He was kneeling in front of me, face taut with worry. “Are you okay?”
My mouth didn’t seem to work, yet. Almost as if I was getting used to having one, again. “Wha?”
He leaned closer. “You went quiet. You didn’t move. For over two hours.”
That was the longest I’d been deep in a long time. What was more worrying was that I hadn’t had any sense of time. If he hadn’t pulled me out, how long would I have been in there?
Would I have come back at all?
I shook it off. Compared to what Clara had been through, this was nothing. We had to catch this guy: the risk to me was acceptable. And I’d found something, while I was in there. “The equations give a phrase,” I told Calahan. “Veiled one.”
“A bride,” he said immediately. “He’s going to kidnap some woman getting married.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” said Carrie. She must have arrived while I was deep. “You know how many weddings there are every day in New York?”
I frowned. “It doesn’t feel right. Brides aren’t special, not in the way this guy wants.”
“Lots of tradition and folklore to do with weddings,” countered Calahan. “Not seeing the groom before the day, all that stuff. Might be to do with her being a virgin, being pure.”
“Or it could be a woman in mourning, at a funeral,” said Alison.
Carrie cursed under her breath. “We’re talking about hundreds of women. We can’t protect all of them.”
I nodded, thinking. Neither answer felt right, to me. The other killings had all been people of power, born special.
Born special.
“Shit,” I said aloud. Everyone looked at me.
“You got something?” asked Calahan.
“Maybe,” I said uncertainly. I pulled out my phone and hesitated. I knew exactly who I had to call, to see if I was right. I just didn’t want to do it.
Carrie, Alison and Calahan all looked at me, waiting.
I sighed...and dialed.
She answered on the third ring and the way she said my name, joyful and hopeful, made me screw my eyes shut and hang my head. I felt like the worst daughter in the world. “Hi, mom.”
“You sound different,” my mom said immediately. “Better.”
Right then, down in the dark, surrounded by blood and too close to the killer’s warped mind, I didn’t feel good. I felt awful. But then I looked up and saw Calahan. He took my hand in his big, warm one and—I did feel better. Hell with Calahan was better than sitting in my apartment without him. “Yeah,” I said to my mom. “I’m...doing okay.”
We talked and it was so much easier than I’d been expecting. She didn’t try to convince me to go back to Oregon. We even sketched out plans for her to come to New York. Whatever change she sensed in me, it was making her less worried about me, in a good way.
I squeezed Calahan’s hand.
“Look,” I said. “I need to ask you something. It’s kind of weird. Back when you were a midwife...didn’t you tell me you’d once delivered a baby with, like, something over its face?”
“A caul,” she said immediately. “Mr. and Mrs. Penning’s son.” I swear, my mom remembers every birth. “It’s like a film. It’s part of the amniotic sac.”
“And didn’t there used to be a superstition,” I asked, “that babies born like that were special?”
“Oh goodness, yes. There are all sorts of legends.”
I had to ask carefully: I didn’t want to lead her, or put ideas in her head. “And wasn’t there some other name for it, aside from caul?”
I prayed that I was wrong.
“A veil,” said my mom. “They used to call it a veil.”
I managed to thank her and end the call. But then my chest closed up so tight in fear that I could barely speak.
“Yolanda?” asked Calahan. “Tell us.”
“A kid,” I choked out. “He’s going after a kid.”
40
Yolanda
IT WAS TOO MUCH. Everything I’d seen, Clara and the void and being deep for so long and now...my mind rebelled and locked up. Not a kid. Not a little kid, taken and bled and—
Calahan bent and cupped my cheeks in his hands. “Hey,” he said. But I just stared through him, seconds from going into full-on panic. “Hey! Look at me. Look at me!”
I focused on him.
“Nothing,” he said, “is going to happen to that kid.” There was an iron in his voice I’d never heard before, a will that went way beyond his usual stubborn need for justice. He wasn’t fucking around. That child was under his protection. I nodded.
“Let’s think,” he said. “How would he find a baby born with a caul?”
“Midwives,” I said. “Midwives would remember something like that. He’d ask them.”
Calahan rubbed at his stubble. “So he’d go to the hospitals. Starting with the biggest one. Let’s go!”
We hurried back down the tunnel, up onto the platform and through the subway station. We rode the elevator up to street level, emerged onto the street and—
I cried out as a million camera flashes hit me at once, blinding me. Before I could stop, I’d rolled into a sea of reporters, all shoving mics under my nose and yelling questions at me.
“Are you working with the FBI?”
“How many bodies are down there?”
“We have reports of symbols on the walls. Is this a satanic cult?”
They pushed in on all sides, towering over me, blocking out the daylight. I tried to find a way through but it was a solid mass of people and, from low down, I couldn’t see the edge. I backed up but my wheels hit a curb hidden by the crowd and I nearly flipped over. I clutched at the chair’s arms, my breathing going tight.
And then someone came crashing through the crowd from behind me, knocking reporters aside like skittles. “Get back! Get away from her!” He broke through the final few and I saw Calahan’s furious face. “FBI!” he yelled. “Clear a goddamn path and let her through!” He glanced down at me as he passed: you okay?
