That wasn’t the only time he’d felt the gut sear of paternal concern.
One long-ago night on a whim, he’d found his way to the Marcy Houses in Bed-Stuy. He’d been relieved when Delia’s roommate Alma told him that Charisse and her mother had moved on.
Yeah, you really think they landed in a better place? All sunshine and white picket fences and backyard swimming pools?
They reach the paladar, a wind-battered two-story structure with tables on the upper deck, facing the water. It wouldn’t stand a chance in a Category 5 storm surge. The owner, a rotund, smiling woman named Ramira, greets Rob like long-lost family and hugs Barnes as well. Her daughter, in her early twenties, shows them to a table overlooking the sea and leaves them to examine their paper menus. Both women speak English.
“That’s why I like to come here,” Rob tells Barnes. “A lot of Americans do.”
Indeed, at the next table, two older couples with Southern accents are fretting about the approaching hurricane. And a nearby tour group is talking about—well, arguing about—the presidential candidates back home.
“Can’t escape the election even here,” Rob notes with a sigh.
“Can’t escape anything these days.” Barnes isn’t talking about politics.
After they place their orders, Rob is drawn into the conversation and Barnes promptly excuses himself, not just because he isn’t in the mood for debate.
He can see two women chatting with each other while waiting to use the only restroom, and the owner’s daughter is bussing a table beside it.
He joins the line, catches her eye, and smiles. She smiles back.
“I ordered the grilled pulpo. Good choice?”
“That depends. Do you like octopus?”
“Love it,” he says.
“Then it’s a good choice.”
He asks her about the paladar’s other specialties, and whether they get a lot of American tourists here. When she tells him that they do, he asks about ex-pats.
“A few,” she says with a shrug, swirling a rag over the table.
“Last night in town, I could have sworn I saw an old friend from New York. His name is Perry Wayland. Do you know him?”
Her hand goes still, clutching the rag, and then she starts scrubbing the spotless table as if trying to remove a stubborn stain. “No. I don’t know any Perry Wayland.”
She’s lying.
Why?
Jessie paces the corridor outside the surgical waiting room.
“There’s been a car accident.”
She’d been braced for those words ever since Chip and Petty had started riding around with older teens at the wheel and then gotten their own licenses.
But she’d never worried about Billy on the road, not even when he was out on the job in a blinding snowstorm. He’s the world’s most capable driver.
She’d done her best to stay calm when Shawn had delivered the news, hearing Billy in her head, telling her not to frighten Theodore, telling her . . .
“You know, Jess, if our lives had a theme, it’s ‘just roll with it.’”
Shawn had confirmed that her husband had survived but been injured; he wasn’t sure how badly.
But it wasn’t good. Otherwise, Billy would have told her about it himself—he’d call from the hospital, or pull into the driveway in a dented car.
Shawn had given her the name of the hospital, and she’d headed straight for the door.
“I can take you over there, Mrs.—Jessie.”
“No. Thanks,” she’d added, already searching pockets on the coatrack for her keys.
“But I’m supposed to—”
“It’s fine, Shawn. I need to drive myself.” She wanted to be alone in the car where she could let out the screams and sobs. Focusing on a task would keep her from stalling on the heart-stopping what-ifs.
Heart stopping.
Billy’s heart, the chest pains, the cardiologist’s warnings . . .
Jessie has been blindsided, like a pedestrian who’d cautiously checked for traffic from the left, stepped off the curb, and been mowed down by a wrong-way bus.
She’d found her keys and her phone and instructed Theodore to stay with Prewitt until Mimi got back. Yes, it’s against the foster rules to leave him in the care of a minor, but this is an emergency and she’d planned to call Mimi immediately. She was just in town. She could be back at the house in ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.
Jessie hadn’t realized until she was en route and trying to call that her cell phone battery was dead. Naturally, she’d forgotten to charge it. Naturally, she couldn’t find the charger she usually keeps in the car.
But Mimi is probably home by now, and the kids are fine, and right now Jessie’s main concern—her only concern—is that Billy pull through.
He’d already been in surgery when she’d arrived. Someone is supposed to come talk to her and explain what’s going on, but so far, she’s been left alone to wait, and worry, and wonder what she’ll do if . . .
He has to make it. He just has to. Having him for all these years is the one thing that’s kept her sane—though he might argue that point.
Losing him is the one thing she can’t fathom.
“Nobody rolls with anything—everything—in this crazy world the way you do, Billy.”
A door opens.
“Mrs. Hanson?”
A man in a white coat beckons her.
She takes a deep breath and walks toward him, steeling herself for whatever is coming.
It isn’t what she expects, and not just because Billy is alive and can stay that way for a good long while, the doctor believes, as long as he learns to take care of himself—and as long as the surgery is a success.
They aren’t treating his injuries from the accident—mere bruises, lacerations, a concussion, none of it life threatening. No, they’re doing an emergency angioplasty. He’d suffered a heart attack at the wheel.
“He’s a lucky man, Mrs. Hanson. It happened at a high speed on a remote road, but there were sheriff’s deputies traveling behind him. They witnessed the accident and were able to assist your husband and administer CPR at the scene.”
