Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  But she couldn’t leave without the packet, which contained the very items she’s carrying with her now: cash, the key to the safe deposit box that held even more cash, photos, her birth certificate . . .

  Relics of her old life.

  Her real life, the one she’d had long before she commemorated the start of the new millennium by moving to New York City and becoming Carrie Robinson.

  On that last morning, she tucked the bulky envelope into her briefcase and greeted several of her coworkers on her way back to the elevator, silently telling them good-bye. She knew she’d never see them again.

  What she couldn’t know in that moment was that no one ever would see them again.

  Less than thirty minutes after she rode the elevator down to the ground floor of the north tower and calmly tossed her gold wedding band into a trash can on the street, the Boeing 767 struck the building a few floors below her office.

  Not a single Cantor Fitzgerald employee who was at his or her desk that day made it out alive. They were trapped there, helpless, all of them.

  The terrorist attack was a divine gift—one Carrie accepted as a sign that she was following the right path.

  Now there was no need to take elaborate steps to cover her trail and her true identity. Mack wasn’t going to look for her. The woman he knew as Carrie Robinson MacKenna had died on that bright Tuesday morning.

  Just as the woman known here on Saint Antony as Jane Deere will die on this increasingly overcast Thursday afternoon.

  Well, evening, technically. It’s almost five o’clock.

  With the straw bag over her shoulder and a box in her hands, Carrie picks her way through the grass and weeds in the heeled sandals she chose to make herself appear several inches taller, keeping an eye out for snakes. That’s one thing she definitely won’t miss about the tropics. Snakes, or those big, hairy spiders that are everywhere. She shudders just thinking about them. She hates spiders; has hated them ever since . . .

  No. Don’t think about that.

  The past is the past.

  Hell, the present is about to become the past.

  And the future . . .

  Ah, the future.

  The future has finally arrived.

  Chapter Two

  The phone rings as Allison is spreading frozen chicken nuggets onto a stoneware baking sheet—the healthy kind of chicken nuggets, if there is such a thing. Free range, no antibiotics, organic whole-grain breading . . .

  She bought the chicken at Greenstone’s Natural Market on Glenhaven Avenue, where groceries cost at least twice as much as they do at the A&P. But of course, the MacKennas can afford to buy all that pricey health food—thanks, ironically, to Mack’s high-pressure ad sales job, which is far more capable of shaving years off his life than the preservatives in cheap supermarket chicken nuggets.

  Allison checks the caller ID on the phone. Seeing the 308 area code, she knows exactly who’s calling.

  Brett Downing, her half brother and only sibling, still lives in rural Nebraska with his wife and their two teenagers. Until November, their number rarely popped up on Allison’s phone, and she rarely dialed it. Now, she knows it by heart.

  After her family’s run-in with the notorious Nightwatcher made the national news, Brett and Cindy-Lou started calling. A lot.

  At first, Allison suspected that their sudden urge to reconnect had less to do with genuine familial concern than it did with ghoulish fascination with the media spotlight that had been cast on the MacKennas.

  But as time went on and the glaring press attention began to fade, Brett and Cindy-Lou continued to call. They sent Christmas gifts to the kids, and they’ve been talking about wanting to get together over summer vacation. In Nebraska.

  “Why don’t you come on out and visit us?” Cindy-Lou suggested the last time she and Allison chatted. “I bet your little ones ain’t never seen a real cattle farm.”

  “They haven’t. But it’s so hard for Mack to get away . . .”

  They’ve always spent their precious week of summer vacation with his sister, Lynn, and her family at their beach house down the Jersey Shore. But that’s where they went to escape a cold-blooded killer last November. The girls were stolen from their beds in Lynn’s beach house; nearly drowned, along with J.J., off the very beach where they frolicked every July with their Boogie Boards.

  How, Allison has wondered countless times since, are we ever going to go back there as if none of that ever happened?

  Still . . . it’s not as if she has warm, fuzzy memories of Nebraska, either.

