Chapter Nineteen

Justine

I’VE BEEN DRIVING for more than an hour.

The Catskills are well outside the city, where congested urban highways narrow to a pair of lanes flanked by rising mountains and palisades of trees, sugar maples competing with black birch and white ash. At this time of year, an early morning blanket of snow swathes the roads, split up by plow tracks so fresh my tires keep catching on grains of deicing salt. I haven’t seen another car in twenty minutes, and the only other hints of humanity are green signs to direct tourists, reflective silver words catching on weak flickers of sunlight.

Back in college, I came here with my friends on long weekends. We’d pile into someone’s car with blankets and liquor and nonperishable foods full of salt and fat to muzzle our impending hangovers. As a freshman, I brought a sketchbook and charcoal to draw everything in sight, only for someone to accidentally tip it into the bonfire when I was a hundred yards away having sex with some pretty girl from my Life Drawing class.

A semester after that, I met Richard. Months later, I told him I loved him for the first time on one of the trails nearby. Once I returned from my capstone year in Paris, he proposed, grounding me in place.

The last text message said to meet at Kaaterskill Clove, where a long cascade of cliffs leads to the state’s highest waterfall. A single trail connects to it off Route 23A, linked together by two parking lots before disappearing up a yellow-blazed slope. I pick a space in the back lot, although both areas are empty because I’m early. Building in a fifteen-minute window to level out my anxiety felt prudent.

My breath turns the air to mist the second I step out of the car. Ice has transformed the asphalt into an active hazard, but the new coat I bought is lined and waterproof, with a wide collar to shield the back of my neck. For the first time since high school, my hair is in one thick braid, held away from my face despite the constant push of a snow-heavy breeze. Humidity colludes with the cold, just wet enough to stick, soaking through my pockets and into leather gloves to nip at each finger.

The weight under my left hand is the heaviest thing I’ve ever carried. Shoving my phone and wallet on the right doesn’t equalize the equation, so every step toward the trail is a matter of balance, one boot forced in front of the other. Despite the tension wound between my shoulders, the static beauty of the forest can’t be overstated; if this is my last day of freedom, at least I’m going out during my favorite time of year, where the weight of snow on evergreen trees rests like a lover, spent by their joining.

A few juncos trill in the distance as I hike up the trailhead, occasionally catching a glimpse of smooth feathers the color of smeared charcoal. They’re my sole company for a quarter of a mile; Catskill wildlife is seasonal, fleeing south when the leaves change, save for these particular birds and sleuths of black bears. We were warned about attacks every year in the summer, but in winter, the bears burrow under the roots of sap-laden maples, violence forgotten until spring brings its thaw.

The Kaaterskill path stalls out near the waterfall’s amphitheater, lined with waist-high barricades and signs imploring visitors not to trespass farther in. Dozens of intrepid wanderers have already trampled the snowpack past the fence, making my footprints meaningless in the mush. Everyone who comes here knows the view is better on the other side; leaning over the edge to look at the bottom is essentially a rite of passage.

Chill air makes my teeth ache as I listen past the suffocated trickle of water, nature’s insistence wearing past stone and frost. By the time I hear footsteps approaching, my entire face is numb. Only a single set—good news—but I don’t dare to look until I hear the creak of the fence under shifting weight, a split second of vulnerability.

Frank Amato lands on the other side of the barricade with a solid crunch, shoes sinking past filthy snow and into the dead brush underneath. He hasn’t dressed well for the weather—windbreaker, pressed black trousers, snub-nosed brogues—but maybe the FBI doesn’t provide lettered trench coats, and he’s gotten used to having their authority branded across his back.

Blue eyes give me a quick up-and-down read. Whatever Frank sees makes his shoulders drop as he joins me by the waterfall, rubbing his hands together before shoving them into his pockets.

“Justine, I presume,” he says.

“You already know who I am.” I lured Amato through my burner phone after Enrico helpfully provided his number. “But it’s nice to meet you, Frank.”

