Mia, if you don’t want to lose everything, then you’ve got to skip town and hide until I can figure this out. Yes. That was how it had to happen.
No big deal. He’d say that she wasn’t there, that’s all. It wasn’t as if she weren’t still free to go wherever she chose. He’d say her things were gone and he didn’t know how to reach her. Then he’d pump Whitey Black for more information. Whoever was framing Mia had to be traceable. There had to be a thread, and he just had to find it and follow it. Once he had some more answers, Mia could come back. But she couldn’t go down for something she hadn’t done. He’d stake his career on preventing that.
“Mia! Open up!”
Gray heard the pounding from the stairwell and quickened his pace, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the landing. There he saw D’Augostino hammering his fist against the door. “Joe,” he snapped. “What are you doing here?”
The sergeant jumped. “Gray? I should ask you the same thing.” He pointed to the door. “I came to talk with Mia. It’s private.” The last words were delivered on the end of a sharp glare.
“That makes two of us,” Gray said, debating whether he should reveal that he still had a key to the apartment. He decided against it. If he had to direct Mia to run, it was better if he hid the extent of their relationship.
“She’s in there. I heard her. She’s not answering.”
“I’ll try her cell.”
Gray dialed and waited. From inside the apartment, they heard the sound of her phone ringing, but no one picked up. Gray’s throat tightened. “She just called me.” He checked to see whether she’d left a message. She had.
D’Augostino waited with his arms crossed as Gray listened to Mia’s voice mail. I have something big.... His pulse kicked as the desperate message continued. It’s Joe D’Augostino. He looked at the sergeant, clutching his cell phone to his ear with white-knuckled fingers. In the voice mail, he heard Joe’s insistent pounding. Then Mia went silent.
With as much calm as he could manage, Gray disconnected the call and set the phone back into his carrier. “I have a key,” he said, and opened the door, not knowing what he would find on the other side. “Mia?”
He set about her apartment, calling her name, but she was gone. Then he came to the bedroom. A man’s white shirt was set out neatly on the bed. It was caked in dried blood.
Joe approached from behind him. “Is she hiding somewhere?”
Gray spun around and grabbed Joe by the lapels, thrusting him up against the wall. “You tell me, you son of a bitch,” he snarled, coming close enough to feel his breath. “What did you do?”
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” Joe gripped Gray’s wrists as he pinned him against the wall. “I just heard her.”
“You sent that email, didn’t you?” Gray’s blood ran white-hot with rage. “She was right about you all along. What are you hiding?”
“Nothing. I don’t understand—”
“You killed her sister. Who else did you kill?” Gray nearly lifted him off the ground. “Who else, Joe? Whose blood was in Lena’s apartment?”
“Gray, I don’t—”
“Were you jealous? Is that it? Jealous of her fiancé? Did you kill her because she turned you down?”
“No, for God’s sake. Let go of me.” Joe pushed back, but Gray only pressed him tighter against the wall.
“Whose blood was it in that apartment?” The pungent smell of fear rose from Joe’s body. “Don’t test me, Joe. I know how to get answers—”
“It was my blood in Lena’s apartment. Okay?”
Joe’s feet hit the ground as Gray relinquished his grip. “What the hell? There better be more to say about that.”
“There is. But I’m not saying more until you let me go.”
Gray hesitated, then released his grip. Joe raised his hands to smooth down his shirt. “What just happened there, anyway?”
“No,” Gray said. “You first. Tell me why your blood was in Lena Perez’s apartment.”
“That’s what I was coming here to talk to Mia about.” Joe knit his brows. “I feel real bad about everything.”
“Yeah, you seem all broken up inside.”
“No, I mean it.” He ran his fingers across his forehead. “I shouldn’t say anything, but it’s gone too far.”
Gray stood as still as a statue, his arms crossed before him. Joe’s eyes darted around the room, and he waited for what seemed like forever with a tortured look on his face. Then he said, “Lena’s not dead. She faked her murder scene.” He swallowed. “And I’m the one who showed her how to do it.”
