No Way Back: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  My heart came up my throat at what I saw.

  There was another man in the room. Gray suit, white shirt open. Salt-and-pepper hair. The second I saw him I realized I’d seen him before. Downstairs in the lounge. He and another man, a black man, had been sitting around a table.

  Except now he had a gun pointed at Curtis, who was on the bed.

  I instantly froze, then drew back inside. I didn’t know what to do. I was worried he would hear the running water. He’d see my jacket and shoes. He’d have to know I was here. Years before, I’d been on the Nassau County police force, but that was basically as a cadet, a lifetime ago. Eleven years. God forbid he did something terrible to Curtis. His next move would be to come in here for me!

  “Pick it up!” I heard the man order him.

  Holding my heart together, I peered back out.

  He’d tossed a second gun onto the bed. It landed next to Curtis, who stared at it with growing terror.

  “I said fucking pick it up!” the intruder said again, leveling his own gun menacingly.

  “No, I’m not going to pick it up,” Curtis said, his voice in between panic and defiance. “I know what you’re going to do. You just want to make it look like I drew on you . . .” He pushed the gun away and it rolled to the edge of the bed and onto the floor. “You’re going to shoot me, no matter what I do?”

  The intruder just looked at the gun and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter anyway . . . This is for Gillian, asshole.”

  He pulled the trigger. My eyes bolted wide.

  There was a loud, muffled pop, and Curtis’s body jumped off the bed with the impact. He tried to scream “No!” Then there was a second pop, and to my horror, Curtis jerked and then went limp.

  I drew back inside, muffling a terrified scream. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

  As I stared through the slit in the doorway, it was clear—a hundred percent clear, in that horrifying split second—that he had to know I was in there. His next move would be to come for me. My heart started to race uncontrollably. What the hell could I do? The bathroom door seemed to open on its own. My eyes locked on the gun on the floor, only a few feet from me. Old instincts kicked in, instincts I hadn’t felt in years. I stepped out of the bathroom and picked it up. The intruder had gone over to check on Curtis’s body.

  I raised the gun at him, two-handed, shouting, “I’m an ex-cop! Put the gun down. Put your hands in the air!”

  I hadn’t even held a gun in years, and never to someone’s face. In this kind of situation. My hands were visibly shaking.

  The man just looked at me and put up his palms defensively, as if to say, Slow down, okay, honey . . .

  But inwardly, I saw him sizing up the situation: My nerves. His chances. How quickly he could raise his gun. I’d just watched him commit a cold-blooded killing. I knew then he wasn’t about to let me call the cops on him.

  “Lady, you have no idea what you stepped into . . .”

  I leveled the gun at his chest. “I said lay the gun down and put your hands in the air!”

  That’s when I saw it. A realization etched into his face. Something he knew and I didn’t. Like the situation had suddenly shifted, his way and not mine. And then in horror I realized just what it was. The gun I was holding had been a plant. To make it look like Curtis had drawn on him first. He would never have risked Curtis taking it and using it on him.

  The safety was still on!

  Frantically I turned the gun on its side and found the lever. I thumbed it forward, just as the killer took a step to the side and leveled his gun at me.

  I screamed and pulled the trigger, the recoil knocking me backward.

  He staggered back, continuing to hold out the gun.

  I pulled it again.

  The first shot struck him squarely in the chest. I saw a burst of crimson on his shirt, hurtling him back against the wall. The next shot hit him in the throat, his hand darting there as he slowly slid, blood smearing against the wallpaper, his gun clattering against the floor.

  He was scarily still.

  There was this awful, heart-stopping silence. I just stood there, an acrid, all-too-familiar smell filling up the room. My heart pounding like a boom box turned all the way up. Wendy, what have you done? Frozen, I stared at him in disbelief. The guy didn’t move a muscle, the flower of blood widening on his white shirt.

  Oh my God, Wendy, what have you just fucking done?

