“Could you believe it was Grady Houlihan in that video?” Jake said.
He and DeLuca were about to jaywalk across Beacon Street toward their cruiser, dodging the Kenmore Square pre-game traffic.
“You heard from him lately?” DeLuca frowned as a car of boisterous Red Sox fans made an illegal left turn. “Grady?”
“Had a message yesterday night.” Jake began to step off the curb, then decided against it. “He was updating on the Sholtos, says their drug sales will go into high gear once fall classes start. Molly and poppers, he says. Roofies. Knew about Avery Morgan, too.”
“Kills me,” D said. “When I was that age it was all weed. Quaaludes, if you were a stoner. Now that stuff’s for punks. Molly and poppers. Roofies. Shit.”
Jake knew Grady used the delivery job to infiltrate local campuses without being noticed—and a good idea it was—but the last person Jake had expected to see in the Avery Morgan video was his CI.
“Clooney Sholto, there’s an asshole. His son Liam, too,” Jake said. “Selling drugs to college kids. There’s a legacy. I told Grady, don’t say anything. Just listen.”
“And then inform us, right?” D said. “That’s why they call them ‘informants.’”
“Freaking witness protection budget.” Jake, wanting to remain alive, checked both ways for traffic. Remembered Grady’s apprehension the day before. “My fault, you know? If the kid gets hurt while we’re waiting for the DA’s office to get its act together? Why is it always about money?”
“It’s about business.” D said.
“Wonder what Avery Morgan’s business was. Talk about assholes. Tarrant, I mean. I’d like him for it, big-time, if he didn’t have an alibi. His colleague is dead. Maybe murdered. Hard to believe he tried to stall about naming the kids in the video.”
“‘I don’t recognize them all’?” D imitated Tarrant’s mannered accent. “Bull. Shom’s checking them out.”
“Think Tarrant’s lying about Grady? That he doesn’t know him?”
“Fifty-fifty.” D pointed to the sidewalk opposite. “Now.”
As they headed for the cruiser, Jake mentally reviewed the personnel records Tarrant had finally handed over. They revealed Avery Morgan moved to Boston from an L.A. suburb earlier in the year. No husband, no next of kin, but there was a social, a landlord reference, and a California address. Good leads. And that intriguing Untitled Studios connection. Had Avery Morgan been a whistle-blower? A rat? Had she moved from California to distance herself from the bad guys? Jake had called the US Attorney out there before he and D were even out of Colonial Hall.
“Hold on.” Jake stopped in the middle of Beacon Street. A guy in a speeding Volvo slammed the horn, had to swerve to avoid them. A middle finger extended from the driver’s-side window as the car careened though the yellow light.
“You’re gonna give me a heart attack,” D said. “Can you tell me whatever it is on the sidewalk? So we’ll survive to discuss it?”
“Yeah, D. We suck.” They stepped onto the curb together, then separated for their cruiser doors. Jake clicked the car open, and both slid inside, slamming their doors simultaneously. Jake cranked the AC. Then, with the twist of a knob, turned it off.
“Hey, gimme a break,” D said. “It’s a million degrees in here. Suck? We suck?”
“Yeah. So we’re getting out,” Jake said. “We’re going back to Tarrant. I’ve got one more question for him.”
WILLOW GALT
Never say another word?
She was never supposed to say another word? About who she truly was, or where she came from? How was that humanly possible? Willow had whiled the day away, browsing the Kenmore boutiques, pretending to be normal. Pretending to be carefree, having a lovely snack at Galatea. But as she sat at the raffia-topped sidewalk table, watching the fans elbow their way to the Red Sox game, she knew it was no good pretending. She and Tom were in real danger.
Avery’s killer had struck in error. It had to be true. The killer had been sent to track down Willow and Tom. Why didn’t Tom realize that?
She lifted her iced tea. The cubes rattled against the glass. Her hand was shaking.
She stopped, tea in midair. Should she get her scrapbook back? Anyone could find it, anyone! By simply moving a book, there it would be, so obviously out of place. And then they’d read it, and wonder—and then find her! She could not breathe. She could not.
Her heart pounded with the relief of the pending reunion with her darling scrapbook. Her life. Her history. She tucked a twenty-dollar bill under her dripping tea glass, then walked away, fast, faster, fast as she could, looking down at her feet, her new black shoes—-all her clothes were new—seeming unfamiliar against the also-alien Kenmore Square sidewalk. She felt someone close to her, and stopped short, almost banging into a man at the curb.
