41

Two missed calls, a text, and an e-mail. Jane clicked her car door open, alone in the Register’s parking lot, turned on the key to get the heat started. I have to sleep. She would see who’d called, drive to her apartment, then answer, if she absolutely had to, when she got home. Then, sleep.

She clicked in her access code. If she didn’t got some rest, she’d never make it through the Gable interview. Lucky she had already done her research. Lucky she didn’t have to look good on camera for it.

Voice mail. “You have two new calls. To listen, press one.”

“Jane Elizabeth?”

Her father’s voice. Was something wrong?

There was a pause. Her dad hated leaving messages. Something must be wrong. Lissa? Her wedding? His health? “Your sister showed me the article in the Boston Register this morning. Online.”

Another pause.

“Nice job, honey,” her father said. He coughed, cleared his throat. “I wish your mother could have seen it.”

There was a beat of silence, then a click. Her father never said good-bye on the phone. Why did she always feel tears, hearing his voice? She was tired. Just tired. She pushed 1 for the other message.

This caller’s voice was so shrill, so tense, she almost didn’t recognize it.

“We have to talk, Jane,” Moira’s recorded voice said. “Owen just got home. Now he says—well, first he told me he was in Springfield, but now he’s saying he spent the night in Worcester. Worcester! That’s more than forty-five minutes from here. Why not simply come home? Why not? I’ll tell you why. He actually had that girl in the car. In his car. I saw her, she got out, preened herself in front of me, all that hair and … ah. That incredible b—”

Jane could hear Moira stop for breath, imagined her trying to calm herself. Did she hear the clink of ice?

“We need to talk, Jane. Did you see this person in Springfield? Why did Owen go to Worcester? It’s terrible, Jane, it’s terrible. You’re an outsider, reliable, the only one I can trust. You know someone is going to notice. And when they do, it’ll be too late. Call me, please.”

Jane stared at the phone. Hit the Save button. And stared again. So much for Jane’s feigned ignorance. Sounded like Moira, too, had seen the other woman.

She turned off the ignition. She had to go back upstairs and tell Alex.

She turned on the ignition. She had to get home. She could call Alex later and they could figure out what to do. If Moira was drunk, or delusional, or scheming, or sincere, or whatever all the other possibilities were. Nothing more was going to happen today. Nothing she could do anything about, anyway.

Who’d texted? She clicked a few buttons. Amy. “Another Sat nite by URself? How ’bout Hot Alex? CL me.” If Amy only knew. And she hadn’t even told her about Alex’s on-again, off-again wedding ring. If she did, Amy’d be on the hunt for bridesmaids’ dresses.

Jane yawned, her whole face stretched with the desire for sleep, her eyes closing. She covered her face with her palms, then batted her cheeks to wake herself up.

Next, the e-mail. From Jake.

Shoot. She clicked it open. Stared at it. Two words: Kenna Wilkes.

*   *   *

It was cold, and beautiful, and it felt like she was flying. Holly stretched to her longest stride, the music filling her head, a blast of salt air filling her lungs and making her so powerful. She was running and running, not away from anything, not anymore, but toward her perfect future. The post office had been open on Sunday, perfect, package number two now on the way.

Odd that Jane hadn’t mentioned the first package. Maybe the mail had messed up. Maybe it hadn’t arrived? She knew the address was correct, she’d chosen Jane carefully and copied her address at Channel 11 from the Web before she’d moved to Boston. She’d even written the mailing labels in advance.

Holly took a deep breath, trying not to fret. She’d only mailed it—when? Like, the other day. Maybe Jane hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe Jane was ignoring it? Testing her? Or maybe she didn’t recognize her from the photos. At the rally, Holly’d been so excited to see Jane! And thought she’d come on purpose, hoping Holly would be there. Funny, she didn’t have a cameraman with her. TV reporters usually did.

Holly let it go, the wind whistling past her woolen cap, and she made the turn back to the post office. The muscles in her legs and her lungs had that nice burning sensation, so she knew she’d pushed to the limit. And a little beyond.

Her car was there, right where she’d left it. The lot had been pretty empty when she parked, only a couple of cars. There were more now, now that it was—she looked at her black digital watch—a little after noon. A guy stood by the railing, a folded newspaper sticking out of his back pocket. She watched him toss bread crumbs or whatever into the water, swooping seagulls snapping them up.

Holly kept running, slowing down, following along her iPod selections in cool-down mode. She’d programmed them specially for her run, starting off slowly, then getting faster and faster, then perfect running music, the Cars, Gaga, Katy Perry, Flo Rida; then the cool down. She was almost through her favorite Sting, so one song still to go before her timed run-list finished. And she had to be back at the car, perfectly, when the downloads ended.

She’d make it. She always did, even if she had to hurry up or slow down a little to make it precisely right.

She leaned both palms against the hood of her car, her hands feeling the chill of the metal through her knitted gloves, and let out a long cleansing breath exactly as the cool-down music ended. The stretching music started. Alanis. She carefully lifted one leg behind her, then the other. She looked up. The guy was watching her.

She squinted in the October sunshine. Ignored the music’s orders to continue stretching. Was the glare on the water playing tricks with her vision? Did she want it so much that it seemed to appear? She stopped, midstretch, staring. Blinked, twice, but the same man was still there. And she knew who it was. She knew.

No. Not possible.

The man was walking toward her. Could it be?

She pinched her own arm, hard. “Ow!” she cried. Like one of the seagulls skirling across the sky. But she felt it. She didn’t wake up. It wasn’t a dream. It was real.

The man came closer. Closer. Closer.

She heard him say, “Hollister?”