I nodded mutely.
He stepped around me and then walked ahead, opening up a path for me with glares and shoves. We were almost through when a reporter pushed in front of me, filming me with a handheld camera. “Is it true the FBI was searching the shopping mall while the murder was happening here? Did you get it wrong?”
The guilt washed over me like ice water. I just sat there gawping at the camera, unable to escape.
Suddenly, the reporter rose into the air. He panicked, looking down at his feet in disbelief as they left the ground. Then he was tossed aside and landed sprawling on the sidewalk. The whole crowd went silent.
“I said, get away from her!” said Calahan in a dangerously quiet voice.
There was a silent explosion of warmth in my chest. I’d never felt so protected.
Calahan marched ahead of me, clearing a path, and a few seconds later we were free of them. The reporter he’d thrown got to his feet. “That’s assault! I’ll sue the FBI! I’ll see you fired, asshole!”
“Get in line,” muttered Calahan, and led me towards my car.
41
Calahan
I SPENT the first few minutes of the journey silently raging. How dare they? How dare they scare her like that? Every time we stopped at a stop light, I looked across at her and had to resist the urge to pull her into my lap, wrap her in my arms, and just keep her safe from everything. Between the crowd and that prick’s accusation, they’d really shaken her up. She was still breathing too fast and her eyes were too wide, staring determinedly at the street ahead, one step from tears.
“Hey,” I said the next time we stopped. I waited until she looked at me. “You didn’t get it wrong,” I said firmly. “You figured it out in time to save Clara’s life. No one else could do what you’re doing. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
She flushed and looked back at the stop light. She still wasn’t good with compliments but her breathing slowed a litt
le.
“Now let’s stop this son-of-a-bitch,” I said. “Okay?” I covered her hand on the steering wheel and squeezed.
She nodded.
A few minutes later, we were at New York Presbyterian, the biggest hospital in the city. Someone showed us to the right department and I marched in—
And stopped.
I’d been so focused on getting there, I hadn’t really stopped to think about what an obstetrics department would be like. There were babies everywhere: moms in bathrobes carrying them carefully, premature babies wriggling weakly as they were transported in their little heated greenhouses, and, on the other side of a big pane of glass, rows and rows of babies in the nursery in babygros and little hats.
And Yolanda was staring at them, transfixed, as silent tears shone in her eyes.
I suddenly remembered Central Park. Aw hell. I had to make this fast and get her out of there.
I grabbed the nearest midwife, flashed my badge and asked her to round up all her colleagues. Then I addressed the group. “I’m Special Agent Calahan with the FBI. We need to know if anyone’s been in here asking questions about babies born with cauls.”
The midwives all looked at each other and then hustled a short woman in her sixties to the front. “There was a man,” she said nervously. “I spoke to him last week. A reporter from the New York Times.” She looked worried. “I mean, he said he was a reporter—”
“Can you describe him?” asked Yolanda sharply.
The midwife gave a description that sounded a lot like the previous glimpses people had gotten of the killer: a lean man in his twenties with long dark hair.
“His eyes,” said Yolanda urgently. “What color were his eyes?”
The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”
I frowned. Why was Yolanda so focused on what the killer looked like? “What did you tell him?” I asked.
The woman was twisting her hands together guiltily. “We get caul births occasionally but I told him I only knew of one case where I still remembered the name. The boy’s five, now, and he goes to the same school as my grandson, that’s why I know it.” Her face crumpled. “Oh God, did I—Is he in danger?” She looked between Yolanda and me, devastated. I got it. Her whole job was to bring children into the world. The thought that she might have put one in harm’s way….
Yolanda wheeled herself forward and took the woman’s hands. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll make sure he stays safe. We just need the name and the name of the school.”
I looked on, amazed. I couldn’t believe how much Yolanda had grown from the isolated, prickly woman I’d first met.
“Harry Brammer,” stammered the midwife. “And the school is Central Park West One, Manhattan Avenue.”
Yolanda patted the woman on the arm in thanks. Then she spun around and shot towards the parking lot with me close behind her.
42
Yolanda
WE SPED through the streets. I could push it up to sixty when we hit a clear stretch but this was daytime in Manhattan and clear stretches were hard to find. Most of the time, we were crawling through traffic and both of us could feel the tension. We’d got to Clara too late to prevent her being kidnapped. We couldn’t let that happen again, not to a five year-old kid. “I want a light,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I want a red flashing light and a siren,” I said. “Can’t we get me one of those?” Then I leaned on the horn as someone pulled out ahead of me. “Get out of the way!”
“Why’d you ask about his eyes?” asked Calahan.
Shit. I kept my eyes straight ahead. “Just thought it might help. Every detail’s important, right?”
“And at the shopping mall, when Alison said she wished we knew what he looked like, you looked worried. What’s going on?”
Damn him. He didn’t miss a thing. I stayed quiet.
“Yolanda, do you know something? Do you have a suspicion? Some mathematician you went to college with? A professor?”