“Agent Ryan spoke highly of you.” He flashes his teeth, half a smile. “‘Very cooperative’ is how I think it was phrased.”

What every woman wants: a good grade in being a witness. “But you know better.”

“You said you had information. Which seems like a given, considering you managed to slip a ring on Campbell’s finger behind the prosecution’s back.”

Legally speaking, I did it in plain view. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have found out. “Tell me what you’re looking for.”

“An explanation for how they actually killed Miceli La Rosa. With proof. I need to get that evidence in before the trial starts tomorrow.”

I knew he was in a rush; no one with sense would meet a stranger in the middle of the woods alone. Although chances are, he thinks the exact same thing about me.

“But out of morbid curiosity,” Frank continues, “why marry Campbell only to betray them? What’s the angle?”

I glance toward the waterfall, at the constant pulse pushing back against the ice, opening veins through a layer of permafrost. “When you’re on death row, they give you a last meal, don’t they? Anything you want.”

“Christ, that’s cold.” Frank’s dark eyebrows jump toward his hairline. I might have actually managed to disgust him, which is entertaining in its own way. “Kind of answers my follow-up question too.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve always wondered why a woman would give herself to a monster on purpose. Never made sense to me. My mother did it, and it ruined her for life.” He tries to shrug the idea off, but the core of anger in his voice is too familiar. I can see through him like glass. “But I guess if you’re two of a kind, it tracks.”

“I have a question of my own,” I say. “Fair trade.”

Frank steals a look at his watch. “Sure.”

“What did Giovanna La Rosa ever do to you?”

His eyes snap up, locking on mine.

“You burned her alive,” I say, “and as far as I can tell, it was for the crime of being married to a man you hate. Did she even know your name? When Giovanna was suffocating on smoke, split open by fire, did she have the first idea why?”

He tries to control his mouth. A sneer of outrage folds into a grimace, then pulls back tight through the muscles of his jaw. “She replaced my mother.”

“In ignorance,” I note.

“I don’t give a shit,” Frank snarls. “Buy the ticket, take the ride. She wore his jewelry. Drove his cars. Signed off her half of his inheritance to a goddamn fashion house in the West End that put her on a ‘best dressed’ list once.”

An inheritance he believes belongs to him and him alone. I was told Frank had a temper, but I honestly didn’t expect his buttons to be this easy to press. Some small consolation lingers in the fact that his haste to frame Campbell has been wearing him down just the same. Not true comfort, but it steadies me.

After a deep breath, Frank settles, too, hands in lumpy fists inside his windbreaker. The fabric is so thin, I can make out the line of his service weapon tucked along the left side of his ribs. Technically in reach, but he’d have to get past the zipper.

“Tell me what you know or no deal. It’s obvious Campbell killed your husband, and you’ve had some little tête-à-tête ever since.” He thoroughly butchers the accent on ‘tête-à-tête’; I swallow the urge to correct him. “You want to get away with it? Give me answers.”

“No.” I draw the Model 19 free from my pocket, hammer pulled back.

I squeeze the trigger.

My shot is dead on. Amato’s knee collapses before he can so much as flinch, landing on his side in the frozen mud. He tries to grab at the wound, staunch the sudden flow of blood, only to cry out the second scrabbling fingers make contact.

“Motherfucker!” he pants. “You bitch—”

When I draw the barrel between blown blue eyes, Amato quiets. “You should know the last man who called me that was stabbed, strangled, and then tied to a bomb that blew him into a thousand nearly unidentifiable pieces. So do yourself a favor and think before you talk.”

Gritting through clenched teeth, he manages, “I’m a federal agent! After this, your life is over.”

“What you are is a traitor. And after today, everyone is going to know you as the guy who tried to play the FBI and the Mafia at the same time. Because right now, a friend of mine is getting rid of the evidence you forged to frame Campbell. And another friend is in your apartment, sorting through your private records. And this gun, well…” I tilt the revolver a little, considerate. “This has Cesare Galici’s fingerprints all over it.”

