Lunchtime, and Ryan still hasn’t heard a thing from Phoenix. He’s gone through the motions of his workday, because really, what else is there to do?
Call the police?
Go home?
Put his head down on his desk and cry?
Without Phoenix, this job is all he has. He can’t afford to risk it.
Shoving his cell phone into the pocket of his overcoat, he leaves his cubicle. Maybe he can at least just step outside to get some air and clear his head.
“Going out to lunch?” asks Barbara, the elderly receptionist, sitting there as always with her stack of tabloids and her bowl of candy—usually butterscotch, but this week, it’s miniature candy canes.
Before Ryan can reply, his cell phone starts to ring in his pocket, nearly making him jump out of his skin. He fumbles for the phone, bumping the bowl. It topples over, scattering cellophane-wrapped candy canes all over the floor.
Ignoring it for the moment—along with Barbara’s dismayed reaction—Ryan hurriedly pulls out his phone, sees the number, answers immediately.
“Hi, Ryan.”
“Hi.” Ignoring Barbara and the litter of candy, he walks swiftly back toward his cubicle with the phone pressed against his ear.
“How are you?” Phoenix asks.
The fear and worry evaporate. Steeped in indignation and disgust, he echoes, “How am I? Where are you?”
There’s a pause. “At work.”
“Where have you been? Yesterday, last night, this morning . . .”
“Home. Why?”
“Because I haven’t heard from you since yesterday morning, that’s why.” Back in his cubicle, he sinks into his chair. “Didn’t you get my messages and texts?”
“What messages and texts?”
That gives him pause. Is it possible that she really didn’t get them, due to some kind of technical glitch, or . . .
Or just not checking? Not bothering to check?
Not caring enough to call you regardless of whether she knew you’d been trying to reach her?
“You know, Ryan,” she muses, “I thought it was strange that you hadn’t been in touch.”
“Then why didn’t you call me?”
“I am! I’m calling you now.”
“But it’s been over twenty-four hours. I mean . . . here I am reading about a woman who was killed in some hotel room last night, and all I’m thinking is that it might have been you.”
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Ryan is certain she’s going to accuse him of being too clingy, and frankly, he won’t blame her.
But then she laughs a little and asks, “What would I be doing in a hotel?”
“I have no idea. I just kept thinking—”
“Well, just stop thinking. I’m fine. Are we going to meet later, after work?”
He sidesteps the question with one of his own. “I don’t know . . . are we?”
“It’s Friday night, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . .” Maybe he was too quick to judge her. Maybe, because he’s always been so insecure, he smothers people.
Not people . . .
There is no one, really, that he could possibly smother but her. Phoenix. The woman he loves.
Lucy was right.
He needs to get a life. He needs to give Phoenix some space, learn to trust her. Otherwise, he’s going to snuff out their relationship.
“Ryan?”
“Sure,” he hears himself say, and he sighs inwardly.
Oh well. Guess I’ll give her space another day.
“Where do you want to meet?” he asks. “How about if I come your way for a change and we—”
“Actually,” she cuts in, “I was thinking it might be nice to try a new restaurant I heard about.”
“Where is it? Near your apartment? Or your office?”
“No,” she says, “near yours—right over on Sixth Avenue. I’ll see you on our usual corner, okay? At five-thirty?”
Sixth Avenue?
“Ryan? Five-thirty?”
“Okay.” His hand trembles as he hangs up the phone.
Sixth Avenue.
New Yorkers call it that.
Newcomers and tourists usually call it Avenue of the Americas.
Maybe not all . . . but most of them. Enough to make Ryan wonder about Phoenix. About how she told him she’s only been in the city for a few months.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe she just doesn’t want to sound like a tourist and call it Avenue of the Americas. Maybe . . .
Maybe she lied.
Oh hell.
But why would she lie about where she was born and raised? That doesn’t make sense.
He’s being ridiculous. Paranoid. Insecure.
Still . . .
Ryan looks at the computer. Maybe he should do some digging around. Just to make sure she is who she says she is.
As he reaches for the mouse, though, a shadow falls across his desk and he looks up to see Traci.
“Hi. Did you figure it out?”
“Figure what out?” he asks, wondering how long she’s been standing there.
“You know . . . the file I gave you. The Medicare fraud case. Did it help?”
“Oh. Uh, I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Do you want me to go through it with you? It might be kind of confusing.”
He shakes his head. “No, thanks. I’ll be fine on my own.”
