall hanging over her plans for a new beginning. Would she have time to set everything in order now? As she wove through the city, she grew tired of hearing impatient drivers honk at parked delivery trucks. Since the rental car office was only a block away, she decided to head there first.
One hour and three hundred dollars later, she showed her suitcase the local sights. Under her arm, she carried the box of mementos that Dora had given her. As she turned onto Pine Street, she recalled the last time she’d rounded this corner, as a deliriously happy, newly engaged woman with a fuzzy past and a hopeful future. So much for that. To top off her sour mood, no Mad Dog tune greeted her. Maybe Mad Dog had abandoned her, too, and taken up residence on an alternate corner. A girl without a theme song—did it get any sadder than that?
Her mood lifted, though, when she spotted Detective Farnham waiting in his car in front of her building. She waved, happy to see a familiar face, even if it was someone who had yet to bear good news in any of their encounters.
Farnham lumbered out of the car, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, and Zoey noticed that, despite his dour expression, he looked happier simply for not having Officer Wilkinson at his side.
“Welcome home,” he said, grabbing her things. “Now what’s all this about the Schuylkill River? You kind of freaked me out on the phone.”
“My fate lies there,” Zoey said, as if that was normal conversational chat. “Unless I can avoid it, of course, which I fully intend to do.”
He looked at her suspiciously but with a teasing frown. “Smoking rolled plants of the cannabis variety while driving is still illegal in this state, you know, even if it does help you deal with this hellhole of a city.”
Zoey laughed. “A little cannabis might be nice right about now.” She patted her slim midsection. “But I don’t think the baby would like it.”
Farnham pulled his head back in surprise and delight. “You did have quite a trip.”
She laughed again and smacked his arm. “I was pregnant before I left.”
When they entered the lobby, Zoey took a deep inhale of the old, moldy scent and knew she’d be sad to leave if she was forced to move.
“Miss Zoey!” Hal exclaimed. A broad smile crossed the familiar face.
“Hi, Hal, how’ve you been?”
“You been on a dig or something, without telling me?”
“Nope, personal business. You miss me?”
“Me and Jake, I guess,” Hal said. “He’s been up to the apartment a couple times.”
Zoey’s eyes widened. “Jake has?”
“Yeah. That’s okay, right? You told me long ago that you gave him a key. Nothing happened with you two, did it?”
Anger rose in Zoey. So Jake felt free to ramble about her apartment, doing God knows what, but he didn’t have the guts to call her after peeling away in his car like a petulant teen? Did he think he still had a free pass into her life, to trample on her things and play with her mind, while he straightened out his issues? Meth explosion or not, he had a rude awakening coming.
Hal stole a glance at Zoey’s empty ring finger. A look of dismay flashed across his face. “Miss Zoey, everything okay?”
“Sure, Hal. Everything’s fine. Just uh, don’t let him up anymore without calling, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. Jake is off the list.” Hal made a dramatic slash in the air with his hand.
Zoey and Farnham took the elevator to her floor. As they turned the corner to her dimly lit hallway, a dark figure in a hooded coat near her apartment door lowered his head and took off at a rapid clip. He disappeared around the far corner.
“Hey, did that guy just come out of my—”
“Freeze!” Farnham dropped his satchel and Zoey’s suitcase, and pulled his gun. Before Zoey could even process what was happening, Farnham was dashing down the hall with impressive speed, but the stranger had already gained a significant lead. The floors were arranged like squares, so Farnham edged around the next corner and aimed his gun down the passageway. “Philadelphia Police! Hold it right there!” Farnham apparently didn’t meet with much success because Zoey heard him yell to someone, “Where’d that guy go? D’you see him?” as he disappeared down the next hallway.
Zoey raced to the corner just as Farnham reached the end of the hall, using his shoulder to knock open the door to the stairway. She heard his rapidly descending footfalls and cringed at the thought of anything happening to him. He’d been her one constant since this ordeal had begun.
