“Son of a bitch.”
Julia sits down hard on the side of the bed. She grips the phone and stares at the woman’s barely clothed backside frozen on the small screen and makes herself keep searching. Six more messages between the woman and David follow, including his praise over similar photos of the woman’s perfect body posed from front to back. In every image, the woman has carefully hidden her face from the camera, just like a lawyer, Julia thinks. But not any lawyer. Brooke Stevenson, who obviously joined David on the trip to recruit Sammy Biggs, Julia realizes.
The fuzzy yet still safe line between nagging paranoia and actually knowing about her husband’s infidelity now crossed, Julia throws David’s phone across the room and begins to weep. The life that she thought she and David could have again, the one she believed as a child she could never attain, slips through her fingers like loose sand. She curses herself for not listening to her internal misgivings about the reconciliation, and for moving back to Rochester to be closer to him, putting their boys at their most vulnerable by believing their parents’ reconciliation would be imminent. She suppresses a scream at the realization she ignored the fast and hard rule that cheaters, whether separated from their spouses or not, don’t ever redeem themselves.
A dark and vindictive fantasy spools tightly around Julia as she pictures herself tearing to David’s bedside where she would raise holy hell and announce to the world that Mr. Ivy League lawyer is nothing more than an adulterous pig, and force him in his weakened state to answer for what he put his family through. Julia holds her face in her hands and knows the fantasy has to stop there. No retribution, at least not now. She stares at her suitcases and realizes that sometimes being the bigger person is all you’ve got left.
David’s warning that Nick Rossi will kill her sons if he isn’t apprehended momentarily pushes out her fresh wounds of betrayal. Julia breathes out hard, resolute in her decision to hunt down Rossi, and closes the bag with one fast zip.
“That’s the last time, David. No more chances,” Julia says.
Logan pops his head inside his mother’s room. “Uncle Ray is here.”
“Can you please tell him I’ll be a minute?” Julia answers. She takes a quick look at herself in the mirror and brushes away a stray tear so Logan won’t see.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Logan says.
“I won’t be long. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
“Why are the police going to be watching our house while you’re gone?”
“Just a precaution. An officer will be keeping an eye on all of you for a little while, even after I get back.”
“Kind of like a bodyguard? Is someone trying to hurt us?”
“Of course not. The police are just here to make sure everyone is safe.”
“What about Dad? Don’t you need to stay in case something happens?”
“I promise you, I wouldn’t leave if I felt for an instant that your dad was going to get worse. Dr. Whitcomb assured me your father is getting better. Helen is going to take you and Will back to the hospital when you get home from school tomorrow. I’ll have my cell phone on the entire time, and you can call me whenever you like.”
“Julia, we’ve got to go to make it to the airport on time,” Navarro calls from the hallway.
“Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll be fine,” Logan rallies. “The police officer will be following us wherever we go. Uncle Ray promised.”
Julia makes her final choice, no time to deliberate anymore.
She trails Logan to the living room, where Will sits on top of Navarro’s back as her friend pretends to be a wild, bucking horse on all fours.
“You’re going to hurt the boy,” Helen says.
“I’ve got a firm hold of his legs,” Navarro answers.
“Again!” Will cries out to Navarro, who abruptly stops the game and pulls Will off his back as he picks up a shift in Julia.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind. Logan, can you help Uncle Ray load up the car?”
When the boys are out of earshot, Helen, who stirs a pot of potato and leek soup on the stove with angry strokes, unloads.
“You go to California and get that son of a bitch who hurt your husband,” Helen says. “I don’t understand why we have the police here, though.”
“David has something on Nick Rossi. I don’t know what it is, but David said Rossi would come after the kids and me if I didn’t find him. David’s doctor thought David was just confused when he told me, but I think David meant it. You need to be extremely careful while I’m gone. That means no going anywhere without telling the officer out front. He’ll be tailing you and the kids wherever you go. Are you sure you’re okay with my leaving? It’s not too late for me to cancel the trip.”
“Of course. I won’t let anything happen to the children. You have my word.”
Navarro returns through the front door with the boys and a young, barrel-chested police officer who looks like he spends all his waking hours in the gym when he’s not on duty.
“Helen, this is Officer John Rodriguez,” Navarro says. “He’ll be on the first shift. If you have to leave the house for any reason with the boys, he’ll be right behind you.”
“Officer Rodriguez, you call me immediately if anything happens,” Julia says. “And I mean anything.”
CHAPTER 17
Julia tries to get comfortable on the second leg of the flight from Chicago to LAX and stares out the window as the plane taxis down the runway for takeoff, Julia’s most anxious part of the flight. The wheels go up and the engine roars to life in the background, and Julia clutches the sides of her seat as hard as she can. She keeps her eyes closed and tries to ward off images of the plane doing cartwheels across the sky before it takes a suicide nosedive and explodes into a giant fireball on impact with the ground. Her visions of imminent death are suddenly replaced by David’s warning and the provocative photographs she found on his phone.
“Gooden, you’re okay,” Navarro says, trying to downplay his amusement over her obvious phobia. “I forgot you aren’t a flyer. Are you all right?”
