Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  “Probably. One way or another, it will turn up. It doesn’t work the way you think it does. It’s more elliptical, more organic.”

  He nodded, looking thoughtful, but he didn’t say anything else about it.

  We said our goodbyes on the street, shook hands and parted. I was a half a block away when he called me back.

  “Hey, something you said helped me,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember in your apartment that time? You said, ‘Love accepts. Maybe forgiveness comes in time.’ That helped me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He lifted a hand and then turned to walk away. I watched as he climbed into an unmarked Caprice where Detective Breslow waited at the wheel. I wondered briefly what was next for them.

  LOVE ACCEPTS. FORGIVENESS comes in time. It makes me think of Linda and Erik. It makes me think of my father—the “why” I have never been able to answer in all my years trying. It makes me think of the man I knew as Marcus, a man I loved, one I forgave, when his first betrayal really should have set me to asking questions about him, about myself. But there’s no point looking back in regret.

  ON MY WAY back home from meeting the detective, I stopped at the post office box I maintained but which I hadn’t visited in months. I knew it would be packed with junk and fliers and maybe one or two important items, like invitations to conferences and maybe a fan letter or two. But I figured I should check it, get back into some of my old routines, let normalcy return.

  I used my key to unlock the box and pulled out the mass of paper that was crammed in there, tossing most of it into the recycle bin, as it was, indeed, the predicted junk. I retained the envelopes with handwriting on the front and stuffed them into my bag. I peered inside one more time before closing the door and saw a small brown box, all the way in the back. I reached for it and held it in my hand. There was no return address.

  DOWNSTAIRS JACK IS still hammering. I open the drawer in the desk and take out the box. I’ve been keeping it there but haven’t told anyone about it. Not even Jack. Not even Linda. I lift the lid and hold the ruby ring between my thumb and index finger.

  I think I know what it means. I don’t have to write it, make it up. I think it means he would have loved me if he could. That’s what he wanted me to know. I feel a twinge in my abdomen, the wound that hasn’t yet had time to heal. I look into the fire of the red stone and remember how he left me to die, slowly, alone, and in terrible agony in a cold, strange place. If it hadn’t been for Jack getting to the police, for Detectives Breslow and Crowe figuring out where Marc was staying, I’d be dead. I remember Rick’s shirt that last time I saw him: Love Kills Slowly.

  Kristof Ragan set his sights on another woman after me. Her name was Martina Nevins. I heard it on the news, had seen her interviewed, a wealthy British heiress who’d lost her fiancé a few years earlier and had been despondent since then. She was celebrating the holidays with her family in Prague. She’d have been Kristof’s next mark. She had the look about her. The fragility of loss. The vulnerability of hope.

  He might have given her the ring, said to her what he said to me, “This is my heart. I’m giving it to you. I’d die for you.”

  Instead he sent it back to me. And I’ll keep it to remember that love is what we do, not what we say. That not everyone has the strength or the ability to love another, or even himself. And that some of us have a secret heart that cannot be shared.

  I close the lid on my laptop and take the ring down to Jack. I want him to see it. I want him to know what it means to me and how it has helped me to understand Kristof Ragan, my father, and myself. Because I want Jack to share his heart with me. But I think that to ask him to do that, I have to share mine first.

  He turns from the tall shelves he is building—an effort I recognize as his act of hope—when he hears me come into the room. I hold the ring in my palm and show it to him. He takes it with a frown and holds it up to the light, then looks back at me. There’s worry on his face.

  “Where did this come from?”

  I tell him.

  “What are you going to do with it?

  I tell him that, too. I think he understands. He puts his strong, thick arms carefully around me and leans down, brings his mouth gently, tentatively to mine. We share our first kiss since the night we spent together a lifetime ago.

  There’s no why to Jack, no questions to answer, no curiosity to satisfy. He is not a mystery, not a stranger. He is my dearest, most beloved friend. My sister thinks that is enough for a start. And she is, as always, so right.