Chapter 18
Mia wished she’d at least had the presence of mind to change into running shoes, but there hadn’t been time. She’d nearly fallen while climbing down the fire escape in her sandals, and now she felt foolish running down the street as if she was being chased by some lunatic. Oh, well. The price of freedom.
Once she reached the street, she figured she had no more than five minutes before D’Augostino came after her. He would be driving, which meant she needed to go underground. She reached the T station, her heart strumming, her skin covered in a cold sweat.
The hot mouth of the station smelled like asphalt and stagnant water. She flew down the steps and reached the landing just as the train was pulling in. She was still early for rush hour, but the train was crowded. Mia edged her way inside and stood by a door, clinging to a rail that felt slightly greasy, or else her palms were sweaty.
The steady shifting and rocking of the train car jarred Mia to a heightened state of alertness. Was it possible he’d followed her here? Was he watching her now? She fidgeted with her hair, pulling it closer to her face as if that were any sort of a disguise. The train stopped and started, turned and shuddered, and all the while Mia eyed the other faces on the train, watching for her attacker. She didn’t see him, but that was small comfort. If he found her, she’d have little time to escape.
The air-conditioning in the train was malfunctioning, but a chill passed through her. Gray hadn’t answered her call. He was so used to having everything his way, and she’d challenged that. This was the price: he was furious, and she was on her own. She’d fled the apartment so quickly that she’d left without her cell phone or her handbag. She had no phone, no identification and no credit cards. She’d scraped together enough change for one ride on the T. She didn’t even have her keys. As the train announced her stop, her stomach tightened. If this didn’t work, she didn’t know what she was going to do.
When she reached her stop, she hurried off the train and into the crowd. There wasn’t enough time to worry that he’d somehow hidden himself among the people streaming out of the T. Fear and anxiety had dulled her for much too long. She rushed into the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, and she hoped that Mark was home.
She asked a woman at the front desk to call him while she waited, pacing the lobby. “Mr. Lewis,” the woman said into the phone, “there’s someone here to see you.”
Please be talking to me, please be talking to me. The last time they’d really spoken had been the night she’d learned he was seeing someone else, and Mia hadn’t been exactly charming about it. She chewed on her thumbnail as the woman behind the desk lowered her voice but then decided she had nothing to lose by being more aggressive. “Tell him it’s urgent,” she said, coming right up to press her palms against the surface of the desk. “Please.”
The woman eyed her suspiciously. “She says it’s urgent. Yes. Very well, sir.” She placed the receiver in its cradle.
“What did he say?” Mia was breathless.
“He’s coming down.” The woman pressed her lips into a line. “Perhaps you would like to take a seat while you wait.”
No. She needed to be standing, because if she was standing, she could run. “Thanks, I think I’ll stand.”
She looked her up and down. “Whatever you prefer.” She turned back to her work, which to Mia appeared to be drawing lines on a pad of paper.
&n
bsp; Mark was prompt. He streamed into the lobby after being disgorged by a hidden elevator, and his face was lined with worry. “Mia? Is everything all right?”
She’d never been so relieved to see a familiar face, and she rushed to his side. “Mark. I’m so sorry to impose. I need your help. I’m in a lot of trouble.”
Lines stretched across his forehead. “Is it Lena?”
Mia took his hands in hers and crept closer to his side, lowering her voice so they wouldn’t be overheard. “I know who killed her, and I know who attacked me last summer.”
“Good God.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her to his side. “Let’s get you upstairs. You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“I can’t help it.” Her teeth were chattering.
“It’s okay.” He smoothed his hand up and down her arm as they walked to the elevator. “Whatever it is, you’re safe now.”
She hugged herself and leaned into his embrace. “I’m so glad you were here. You don’t have any idea—”
He gave her a one-armed hug. “I’m glad I was here, too. Come on, let’s go upstairs.”