As she turned to go back to her apartment, her mind filled with otherworldly thoughts. Things were in motion now and literally hitting close to home. She didn’t like the feeling of not being in control, as if she were frozen in the middle of a field while a tornado loomed on the horizon. The archaeologist within her cried out and she wanted desperately for her mind to latch onto something solid, for her fingers to wrap around a hard piece of evidence that could explain all this madness. Worse yet, she sensed that an answer was hovering right in front of her, but like a dream upon waking, it kept slipping away and she couldn’t quite grasp it.
She gathered her things, along with Farnham’s bag, and faced her apartment door. The smart thing would be to wait for Farnham, but waiting was one more passive step—and she was through with passivity. She reached for the door handle.
“Don’t touch anything!” came an urgent voice.
Zoey yanked her hand back and pressed it to her racing heart. Even when she turned and saw familiar, piercing blue eyes, her pulse did not slow. “Jake! Oh my God, how are you?”
Surprise, joy, fear, and resentment mingled within her to form an unusual emotional cocktail. Sadly, it ended with a sour taste.
“If someone broke in there,” he said, “you shouldn’t touch anything. There could be fingerprints or other evidence on the doorknob.”
Zoey narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “How did you know someone broke in? Where did you just come from?”
“I came up on the other elevator, probably right after you. I was behind you when I saw that big guy take off down the hall. I went the opposite way to see if the guy he was chasing would come around, but no go. What’s going on?”
“What isn’t going on?” Zoey said before remembering to guard her words around Jake—a difficult task when part of her wanted to rush up to him, throw her arms around his body, and kiss the bejeezus out of his lips while he professed his innocence. She could smell his familiar deodorant, the eucalyptus gel he used in his hair, and the thin layer of perspiration that gave the other scents that needed hint of masculinity. He looked good, too, despite an overnight hospital stay. But just as desire for him rose to the point of no return, she cocked her head at a new feature. Its existence laid waste to any stirrings of weak emotion she had allowed.
“What happened to your hands?” she said, her voice shaky. “Is that from the explosion?” The precise words of the foretelling filled her head. How had it described the killer’s hands? Scarred? No—callused, old before their time, something like that. Could burns be mistaken for calluses? Could calluses be confused with scars?
Jake glanced down at his blistered left hand and bandaged right hand, embarrassed. The fingers peeking out from the ends of the extensive wrapping looked red and raw. “Good guess,” he said. “It was an explosion. Meth lab, believe it or not, if you could c
all it a lab. More like the grossest kitchen you’ve ever seen.” He shrugged. “I spent the night in the hospital.”
“I know. You called me.”
“I did? When?”
Zoey sighed. If he didn’t remember the call, no way he remembered his declarations of love. “You wanted donuts, but other than that, I haven’t heard from you in two days.”
“I’m sorry, Zo. This story got away from me big-time.”
“What story? Tom said it was something old.”
Jake shook his head as though remembering a personally humiliating event. “Remember that profile piece I did six months ago? About the Appalachian guy who came to town to find the guys who got his daughter hooked on meth, and he thought he was finally onto something?”
“Yeah, the lead dried up.”
“Well, someone watered it. The guy called me at 3 a.m., night before last. Long story short, we ended up in this disgusting, quarantined house. Walking in, I knew it was a bad scene and it went downhill from there. The night ended in flames. I got away lucky, just a gash in the leg and some ugly burns, but the Appalachian dad’s still in intensive care.”
“You could have been killed, Jake. Does that even bother you, or is life just not worth living in your opinion?”
“Come on, that’s not fair. I didn’t go into that situation expecting an explosion.”
“Sometimes we have to deal with the unexpected, don’t we?”
They held each other’s eyes for a tense moment and Zoey knew that her feelings for Jake were far from sorted out. No denying she loved him and would do anything for him—but that hardly meant she wanted to die at his hands on the banks of the Schuylkill. She crossed her arms and propped herself against her apartment door, but nearly fell inside when it opened without resistance. Any developing mood between them evaporated.
“Looks like the mysterious interloper definitely got in,” Zoey said, pushing the door all the way open with her foot.