Ten

Hollis was careful as she drove, watching out the rearview mirror, sure that no one followed her to Breyer Square, the small residential neighborhood just north of campus where a lot of the grad students lived.

But just in case, she parked around the corner.

“It’s going to be okay,” she muttered to herself as she walked down the street. It had to be okay.

When she got to the small frame bungalow on the corner, she rang the bell and waited. Angela opened her door, still in her pajamas, and she went pale at the sight of her professor.

“Are you okay, Dr. Larsson?”

“Are you okay?” Hollis asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I wasn’t supposed to go in the office today, was I? Oh my gosh. I’m sorry …”

“No. It’s fine. It’s just you never sent me your friend’s contact information. Do you have it?”

Angela opened the door to let Hollis in. The living room was small, furnished by Goodwill and Ikea. The only original pieces were a pair of paintings, both Van Gogh–esqe still lifes of flowers. The whole room was neat and very feminine. The amount of throw pillows alone would have sent Finn into eye-twitching mode.

They’d been married for nearly two years before she’d come home to garbage bags full of floral throw pillows that had once been on their bed. He told her he couldn’t do it anymore, live with all the pillows. At the time she was confused. She remembered thinking he loved those pillows. But now, she smiled at the memory. He was right. When they were first married he had gone along with all her choices. Annoying as it was at times, she liked him better this way, sometimes cranky and opinionated, but honest. And in retrospect, it was far too many pillows.

“I got a call from him,” Angela said.

“Tommy.” Hollis’s voice stuck in her throat. “What did he say?”

“He told me that someone dropped off a bag with cash in it, loads of cash. He said maybe ten thousand dollars. There was a note telling him to leave town. He thinks it has something to do with that envelope he brought for you.”

“When did you speak to him?”

“Last night.”

“When last night?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ten.”

That would have given the killer plenty of time to shoot Tommy and bring him to the house. It was after one when they went downstairs and found Peter.

“Are you sure it was ten?” Hollis asked. “Not later?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I was studying.”

That would mean Angela was home on the night before a long weekend night reading about trade agreements and their effects on diplomacy. Hollis hoped, for Angela’s sake, she was just trying to impress her professor with a lie.

“And that was the last time you heard from him?”

“Yeah. My roommates went to a party, so I had the place to myself for once.” She nodded toward the hallway where there were several closed doors leading, Hollis guessed, to bedrooms. On each of the bedroom doors was a corkboard with notes. The only one she could read said, Your turn to do dishes with five exclamation points.

“They’re home now if someone came … I mean, you’re not alone now?”

“Hungover and sleeping it off, but yeah.” Angela was looking a little nervous. “What’s going on?”

Hollis didn’t explain. She was trying her best to stay calm and think about what to say next. “What does Tommy look like?”

Angela shrugged. “Ordinary. Sort of cute.”

Not helpful.

Hollis tried again. “Yes, but black or white, short or tall, fat or thin, long brown hair or bald. Specifically, what?”

Angela walked to the coffee table, picked up a cell phone, and flipped through it for a few seconds. She turned the phone to face Hollis. “Like this.”

Hollis stared at the photo. A good-looking black student with short hair. Not a white kid with shoulder-length brown hair, like the young man in her house. “This is Tommy?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why?”

Hollis handed her back the phone. “I thought I saw someone outside the house last night. A young man, white with brown hair. I wondered if it was your friend.”

“That describes a lot of guys.”

It did. “What’s Tommy’s last name?”

“Silva,” Angela told her.

Yoga cleansing breath, Hollis. She tried it. It didn’t work. If Tommy Silva was alive, then who was the dead kid in her chair? He had an ID with Tommy’s name on it, but then again, she had passports with Janet and Tim McCabe’s names on them. Whoever they were.

She felt herself go pale. If Tommy Silva was a real person, were Tim and Janet real too? Up until that moment she’d assumed they were just made up. If there were real people named Tim and Janet McCabe, they might be dangerous. Or, she realized, they might have wound up with bullets in their heads, just as the fake Tommy had in his.

“Please tell me what’s going on, Dr. Larsson,” Angela asked. “You seem really stressed.”

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” Hollis mumbled. “This is the start of a long weekend. Maybe Tommy should do what the note suggested and go out of town. Maybe you should go together.”

“We’re not a couple.”

“But you want to be.”

Angela turned bright red. “Is Tommy in trouble?”

Hollis opened the door. “Call him and tell him to leave town today. You too.”

Hollis walked out of the house, leaving Angela standing alone and confused. She could hear Angela call after her, ever eager to do something to help, but Hollis turned back and said again, “Leave town. Now. Promise me.”

Angela nodded, but she didn’t move from the door.

“I must sound crazy,” Hollis muttered, but explaining herself to Angela was a problem for another day. Today was already chock-full.

She’d only delayed by twenty minutes or so. Not too bad. Now she would go to the grocery store and then home. And then, fingers crossed, she and Finn would be out of danger within the hour.

It had sounded like a great idea while they were sitting in their kitchen. Now she was sure there was a flaw that neither had anticipated. She just couldn’t figure out what it was.