  Dazed, I put the gun back on the bed and rushed over to Curtis, who was clearly dead, the smoky, dark eyes that had so intrigued me at the bar just minutes before now glassy and fixed. You have no idea what you stepped into, the intruder had said. Okay, so what . . . what have I stepped into? What have you done, Curtis, to deserve this? I tried to think, but my mind was jumbled and confused.

  My heart still racing, I ran over and checked the man on the floor. You didn’t have to be an MD to see he was dead as well, his cold, gray eyes glazed over and inert; the pool of blood on his chest continuing to spread. You killed him, Wendy . . . I’d pulled a trigger once before on the job, and it had changed my life. But not like this. Not at point-blank range. Not with my life on the line. I thought, What the hell do I do now? Call security? The police? You just killed someone, Wendy . . . I knew I didn’t have any choice. I’d just watched the son of a bitch kill Curtis in cold blood. He was about to shoot me too. I was lucky to even be alive.

  Anyone would see it was clearly self-defense.

  But then the reality of where I was swelled up inside me.

  No. I couldn’t do that at all! Call the police. That was the last thing I could do. I was in the hotel room of a complete stranger. A place I absolutely shouldn’t have been. How would I possibly explain that? Not just to the police, even if I could convince them of what had happened.

  But to my husband. To Dave. To our kids!

  That I was up here to have sex with a guy I’d just met at the bar when the whole thing happened.

  My whole life would be torn apart.

  My eyes fell on the intruder. Who are you? Why were you following Curtis? What were you up here to do? Leaning over him, I saw he had an earphone in his ear. Which suddenly unnerved me even more, realizing that there was likely an accomplice somewhere. Probably in the hotel at that moment!

  Possibly even right outside.

  If he has any idea what had just happened in here . . .

  Terrified, I took the earphone out and held it to my ear. I heard a voice on the other end.

  “Ray? Ray, what’s going on up there? Answer me, Ray, are you all right?”

  His jacket had fallen open, and I saw an ID folder in the breast pocket. I started thinking, What if he was security? Or maybe even the police? What then?

  I was suddenly encased in sweat.

  I opened the ID folder and stared. And whatever panic or fear I had felt up to that moment became just a dry run for what was rippling through me now.

  I was staring at a badge. But not from hotel security.

  It read, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My heart, which to that point had been acting as if a live wire were loose in my chest, went instantly still, as if the power had been cut. The agent’s ID fell out of my hand.

  I’d just killed a government agent.

  Not just an agent—Raymond Hruseff. From the Department of fucking Homeland Security!

  Who only seconds before I had watched commit a cold-blooded murder and then try to frame someone else. And who would have surely done the same to me had that gun not happened to be close by.

  My throat went completely dry.

  You have no idea what you stepped into, Hruseff had said to me. I turned to Curtis and wanted to shake him from the dead. Tell me . . . tell me, damn it, what did I stumble into? What the hell did you do?

  I knew I had only seconds to decide what to do. But, clearly, staying here wasn’t an option.

  I found a duplicate room key
in the agent’s jacket pocket, which was no doubt how he’d gotten in. He had icily put two bullets into Curtis right in front of my eyes. He was in the process of trying to make it seem as if Curtis was the one about to shoot. Even more troubling, when I identified myself as an ex-cop, instead of laying down his weapon and putting his hands in the air—and identifying himself, standard operating procedure—he’d made a move to shoot me. Clearly, he wasn’t up here on official business.

  What I’d stumbled into was an execution.

  And I knew if the person on the other end of that earphone happened to find me in this room, I’d be as good as Curtis.

  Wendy, you have to get the hell out of here now!

  I hurried over to the bed, wiped down the gun I’d used to shoot Hruseff, and placed it back on the bed. I did the same with the bathroom doorknob and everything else I’d touched. I took my coat. Only a minute and a half or so had passed since the actual shooting. The shots might have attracted people’s attention. There might already be a crowd gathered outside the room.

  The guy’s partner could be on his way up!