“He knows,” she tells Chaplain Gideon, pacing the herringbone hardwoods. “He knows.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he brought up what happened in that hotel room last night. Why else would he have mentioned it?”
“He was worried that something had happened to you. That’s all.”
“No. He was baiting me.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. You didn’t give anything away.”
“But if he knows—or even suspects—then I have to get rid of him. It’s getting too dangerous.”
“Not just yet. You need him. That’s why you’re with him. Hold on a little longer.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You must. This isn’t about him. It’s about the baby.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
She squeezes her eyes shut.
She’s the prophet, the chosen one, the one who will deliver the child to the waiting world.
She didn’t want to believe Chaplain Gideon when he first explained that Lucy Cavalon was carrying the child she herself should have borne. The child she would gladly have borne, had she been able. But then she realized that of course it was true, that it made perfect sense, and—
“Patience.”
Her eyes snap open.
Patience. She hates that word. Hates hearing it over and over, hates the sound of Chaplain Gideon’s voice when he says it, but she can never drown it out. He just keeps talking. Constantly, talking to her, talking at her. Telling her what to do.
“You have to get this right, or it will all be for nothing. Do you understand?”
She looks down at her hands.
Just hours ago, they were covered in sticky red blood.
Now, they’re clenched into hard, angry fists. Impatient fists.
“Yes,” she tells Chaplain Gideon. “I do. I understand.”
“So either Jollston told the perp what room he was staying in, or she found out some other way,” Brandewyne muses aloud, and Omar resists the urge to shoot back, No shit, Sherlock.
Instead, he finishes his second hot dog in a single bite, washes it down with a swig of Pepsi, and brushes the crumbs from his black slacks.
“Coming?” he asks Brandewyne, who’s still seated on the low wall beneath the overhang of the adjacent office building, munching away at her sloppy street cart falafel.
“Can I finish my lunch?”
“Sure. Go ahead.” He tosses his hot dog wrapper into the nearest trash can and carefully props the Pepsi bottle on top to be discovered by the next homeless person to come along.
Brandewyne takes another bite, chews, swallows. The woman loves to eat. Nothing wrong with that. And she’s in decent shape—not shapely, by any means, but not hugely overweight. Just solid.
With that short hair and strictly functional wardrobe, she obviously doesn’t spend much time worrying about her looks. Nothing wrong with that, either.
It’s just . . .
When Meade first found out that his longtime partner Ben Tarrant was going to be replaced with a female detective, he was admittedly intrigued. With his schedule, it’s not easy to meet women at his age. He might have briefly entertained the fantasy of an on-the-job tryst with a partner who looks more like Charlie’s Angels than Baretta.
Okay, to be fair, Brandewyne’s not quite as . . . as masculine, or as . . . swarthy as Baretta. And she’s probably a charming—all right, that’s a stretch, but at least a decent—human being when she’s not on the job. But sometimes, he really doubts it.
Looking at his watch, he thinks about Richard Jollston and Myra the maid and the murderous woman in the monk robe.
Brandewyne looks at Meade looking at his watch. Some kind of creamy sauce is smeared in the corner of her mouth. He does his best not to make a face.
With a sigh, she stands and dumps the rest of her lunch, including her half-full Diet Pepsi, into the trash can.
“Why’d you do that?” Meade asks.
“Because I can’t eat with you breathing down my neck.”
He’s hardly breathing down her neck, but . . . “No, I mean why’d you throw away the bottle? Someone can return it for a nickel.”
“So let him work a little to find it.” Brandewyne wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her coat, already mucked up with food stains, and takes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.
God, he misses Tarrant—and not just because the guy was a good-hearted, fastidious nonsmoker.
Tarrant was more efficient, if that was even possible, than Omar Meade himself. Together, they were a well-oiled machine.
Now Tarrant spends his days golfing in the South Carolina sunshine, and Meade is saddled with a woman whose slovenly habits—along with just about everything else about her—have been driving him nuts. None of it should matter as much as it does, but he can’t seem to help it. After six weeks, she’s wearing on him. Too bad his own retirement is still a few years off.
He’s not one to give up on anything—even his marriage. He stuck it out till the bitter end. But he’s starting to think that this partnership might not work out.
Brandewyne puffs away on her cancer stick as they head back toward the hotel a few blocks away.
It’s a crappy day—cold, misty, rainy—and the sidewalk is a sea of umbrellas and trench coats. Plenty of Burberry plaid on this particular stretch of Park Avenue, and glossy paper shopping bags from fancy stores.