  Author’s Notes

  This book might not have been written if I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit Prague for five weeks in the summer of 2007. My family and I embarked on a home exchange with a lovely Czech family and spent five weeks wandering the streets of Prague, one of the most magnificent cities I have visited. I was truly inspired by its winding cobblestone rues, its hidden squares, grand buildings, and aura of mystery. If you haven’t been there, go. If you have, go again.

  During my visit, I was fortunate enough to meet the acclaimed screenwriter and poet James Ragan. A Czech who returns every summer to teach at St. Charles University, James showed me his city, taking me places I never would have known to go without him, telling me about its evolution since the fall of communism. He and his lovely family embraced us and enriched our experience more than they might have guessed. His wonderful book of poetry The Hunger Wall continued to inspire me and feed my dreams of Prague long after we returned home.

  I was also welcomed to Prague by the talented team at my Czech publisher, Euromedia Group. Denisa Novotna, the PR manager, was a smart, funny, and lovely woman who endured my many questions, while arranging a stunning lineup of media interviews. During my stay, I was on television and radio and had multiple newspaper interviews—which caused me to learn how to get around the city by taxi, subway, and on foot. There’s really no better way to get acquainted with a strange place (where you can hardly speak a word of the language!) than to insist that you can get yourself around without help—and then prove it.

  Through one my law enforcement connections, I had the opportunity to share a few hours with a CIA agent who has spent many years in the Czech Republic and has an intimate knowledge of Prague since the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism. His anecdotes and information heavily influenced my imaginings. I am not at liberty to reveal his name.

  I also relied on The Prague Post online (www.praguepost.com) and the city’s tourist site www.prague.cz, as well as the BBC online (www.bbc.com) for all gaps in knowledge and experience.

  All mistakes I have made, liberties I have taken, and geographic alterations committed in the name of narrative flow are my own.

  Acknowledgments

  With every novel it gets more difficult to acknowledge the people who contribute to my process, as my web of supporters seems to grow and expand each year. What did I do to deserve them? I don’t know. But I will take this opportunity to shower them with praise.

  My husband, Jeffrey Unger, and our daughter, Ocean Rae, are the glimmering center of my universe. Every day they inspire and nourish me, make me think, make me laugh, and keep me grounded in reality. In my daughter’s wide blue eyes, I see the whole world. My husband holds that world together. I wouldn’t be the writer I am or the person I am without them.

  My stellar agent, Elaine Markson, and her wonderful assistant, Gary Johnson, are more than business associates; they are my close and dear friends. Each day they provide something invaluable to my life and to my career, even if it’s just a chat on the phone about nothing in particular. They take care of me. I count on them in more ways than I can begin to list. So, this one’s for you, Elaine!

  Special Agent Paul Bouffard (Ret.) and his wife, Wendy Bouffard, offer so much more than their wonderful friendship and beer on tap. They give me a space to write when I need it. Paul remains my source for all things legal and illegal, continuing to field every question,
no matter how bizarre or inane, with equanimity and keen interest. And Wendy gave invaluable insights during her read of this manuscript. I am truly blessed by their presence in our lives. They also have two nice cats—Freon and Fenway.

  A home like Crown/Shaye Areheart Books is every writer’s dream, full of intelligent, creative, passionate people who really care about books. Shaye Areheart is a truly brilliant editor and one of the most wonderful and loving people I have known. Jenny Frost has offered her continuing support and enthusiasm and seems to forever be coming up with new and wonderful ways to get more copies out into the world. I also offer my humble thanks to Philip Patrick, Jill Flaxman, Whitney Cookman, David Tran, Patricia Shaw, Jie Yang, Jacqui LeBow, Andy Augusto, Kira Walton, Patty Berg, Donna Passanante, Katie Wainwright, Annsley Rosner, Sarah Brievogel, Linda Kaplan, Karin Schulze, Kate Kennedy, and Christine Kopprasch. And, of course, I can’t heap enough praise on the top-notch sales force. Every time I visit a bookseller, I hear about their tireless efforts on my behalf. Each member of the team at Crown/Shaye Areheart Books brings his or her unique talent to bear on every publication and for that I am eternally grateful.