I’m not sure whether it’s pain, the cold, or the ensuing blood loss, but hope dwindles out in Amato’s eyes.

“What the hell do you want?” he demands. “I offered you a deal. We’d put the blame on someone else!”

“Oh, Frank. This isn’t about protecting myself.” He really doesn’t understand. “You’re being held accountable for your mistakes.”

“What mistakes?” he spits. It dribbles down his mouth, icing the insult into a chin stippled with five o’clock shadow.

“First, you tried to frame one of the most prolific assassins in the world for a murder they didn’t even commit. Which I only mention because it’s so fucking laughable. But more importantly, you tried to put the person I love more than anyone else in a cage for the rest of their life to save your own skin. And I would do anything to keep Campbell free.”

“You love them?” Frank growls. “That broken, homicidal freak?”

“Heart and soul,” I whisper without hesitation. “But here’s the real question, Frank. My own morbid curiosity. Are you sorry? Do you feel the least bit of guilt for anything you’ve done?”

The truth of what’s about to happen rolls through his face like a riptide, fear dragging him under before one last gasp of arrogance tries to resurface. Kerosene eyes spark and gutter, burning away the mask Frank wears until nothing is left behind but loathing. Sheer, unadulterated disdain, scorning me even with a gun angled at his temple.

“No.” He draws out the word, grates it through his teeth. “I’m not sorry at all.”

Frank yanks his jacket open, scrambling for his holster. Fingers slick with gore on leather. Too slow, too late.

I pull the trigger again.

Sofia told me head wounds are a mess, but the bullet must catch on bone somewhere, because the faint red mist exiting the back of Frank’s skull is more like an errant flick of paint. Pale fingers twitch around his standard issue Glock, then go still, the hole between his eyes stealing their light. Curled up on a bed of ice and mud, he looks half his size, silent save for the slow drip of fluid tapping onto the back of his federal windbreaker.

“Me either,” I admit.

The gun goes first. I check the cylinder for any stray black hairs before tossing Cesare’s revolve over the frozen edge of the waterfall. It takes a lot longer than I expect to splash at the bottom. No wonder so many people have died out here.

An interesting fact I learned recently: water will erode DNA, but it doesn’t erase fingerprints. The gloves protect me there, but I have to toss them after I leave anyway; gunshot residue mars my second skin.

Blood too, when I kneel and start searching Frank for a wire. The lack of SWAT stormtroopers stampeding through the woods after the sound of gunshots means he probably wasn’t recording live, but I can’t trust that a man like him wouldn’t try to fuck me over, even from the grave.

What I find is his phone, which is on and locked but shows no signs of any app running on the main screen. I want the FBI to follow the GPS and track him here to knock all of the other dominoes down, but a trained mafioso would know better than to leave that kind of evidence in easy reach.

So I toss it over the edge, too, but not far. The phone’s reinforced case skitters over slick stone several feet down. Distantly, it feels like littering, and the sudden but utterly banal spark of regret almost makes me laugh. In its wake, dipping adrenaline shudders through me; I start hiking away from the falls before losing my nerve.

Wet gloves are a special kind of misery, so I’m relieved to reach the car and strip them off, along with the rest of my outfit. My teeth are already chattering by the time I get the trunk open and shove everything into its own plastic bag, hastily sealed. Getting dressed in new clothes is twice as difficult; I give up on connecting the clasp of my bra after the third time shaking fingers fail and just yank the sweater over my head. If a cop pulls me over, other problems take priority.

I get in the driver’s seat, and my gorge rises. Face hot and hands frozen, I fumble for the bottle of antiemetic on the console and swallow two pills dry, eyes squeezed shut until the hard lump finally goes away. Leaving vomit in the parking lot is a slip I can’t afford.

It’s over. It’s done.

I killed Frank Amato.

After cranking up the heat, I reverse out of the parking lot and get back on Route 23. As I drive toward the city, the sun finally rises past the trees. Everything starts to melt, and the last of the numbness slips from my heart, mouth, fingertips.

Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.