“I’ve got some personal issues going on right now.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she answers, and stares vacantly at the quickly disappearing Chicago skyline below. “Did Russell meet with David yet?”
“Russell tried to interview David this morning, but he was still pretty out of it. He’ll swing by the hospital again this afternoon.”
“I’ve been thinking about what David said. If Rossi didn’t plant the bomb to take out Sammy Biggs, then who was the intended target?” Julia asks.
“My guess would be David,” Navarro answers.
“David uncovered something that got him in trouble, something that Rossi had to stifle at all costs, including killing my family.”
“I have twenty-four-hour surveillance on your sons and Helen. Nothing will happen to them while we’re gone.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I thought otherwise. We need to find the money and the video recording David told me about.”
The pilot turns off the FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT sign and Navarro gets up, a big man at six-foot-three and 220 pounds, freeing himself from his relatively small seat, and stretches his muscular frame to get the kinks out from the confines of his seat. A stewardess pushes a drink cart in their direction and gives Navarro an extra-special smile.
“Anything to drink?” she asks, sounding about as friendly as a stewardess can get without openly soliciting a passenger.
“I’ll take a Heineken and so will my girlfriend,” Navarro answers.
The female flight attendant realizes she has no chance and hands the two cans of beer over without another play. Navarro hands her fifteen dollars and tells her to keep the change.
“Girlfriend?” Julia asks.
“Just trying to call off the dogs, so to speak,” Navarro answers. “And considering the fact you almost hyperventilated durin
g the past two takeoffs and the last landing, I think if anyone ever needed an alcoholic beverage right now, that person would be you.”
“You started drinking again? I thought you quit for good,” Julia says, recalling the times when she had been roused from her sleep by the sound of Navarro vomiting outside the apartment they once shared after another late night of his binge drinking. Navarro had hit the bottle hard after Julia rejected his marriage proposal more than a decade earlier. Julia ultimately left the relationship as painful childhood memories of her mother, a raging alcoholic, cemented her decision. Navarro sobered up in an attempt to win Julia back, but by then Julia had moved on with David.
“Just a beer or two once in a while. I’m not falling back to the sins of my youth, Mom. I promise.”
Julia takes a long sip of the beer and feels the warmth of the alcohol spread nicely through her body.
“Something else is bothering you. Something more than the bombing and David being in the hospital. Like that wasn’t enough, but I can tell,” Navarro says.
“It’s nothing.”
“None of this was your fault,” Navarro says. “I know you. You find a way to blame yourself for everything, like a black cloud is always hanging over you, and you deserve every bad thing that comes your way. But you don’t. You can’t blame yourself for what happened to David like you did with your brother. You couldn’t have saved David in the courthouse. And you were only seven when your brother disappeared. Can I ask you something I’ve always wondered about?”
“If it’s about David, no.”
“Well, not exactly. You told me once that you kept your maiden name, Gooden, to be consistent with your byline and professional career instead of taking David’s last name of Tanner when you two got married. I always thought, though, that the real reason you kept going by Gooden was in case Ben was still out there looking for you.”
“You’re the only person who’s ever put that together. You know me very well. And by the way, I’m not the only one who blames themselves for things that happened in the past,” Julia says.
Julia doesn’t take it any further. She knows Navarro’s memory of seeing his mother choked to death by his abusive father when he was just eleven still weighs him down like a thorny, lifelong anchor and is ultimately the reason why he became a cop.
“Who’s your police friend in L.A.?” Julia asks.
“Felix Espinosa. I trust him. He reached out to me when Rossi began to set up shop on the West Coast.”
The pilot’s voice announces that they are about to go through a patch of turbulence, and the FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT sign chimes a reminder.
Julia slams back the rest of her beer for courage and closes her eyes, seeing the words David wrote in the hospital room flash as if they were backlit by exploding camera bulbs before her eyes: Box twenty-two. Three. Two. One. Thirty. Infinity. Julia then sees a crystal-clear image of David, fully coherent and dressed in his blue business suit but trapped inside his own broken body as he desperately tries to tell her something. She starts to drift off to sleep, the effects of the alcohol and her lack of rest over the last forty-eight hours finally kicking in, and sees a vision of herself as she slips into the subconscious. In her dream, Julia turns her back on David, still in the blue suit, but this time he’s covered in the sticky cocoon of a spider web. Julia runs quickly away from him and to the safety of her brother’s voice.
* * *
“This way, Julia!”
The hot summer sun beats down on Julia as she chases Ben, running along the town of Sparrow’s boardwalk. She can hear the sound of the carousel music from the seaside amusement park up ahead. Julia reaches out to try to touch Ben, but her hand slips through him as if he is nothing but fog and dim yellow light. Julia feels the familiar and profound sense of wanting and loss move through her again as she realizes that what she sees is nothing more than a black-and-white shadow, like a quickly moving image from an old movie projected on a screen.
“Ben, wait!” Julia calls, and tries to run faster. She feels the thump of her heart keep rhythm with her bare feet, which slap against the boardwalk’s weathered wood, long distressed from the elements and wear.