She digests this. “You mean . . . were they chasing him?” she asks, imagining Billy hunting down Dave Carver like a wild man.
But the doctor smiles and shakes his head. “Not that I’m aware. I was told they were heading to a crime scene out on Cortland Hollow Road.”
Cortland Hollow Road.
Prewitt had been found out there.
Prewitt, frightened, telling them about l’homme dangereux.
“Do you know anything about it? The crime? Was it a robbery, or . . .”
His smile fades. “A homicide, I’m told.”
Before leaving the stolen car in the parking garage, the Angler had removed every bit of evidence that might possibly link it to him. He’d thrown the passports, one by one, into separate trash cans along the crowded Commons. He’d pushed them down into the waste, so blinded by rage that he didn’t see, or care about, the filth his bare hand encountered. The tackle box, too, had gone into the garbage, sans the knife.
That, he carries in his pocket as he walks up North Cayuga Street, seething and searching, Monique’s betrayal shadowing him like the damned tracker itself.
The street is humming with leaf blowers, people doing yard work as kids ride bikes and scooters or shoot hoops. No one seems to pay him any mind. Student housing is sprinkled through the neighborhood, kids congregating on porches with beer even at this hour. And there’s a tag sale down the block, so it’s not unusual for a stranger to stroll past.
He spots a For Sale sign on the plush green lawn of a stately brick Tudor. Directly across the street, beyond a yard thick with fallen leaves and downed branches, is an enormous yellow house.
The architecture is distinctly Victorian, like his father’s place back in Ottawa. Does the boy feel at home here?
He hopes so. The barb will sting that much more.
He walks on pa
st, noting that there are no cars parked in the driveway. Someone must be home, though, because the home’s elegant wooden front door is ajar beyond the storm door, revealing a wallpapered stair hall and lights on in the back of the house.
At the top of the street, he looks around to see if anyone is watching before he does an about-face and backtracks. He pretends to be scanning the sidewalk as if he’d dropped something the first time, though he’s reasonably certain the show has no audience.
This time, though, there will be no reckless mistakes. After he’s done what he has to do to the kid—and to these Hanson people, who were foolish enough to take him in—he’ll put this all behind him for good.
He thinks of Cecile. By now, she must realize he’s gone. Had he told her about his mother—that she’d run off and left her family—Cecile might not have been surprised that he’d do the same. She might assume he was merely following in her footsteps.
But he’d told his wife only that his mother had died when he was too young to remember her. He’d wanted to think it was a lie, but by that time, he’d seen the brown paint spill hidden beneath the carpeting in his father’s bedroom, and on the dusty floor of the secret room above, and in the damned ceiling . . .
He hadn’t torn it out, hadn’t confirmed that it’s there, but he knows. He’s always known.
He stops in front of the yellow house and looks around to see if anyone is watching.
A college-aged couple has just exited a house two doors up. He’s wearing a Cornell hoodie; she’s wearing a short skirt and stiletto heels. Both are perhaps still drunk from last night, weaving a little as they walk arm in arm to a car parked at the curb. Ah, the morning after, and they see nothing but each other.
The girl reminds him a little of Monique.
Monique, dead in the bottom of the lake.
Monique, who betrayed him.
He spins away, and strides toward the yellow house. Boldly, up the walk, up the steps to the door. He’ll knock, and ask about the house across the street as if he’s an interested buyer. He’ll ask about things other people care about—the neighborhood, about the schools, the stores, the student housing, noise, taxes.
Nice. Friendly. He can do that. He can talk his way inside, and then . . .
As he lifts his fist to rap on the door, a teenaged kid appears on the other side as though he were waiting, watching, for trouble. But when he spots the Angler, his eyes seem to widen in . . . relief? Yes, unless his glasses are distorting his expression. He reaches out and opens the storm door.
“Are you the repair guy?”
He barely hesitates. “Yeah.”
“My mom said you were coming yesterday.” The kid stands back, holding the door open, expecting him to come in. He’s wearing sneakers, pajama bottoms, and a baggy hoodie. No Cornell colors, and no Ithaca College. It’s gray, and shapeless as the kid himself.
“Right, sorry, I couldn’t make it yesterday.” He steps over the threshold. The house smells like a mother lives here—homemade cooking, warm laundry, maybe one of those scented jar candles women like. Not Cecile. She turns up her nose unless they’re the hundred dollar ones imported from Paris.
“Where’s your mom?”
“She had to go to the hospital. My dad was in a car crash. How long will it take you to fix the Wi-Fi?”
“Not long.” The Angler quells his excitement, keeping his voice steady. This is so easy—too easy. It might be a trap. The kid refuses to make eye contact, as if he’s hiding something.
The Angler takes a few cautious steps over the threshold, looking around. “Are you here alone?”
“No. Espinoza is here. I thought you were the guy who’s trying to steal him, but you’re not.”
“No, I’m not. Is Espinoza your brother or sister?”
“No. They’re away at college. He’s a rooster.”
Right. The rooster.
“You and Espinoza are the only ones home?”
“Yeah.”