  As ever, my family and friends continue to bolster, support, cajole, comfort, and cheer me on in this crazy writing life. My parents, Joseph and Virginia Miscione—formerly Team Houston, now Team PA—are forever bragging about me, buying books, and spreading the word. They’re facing books out in a whole new state! Their support is everything to me. My brother Joe Miscione and his wife, Tara Teaford Miscione, are endlessly kind, helpful, and supportive. And Tara has become one of my early and most important readers. Thanks, T! My thanks to Heather Mikesell for her eagle-eye editing and endless reading of my work. I can hardly imagine publishing anything she hasn’t read first. How she must dread the e-mail subject line: “Can you just read this really quickly???” Marion Chartoff and Tara Popick, friendships that endure the test of time, continue to nourish me in more ways than I can count. I am a very lucky girl.

  An Excerpt from

  FRAGILE

  Lisa Unger

  1

  The sound of the screen door slamming never failed to cause a happy lift in her heart that was immediately followed by a sinking, the opening of a small empty place. Maggie could almost hear her son the way he had been once—always running, always dirty from soccer, or riding his bike and getting into God knows what around the neighborhood. He’d be hungry or thirsty, would head directly to the refrigerator. Mom, I want a snack. He was loving then, ready to hug her or kiss her; not yet like his friends, who were even then slinking away from their mothers’ embraces, bearing their kisses as if they were vaccinations. He’d laughed easily. He was a clown, wanting her to laugh, too. Those days weren’t so long ago, when her son was still Ricky, not Rick. But that little boy was as far gone as if he’d gotten in a spaceship and flown to the moon.

  Ricky walked into the kitchen, standing a full head taller than she, clad in black from head to toe—a pair of jeans, a carefully ripped and tattered tank, high-laced Doc Martens boots, though the autumn air was unseasonably hot. Nearly stifling, she thought, but that might just be her hormones. She was used to the silver hoop in his nose, almost thought it was cool.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hi, baby.”

  He started opening cupboards. She tried not to stare. She’d been standing at the counter, leafing through a catalog packed with junk no one needed. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched it. Yesterday, he’d come home with a tattoo, some kind of abstract tribal design that spanned the length of his upper arm. It was hideous. And it wasn’t done; there was just an outline with no color. It would take several more appointments to complete, and he had to earn the money to pay for it. She certainly wasn’t going to pay for him to mutilate himself, not that he’d asked for money. The skin around the ink looked raw and irritated, shone with the Vaseline he had over it for protection. The sight of it made her sick with grief.

  All she could think of was how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been. How his wonderful body, small and pristine, used to feel in her arms, how she’d kiss every inch of him, marveling at his beauty. When she was a new mom, she’d felt like she couldn’t pull her eyes away. Now she cast her eyes back at her catalog quickly, not wanting to look at her own son, at what he’d seen fit to do to his beautiful body.

  The fight they’d all had yesterday was over; everything she needed to say, she’d said. He would be eighteen in three weeks. His body wasn’t her responsibility anymore. You have no right to try to control me, he’d spat at her. I’m not a child. He was right, of course. That’s what hurt most of all.

  “Not a big deal, Mom,” he said, reading her mind. He was riffling through the mail on the counter. “Lots of people have tattoos.”

  “Ricky,” she said. She felt the heat rise to her face. But instead of saying anything else, she released a long, slow breath. It was a thing, like so many things, that could never be undone. It would be on him forever. Maybe she’d stop seeing it, like his hair, which was always a different color, jet-black today. He walked over and kissed her on the head.

  “Not a baby, Mom,” he said.

  “Always my baby, Ricky,” she said. He tried to move away, but she caught him and gave him a quick squeeze, which he returned.

  “Rick,” he said. He turned away from her and headed to the refrigerator.

  “Always Ricky,” she said. She knew she was being silly and stubborn. He had a right to say what he wanted to be called, didn’t he? Hadn’t she taught him to speak up for himself, to establish his boundaries, to have respect for himself?