  I grabbed my bag and my leather jacket, which had fallen off the desk chair and onto the floor, and saw Curtis’s cell phone next to his laptop. I threw his phone into my bag, thinking that down the line I might well need something to prove my innocence, and I had no idea in hell who the guy even was.

  I didn’t even know if Curtis was his real name!

  I hurried over to the door. It was 8:41. It seemed like an eternity had passed since the shooting, but it had only been about two minutes. I prayed that people hadn’t been inside their rooms. That they would be out to dinner somewhere, or at a play, or at the fucking Knicks game for all I cared. Just somewhere! I put on my floppy cap and covered my face with my scarf as best I could, my blood pulsing with adrenaline. Collecting myself, I opened the door a notch and looked out. Thank God, the only people I saw in the hallway were an elderly couple heading to the elevators at the far end. Still, I didn’t think I could risk it. I needed another way out of the hotel. There had to be an emergency stairwell somewhere.

  I stepped out, averting my face from any possible cameras, but just as I headed down the hall in the opposite direction from the elevators, someone bolted around the corner, behind me.

  I spun.

  It was the black guy who I had seen with the dead agent down in the lounge. Who had to be the person I’d just heard on the radio.

  Our eyes locked and he seemed to recognize me. Then he reached inside his jacket for his gun.

  Oh my God, Wendy . . .

  “Federal agent!” he yelled. “Stop and put your hands in the air!”

  I stood, frozen. A voice inside me shouted that a federal agent had just ordered me to stop.

  But another, far more convincing, told me, If you do, this guy might kill you, Wendy! You just watched his partner murder a man. They were clearly here for something dirty. You can’t chance it. You have to get out of here now!

  “Here’s in there!” Backing down the hall, I pointed toward the hotel room door. “Your partner. He’s been shot.”

  Then I started to run.

  “Stop. Now!” I heard him shout again from behind me.

  I didn’t. Ten feet away, the hallway turned to the right and I flung myself around the corner just as a bullet whizzed by my head and slammed into the wall.

  I screamed.

  I prayed that he wouldn’t come right after me but instead would check on his partner. Who could be bleeding out. Or even dead. Which hopefully would buy me a few seconds.

  Or maybe he’d radio a third person. Down in the lobby. I had no idea how many were even involved.

  I sprinted down the long hallway, not sure what he was doing behind me. I knew that even if I screamed bloody murder and pounded frantically on the doors; even if people came out of their rooms to see what was going on and I was somehow spared; even if the police believed my story of what actually had happened in there, I would still have to face my husband and tell him what I’d done. Either way, my life would come crashing down.

  I raced around another corner, no idea if there was even a stairwell there. Up ahead, I saw a dimly lit sign that read Emergency. Thank God! I barreled through the door without looking behind, flew down the fire stairs as fast as my boots would take me—seven floors, my heart racing almost as frenetically as my feet. I had no idea what awaited me at the bottom. Hotel security? The police? With guns drawn?

  Maybe a third agent?

  I made it down the seven floors in what seemed like seconds. Above me, I heard the echo of the door opening and someone shouting down the stairwell. Loud footsteps coming after me.

  Oh, God, Wendy, hurry . . .

  Almost out of breath, I pushed through the security door on the ground floor. It opened to an unfamiliar part of the lobby, and I let out a gasp of relief that no one was around. Composing myself, I got my bearings and hurried toward the main entrance. An hour ago, I had come through it, a marital spat with my husband the most pressing thing on my mind.

  Now I was a witness to a murder. Now I had killed someone myself.

  Now I was just hoping to stay alive.

  I buried my face in my jacket and scarf and hurried through the revolving doors, the brown-uniformed doorman pushing me through with an accommodating wave. “Have a nice night.”

  I gave him a quick wave in return, not knowing what else to do.

  Outside, I didn’t know which way to turn. I wasn’t sure how close behind me the agent was. Park Avenue is a two-way street, bisected by a divider in the middle. The closest cross street was Thirty-Eighth, but the block to Madison Avenue was straight and long, and if the guy came out and saw me turn, there would be no place for me to hide.

