4:11 PM
Shutter Island, New Scotland Avenue, Albany
Briony was on top of the world, with Erik’s photos in her hand.
Her sisters and their father had left close to an hour before, driving back to Obergrande. She had taken the opportunity to return to Shutter Island, as she had promised Erik, to pick up his prints.
She had just stepped off the last of the brick stairs onto the sidewalk in front of Shutter Island when a slew of cars of every make and model began converging on New Scotland Avenue, stopping abruptly, their tires screaming, as their drivers and passengers disgorged onto the street.
Waving television cameras and notepads, reporters from every possible news agency appeared from their vehicles, running across the street toward the sidewalk on which she was standing.
“Briony! Briony—over here! Look here—”
“Briony, smile! Someone take off her glasses—”
“Briony! Briony!”
Briony froze as camera flashes went off all around her like shrapnel in a war zone.
A wave of humanity, many with cameras sporting professional lenses, other waving cell phones, swarmed toward her, chanting her name in chaos.
Briony! Briony! Briony! Briony! Briony! Briony! Briony! Briony!
She glanced around wildly, fighting the panic that was rising to her throat.
“Briony! Look here, Briony!”
“Where have you been?”
“Why haven’t you been at Fashion Weeks? Are you having contract disputes?”
“Briony! Here!”
“Is it true you got married? Was it to Desmond Votra?”
“Briony—look over here! Briony! Briony!”
Fighting nausea and lightheadedness, she backed up to the stairs of Shutter Island, keeping her face to the coming flood of photographers and reporters. Behind the reporters, regular people on the streets, many of whom appeared to be students, were looking around, grabbing their own phones and joining the storm.
Briony looked desperately around and caught sight of Ed exiting the SUV across the street, the cancer patients staring out the car windows, log-jammed by the abandoned vehicles of the photographers, separated from her by the growing crowd. The look of fear on her driver’s face tore at her heart, and made her own fright explode.
Further down the street, she saw Erik making his way through the crowd, violently pushing the reporters aside, struggling to get to her.
Shaking, she backed up the stairs and pulled the door open.
The swell of photographers stormed the staircase, chasing her into the store.
She dragged the door shut behind her and twisted the bolt lock, then turned to face the startled employees behind the counter.
“Help me,” she gasped. “Back door?”
A man and a woman she had spoken pleasantly with that afternoon stared dumbly at her, but another woman who had waited on her earlier in the day snapped to attention and waved her to the back of the store.
Just before Briony turned around to follow her, she saw the crowd surge up the stairs to the door, a number of them pulling and banging on it, while the remainder, after a moment’s hesitation, parted down the middle like the Red Sea and rushed back down the stairs, heading out behind the building on either side of the staircase toward the back parking lot.
She ran as fast as she could, dodging the displays and the counter, and followed the woman through the back of the shop where the merchandise and the framing counter stood, toward a solid door in the back wall.
The woman opened the door to the sound of hooting and catcalling, mixed with the occasional shout of her name, coming around the building on both sides.
“Thanks,” Briony gasped as she hurried down the concrete steps to the back parking lot.
Just as her feet touched the hard ground, a long, dark car screeched into the parking lot from the street behind the building.
Two men, clearly security guards, in the standard dark pants, white shirts, jackets and sunglasses with holsters on their hips exited the car smoothly and began hurrying toward her. A third guard opened the back door but remained at the car, a second line of defense.
“Miss Briony!” the closer of the two running guards shouted. “Miss Briony, come!”
Recognizing the intervention of professional security, Briony dashed toward the car.
She could hear the crowd coming around the back edge of the building now, swelling into the store parking lot, the distant sounds of clicking shutters blending with the irregular shouts of her name.
Breathing a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens and Hanoway Ltd., she ran to the first guard; he interposed himself between her and the following crowd, now equal parts reporters and interested onlookers. He passed her to the second guard, and that man pulled her toward the car, conveying her to the third guard holding the door open, while the second guard jumped behind the wheel.
Briony! Briony! Briony—here! Briony, look here!
She looked over her shoulder as she was pushed gently, professionally into the back seat of the car.
The portfolio of Erik’s photos fell to the broken blacktop of the parking lot, where they were scattered and stepped on by the guards on the right side of the car.
At the edge of the crowd she saw Erik, fighting his way through the photographers who had now stopped and were taking rapid-fire photos of her rescue. His face was lined with worry, and he broke away from the mass of pursuers and made it almost halfway across the back parking lot before the first guard opened the front passenger side door, the third crawling into the back seat beside her.
“Briony!” he shouted, his agonized voice harsh over the sound of the cameras clicking. “Briony—oh God—”
Her mouth dropped open as the driver slammed her door shut.
Their eyes met, as his voice stung her throbbing ears.
Briony! Briony—oh God.