* * *
“Lena’s alive?” Gray glared at D’Augostino and commended himself for his restraint. “All this time you’ve been watching Mia grieve her sister. I should knock you on your ass for that.”
“I had a good reason, Gray.” Joe held his palms up in front of him. “She was in danger. She had to disappear to save her own life.”
“You’d better start from the beginning. Make it quick.”
D’Augostino looked at the floor, resigned. “She came to me one night, scared out of her mind. We were close, you know?”
“Yeah, we’ve already established that.”
“No, I mean it.” D’Augostino looked him in the eyes as if he was desperate for Gray to believe him. “I loved her, and I think she loved me, too.”
“She was engaged, Joe. If she loved you, she would’ve left him.”
He dragged his fingers across his head. “She was afraid to leave him. Mark...I don’t know what he’s into. I tried to find out, but I could never link him to anything. He would cheat on her, but she stayed because she was too scared to leave.”
Gray watched him. He’d known Joe for years, but now that he knew what he was capable of, he felt as if he were looking into the eyes of a stranger. “I’m still waiting for you to justify how you could help a woman stage her own death. If Lena was afraid, she should’ve gone to the police.”
“She couldn’t.”
“What do you mean, she couldn’t? Did she witness a crime? We could’ve kept her safe.”
D’Augostino snorted. “Yeah, right. If she’d turned witness, she never would’ve lived to see the trial. She told me it had something to do with a cartel. She’d witnessed a crime. The hit on Jake Smith. Wrong place, wrong time.” He nodded at the bloody shirt on the bed. “She told me she’d given Mia the evidence for safekeeping. That must’ve been it. That and the gun, I’m guessing.”
Gray’s blood boiled. “What a damn minute. You knew about the gun? And you didn’t say anything?”
“I was trying to figure it out myself, okay? I never would’ve allowed Mia to go to prison. That’s why I was coming to see her tonight, to tell her Lena was alive.”
“What would that have solved?” Gray clenched his fists and fought to keep them at his sides. “Her fingerprints were still all over that gun, and now we got a junkie telling us that Mia hired him to kill that Globe reporter.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.” D’Augostino released a breath. “I don’t know what to say about it. I only thought that if Mia knew the truth about Lena, maybe she could piece the other parts of the puzzle together somehow. Look, Lena was afraid that if anyone knew what she’d seen, the cartel would come after Mia or Mark. I realize what we did was unorthodox, but it wasn’t wrong.”
Gray crossed the room to look out the window to the alley below. Mia must have fled in a panic when she heard Joe at the door. “You realize you’re only fooling yourself, right? Once this gets out, your career is finished.”
He held himself stiffly in place. “I can’t be a part of this anymore. Mia is innocent. I had to say something. I tried to do what I could to keep her off the case...”
“You sent that email. You even tried to make it look like someone broke into Lena’s apartment.”
“I actually tried to break in. The damn window wouldn’t open. Then I just used my key. I meant to take it off the key ring.” He laughed drily. “I’m a terrible criminal.”
“You scared Mia half out of her mind just to protect yourself.”
“Not to protect myself.” His voice broke, and he sat back on the bed, next to the bloody shirt. “Mia was attacked last summer when she investigated this case. I was afraid whoever had hurt her would come back.”
“Yeah, but framing someone for murder isn’t cartel style.” Gray walked back to the bed and placed himself directly before D’Augostino’s slumped figure. “For God’s sake, Joe, get ahold of yourself. You’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up before you can fall apart.”
“I don’t know who’s framing Mia—”
Gray grabbed him by the shoulders. “You’re the only one Lena told about the crime she witnessed. What did she say?”
His eyes widened, and Gray noticed how they were ringed with purple. Evidence of sleepless nights. He rubbed at them as if to confirm Gray’s thoughts and said, “She told me she knew who’d killed Jake Smith and that it was related to a cartel.”
