She picks up the receiver, dials Mack’s number.
It rings and goes right to the answering machine, just like before. “Hi . . . it’s Allison Taylor again. I just wanted to let you know that I’m at work, and you can call me here if you want, or try my cell phone. I hope . . . I hope you’re okay.” After leaving her numbers, she hangs up.
Remembering what she saw yesterday in Kristina’s apartment, she swallows hard.
What if something happened to Mack?
The thought is too horrible to push aside. She takes a card from her wallet and quickly dials the number, before she can change her mind.
This time, there’s an answer—a gruff, hurried one—on the first ring.
“Yeah, Manzillo here.”
“Detective Manzillo, this is Allison Taylor. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” he cuts in. “What can I do for you? I’m in my car on the Bruckner and I always lose the signal right near here, so talk fast.”
“I was just wondering what’s going on with . . . the case. Did you get him yet?”
“Get who?”
“You know . . . whoever killed Kristina.”
She holds her breath, praying that they got him, whoever he is—praying that it’s not Mack, praying he didn’t get to Mack.
“Not yet,” Detective Manzillo tells her. “Is there anything else you can think of that might help with the case?”
“No. Nothing, except . . . well, there are two things. One is that Kristina had the key to my apartment, and I’m worried that . . . um, do you know if it was still there?”
There’s a pause. “Do you know where she kept it? Because I know that the only keys on her key ring were to the front door of the building, her own apartment, and the mailbox. We checked them out.”
“I don’t know where she kept it, but she definitely has—had it. Could I, do you think, have a look around her apartment just to make sure it’s still there?”
“I’ll have to do that myself,” the detective tells her. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. What’s the other thing you wanted to mention?”
Oh. That.
“I just wondered if you knew where Mack—I mean, Mr. MacKenna—is, because I don’t think he’s home and I can’t reach him.”
As soon as she blurts it out, she regrets it.
Especially when she’s greeted with silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m just worried something might have happened to him,” she adds hastily. “It’s not that I, you know, think he’s . . .”
Guilty.
She can’t say the word; that would mean admitting she’s considered that he might, indeed, be guilty.
Still, Detective Manzillo says nothing.
“Sir?”
Silence.
After a moment, she realizes the connection was lost.
Hanging up the phone, she wonders how much he heard.
About a minute later, her phone rings. She hesitates, wondering what would happen if she ignored it.
It could be a work-related call—though she doubts it.
It could be Mack, getting back to her.
Or it could be Detective Manzillo again, freshly suspicious of Mack, thanks to her.
Reluctantly, she picks up the phone. “Allison Taylor.”
“Sorry, we got cut off before,” Manzillo says briskly. “I was asking if you can think of anything else that might help us with the case.”
And I was putting my foot into my mouth, but you apparently didn’t hear any of that.
Relieved, Allison tells him, “No, there’s nothing else. But I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Do that. And please be careful.”
“I will.”
She hangs up and spins her desk chair to the window, gazing absently at the skyline and thinking about Mack. He’s a stranger and a married man—a widowed man. Newly widowed. Why does he matter so much to her?
Maybe it’s because she recognizes in him a kindred spirit. Like her, he seems alone in the world, whether he really is or not. She sensed it even on Monday night, before his wife went missing—which is odd, when you think about it.
She’s sick of thinking about it.
So think about something else. Anything else.
Realizing she’s gazing out at the Chrysler building spire, she’s glad her office window faces north and not south. At least she won’t have a daily view of lower Manhattan’s scarred skyline.
It’s hard to imagine that just forty-eight hours ago, on a beautiful morning like this one, the clear September sky exploded in flames.
A faint sound reaches Allison’s ears.
Instantly on high alert, she spins abruptly in her chair, looking expectantly toward the doorway.
Beyond lies the bullpen—a large, open space filled with desks, work cubicles, file cabinets, and office machines.
“Hello?” she calls, and waits for a response from a coworker who probably didn’t realize someone else is here on the floor.
But there’s no reply.
Heart pounding, Allison stands.
She’s as certain she’s not alone as she is that terrible things can happen out of nowhere, out of the clear blue September sky.
She sees nothing, hears nothing, but there are countless nooks where an intruder might be hiding, waiting to pounce, waiting to do to her what he did to Kristina Haines.
“Did Mack leave?”
Ben nods, closing the bedroom door behind him and watching Randi pull a sweater over her head.
“Where did he go?” she asks when her head pops out the neck hole.
“Home, he said.”
“I was going to see if he wanted some breakfast.”
“I gave him coffee, and ginger ale,” Ben says, sitting on the bed, “and he barely got that down.”
“Poor guy.” His wife sits beside him. He can smell the lotion she always uses before bed at night and when she gets out of the shower in the morning. The scent comforts him; it always does, especially when he comes home after a hard day at work.