“You think it’s some kind of cult killing?” Brandewyne asks.
“That, or Little Red Riding Hood’s gone psycho.”
Little Red Riding Hood assassinates Chicken Little. Yeah, that’s good.
Veiled in smoke, Brandewyne coughs a smoker’s cough before asking, “You think the cloak was red?”
He shrugs. The surveillance tape was black and white. Anyway, he was kidding.
Pretty much.
Then again, if all these years on the job have taught him anything, it’s that you just never know who you might be dealing with: serial killers, terrorists, cult leaders, random nutcases . . .
He’s seen ’em all. A psycho Red Riding Hood isn’t that big a stretch.
Omar’s phone rings just as they reach the hotel entrance, which is festooned with a wreath the size of the Rockefeller rink. “Silver Bells” is piped over a speaker above the doorman’s post. Ah, life goes on. You’d never know a gory murder took place here last night.
Not even breaking his stride, Meade answers his phone immediately with his customary “Yeah.”
“Thought I’d check in and see how you two lovebirds are making out today. Pun intended.” Doug Alden, a fellow detective down at the precinct, loves busting his chops about Brandewyne.
Meade responds with an expletive, which brings a laugh from Alden—and then it’s down to business.
“Some bum found Jollston’s wallet in a garbage can and turned it in looking for a reward.”
“Really.” Meade stops walking and raises an eyebrow. “That was noble.”
“No kidding.”
Brandewyne, too, has stopped walking. She mouths, What up?
Not what’s up. What up. Fortysomething middle-class white woman gangsta talk. That kind of crap drives Meade crazy.
“Listen, we might have to give him one hell of a reward,” Alden is saying, “because we lifted some prints off the leather.”
“Yeah? They probably belong to the bum or Jollston.” After all, there wasn’t a single print at the murder scene. The killer monk had been wearing gloves that were plainly visible in the surveillance video.
“It looks like there are three different sets of prints on the wallet, Meade.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Of course, random prints only tend to be helpful if whoever left them has a prior criminal record on file in the system. Hopefully that will be the case.
“So listen, they’re running them now at the lab.”
“Let me know what comes up, Alden.”
“Will do.”
Meade ends the call and turns back to Brandewyne in time to see her grind out a cigarette on the sidewalk a few feet away from the doorman, who sees it, too.
“What up?” she asks aloud this time, and this time, Meade tells her.
“Know what, Omar? This might just be our lucky day.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Yeah, well, you never want to count on anything.”
Thinking of all these years on the job, and the kid he rarely sees, and the wife who left him for another man—one who has time for her—Meade doesn’t argue with that.
At four o’clock, Lucy closes the door to her office, picks up her cell phone, and dials her mother’s number in Florida.
Lauren Walsh picks up on the first ring. “There you are. We’ve been playing phone tag.”
“Hi, Mom. Sorry I couldn’t pick up when you called me back earlier. I was on the other line.” Actually, she’d been on both other lines when her mother buzzed in on her cell phone. She’s spent the day juggling phone calls, as usual. And being relieved that she hasn’t had the slightest hint of a cramp all afternoon.
“Aren’t you still at work, Lu?”
“Yes, but I figured I’d better call before you and Sam head out to the early-bird special or something.” Lucy smiles.
She can hear the smile in her mother’s voice, too, when she replies, “We might be snowbirds, but we’re not quite that stereotypical just yet. Although Sam did say he wants to give me golf lessons for Christmas so that I can join him on the course.”
Golf.
Lucy’s smile fades.
Every time she hears the word, she thinks of Jeremy wielding a bloody seven-iron over a helpless little girl.
No matter how you look at it, La La Montgomery, regardless of whom—of what—she grew up to be, was once a helpless little girl.
Lucy makes appropriate comments as her mother talks on about golf lessons and the great weather they had for last weekend’s visit from Lucy’s Aunt Alyssa and Uncle Ben and her cousins Trevor and Courtney, who are still in high school.
But mostly, Lucy’s thoughts are settled again on Jeremy.
She doesn’t know why, but she’s still feeling uneasy—mostly about him. About the way he was acting this morning. Dark, distant.
Something’s bothering him. Possibly something other than the fact that she rebuffed him this morning in bed, even something other than his Friday visit to Marin, which is always a downer.