  Grand Central station was four blocks north. Even at this hour, it would be busy with commuter traffic and offer plenty of places to hide. I knew I’d be safe there.

  I buried my head in my down coat and ran across to the other side of the street, heading north. I clung to the dark cover of the high-rise buildings.

  A block away I glanced back and saw the agent who’d been chasing me come out of the hotel. He looked up and down. I pressed myself against a large, bronze sculpture in the courtyard of an office building on Fortieth Street. My heart was ricocheting off my ribs, and I was praying he hadn’t seen me. He looked in all directions, gesturing in frustration, and spoke into a radio. I didn’t move a muscle. He looked around again; he seemed to be staring directly at me.

  I went rigid.

  Then finally he went back in.

  I think I exhaled so loudly in relief that a person a block away would have turned at the sound. I was in tears, tears from the thought of what I had just witnessed. At what I’d just done. Not knowing if I was safe, or about to be implicated in a double murder? Or if my family was about to fall apart? I knew I had to bring this to the police. But I also knew that then everything would spill out. Everything! And they would likely just bring me back to the hotel and hand me over to the very people who had just tried to kill me.

  All I could think of was to just get home. To the person I trusted most in the world. If this was going to come out, he was damn well going to hear it from my lips, and not from the police. I had no idea what I would say to him. Or how he would react. I only knew that together, we’d figure out the right thing to do. How could I possibly hold it inside? A dark, shameful secret that would haunt me the rest of my life? Every time I looked at my husband.

  Every time I looked at myself in the mirror.

  Not just what I’d done to a federal agent . . .

  But having that second drink. Going up to that room.

  Everything!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It only took about five minutes to make it the couple of blocks to Grand Central.

  There were a couple of policemen stationed at the entrance. I thought about stopping them and telling them what happened. But I just ran past.

  I saw on the large sc
hedule screen in the Grand Concourse that there was a 9:11 train back to Pelham. That was only five minutes from now.

  I headed down to Track 24. Before going underground, I called the house. It didn’t surprise me that there was no answer. Dave had a business dinner with some prospective new partners. When our voice mail came on, I hung up and tried his cell. No answer again. This time I left a harried message, trying to calm my voice as best I could: “Honey, I’m sorry about what happened last night. I’m on the nine-eleven. I’m looking forward to seeing you at home. Please, I need to talk to you about something. I love you.”

  What else mattered now?

  The ride home was the most nerve-racking half hour of my life. As soon as we got out of the tunnel, I checked Google News on my iPhone to see if the story had hit. So far it hadn’t. I looked in the faces of the people sitting across from me. Just regular commuters. A black woman with her young daughter who was playing a handheld electronic game. A businessman heading home from a late night at the office. A couple of loud twenty-somethings. Could they see it on me? Was it all over my face? Could they hear it in the pounding of my heart? What I’d done!

  Pelham is the second stop in Westchester County. It was a quiet, upper-middle-class town tucked in between Mount Vernon and New Rochelle. I’d left my Audi SUV at the station. We live in Pelham Manor, an upscale neighborhood only a couple of minutes from the town, in an old Tudor on a wooded half acre with a carriage-house garage, just two blocks from the Long Island Sound. Dave was a partner in a small advertising company that was looking to merge with a larger one. That’s what his meeting tonight was about. It would be a huge moment for him, for us both, if it all went through. And it could mean a little money for us, which we surely could use. We lived well: We had a ski house in Vermont; we belonged to a nice country club, ate out pretty much whenever we wanted. But not so well that it wasn’t a struggle to pay full tuition for the kids in college and go out west skiing in Snowmass with friends once a year.

  All of a sudden, everything seemed threatened.

  I drove home, my mind a daze, and went in through the garage. Once in my kitchen, surrounded by all our familiar things, I actually felt myself start to feel safe, for the first time since the incident. Dave wasn’t back yet. I threw off my coat, pulled off my boots, and heaved myself into a chair in the den. I had to decide what to do.