You Are Not Alone

by Greer Hendricks

  Shay has finally arrived.

  The other women in the group think Cassandra and Jane are the leads, and that Valerie plays a supporting role.

  But Valerie has been the star all along. This is her stage.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  SHAY

  The Double Jeopardy Clause in the 5th Amendment means no one can be tried twice for the same crime. There is no statute of limitations when it comes to murder. There are currently 54 correctional facilities in New York. They hold about 47,000 prisoners.

  —Data Book, page 78

  IT’S NEARLY TEN P.M. by the time I enter the Thirty-third Street station.

  A dull roaring sound floods my ears; I’m so dizzy I have to concentrate to simply walk in a straight line.

  I look around for the police as I grip the railing and slowly begin to descend the steps. But I don’t see them.

  Unease fills my body.

  Though people are on the street above me, the stairs are empty.

  Even though that’s not unusual at this time of night on a weekday, my legs are trembling, and I almost miss a step.

  As I reach the landing, a woman hurries toward me, as if she is rushing up to exit.

  But instead of passing me, she spins around and grabs my arm above the elbow, hard, causing pain to shoot down my forearm. At the same moment, I feel something hard press into my waist.

  I know even before I glimpse her face that it’s Valerie.

  We were here together, in this precise spot, only weeks ago. Valerie held my arm then, too, as she laughed and joked and got me over my fear of the subway.

  But she was wearing a friendly mask then. Tonight I see her real face.

  Her expression is composed, yet her brown eyes glitter. “Shay, come with me. We’re going to take a ride.”

  My heart begins to thud. My body is limp with terror.

  “The police are here!” I blurt. “I’m meeting them!”

  “Sorry I had to trick you to get you here, Shay.” But it’s not Valerie’s voice coming out of her mouth. It’s Detective Santiago’s heavy New York accent.

  Then she smiles.

  If I was scared of Valerie before, now I’m terrified.

  Valerie begins to walk toward the platform, maintaining the painful pressure near my elbow joint. I have no choice but to keep pace with her; I haven’t looked down yet, but I’m certain she’s pressing a gun against my torso.

  A man carrying a briefcase passes us going the other way and I try to catch his eye, but he’s looking down at his phone. Even if he did see us, what would he notice? We look like two girlfriends huddled close together, maybe because of the cold, heading out to a late dinner or concert.

  We approach the platform. “Look, Shay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Half a dozen people are milling around—a few businesspeople, a young woman wearing bulky headphones, and a mom absently rolling a pink stroller back and forth. But they all seem lost in their own thoughts.

  Valerie’s voice is soft and gentle now; I’d almost believe her if I didn’t know what she is capable of. “Cassandra and Jane and I just need to talk to you.”

  It’s eerily quiet down here, between the rush of trains.

  “I know you and Cassandra and Jane are sisters, and that you had a stepbrother named James.” My lips are so dry and rigid it’s hard to form the words. “But why did you set me up for his murder?”

  “Cassandra and Jane want you to know it was nothing personal.”

  Valerie leads me farther down the platform, by the support beam. She pulls me to a stop not far from where Amanda stood when I first glimpsed her, then positions herself directly behind me.

  Time seems to be slowing down. I’m acutely aware of my breath shuddering in and out of my lungs and what must be a gun against my ribs as Valerie adjusts it a little higher.

  I could jerk away from her and try to run back up the stairs. I read somewhere that it’s difficult to shoot a moving target. But I’m so weak and my brain is so foggy that I can’t risk it. I’ll never be able to outrun her. Plus that little pink stroller is somewhere behind me … if Valerie fires her gun, the bullet could go anywhere. With so much metal down here it might ricochet.

  Valerie’s hair brushes against my cheek as she leans closer to me. “Come, Cassandra and Jane are waiting for us. We’ll get this all sorted out as soon as we see them.”

  The LED display shows the next train is due in two minutes.

  A woman in gym clothes strolls toward us, appearing bored, one of her hands in her pocket and the other swinging free.