Lucy frequently offers to accompany him, but she didn’t today. Anyway, he usually doesn’t want her there. He said it confuses Marin.
He’s right about that. On one recent occasion, Marin lit up as she walked in the door with Jeremy—before she realized who Lucy was. Or rather, who she wasn’t. Then Marin started sobbing in despair and had to be tranquilized.
“It’s not that she didn’t want to see you,” Jeremy later explained. “It’s just that she thought you were my sister.”
“Which sister?”
He just looked at her. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
No. It didn’t. Either way, it was heartbreaking.
Earlier, Jeremy called to say that he was headed from Parkview to a family meeting for one of his “guys,” as he refers to the troubled youths at the group home. From there, he was going to a children’s court hearing and then on up to the Bronx to put in some time on the grant he’s writing, capped off by a group session at six-thirty.
“I’ll try to get home before eight,” he’d told Lucy, who then reminded him that she’s going out tonight with Robyn.
“I won’t be home too late,” she promised. “Do you want me to bring you some Mexican takeout from the restaurant?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll figure out something for dinner. See you later.” She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or just in a hurry to get off the phone, but again, he didn’t seem quite like himself.
Now, hearing her mother chatter on about what a nice time she and Sam are having in Florida together, Lucy feels a pang. Between the lost pregnancies and Sylvie’s death and the move, it’s been so long since she felt as though she and Jeremy were really in sync, enjoying life.
Then she reminds herself that Mom and Sam went through a lot before they got to this place—and not just the usual second marriage/blended family stressors. Sam was shot right after they met, for Pete’s sake, trying to help Mom protect her family from Garvey Quinn.
Yeah, they deserve some happiness.
So do Jeremy and I. I just hope we can get back to that good place soon.
“How have you been feeling?” her mom is asking.
Should she mention the cramping? No. Patrice said it was probably just Braxton Hicks contractions, and when Lucy looked that up on the Internet at lunchtime, the symptom matched.
“So far, so good,” she tells her mother.
“Good. Everything’s going to be okay this time, Lu.”
Of course, Mom doesn’t know that for sure, but there’s a certain comfort in her words, in hearing her voice.
“I really think it will,” Lucy agrees.
“That’s my girl. How’s the new apartment?”
“Big. Fancy.”
“I can’t wait to see it—and you. Don’t forget—I’ll be on a plane the second you go into labor, unless you need me sooner.”
“No, I’m fine.” And even if she weren’t, she would never ask her mom to cut short her time in Florida.
“What about Ryan?”
Lucy hesitates just long enough for her mother to ask, “Lucy? Is Ryan okay?”
“Yeah, he’s . . . I mean, he’s . . .”
Something tells her not to get into Ryan’s relationship with their mother. She doesn’t know how much her brother has told Mom, and it’s not up to her to complicate his life.
“He’s good, Mom. Actually, he came over last night after work.”
“How did he look?”
“Like Ryan.”
“And Sadie? Have you heard from her?”
“No, but I never hear from her.”
“I don’t, either. Not as much as I want to, anyway.”
Hearing the worried note in her mother’s voice, Lucy points out, “She’s away at school, Mom, and it’s finals time. Did you hear from me regularly when I was in college?”
“Pretty much. But you were the model child, remember?”
Lucy is smiling again, until her mother adds, “I just hope Sadie’s not involved in anything she shouldn’t be . . .”
Drugs.
Mom doesn’t bother to say the word, but Lucy hears it loud and clear.
Sadie was only four when their father moved out, and she had a hard enough time adjusting to that, let alone everything that came after. When she got to middle school, she fell into the wrong crowd—the crowd with a lot of money and no supervision.
It happens to a lot of kids—but Sadie, given what she had already been through, was especially vulnerable.
Lucy’s always thought that if she had still been living at home then, she might have been able to help Sadie work through her horrible memories, rather than resort to chemical attempts to block them out.
But who knows? Mom couldn’t get through to her, nor could Sam. They looked for help in every direction—Sadie’s guidance counselor and teachers, her child psychiatrist Dr. Rogel, even Father Les.
In the end, Sadie’s badly needed wake-up call came in the form of a tragedy that hit much too close to home.
Sadly, it was too late for Jeremy’s sister, but not for Lucy’s.
“I’ll give Sadie a call over the weekend,” she promises her mom.
“Do that. And give Ryan a hug for me when you see him. Jeremy, too. How is he? It must be hard for him to live in his grandmother’s apartment so soon after losing her.”