“Oh, sorry,” she apologized, frazzled, to him, a lawyer, maybe, in a blue summer blazer. He was frowning, seemed annoyed. She looked out over the traffic-clogged street, saw two guys a block away trying to jaywalk across.
“Only in Boston.” Willow smiled, gestured at the jaywalkers, tried to be polite. “In California, we obeyed—” and then she stopped talking.
Stopped talking because she wasn’t supposed to talk about California.
Stopped talking because she recognized the jaywalkers. And they were coming her way. Straight toward her. She saw their cruiser behind them, parked on the street. She knew the tall one’s angular walk. The cute one seemed to be pointing toward her.
“Are you okay?” the man said. “Are you lost? Where are you headed?”
“I’m fine.” Willow’s heart pounded so hard it threatened to choke her. Lost. He didn’t know the half of it. Everything was lost. “Have a nice day.” Or whatever you say.
“You, too,” the man said.
Willow didn’t have time for niceties. She took her eyes off the cops, just for a second, scanning, calculating escape routes. They’d been following her! Had they seen her go into the library this morning? Had they already been in there?
What if there were surveillance cameras inside? What if they had taped her every move? What if that librarian at the front desk had told them everything?
What if her book was gone? The world almost went black, but she reeled herself in, fighting for balance.
“Shut up,” she said out loud.
The cops had stopped, right in the middle of the street. They’d tried crossing against the light and were stranded on the island dividing the lanes. Cars, a billion of them, darted and swerved in all directions.
She felt the panic spiraling in her chest, felt her brain churning at light speed. Move. She had to move. There were so many people, and it’d be easy enough to melt away. The man in the blazer was nowhere in sight.
She ducked into the Java Jim’s, where the wave of cinnamon and cheap milk nearly knocked her over. A life-sized cardboard cutout of some uniformed baseball player, all huge muscles and toothy grin, almost made her shriek in fright. Did the place have a back door? Where were the detectives? Oh, no, no, she’d gone into a coffee shop, and cops …
The ladies’ room sign pointed her toward the back. But if she went in there, she’d have to come out. She couldn’t stay in the Java Jim bathroom forever. This was dumb, truly dumb. Bracketing her hands against her face, she peered out the front window. They were still on the traffic island. She had time.
The library was three doors to the right, she knew, next door to the Adams Bay administration building. She’d … she’d … She untwisted her silk scarf, wrapped it over her hair—well, no, no one was wearing a scarf, it was August. And what if the police had seen the scarf?
She dropped it on the coffee shop floor. Maybe if they came here, asking questions, they’d see it, and decide she was somewhere inside.
But she wouldn’t be. She slammed out the front door, keeping half an eye on the cops, who seemed to be talking to each other while the traffic went by, and ran, lungs bursting, toward the library.
Hand on the door. Pull the door open. Pull again. Again. What? “Closed,” the sign said. Closed. Summer hours.
Was she screaming? She wasn’t, she wouldn’t, but the library was closed? Could that even be? Or was it a ruse? A closed library? A closed college library? At 5:25? No. No. They were clearly clearly waiting for her, waiting for her to come back, and they’d closed the place so that when she arrived, no other people would be around to interfere. It made blazing sense. They’d investigated her, they knew who she was, and Tom. It was her fault, all her fault, for calling the police in the first place.
She pulled out her secret phone. She always carried one with her, in case. Cops still on the street. Arguing, now, it looked like. Good. Gave her some room.
She couldn’t dial and run at the same time, so she tucked herself into a narrow alley, an arm’s-width strip of open space between the dry cleaners and the liquor store. She dialed Olive’s number, Olive, three thousand miles and three time zones away. Go through, she prayed, go through. She had to talk to someone, had to. Witness protection was to hide you from the bad guys, not from your friends.
The phone rang, a second time. Willow, leaning against the bumpy concrete wall, pictured dear Olive Brennis, the agent who’d helped them create their new identities. Olive was her lifeline. Her security.
A voice cut through her haze. “Yes?”
“It’s Willow,” she whispered. “Daniella.” She thought about Tom, and their new home, and their promises. I am Tom and you are Willow, and so it always shall be, he’d said. She was so sorry. She could not do it. She could not stay here. She was too afraid.
“Yes?”
No turning back now. “Get me out.”