  “Not a word,” Valerie whispers, her breath warm against my ear.

  But the woman isn’t even looking at us. It’s like no one in this city sees me.

  I glance around. There’s no escape. I feel a faint vibration beneath my feet.

  One minute, the LED light announces.

  The woman is closer now, but she’s glancing at something back in the shadows beneath the overhang of the stairs. She casually raises her right hand, running it over the top of her hair, as if smoothing out her ponytail.

  My body is completely rigid as I hear the rumbling of the train.

  Valerie takes a big step, forcing me toward the edge of the platform.

  Too close.

  Suddenly I know what she intends to do. Cassandra and Jane aren’t waiting for us. Valerie wants this to look like I committed suicide; she’s replicating Amanda’s last moments.

  She’s truly trying to turn me into Amanda.

  Valerie’s gun is digging into me, and the oncoming train is almost in front of me. I’m trapped between two horrible fates.

  The thunder of the train fills my ears.

  Then I hear a shout: “Police! Valerie Ricci, put your hands up!”

  The command comes from behind us. Valerie’s head whips around as she twists slightly away from me and momentarily lowers her gun.

  In that moment my instincts take over, marshaling every bit of my remaining strength as my legs and core tighten and keep twisting, continuing the rotation as I pull Valerie in a half circle with me. Then I ram my elbow into her chest, pushing her away from me.

  The train appears in the mouth of the tunnel as Valerie falls backward onto the tracks.

  The train whips past, erasing her, as I collapse onto the platform. I squeeze my eyes shut as the subway cars frantically grind to a stop, making shrieking noises that sound horrifyingly human.

  People are shouting and rushing toward me, but I just lie there, feeling numb. When I finally open my eyes, I see the overturned pink baby stroller—with a plastic doll dangling out of it.

  The woman pushing it was a cop, like the woman in exercise clothes, I realize.

  I was never alone down here on the platform, just as Detective Williams promised when I called her from the cab.

  A hand on my shoulder, her steady, familiar voice in my ear: “You’re okay now, Shay.”

  It’s good she heard everything, I think as she gently unzips my coat and checks the wire she outfitted me with shortly before I arrived at the subway station.

  After all, two other sisters need to be punished.

  EPILOGUE

  SHAY

  Two months later

  Three things that saved me:

  1.  When Valerie, the former actress from L.A., pretended to be Detective Santiago by channeling the detective’s thick Brooklyn accent, she asked which exit I was near on the “freeway.” That’s a West Coast term, as I once noted in my Data Book when I jotted down regional terms like bubbler for “water fountain” and gravy for “tomato sauce.” Anyone born and bred in New York would have said “highway.”

  2.  The woman who was with James Anders on the night he was murdered—by now she has been identified as Amanda Evinger—wore hoop earrings and dropped one as she left Twist. The bartender spotted it and called after her, but she didn’t hear him. The real Detective Santiago collected it when she questioned the bartender following the disc
overy of James’s body. She knew I couldn’t have been with James at Twist. My ears aren’t pierced, as Amanda’s were.

  3.  When Detective Santiago asked Jody to bring her the picture of Amanda that was planted in my Data Book, Sean accompanied Jody. He described how the Moore sisters had set me up with a house-sitting gig, how shocked I was when they knew about my smoothies, and how he’d listened during my phone call with the sisters as they urged me to take Amanda’s vacant alcove studio, in a location and with a rent that seemed too good to be true. He also told the police he’d stake his life on his certainty that I was a victim in whatever was going on. When I finally got my iPhone back from the sketchy hotel, I saw he’d left a half dozen messages.

  —Data Book, page 84

  I STEP ONTO THE subway car just before the doors close and grip the overhead metal bar, my body swaying as the train picks up speed.

  My old tote bag, containing my Data Book, is slung over my shoulder again.

  I look around, collecting details the way I always do. Thirty-five other people are in this car. So out of the thirty-six of us, twelve—or 33 percent—likely consider themselves very happy, according to one survey on the emotions of Americans. A different study says four, or about 11 percent, are probably deeply unhappy.