I sat there turning it over and over in my head. It couldn’t be him. Even if he’d somehow survived the bridge, my brother was no killer. He’d never been into superstitions and magic and he’d never take LSD. Yes, he could have grown his hair long and that would make him fit the description but there were millions of dark-haired men in their twenties. The only real piece of evidence I had was the candy wrapper and that was laughably flimsy.
I could feel Calahan’s eyes burning into me. I didn’t dare look at him because I know I’d wilt under that gaze.
I couldn’t tell him. It was crazy, it probably meant I was crazy. He’d lose all faith in me. And saying it out loud: what if my brother is alive...that would make the idea real. I was just starting to heal from his death: this would rip the wound wide open again. When it turned out I was wrong, it would be like losing him all over again. And I had to be wrong because Josh would never do something like this.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”
It was a long time before I felt his eyes leave me. And when I finally dared to glance across at him, he was scowling out of the window. My stomach knotted. He knew I was lying and it was driving a wedge between us.
A few moments later, I pulled up outside the school. Calahan waited for me to get the chair out of the back but I waved him on. “Go, go!” He nodded and ran. Both of us remembered the NYPD getting to Clara too late. For all we knew, the killer was in there now, spiriting the kid away.
When I caught up to Calahan, he was leaning against the visitor’s window, trying to stay calm while he talked to the woman inside. “Harry Brammer,” he told her, for what sounded like the third time.
“And what class is he in?” asked the woman.
“I don’t know what class he’s in!”
The woman peered at her screen. “Blake, Bosco...Brammer. Got him. Let me just check where he is….”
I reached up and curled my fingers around Calahan’s, feeling ill. We were too late again. You just missed him. A man who said he was his father took him for a dentist appointment—
“Classroom 16A,” the woman announced. “Geography.”
Both of us stared at her in disbelief. “He’s here?” asked Calahan. “For sure?”
The woman looked between us, bemused. “I can have him brought out to you, if it’s important.”
Calahan just slumped, his head dropping as he gave an amazed, exhausted chuckle. I grabbed his jacket and turned him to me, then threw my arms around him. He leaned down, pulling me to him and almost lifting me out of the chair. The relief was like a drug. I felt shaky and lightheaded. We’d done it. Finally, finally, we were ahead of the killer. We’d be able to keep the kid safe.
Ten minutes later, Calahan was embroiled in a full-on shouting match with Harry’s teacher, the principal, and the vice principal. They wanted to keep Harry in school until his parents got there. Calahan wanted to take him to the FBI building now, to make sure he was safe. Neither side was giving an inch.
And me? I was somewhere I never thought I’d be.
I was babysitting the kid.
The two of us were sitting outside the principal’s office like we’d been caught cutting class. Harry had a mop of sandy hair that no comb could tame, too many freckles to count and big, solemn gray eyes. I hadn’t spent much time around kids but he seemed small, for five. He swung his legs like pendulums, his feet not touching the floor.
“Am I in trouble?” he asked at last.
“No.” I said firmly. “Not at all. We’re just here to make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Why would something happen to me?”
Crap. Hurry up, Calahan. I was no good with kids. “There’s a man, a bad man, who might try to hurt you. But we’re not going to let that happen. I promise.”
He nodded. Then, “Because I’m small?”
I stared at him, completely thrown. “What?”
He shrugged. “Is that why he wants to hurt me? Kids pick on me because I’
m small.”
“Yeah, well…people can be assholes.” Then I winced. “Forget I said that last word.”
He looked at my wheelchair. “What happened to you?”
“That’s—” I bit back my instinctive response. “Some really heavy stuff fell on my legs and now they don’t work anymore.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
I liked this kid.
Calahan marched out of the principal’s office. “Let’s go,” he said. ‘Harry, we’re going to take you somewhere safe.”
The principal was shaking her head. “Agent Calahan, I’d really rather wait for Harry’s parents—”
Harry’s face fell. “You’re taking me somewhere? No! I want to wait for my mom!”
I pulled Calahan aside. “Maybe we should wait.”
He glared at me, exasperated. “You, too? What’s the matter with you? This place isn’t secure! What if the killer comes in here with a gun and starts shooting? What if he pulls the fire alarm and grabs the kid from the yard while they’re evacuating? We’re taking him to the FBI. It’s the only place we can guarantee he’ll be safe.”
I could hear that iron in his voice again, like I had in the tunnel. It’s the kid, I realized. Kids in danger put Calahan into full-on daddy bear mode. I bit my lip, going a little melty inside. He’d make a wonderful dad...and then my stomach lurched as that thought reached its conclusion. He just needs to find someone who can give him that.
I blinked furiously and glared at the ceiling. I’d been a mess ever since I saw all those babies. Focus, Yolanda! One thing was for sure: arguing with Calahan, when he was in this mood, wouldn’t do any good. He was going to protect this kid no matter what.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, fine.” I went back to Harry, whose lip was starting to wobble. “Harry, this is Agent Calahan,” I said, pointing. “FBI.”
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