  “That was so long ago, Allison,” Mack said when she brought it up. “It’s not like your parents are still there.”

  “For all I know, my father might be.”

  “Well, what are the chances that you’re going to run into him on the street in the town where your brother lives?”

  “Mack, there are no streets—or towns—where my brother lives.”

  “Good. It sounds nice and relaxing. And I’d like to meet your family. That’s probably not going to happen unless we go out there.”

  He’s right about that. Brett and Cindy-Lou have no desire, or money, to travel to New York with their teenagers—even if they could manage to leave behind the farm they’d inherited from Cindy-Lou’s late parents.

  Nebraska it is.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stop in Centerville,” Mack suggested.

  “Centerfield. And no, thank you.”

  “But maybe it would help you feel better about things if you could—”

  “It wouldn’t. And there’s no one there I’d ever want to see again.”

  “Was it really all bad, Allie? You said you did have a few friends there.”

  “And every single one of them turned her back on me right after my father left.”

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true, she thought, remembering her next-door neighbor Tammy Connolly. She’d cried on Tammy’s scrawny shoulder quite a few times after her life fell apart. But then Tammy and her mother wound up moving away almost as suddenly as Allison’s father had left. She said she’d write and call, and Allison really believed that she would—but Allison never heard from her again.

  “Believe me,” she told Mack, “there’s no reason to go back to Centerfield. I just want to see my brother.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  Now, Allison picks up the ringing phone. “Cindy?” She can never quite bring herself to say Cindy-Lou, though it’s what her sister-in-law prefers. Back in the old days, Allison used to call her Cindy Lou-Who—but only behind her back, of course.

  I never gave her a chance. Back then, I just hated her for taking my brother away from us.

  “Hi, Allison!” Ever cheerful, Cindy’s voice bubbles across the miles. “How the heck do you do that?”

  “I told you—we have caller ID.” You’d think basic technology hadn’t made it to the Midwest, the way Cindy-Lou had reacted the first time Allison explained it.

  “No, I mean, how did you know it was me and not Brett?”

  “I guessed.”

  She’d based it on the time, knowing that Cindy-Lou likes to call while she’s “washing up the supper dishes,” as she says, while Brett naps in his “Barcalounger.” Indeed, Allison can hear running water and clattering pans in the background.

  “And here I thought we had a psychic in the family.”

  Allison is as warmed by her sister-in-law’s easy laughter as she is by the word “family.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting your supper, Allison. I know you’re an hour ahead and you all eat later than we do here.”

  Yes, but it’s still early for an evening meal—and of course, even earlier in Nebraska, where it’s barely past four. By the time Mack gets off the commuter train at around eight o’clock in this time zone, Brett and Cindy-Lou will be thinking about bedtime in theirs. The next morning, they’ll be up to tend to their cows and fry up a big, unhealthy, nonorganic country breakfast long before
the sun appears on the horizon there—or here, for that matter.

  How, Allison wonders, not for the first time, are we ever going to spend an entire week together without driving each other crazy? We have such different lifestyles. Ours is beyond hectic, and theirs is . . .

  Well . . . low-key is a nice way to put it. And these days, as far as Allison’s concerned, low-key has a certain appeal.

  Even dull has a certain appeal, in the wake of all they’ve been through.

  After assuring Cindy-Lou that she isn’t interrupting a meal, Allison asks how the kids are, how Brett is, how the farm is.

  And this time, when her sister-in-law tells her how much her own children would love it—a real live farm!—Allison not only agrees, sincerely, but asks when would be a good time to visit.

  “Oh, gosh, anytime!” Cindy-Lou sounds so thrilled that Allison feels as though she’s just been heartily hugged. “Are you really going to come out?”

  “We’d like to,” Allison tells her, and she means it.

  Mack was right. It’s time to get together with the only family she has left.