Ben, now bathed only in pale silhouette, turns around to face his little sister as the boardwalk disappears. Julia stops running and keeps her eyes focused on her big brother, who now stands far away from her on the edge of a vast, barren field.
“Here’s the thing, Julia. You’re not looking at the situation clearly, kid,” Ben says. “Look at each piece of the puzzle without emotion. Then you’ll be able to find your answer. But be smart, little sister. No one is who they seem to be.”
A hum of a thousand wings beating as one thumps above Julia’s head. She looks up to see a single ebony spot tucked up in the sky’s highest peak. The tiny speck quickly descends and grows to a mobile black mass that gets bigger as it approaches.
“I know what you are now,” Julia cries.
She feels an odd sense of relief as she watches a massive storm of blackbirds swoop down and circle Ben in a protective cylinder until the sheer force of their wings lifts him up and carries him away.
“Wait, Ben!” Julia calls out for her brother.
But it’s too late. He’s already gone.
* * *
“Julia, you all right?” Navarro asks.
Julia sits up quickly in her seat and feels a light film of sweat lace across her chest and the back of her neck. She takes a deep breath as the airplane’s wheels land on the dark runway of LAX.
“I’m fine. Just a strange dream.”
CHAPTER 18
Nick Rossi uses the sharp blade from his folding knife to clean his fingernails while he sits with his feet propped up on a wicker table outside his Santa Barbara mountain hideaway. The warm spring breeze makes him feel lighter and like a human being again after his recent lockup in his hometown of Detroit, and he spits on the ground in disgust over the memory.
Enzo Costas, a short, squat man, walks out to the patio armed with two Coronas.
“You bringing me good news this time?” Rossi asks.
Costas sucks the lime between his teeth before he takes a drink and shoves the spent slice of fruit deep into the bottle’s neck.
“Some good, some bad. Bartello was killed just the way you wanted.”
“I should have killed his family, too.”
“That can still be arranged. My source at the Detroit police station tells me the sniper Bartello hired was brought in for questioning, and he confessed to everything.”
Rossi digs the blade of the folding knife deeper into the edge of his thumbnail until it draws blood. “Get Tarburton on the phone for me. I need to be sure he did his job and I won’t be retried on the drug, gambling, and bribery charges. This sniper is a whole other issue. Is the dumb-ass incarcerated?”
“Yes, at Wayne County Jail.”
“Then make sure he’s killed. By tomorrow. Do we still have people inside there?”
Costas’s smile is proud and lethal. “Of course. I’ll make a call. I’ve promoted Duncan Broudette to take over Bartello’s position. He’s done a pretty good job for us in Flint.”
“Stupid-ass will probably think a move from Flint to Detroit is like getting transferred to Hawaii. Last couple of years, Detroit’s been nothing but bad luck to me. I used to love that city. I thought it was just like me, you know. An underdog. When I was a kid, I’d sit out on the roof of my uncle’s house at night after everyone went to sleep and I’d look out at Detroit for hours. I swear, I thought I could see my name written in lights across the skyline. I told myself back then, one day I’d own that city. But I don’t want it anymore. Detroit’s a good place for Isabella, though, don’t you think? She screwed up her job with the lawyer and that almost cost me everything.”
“And her punishment was deserved,” Costas answers as his tongue darts to either side of his mouth. He pulls a gold necklace out from under his shirt. A medallion of the Virgin Mary hangs in the center o
f the chain, and Costas brings it to his lips and gives it a respectful and reverent kiss.
“She messes up again, I’ll kill her myself. And what about the lawyer?” Rossi asks.
“Soon, boss. I promise. The police at the hospital will thin out in a few days and we’ll be able to get to him without any trace coming back to you.”
“Soon isn’t good enough.”
“You have my word he’ll be taken care of. There’s one more piece of news. My source in the Detroit PD tells me an officer, Ray Navarro, is flying into LAX this afternoon to meet a local cop. I hear Navarro is coming to California to look for you.”
“Get some guys down to the airport and have them follow the Detroit cop. I know that guy. He was part of that sting that busted me, and he’s obviously still gunning for me now.”
“You want me to have him killed?” Costas asks.
“No. Not yet anyway. I don’t need any more trouble following me from Detroit, especially with this bomb investigation still going on, so tell them to kill the cop only if he gets too close.”
“You got it. One other thing. I checked the airlines. Navarro is being accompanied by another passenger.”
“Another cop?” Rossi asks.
“No, Julia Gooden, the lawyer’s wife.”
Nick Rossi tilts back his head and laughs.
“The prosecutor’s wife,” Rossi says. “Classic.”
CHAPTER 19
Julia and Navarro bypass the baggage claim area since they only brought carry-ons and search for their pickup, Felix Espinosa. Julia spots a young man, probably early twenties, wearing a pair of dark khaki pants and an olive green shirt, staring directly at her. She trained herself long ago not to make eye contact with a passerby in a strange place, but his gaze feels uncomfortable and almost intimidating, and Julia reciprocates with a straight-on stare right back at the man, who looks away and busies himself with a call on his cell phone.
“That guy was looking at me,” Julia tells Navarro.
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