“Related to a cartel?” Gray’s mind started spinning. “That’s not the same as a crime being committed by a cartel.”
“I don’t know. I just thought—”
“And how would Lena have evidence of a cartel killing? The shirt the killer wore, or the gun he used?” Gray’s blood went cold. “She wouldn’t. She’d only have those things if she got very, very close to the killer.”
“The papers were saying that Jake Smith was reporting on cartel activity,” D’Augostino said. “I guess I thought...I made the connection...”
“He was reporting on cartel activity. But maybe he found a link to someone more...legitimate.” He decided to follow a hunch. “Since you know so much about Lena, tell me this—was she pregnant?”
“No.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Pretty damn sure, yeah.”
“Any reason why Lena would tell her fiancé that she was pregnant?”
D’Augostino narrowed his eyes as he thought. “I can’t think of any reason. I don’t see where this—”
“Mark Lewis told Mia that Lena was pregnant when she disappeared. Now, why would he say that if it wasn’t true?” He looked at D’Augostino. “Why do people lie, Joe?”
The sergeant’s cheeks colored, and he turned his gaze back to the floor. “Well, uh...to conceal something, obviously.”
“Why else?”
“For fun.”
“Let’s assume this isn’t for fun.”
“To get something, then.”
Gray snapped his fingers. “To get something. Like a reaction.”
“What are you thinking?”
“If I told you Lena was pregnant, what would you say to me?”
“I’d say that she wasn’t.”
“And one way you might know she wasn’t pregnant at the time of her disappearance is that you know she doesn’t have a child now.” Gray gritted his teeth. “I think Mark was testing Mia. He was trying to determine whether Mia knew the truth.”
“You mean Mark might suspect that Lena is alive?” D’Augostino rubbed his temples. “Jeez. I almost forgot.”
“What?”
“She came back to town last summer. It was real quick. She wanted to see Mia in the hospital after the attack. She felt horrible.” He closed his eyes.
Gray remembered Mia telling him about the dream she had where Lena was sitting beside her bed and crying. “I told her no more than five minutes,” D’Augostino said.
“Someone must’ve seen her. That must be how Mark knows.” He cursed.
Gray’s breath quickened, keeping pace with his heart. “You said Lena was afraid of Mark. Maybe he had some powerful friends. Maybe he was protecting them when he killed Jake Smith.” He reached for the bloody shirt on the bed. “Look at this. It’s Italian made, probably custom. Is that Mark’s shirt?”
D’Augostino’s face paled. “Lena brought a shirt back from Italy just like it for me.”
“That sounds like a yes.” Gray threw it back on the bed. “Where did Mia go?” When D’Augostino didn’t answer, he grabbed him by the shoulders again, and this time he shook him. “Where did she go?”
“How should I know? You’re the one in love with her.”
His heart arrested. D’Augostino was right—he loved Mia, and right now she was on the run and he had no way of reaching her. She’d called him in desperation, and he hadn’t even picked up the call. He’d let her down when she needed him most.
His mouth went dry, and his heart pounded. Her handbag was by the door and her cell phone was in the middle of the room. She was running, but she had no money and no cell phone. If he’d been her first call for help, who would be her second?
“Get up,” he barked. “We need to find Mia. Where does Mark Lewis live?”
“Uh...” D’Augostino shook his head. “The Ritz-Carlton. In a penthouse or something.”
“I’m driving. You have your gun?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll call for backup on the way. Let’s go.”
Chapter 19
Mia sat numbly on the white calfskin love seat in front of the granite fireplace. The penthouse was flooded with light from the floor-to-ceiling windows that comprised an entire wall. Mark hadn’t bothered with artwork on the walls—nothing could compete with the view. She’d visited Mark’s penthouse only a few times, and she’d never understood why Lena had refused to live here until this moment. The feel of the penthouse was austere, like living in a museum, far removed from the reality over which it gazed. Lena had often talked about moving once they were married. She’d said she wanted to be closer to the ground.
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