He thinks about Mack, going home to an empty house, and he wonders what he would do if something happened to Randi.
I would die, he thinks, and on the heels of that thought, No, I would go on.
What else is there to do?
Mack . . .
He’ll go on, just like thousands of other people in this city who lost their spouses.
“Ben?” Randi’s shoulder-length dark red hair is mussed from the sweater; he pats a couple of strands into place, then presses a kiss to her shoulder. “What’s that for?”
“I love you.” He rests his cheek against her shoulder, breathing her lotion scent.
“I love you, too, Benjy . . .”
She calls him that when she’s in a good mood or feeling playful and affectionate.
“But I hope you’re not getting any ideas,” she goes on, “because Lexi might walk in any second now.”
“I wasn’t getting ideas, but now that you mention it—she’s watching Blue’s Clues, and we can lock the door . . .”
Randi laughs, giving his head a gentle push off her shoulder.
“Sorry, but you have to go to work, and I have things to do.” She reaches over to the nightstand for her watch. Strapping it on her left wrist, she says, “Tell me about Mack.”
“Thanks for not giving me a hard time about meeting him.” Ben shakes his head. “He was shit-faced by the time I got to him.”
“What’s going on? Besides Carrie, I mean . . . as if that’s not enough. But you said his neighbor . . . ?”
“Was killed.” He nods. When he climbed into bed beside Randi in the wee hours, after wrestling Mack home from the pub and onto the couch, he briefly told her what was going on.
“But
not at the World Trade Center on Tuesday,” Randi clarifies.
“No. It happened in her apartment—she lives in his building. I guess someone broke in and killed her.”
“Oh my God. Did he know her?”
“He said he did, but not very well.”
“I’m sure it’s upsetting—I mean, any other time, it would probably be devastating. But with his own wife missing—”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. He told me something about Carrie—you know, why she is the way she is.”
“How is she?”
Ben raises an eyebrow at Randi. “ ‘Standoffish’ is the nicest word I can think of. How about you?”
“Same.” She sighs. “The other one rhymes with ‘witch’ and starts with a B, and now I feel really horrible about ever having said that about her.”
“Want to feel worse about it?”
“Oh yes, please,” she says dryly. “I’d love to feel worse.”
“When she was a little girl, her family had mob ties. I’m not clear on the details, but I guess there was a murder and she and her parents were put into the witness protection program.”
Randi just looks at him.
“What?” he says.
“I don’t know . . . the witness protection program?”
“Why are you saying it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t believe it.”
“Because I’m not sure that I do.”
“You think Mack is lying about it?” he asks incredulously.
“I didn’t say that.”
It’s Ben’s turn to just look at her.
Unlike him, Randi has always been incredibly intuitive. Where Ben pretty much likes everyone he meets and tends to give strangers the benefit of the doubt—and has been burned for it, many a time—Randi is far more wary, far less trusting.
What she likes to say is that she has a highly functioning bullshit detector. Ben wouldn’t argue with that.
He’s come to rely on her judgment whenever they cross paths with new people—though back when they first met Carrie Robinson, he didn’t need his wife to tell him that they weren’t going to become a cozy foursome with the MacKennas. Even easygoing Ben found his best friend’s new girlfriend to be disappointingly stiff and reserved. Carrie was the kind of woman who, at a group dinner, would turn and talk to her date as if no one else were even present—when she talked at all.
Had Mack ever asked him, afterward, what he thought of Carrie, he was prepared to be truthful. Well, as truthful as he could be. Randi had coached him on what to say: I’m sure she’s a nice person, and if you’re happy with her then I’m happy for you, but just make sure you take it slow.
Mack never asked.
Mack, who had been best man at Ben’s wedding seven years ago, eloped without ever having told Ben he was engaged.
On Randi’s advice, he swallowed the hurt and invited Mack and his new bride out to dinner to celebrate their wedding. Mack made excuses every time they tried to set a date. Ben got the hint.
His friendship with Mack eventually got back on solid footing, but he saw Carrie only a couple more times—once at the office Christmas party, and once when Mack was presented with a sales award.
They never discussed Carrie, other than in passing.
But last night, when Mack drunkenly confided in him about Carrie’s past, Ben immediately forgave her. Now, thanks to Randi, he has misgivings about her all over again.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he tells his wife.
She shrugs. “It sounds far-fetched. That’s all.”
“There is such a thing as the witness protection program, you know. It’s—”
“I know what it is, Ben.”
Ben. Not Benjy.
“It’s been around for a long time,” he tells Randi, “and real people are in it—families with kids. Why couldn’t Carrie have been one of them?”
“I’m not saying she wasn’t.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“Just—”
“Mommy?”
They look up to see Lexi standing in the doorway.
“Can I have some Goldfish crackers?” she asks, and then, without missing a beat, “I thought you went to work, Daddy.”