  As we pull into the station on Forty-second Street, I slide onto an open seat. I’m on my way home from my new job at Global Metrics. The person they hired right after I botched my interview didn’t work out, so I went after the position again, and this time I won it. I’m looking forward to a quiet night in my studio apartment on the Upper West Side. It doesn’t have the charm of Amanda’s place, but at least the memories there are all my own.

  On the happiness spectrum, I’m somewhere in the remaining 56 percent.

  A guy across from me is staring. I don’t think it’s because I’m his type, though. My face was plastered on the cover of the New York Post when the paper broke the story of the Moore sisters’ arrests for being accomplices in a homicide. Cassandra and Jane are currently being held without bail as they await trial, along with the other women in their group. They’re going to be convicted, Detective Williams assures me; there’s an awful lot of evidence against them.

  I look a little different these days. I’m growing out the layers in my hair, though I’ve decided to keep the highlights, and I alternate between contacts and glasses depending on my mood. It’s like I’ve taken on some parts of Amanda; the new me is a hybrid of the two of us.

  Though I think about the sisters less and less, I’m still frequently reminded of them. Like when I see a trio of women sharing a bottle of wine and laughing, or when I remind myself to stand up straight instead of hunching, or when I watch friends link arms as they walk down the street.

  It’s hard to admit this, but even after everything they did, a part of me misses them. When they were around, I never felt alone.

  I also remember all three sisters whenever I step onto a subway platform.

  What are the chances that I would bear witness to two violent deaths in the same precise spot, only months apart?

  But I try not to dwell on that data.

  There’s also a stat I’ve thought about a lot lately: that the average person will walk past sixteen killers in the person’s lifetime.

  I watch as a woman moves down the subway aisle.

  I keep staring at her as she passes my seat. I wonder if she will walk past fifteen others during her lifetime.

  I’ve never told anyone about how after the police officer yelled for Valerie to put up her hands and she reflexively turned, I continued twisting, forcing her between me and the platform. The body I used to try to minimize by shrinking into myself was my greatest ally in that moment; I needed my bigger limbs, stronger muscles, and extra few inches of height to overpower her. Then I used my last bit of strength to push her away.

  I glimpsed her eyes as she was falling onto the tracks. They were wide open, glittering with a silent accusation.

  Some people might consider me a murderer. But I hope most would say I acted in self-defense.

  My subway car grinds to a stop and the doors wheeze open. A few people get off, and others crowd aboard.

  I watch them move in and out of view. Some will get raises during the next year, while others will be asked for a divorce. A percentage will suffer physically—anything from a broken bone to the diagnosis of a terrible disease—while others will fall in love. The numbers tell me so.

  As for me, I don’t know what the future holds. But I choose to believe that the statistics are now in my favor.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  From Greer and Sarah:

  Our thanks goes first to our brilliant editor and publisher, Jennifer Enderlin, who deftly steered us toward finding the right way to tell this story and whose creative vision elevated it immeasurably. Her support and enthusiasm for us and our writing are appreciated every day, and we feel so lucky to have her at the helm.

  Our passionate publicist, Katie Bassel, is like a ray of sunshine, and she goes above and beyond to promote us and our books.

  The incredible crew beside these two women nurture our novels through the publication process with meticulous care, boundless energy, and limitless creativity. We are so lucky to have them working on behalf of our books. Thank you to Rachel Diebel, Marta Fleming, Olga Grlic, Tracey Guest, Jordan Hanley, Brant Janeway, Sallie Lotz, Kim Ludlam, Erica Martirano, Kerry Nordling, Gisela Ramos, Sally Richardson, Lisa Senz, Michael Storrings, Dori Weintraub, and Laura Wilson.

  To our new family at William Morris Endeavor: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Margaret Riley King, Sylvie Rabineau, and Hillary Zaitz Michael, thank you for taking us on and hitting the ground not just running but sprinting. We are elated to be working with you.