Crushing disappointment. So close . . . but not close enough. They must have moved the kid to another foster home.
Then—a shrug and afterthought: “There’s a boy here, too. But I’m the only one who can talk to him because I speak French.”
A French boy.
The Angler takes another step into the house. “Where is he?”
“Espinoza?” The kid is suddenly wary. “Do you know Dave Carver?”
Dave Carver. The real estate agent who doesn’t like the rooster.
“Yeah. Can’t stand that guy.”
The kid is pleased. “I hate him.”
“Me, too.” He reaches back casually and closes the big wooden door. His fingers itch to turn the bolt, but he doesn’t dare. “I wasn’t talking about Espinoza, though. I was talking about the French boy.”
“He’s doing puzzles. Why do you hate Dave Carver?”
“Because he’s a jerk. How about you? Why do you hate him?”
As the kid launches into a tirade about Espinoza and Walmart and fried chicken, the Angler sees movement at the back of the house.
“Why don’t I start working on the Wi-Fi while you finish telling me?” he cuts in when the kid pauses for a breath.
No argument there. He doesn’t miss a beat, talking on as the Angler leads the way down the hall toward the kitchen, and . . .
Voilà.
The boy, Monique’s son—his son—is there.
“Prewitt!”
Theodore whirls on him.
“Hey! How do you know his name?”
“Où est Maman?” The boy, small and fierce, lifts his chin and glares at the Angler.
“Maman est morte.” The Angler smiles, watching the child wither at the last word.
Dead.
“Hey! You speak French, too?”
He ignores the kid and walks slowly toward his son. Only then does he see that he’s clutching a silky lavender garment.
Monique . . .
There she is, alive again, her strength, her mistrust, her treachery glittering in her son’s blue eyes.
There, too, is Pascal, his other son—frail, hurting, begging for his mother . . .
And there is the Angler himself—young, vulnerable, weak. Too weak to fight back the way he should have. Too weak to confront the man who’d tormented him all his life.
No. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see his own face looking back at him, or his son’s face, or Monique’s . . .
Or his dead father’s.
Voices break through.
“Are you really here to fix the Wi-Fi?”
“Il est l’homme dangereux!”
“You killed her!” He presses his palms to his temples, seeing it. Him. La bête noire.
The black beast is killing his mother in the secret room. His mother’s blood seeps down through the ceiling like rain. The beast lies that she’d left, blaming him for that, for every ounce of misery in his life.
His eyes snap open. “You should have fought back! Why didn’t you—”
The kitchen is empty.
The boy had slipped through his fingers once again.
He screams in rage, rushing to the back door. He throws it open. It squeaks so loudly that there’s no way it had already opened without him hearing it. The space where he’d been standing, between counter and chair, would have made it impossible for the brats to get to the front of the house without brushing past him. There’s only one place they could have gone.
He sprints up the narrow stairway, reaching the top just in time to catch a flash of movement down the hall—someone diving through a doorway, too large a figure to have been Prewitt. Reaching the room, he’s not surprised that it appears to be empty. The older kid is there, probably hiding under the bed, but is the boy?
Turning to scan the hallway, the Angler sees the other stairway, the grand, polished one that leads straight to the front door, and freedom.
But what if he’s still up here, in the room with the kid? He spins back to the bedroom, and he
senses him nearby, can almost hear him breathing. But almost isn’t evidence enough. He can’t be sure he’s here unless he searches the room, and if he pauses to do that—and he’s wrong—the boy will get away.
He can’t escape this time. I have to stop him, like I stopped her.
And then he sees it, like a gift: a slide bolt on the outside of the door—just like the attic chamber in his father’s house.
He locks it in a flash, trapping at least one of them in the room.
“Faites confiance à vos sens.”
He’s a child again, fishing from a rickety pier with his uncle, prey lurking just beyond the surface.
He clenches the filet knife, remembering the slick of guts and blood on his hands, how he’d pretend the blade was slicing into human flesh instead of silvery gills.
“C’est comme une prison!” Monique’s ghost wails in his head.
“Oui,” he says aloud. “Les prisonniers sont condamnés à mort.”
Then he hears another sound. This time, doesn’t almost hear it; this time, it’s loud and clear and unmistakable.
The front door at the foot of the grand staircase just opened . . . and closed.
Chapter Sixteen
Deserted stretches of beach are in no short supply in Baracoa.
Barnes found one after the museum tour, while Rob went back to the house to get his phone and make arrangements to leave the island tomorrow morning.
It seems like a wise move. The surf is already raging. Barnes is watching it, lying on his back, elbows propped in the sand, when a shadow falls over him.
“Heard you’ve been looking for me.”
He looks up.
The sun’s glare obscures the man’s features, and he’s fully clothed, but Barnes doesn’t have to see his face, or his chest tattoo, to identify him.
He gets to his feet, facing Perry Wayland. No trace of the hedge fund millionaire at a glance. But there’s a self-consciousness about the beach bum vibe—his shaggy hair and beard are well-groomed, board shorts and white tee shirt unrumpled, flip-flops made of leather, not rubber, sunglasses an expensive brand. He’s holding a crude bamboo walking stick.
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