Time seemed to slow as the driver dragged down on the gear shift.
Briony, she thought. He—he called me Briony.
He knows. He—knows.
He’s known all along.
Her stomach cramped tight as her head swooned.
Just as the car lurched forward, she saw the expression on his face change as well, from panic to realization.
To horror.
He ran forward, leaving the crowd of photographers and fans behind, as the black vehicle pulled out of the back parking lot and onto the street, the tires wailing, leaving patches of rubber on the asphalt.
And stumbled to a stop as it drove away into the back streets of Albany.
As soon as the car escaped the back parking lot, the crowd structure crumbled.
The students and onlookers broke into small groups or singly walked away, most of them thumbing through or sharing the photos they had caught on their cell phones and tablets, chatting excitedly.
The professional reporters, deciding that pursuit was a waste of time, began tending to their cameras or jotting in their notebooks. The chanting and shouts, ardent, enthusiastic and rabid, dwindled down to a rumble of excited conversation and the dull hum of the aftermath of partially successful chase.
Only Erik stood, silently and in shock, staring at the path the car had taken as it swept the woman he loved out of the tumult, with any luck, to safety.
He brought his hands to his face and pressed them harshly against his eyes and cheeks, on either side of his nose, trying to keep from being swallowed by despair. He walked over to where the car had been, a portfolio of familiar photographs lying on the asphalt, the top few smudged with footprints. Erik picked them up numbly.
He could hear his voice echo with the sound of her name.
Briony! Briony—oh God.
Erik fought back the urge to vomit, then turned and ran back to New Scotland Avenue, where the logjam of cars was beginning to disburse. The police had arrived, and were directing traffic to move off of the main street, away from the Medical Center.
Ed Hillenbrandt was standing on the far side of the street, the Carpool Kids still inside the SUV, talking alternately on the phone and to a police officer standing beside him.
Erik ran over to him.
“Her security picked her up,” he said as he came to a halt beside her driver. “They got her out of there.”
Her driver glanced at the police officer, then back at Erik.
“You know? You know who she is?”
Erik nodded. He watched as Ed’s expression changed quickly from surprise to anger to worry before his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I’m on the phone with Hanoway Ltd.,” her driver said nervously. “Trying to reach Mr. Hanoway personally; her assistant, Claire, doesn’t know anything about this.”
In the backseat of the car behind the driver, Briony let her head fall back against the headrest.
For a long time she stayed like that, looking up at the roof of the immaculate car. The men who had rescued her did not speak, but focused on the driving or consulted their cell phones. The one sitting to her right was engaged in a complicated series of texts.
Finally, when the silence became uncomfortably heavy, she cleared the grit and dust from her throat with a series of soft coughs, then sat back up again.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “As always, I owe Hanoway Ltd. a debt of gratitude. I have the best management in the world.”
The security guards exchanged a glance, then went back to their tasks, driving and texting. The two guards on their phones smiled as they did.
A chill went through Briony’s body.
“What—what’s so funny?” she asked nervously.
The guard sitting next to her looked up from his phone and turned to her again.
“We don’t work for Hanoway Ltd., Miss Briony,” he said.
Then he went back to texting.
After the immediate shock of the words had abated, Briony began to tremble.
Where are we going? she thought desperately. My God, what is happening to me?
She had peppered them with questions, demanding to know who they were working for, where they were taking her, had even made a half-hearted attempt to escape when the car slowed down for a traffic light, only to find the door locked. Her mind went numb as she thought of her father, her sisters, and Ed, who she knew would be blaming himself, even though there was nothing he could have done.
The thought of Erik knocked on the door of her terrified mind, but she slammed it shut.
Whatever she asked, demanded, or begged to know, all three men remained silent.
Finally, after a surprisingly short time, the black car pulled into a parking garage and drove to the very back of it, stopping at a pair of steel doors that resembled a giant elevator. The driver must have operated a signal from inside the car, because the doors opened with a clanging sound, and the car pulled into the room beyond them.
Which moved slowly up as the door closed behind the car.
Hard as she tried to be brave, Briony was shaking like a leaf as the elevator came to a halt, and the three guards simultaneously opened their doors and stepped out.
The driver came back to her door and opened it, standing politely aside as she stepped out of the car, then signaled to her to follow him.
Briony hesitated, looking around at the pale walls and steel of the building, otherwise not decorated in any way, then sighed and walked behind the driver.
The two other guards fell into a line, side by side, behind her.
A long hall that led to another steel door stretched out before them.
The security guards led her down the hall to the door. One stepped aside while the other knocked on it, opened it, and stepped politely out of the way.
Briony looked down the hall behind her, then walked uncertainly through the door.
She turned to the left, where a large desk stood in front of a draped window, and stared at the man sitting behind it.
Her face went utterly white.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You?”