  Our gratitude to all of our foreign publishers who have shared our work around the globe, especially the charming and hilarious Wayne Brookes at Pan Macmillan UK.

  A big thanks to Victoria Sanders, Bernadette Baker-Baughman, Jessica Spivey, and Diane Dickensheid.

  And to Benee Knauer: Your enthusiasm and insights always make us feel better!

  A special shout-out to Holly Bario, Mia Maniscalco at Amblin Entertainment, as well as producer Jared LeBoff, for their guidance, support, and patience as we wrote the screenplay for The Wife Between Us. We are thrilled to be on your team.

  Our deep appreciation to Shari Smiley, Lindsey Williams, and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein. And to Carolyn Newman, Jackie Secario at eOne, USA Network, and screenwriters Josh and Rachel Abramowitz: We are so grateful for your work in bringing An Anonymous Girl to the screen.

  And last but never least, a huge thank-you to our readers. We love connecting with you, so please find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And to sign up for our very occasional newsletters, please visit our websites, at www.greerhendricks.com and www.sarahpekkanen.com. We’d love to stay in touch with you.

  From Greer:

  Sarah, I have two words for you: BETTER TOGETHER! Whether we are joyously celebrating a success or struggling in the trenches (cake toppers, timelines, cats), there is no one I would rather be with on this magical journey. With you by my side I am never alone!

  I am deeply appreciative of my friends both inside and outside the publishing industry who come to readings, host events, and recommend our books. I am especially grateful to Marla Goodman and Alison Strong (who did double duty as early readers), Karen Gordon, Gillian Blake, and my Nantucket Book Group.

  Thanks also to Georgeanne Dinan, Patty Allocca, and Detective Will Acevedo, who helped with some of the research. And to Kirsi Insalaco and the team at SoulCycle East 83rd, who keep me physically fit and mentally sane.

  Extra-special thanks to my family: the Hendricks, the Alloccas, and my incredible parents, Mark and Elaine Kessel.

  Robert Kessel: Little brother, this one’s for you. Your love and support over the years have meant the world to me. Rabble Rabble, my special friend!

  Paige, our tech adviser, your intellectual c
uriosity and smarts made this a better book. Alex, I can always count on you to lift my spirits with your generous heart and good cheer. And finally to John, who lives through each book from its inception through publication and beyond. Even the sky isn’t the limit with you by my side.

  From Sarah:

  Greer, what a ride we’ve been on! I’m so grateful we have each other to cling to during the scary dips, and that we get to soar to heights side by side—often wearing outfits that we didn’t plan to be matching!

  So many dear friends assisted with this book, beginning with Susan Avallon, who provided a smart critique that improved our pages. Thanks to my sister-in-law Tammi Lee Pekkanen, who helped us come up with a breakthrough plot twist, and to early reader Jamie des Jardins.

  Retired Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Chief Tom Manger patiently explained police procedure to me over a delicious breakfast. We took a few liberties in this novel in the name of creative license, but you grounded several key scenes in fact. I owe you another breakfast—this time with the lovely Jacqueline, too!

  My gratitude to Russell and Lisa Pompa for their assistance, and to Amy and Chris Smith, Cathy Hines, Joe Dangerfield, and Rachel Baker for always being there. And to Glenn Reynolds, for being a terrific co-parent.

  Laura Hillenbrand, a special thank-you for your generosity and for always listening. P.S. Your books aren’t half-bad, either.

  My parents, John and Lynn Pekkanen, fill in the gaps during deadline weeks by picking up my kids from soccer practice and drum lessons and dropping off pizzas. They’re also among my earliest readers and biggest champions, as are Robert, Saadia, and Sophia Pekkanen—the West Coast Pekkanens—who are all stellar writers themselves. Ben and Tammi Pekkanen have given me so much support and laughter—as well as a perfect nephew, little Billy.

  Roger Aarons, thank you for making me laugh every day, for always planning new adventures for the two of us, and for reading every single draft of this book and catching errors with an eagle-like intensity. Most of all, thank you for making me so happy.