  “You’re always telling the girls to be good to each other and J.J., and that siblings are best friends,” he pointed out when they were discussing it. “Don’t you want them to at least see you and your brother in the same room? In this lifetime?”

  Of course she does.

  Not only that . . .

  And not that she’d ever admit it to Mack . . .

  But all last fall, when she was feeling overwhelmed by the fast-paced world in which she’d chosen to raise her children, she found herself fantasizing about the one she’d left behind—the last thing she’d ever imagined doing.

  No, she doesn’t really want to live in her small Nebraska hometown again. But at least now she grasps that it couldn’t have been all bad. She just had so many unpleasant memories associated with her deadbeat father and her suicidal mother.

  Then there was Brett, born to an unwed, teenage Brenda a decade before Allison came along. He grew up fast, married young, and moved away. She can’t really remember a time when he was truly a part of her life.

  But that doesn’t mean he can’t be, going forward. She wants to see him again, and Cindy-Lou, too, and get to know the niece and nephew she’s met only once before.

  “When can you come, Allison?”

  “Well, the kids finish school at the end of June”—she thrusts the tray of chicken nuggets into the preheated oven—“and Mack has always taken off work the week of the Fourth of July, so—”

  “That’s great! I’ll mark the calendar!”

  “Wait! I have to check with Mack first,” Allison cautions. “Last year, he didn’t even get a vacation because he’d just been promoted.”

  “What? That’s terrible!” says Cindy-Lou, who’s probably never gotten a vacation—a true one—in her entire adult life. Or perhaps even her childhood, considering that she was raised on the farm, and her parents were just as saddled to it as she and Brett are.

  Growing up, Allison couldn’t imagine choosing to spend every day from birth to death with the same roof over your head, the same view out your windows, the same people coming and going, day in and day out . . .

  That’s part of the reason she left.

  And it was the right decision, she reminds herself, closing the oven door. Of course it was.

  “If you can stay here until the middle of July,” Cindy-Lou says, “we can celebrate your birthday together. It’s the twelfth, isn’t it?”

  Allison is touched that she remembers, and even more touched when she promises to bake a big chocolate birthday cake. “And we can all go to the county fair that week, too. Your kids would love it.”

  “I’m sure they would.” Allison thinks of the carnival rides and games on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore, bleak and deserted in November, on that awful day when the children were . . .

  No, don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t think about that.

  “Do they like deep-fried Twinkies?” Cindy-Lou is asking. “Best deep-fried Twinkies in the world are right here.”

  “They’ve never had them, but I’m sure they’d love them.”

  To think she was feeling guilty, just minutes ago, about the frozen chicken nuggets and the little bowls of Goldfish crackers she’d given the kids to eat as they watched television because they were all too hungry to go without a snack before dinner, which won’t be ready for . . .

  She checks the directions on the box and sets the stove timer for twenty-seven minutes.

  That means the kids will be fed by six, bathed by seven, and trying to keep their eyes open long enough to spend five minutes with Mack when he gets home after eight.

  Then she and Mack will eat—sushi delivery, she decides—and tell each other how exhausting the day was before Allison heads up to bed, leaving Mack to deal with the work-related e-mails and the spreadsheets he inevitably has to have finished by morning.

  She won’t hear him when he slips into bed beside her, and most of the time, he won’t hear her when she slips out of it a few hours later, summoned by J.J. the human rooster.

  The insomnia that’s plagued Mack all his life still strikes now and then, but some recently prescribed medication has been helping. It’s not as effective as the Dormipram he was taking last fall, but thankfully he isn’t experiencing the frightening side effects he’d suffered with that medication.

  Maybe he’ll sleep better when they get to Nebraska. All that fresh air, early-to-bed, early-to-rise . . .

  “I can’t wait to tell Brett you’re really coming,” Cindy-Lou tells her. “It’s going to be great for the two of you to see each other after all these years.”

  I hope so, Allison thinks. I really do.