  “Mom.” One word. It was a gentle admonishment, as well as a request that she lighten up a bit.

  She smiled and felt some of her tension dissolve. No matter how sad, how angry she was, she and her son had the kind of chemistry that made it difficult to fight. They were as likely to dissolve into laughter as they were to slam doors or raise their voices. Unlike the chemistry Ricky had with his father. When her husband and son fought, she understood why world peace was impossible, why people wouldn’t someday just learn to get along.

  “How’s the band doing?” she said. A change of subject would do them both good.

  “Not great. Charlene and Slash had a fight; she smashed his guitar. He can’t afford another one. We don’t have any gigs lined up anyway. We might be taking a break.”

  “Who’s Slash?”

  “You know, Billy Lovett.”

  “Oh.” Billy of the golden hair and sea green eyes, the charmer, the star soccer player, once upon a time the heartthrob of the fourth grade. He and Ricky were both seniors getting ready to graduate, unrecognizable by those fourth-grade pictures, taken when sunlight seemed to shine from their very pores. Now they looked more like they slept in coffins during the daylight hours. That Billy wanted to be called Slash was a new development.

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said. Honestly, their band was awful. Charlene’s voice was middling at best. Ricky had been playing the drums since fourth grade. His technique was passable, but he didn’t have any real talent for it—not that Maggie could hear. Billy, aka Slash, was a fairly decent guitar player. But when they got together, they emitted a raucous, angry sound that inspired in Maggie an awkward cringing.

  “Wow,” she’d said to them after she and Jones went to hear them perform last year at the school battle of the bands. They’d been in the final three but eventually lost to another, equally unpleasant-sounding band. “I’m impressed.”

  Ricky poured himself a glass of orange juice, managing to spill a few drops on the granite countertop and the just-cleaned hardwood floor. She grabbed a rag and wiped up after him.

  That’s the problem. You’re always following him around, cleaning up his messes. He thinks he can do anything. Her worst fights with her husband had been about their son, their only child. Jones didn’t seem to notice that their son, “the freak,” as Jones liked to call him, had a 4.0 average an
d nearly perfect SAT scores. His early acceptance letters to Georgetown and New York University were hanging on the refrigerator, where she used to hang his crayon drawings and report cards. And those were just the first two.

  What difference does any of that make when he doesn’t even want to go to college? All that brilliance and all he can think to do is get his fucking nose pierced?

  But Maggie knew her son; he wouldn’t have gone through all the work of those applications as early as he had if there wasn’t someone beneath the punk hairstyle and tattoo who knew what an education meant. He didn’t want to work at the local music shop all his life.

  “So are you and Charlene going to the winter formal?”

  He flashed her a look, turning his too-smart eyes on her. They were black, black pools, just like her father’s eyes had been. Sometimes she saw her father’s strength, his wisdom, there, too. But mainly, she saw the twinkling before some smart comment or the flash of attitude. Like right now.

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “No,” she said, drawing out the word. “I’m not kidding. It might be fun.”

  “Um, no, Mom. We’re not. Anyway, it’s not for months.”

  “You could do it your own way, with your own style.” The rag still in her hand, she started wiping down things that didn’t need wiping—the chrome bread box, the toaster oven, the Italian pottery serving bowl where they kept the fresh fruit, when they had any in the house—which at the moment they did not. She really needed to go to the grocery store. God forbid Jones or Ricky would ever pick up the list on the counter and go without being nagged for three days.

  She wondered what “your own style” might mean to Ricky and Charlene. But all the other moms she ran into at the school or the grocery store were readying their daughters and sons for this high school event—shopping for dresses and renting tuxes already. Maggie could settle for gothic formal wear; she could handle that. She used to be cool a hundred years ago. She went to NYU, partied in the East Village—Pyramid Club, CBGB—wore all black. Her son’s style didn’t bother her as much as it did Jones. It was the whole college thing that kept her up at night. And Charlene, she worried about Charlene.