Eighteen

The car, the maze of streets, the hotel.

Lola must have negotiated them all, because she was back in her room, desk dragged away from the wall and shoved against the door as though someone might have followed her from the park, intent upon doing unto her what he’d done to the cop.

Her phone lay where she’d flung it, blinking accusation from atop the bed, the screen showing 911. She’d gotten as far as punching in the numbers. But there’d been no fourth tap. Her finger had hovered repeatedly over the green “call” icon—nearly giving in to the impulse to tap it as she ran through the park toward the street, again in the safety of the locked car, even while driving far too fast through the city. At which point, she knew it was already too late. Someone else would have discovered the wounded officer, would either have called 911 himself or prevailed upon another of the park denizens to do so.

That person, the one who’d done the right thing, would have to describe how he’d found the cop. Would be grilled to within an inch of his life about every detail surrounding the discovery. The time. What he’d been doing there. Whether he’d seen anyone else.

A woman, maybe. Someone obviously not a park regular. Running away.

She raised a clenched hand as though to strike herself. Slowed the motion and bit down on her knuckles instead. She should have called 911 right away. Taken her chances. Because the only thing worse than being hit with the same questions now facing whomever had reported the cop’s assault was being asked the most important one: why didn’t you report this the second you saw it?

She paced the room from the foot of the bed to the door and back, three long strides each way, a new rationalization with every turn.

Because the cop was already dead, maybe, or almost there. I couldn’t help him.

Turn.

Because no matter what, I’d seem suspicious.

Turn.

Because I didn’t see anyone or notice anything that would help an investigation, anyway.

Turn.

Except Malachi.

A single slow step.

But he seemed as surprised as I.

Step.

Something else is going on.

Step.

Because …

And there it was, the thing the cops wouldn’t put together, not at this point anyway, and especially not without talking to her. And maybe not even then.

Two people attacked within the space of a week in a state notable for its low crime rate. Two throats slashed. No obvious connection between them.

But minutes before the cop’s death, and only yards away, someone had simulated—the more she thought about, the more certain she was of the fakery—a sexual assault on her. Had held a knife, or whatever sharp thing it was, to her own throat.

What if?

A question that, until smothered in the fog of grief following Charlie’s death, had lurked insistently at the forefront of her reporter’s brain, the propelling force of every story.

What if the attacks—lethal in Sariah’s case and maybe the cop’s, and potentially in her own—were somehow connected?

That humming in the room again, Charlie someplace close. Sense of a shadow. By now, she knew better. Still, she turned. Nothing.

She froze, holding her breath, trying to divine the message. Disapproval? Because just as she was above all a reporter, Charlie was a cop, blue brotherhood and all that. He’d come thundering back from the grave if she withheld information that could lead to a cop’s attacker.

Or, just maybe, he’d urge her on, knowing after all their years together that to stand in the way of her pursuit of a story was to be bulldozed without a backward glance. Especially one that might lead to an answer about who’d gone after that cop.

“I can’t go to the police. Not yet,” she argued aloud, as though Charlie stood before her barely containing the frustration he clearly felt, but rarely expressed, when she chased an improbable lead.

The police probably would label as unlikely her theory that the assaults were somehow related. She walked to the sink, pulled her sweater away from her neck, and examined her throat in the mirror. A scratch, nothing more. Saved by the turtleneck. Which wouldn’t have saved her at all had the vagrant not wandered past when he did.

She turned the hot-water tap on high, peeled the wrapper away from the oval of soap whose stamp proclaimed it hand-milled, whatever that was. Lathered her hands. Washed the blood away from her chin, evidence swirling down the drain. She raised her head and stared at the woman in the mirror, peering past her, searching the reflection of the room behind her for someone who wasn’t there.

“I have to do it this way,” she told Charlie. “I have to find out myself.”