  Glancing around to make sure no one is in the vicinity, Carrie picks her way through the overgrown yard to the back door that leads to a small storage room just off the Big Iguana’s kitchen. It’s ajar, as always.

  She swiftly reaches inside and sets the box on the scarred plywood floor there, against the wall alongside a couple of spare propane tanks used to power the deep fryer.

  Even if someone happens to spot the carton, it won’t draw suspicion. It’s identical to stacks of others in the storage room, stamped with the name of a liquor distributor; the kind of box that is delivered nearly every day.

  Only this one isn’t filled with bottles of rum.

  Satisfied, Carrie crosses the yard again. The humid air is hot and terribly still; a thunderstorm is brewing. The sky, barely visible beyond a canopy of tangled vines and fronds, still retains a high patch of blue, assuring her that by the time the bad weather hits, she’ll be settled in the air-conditioned comfort of a cabin at sea. That will be . . . bliss.

  Her scalp is already beginning to sweat beneath the long, dark wig, also left over from her old life. She’s accumulated quite a few wigs; all of them now abandoned, along with her tropical wardrobe, in dresser drawers in the apartment upstairs. Having gone gray fairly young, she started dying her hair a dirty blond shade a few years ago. She did it less out of vanity than practicality: she got better tips as a blonde, most of it in American dollars. More cash to stockpile, waiting for the day she would make her escape . . .

  Waiting for today.

  But I have to stay calm. Take it step by step . . .

  She’s wearing Molly’s orange floral print sundress now—not Carrie’s style, by any means, but all that matters is that it will get her onto the Carousel. Between the wig, the sundress, the bag, the heels, and Molly’s glasses perched on her nose, she’s willing to bet no one will give her a second glance when she arrives at the ship in ten minutes. Even if the crew scanning ID cards noticed Molly coming and going over the past couple of days, chances are they don’t know her well enough—and will be too busy getting thousands of passengers back on board—to suspect anything is amiss. After all, Carrie looks like Molly, she’s wearing Molly’s clothes, offering Molly’s ID . . .

  As fo
r Molly herself . . .

  Carrie has never been prone to backward glances. Even on September 11, she didn’t spend more than a couple of moments watching the north tower burn from her vantage point across the river in Jersey before she went on her way.

  Now, though, she shoots a quick last look at the upstairs windows above the bar, just making sure that Molly Temple hasn’t suddenly appeared in one.

  The windows are empty. Molly is much too far gone to bat an eye, let alone get to her feet and scramble to save herself.

  The sedative had hit her so hard that Carrie was lucky to get her out of the bar at all. Seeing her start to slump on her stool, she’d reached Molly’s side just in the nick of time, escorting her outside “for some fresh air” before she keeled over. From there, she managed to walk/drag the woman up the steps to the apartment, where she now lies on Carrie’s bed, wearing Carrie’s clothes, with Carrie’s keys and ID in her pocket and the distinctive larimar bracelet on her wrist.

  Molly will be burned beyond recognition, but the blue gemstone bracelet will remain intact. Anyone in this tiny harbor town who’s ever met “Jane” will remember seeing it glinting on her wrist at one time or another as she mixed drinks behind the bar.

  Smiling to herself, Carrie slips down a side alley that leads to the sparkling white ships in the harbor. Emerging in the glare of late day sun on the pier, she feels dangerously exposed and fights the urge to turn back to the sheltering shadows. Hundreds of passengers are streaming back to the Carousel, where two gangways are set up to admit them to the lowest deck adjacent to the dock. She allows the crowd to swallow her and sweep her toward the ship.

  As planned, she chooses the fore gangway, which is closer and thus busier, with a long line of overweight American tourists too lazy to walk in this heat to the aft gangway, where there is no line at all.

  Carrie isn’t lazy, by any means. But she’s watched this reboarding process many times from afar, and is well aware that it suits her purpose to get lost in the crowd that’s being hustled along by the nautical-white-uniformed human assembly line crew.