Hmm . . . maybe that’s it, Lucy thinks. Maybe Jeremy is just mourning the loss of Sylvie, and that’s why he’s seemed so down.
Maybe they shouldn’t have moved into the Ansonia after all.
Sitting on the hardwood floor in front of the tall living room window, staring bleakly at the monochromatic skyline beyond the iron scrollwork of the Juliet balcony, she remembers waking up one morning to find herself in prison.
Andrew Stafford came, of course—only the very best legal representation for her family—and they talked about why she was there, and she could tell he suspected she was faking when she claimed she didn’t remember any of it . . .
She was faking.
She remembers everything: the fury bubbling up inside her, and feeling as though she was going to lose control and do something horrible—
And then you did.
But she learned long ago that you don’t necessarily have to own up to anything. If you’ve been through what she’s been through in her lifetime, people tend to give you a pass.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, no one gives you a pass for committing murder—even if the murder was justified. Even if the brilliant Andrew Stafford fights for an acquittal after you’ve been deemed mentally competent to stand trial.
Chaplain Gideon was right. What she did last night was dangerous.
She has to tread carefully from here on in.
Has to suppress the fury once again stirring inside her, and the overwhelming desire to kill again.
Williams might be the third most common surname in the United States—an odd thing for someone to have mentioned, now that Ryan thinks about it—but Phoenix is one of the most unusual first names. You’d think that would help, when it comes to tracking down information about her past.
Nope.
He hasn’t had much free time at work this afternoon, as his boss, Rachel, has pretty much been breathing down his neck. But as the day winds down, he’s finally able to get on the Internet and look for his girlfriend . . . only to find that she isn’t there.
There are plenty of hits for Phoenix, and Williams, and even Phoenix Williams, but none of them is his Phoenix Williams.
Which means she isn’t.
She isn’t what? he asks himself, annoyed with his own paranoia.
Isn’t yours?
Or isn’t Phoenix Williams?
Maybe both. Oh hell.
In this day and age, if you plug a name into an Internet search engine, chances are you’re going to come back with something relevant. The person’s Facebook page or LinkedIn profile, or the fact that they broke a high school track record—something.
His own name, for example, generates pages and pages of hits. Yeah, there are a lot of Ryan Walshes out there, but there are plenty of links to Ryan himself.
In his case though, most of them have something to do with Garvey Quinn’s terrible crimes. There are press photos of him and Lucy and Sadie when they were kids, after the kidnapping and their father’s murder. The pictures ran again when the whole La La Montgomery thing happened, and again after that, when Garvey was tried and convicted and sentenced to life in prison, when he died, when his daughters died . . .
Every Quinn tragedy generates press coverage and renewed interest in the Walshes—nowhere near as many photos of Ryan as there are of Garvey himself, and his own family, but still—Ryan’s face, his name, are out there.
Phoenix Williams—his Phoenix Williams—is not.
What, if anything, does that mean?
And what, if anything, is he going to do about it?
He has yet to figure that out when his cell phone rings at a few minutes before five. Seeing that it’s Phoenix, he lets it ring into voice mail.
The moment it stops ringing, though, he regrets doing that. He should have just picked up. What if she didn’t leave a message? What if she did? What if she’s in some kind of trouble and needs him?
Idiot. You could have just answered the phone to see what she wants. You didn’t have to get into anything serious right now.
He waits an agonizing minute, then checks for messages, not sure whether he’s hoping she left one, or that she didn’t.
She did. When he hears it, he’s glad he didn’t pick up.
“Hi, I just wanted to let you know I’m stuck at the office working late, so I have to cancel tonight. Sorry. I’ll talk to you over the weekend.”
Short and not all that sweet.
But at least it buys him a little more time to figure out how he’s going to break things off with her.
Wow. So that’s it, then. That’s what he wants to do.
The realization brings only mild surprise—and surprising relief.
Even if she didn’t lie about any of it—her name, or who she is, or where she’s from . . .
And even though he loves the way he feels when he walks around with her on his arm, loves being alone with her, loves waking up with her . . .
He doesn’t love her.
He doesn’t trust her, either.
In fact, right here, right now—he’s almost afraid of her.
Maybe it’s just that seeing those old news accounts and photos online brought back all the fear and uncertainty he’d experienced as a child whose life was in jeopardy.
A child whose parent was murdered.
A child who learned the hard way that people aren’t necessarily who they seem—or claim—to be.