Oh, Jesus, no . . . ,” Patrick exhaled grimly from the back.
I spun around.
“Hilary, turn around, quick,” he instructed me. “I need to get back to my car.”
We were still pulled over on the side of the expressway near the housing projects, Brandon buried in my arms. The worry in Patrick’s voice was clear.
“What’s happened?”
“I just got a couple of texts from two of my neighbors. There’s been a fire at Mrs. O’Byrne’s house. They think she’s still trapped inside.”
“Oh, Patrick, no. My God!”
“I have to get back there,” he said. “Hilary, listen, drop Elena off back at her house, but I don’t want you going back to yours. Is there somewhere you can go? A friend’s? A hotel? Anywhere?”
“It’s two thirty in the morning, Patrick.”
“Just until I’m back. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I can. Tomorrow we’ll go to the police with what we have on Landry.”
“Please, Mrs. Cantor . . . ,” Elena injected in her broken English. “You can stay with me. At my house.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said, tenderly grasping her arm. Brandon was stirring. “Here, baby.” I buckled him in the seat next to me. “Stay over here.”
“Just promise me you’ll do that.” Patrick’s gaze was resolute. “I don’t want you going anywhere near your house.”
“Okay, I won’t.” I nodded. “I promise.”
It took no more than three minutes to get back to Patrick’s truck near the RFK Bridge. We passed the spot beneath the expressway where we’d just been with Mirho. The Russians’ vehicles were gone. So was Charlie’s. There was no sign of him. No doubt Patrick was right. He probably had a bullet in his head by now.
We didn’t stop for a single light as we made our way back to the truck. When we got there, Patrick jumped out. He smiled, happily, at me; Mirho was dead, I had my son. Everything had worked out. But it was a worried smile at the same time, as he looked at me with Brandon. “There’s something I want to say . . .”
“Okay . . .”
“Not now. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“Patrick, I hope she’s all right.”
“I know. Thanks. You know I hoped we could just bury all this—that’s why I called in Yuri. Handle it privately.” He smiled. “Now I know that can’t happen.”
“I understand,” I said. His hand was wrapped around my lowered window and I placed mine over his. There was almost sorrow in his eyes.
“You know what that means, don’t you, if we go after Landry?”
It meant an investigation. It meant coming clean on all I’d done. And all that came with it.
Patrick too.
I nodded.
“I love my son. But I’m with you, Patrick. I’m ready for whatever it is.”
He smiled wistfully and wrapped his fingers around my hand. “I have to go.” There was something in his eyes. Something both unsettled yet pleased at the same time. Looking at me with my hand over Brandon’s face, my son leaning into me. As if it was almost like the one certain thing in the face of everything uncertain that was about to happen. Almost freeing.
His life was about to come crashing down too.
He had squeezed my arm and taken a step away when he suddenly came back and put his hands on my cheeks and leaned in and gave me a kiss. A brief one, but one that was full of life and alive with what lay ahead. Warm with possibilities.
“Mom of the Year.” He pointed as he went back to his truck. “You’ve got my vote locked.”
“Thank you for what you did,” I said. “For everything.”
“Remember . . . ,” he said.
“I got it, Patrick. I won’t go back home. I’ll let you know where I am when I figure it out.”
He jumped in his truck. He started it up and pulled out into the street ahead of me. I followed him for a couple of blocks, amid the all-night gas stations and shuttered-up auto shops, until it was time for me to turn and head north, and for him to go onto the RFK Bridge, then the BQE, which led across the Verrazano. I kept an eye on his truck in my mirror until it turned out of sight. Then Brandon murmured in the seat next to me, “Where are we going, Mommy?”
I didn’t know where we were going. Until someone entered my mind. Somone I knew I could call. I took my phone out. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to be there with him, my beautiful little angel. “We’re almost there, Brandon. Just one more day and then we can go home.”
I prayed.