“And I thought you were watching Blue’s Clues.”
“It’s in a commercial. I hate commercials.”
“We don’t say hate,” Randi automatically corrects her.
“Especially about television commercials,” Ben puts in.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he tells his daughter, “they’re how Daddy makes a living.”
“Shouldn’t you get to work, Daddy?” Randi asks, looking at her watch. “The sooner you get there, the sooner you’ll be able to get out and come home.”
“You’re right.” He plants a kiss on her cheek, and one on the top of Lexi’s dark head.
“Bye, Daddy. I love you.”
“Love you, too. And you—and we’ll talk later,” he tells Randi meaningfully as he heads for the door, wondering again about the mysterious Carrie Robinson MacKenna.
“Is someone there?” Allison calls again, standing poised in the doorway of her office, her eyes scanning the bullpen.
She skims right past the shadowy corner behind the copy machine. Crouched there, Jamie can clearly see the exquisite fear in her blue eyes.
This is going to be good.
Allison reaches back and plucks a small pair of scissors from the pencil cup. She holds them like a dagger, her elbow bent, her trembling fist wrapped around the finger holes, the closed blades poised before her, ready to make contact.
Nice try, but those are no match for this.
Jamie glances down at the eight-inch chef’s knife that had once belonged to Kristina Haines. The blade is clean now, but her blood—and Marianne’s—still stains the wooden handle.
Now Allison’s will join the mix.
It’s just a pity this time won’t be like the last two . . . setting the scene with lingerie, candles, music . . .
You can’t have everything.
No, but still . . .
Maybe it would have been better not to track her down here at the office. It was so easy—too easy—to slip in through the basement door, propped open with a plastic bucket, cigarette butts littering the concrete around it.
Jamie rode the elevator up from there. Had it stopped on the lobby floor, there might have been trouble—though even if the security guard had noticed someone inside, he might have assumed it was just an employee who had gone out for a smoke.
But the elevator didn’t stop.
And here I am . . . and here she is.
Finding Allison alone was incredibly fortuitous. Jamie had expected it to be quiet here—quiet enough to do what has to be done and beat a hasty retreat.
This is perfect, though. She’s alone, just as the others were.
Does she sense that she’s about to die?
Kristina Haines knew it.
So did Marianne.
Jamie made sure of that.
Telling them they were about to die made it more satisfying, somehow. Their terror—Jamie’s power.
This is different. Allison is tense, watchful, but she doesn’t really know what’s about to happen. Tempting as it is to prolong the inevitable, it will have to be quick.
Does that really matter? The knife plunging into flesh will yield the same result, won’t it? There will be blood, hot and sticky. There will be death.
Trembling with anticipation, Jamie straightens and inches a cautious step forward.
Allison, looking in the opposite direction, is oblivious.
Jamie takes another step.
The glorious moment is so close, so tantalizin
gly close . . .
And then it happens.
Voices reach Jamie’s ears; Allison’s, too. She jerks her head in the direction of the reception area, again skimming her gaze right past Jamie’s hiding place.
“Hello?” she calls, and her face is etched in relief when the voices call back to her.
Moments later, a pair of coworkers appear in the bullpen.
Jamie watches Allison greet them, the scissors discreetly held at her side now that the threat has evaporated . . . or so she seems to think.
That’s all right, Allison.
I’ll see you later.
And next time, it’s going to be on your turf . . . on my terms.
Being able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time of day—it’s a good quality in a detective. Or so Rocky likes to remind Ange, when she scolds him for never staying awake through a movie when they sit down to watch one on cable.
Today, she’s the one who told him to go lie down for a while as soon as he finished eating the hot frittata she had waiting when he walked in the door.
“Breakfast, and then bed . . . yeah, why not?” He gave her a weary kiss on the cheek.
“Go forget about everything for a while,” Ange told him, briefly stroking his temple with her fingertips.
Rocky went off to the bedroom thinking that despite everything, he was a lucky man. His last thought before drifting off was that he probably should have gone back down to the crime scene to make sure Kristina’s killer hadn’t stolen Allison’s key from the scene.
But by the time she’d mentioned it, he’d already been on his way home. And in his heart, he honestly doesn’t believe that if the killer set his sights on Allison, he’d need that key to get in. Either he already has one, or he has another method of getting in and out.
Now, awakened by the ringing telephone, Rocky opens his eyes and gets his bearings.
The milky light filtering through the sheer drapes indicates that it’s still daytime—good. That’s good.
The phone that’s ringing is his cell—not so good.
Unless it’s Vic, calling back.
He snaps open the phone and says, “Yeah, Manzillo here.”
“Rock . . . we got another one.”
It’s not Vic. It’s Tommy, the station house desk sergeant.
“You got another what?” Rocky sits up fast, his thoughts racing. Another terrorist attack, another building down, another ground zero . . .
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