The Homicide Unit in Boston contained few women, just 7 percent overall, a dismal statistic to which Ellery knew she owed her current job. Under pressure to up the estrogen content on the murder squad, the chief of D’s had been willing to take on a rehab project—someone with a lightning rod personality and at least one questionable shooting already under her belt. Her background as Coben’s lone survivor made her a curiosity. Dorie had let it slip once that they’d had a division-wide meeting prior to her arrival, with orders not to ask her about the infamous serial killer. Instead, she had to endure stares and whispers, or conversations that suddenly ceased when she entered the room. She’d caught one officer from the canine unit reading a copy of Reed and Sarit’s bestselling book about the case, Little Girl Lost. She’d been prepared to ignore him until the guy asked her if she could get Reed to sign it.
The wide gender gap meant she could usually find solitude in the ladies’ restroom, but it was closed for cleaning when she emerged from her debriefing over the shooting of Stephen Wintour. Wintour remained in ICU at the hospital, an armed guard posted nearby. The hungry press outside had pitched Martin Lockhart as a hero, and with word that Ellery had been involved in the case, they were waiting to talk to her. Reporters never missed an opportunity to shove a microphone into her face. Wherever the questions started, they always came back to Coben. I’d recommend leaving through the parking garage, Conroy had advised her. She had been sitting on her hands so he couldn’t see them shaking. She had “yes, sir”-ed her way out of there and dragged a chair between the wall and the vending machine in the break room, carving out a hidden alcove in which to breathe. She pressed a cold bottle of water against her neck while the sound of the gunshot played on a continuous loop inside her head. Loud male voices entering the room made her sit up with a jolt.
“So, after all that, he didn’t even have the kid?”
“Maybe he’s got her stashed somewhere.”
“If the pervert dies, then what?”
“Maybe her father should’ve thought of that before he pulled the trigger.”
“Can you blame the guy? I’d have wanted to pop him straight between the eyes.”
They had sent search teams to all of Stephen Wintour’s registered properties. So far, there was no sign of Chloe. They had warrants for all his electronics now. Ellery felt sorry for whoever got the job of wading through Wintour’s hard drive. The pictures on his walls were sickening enough.
Ellery heard the whirring of the microwave as one of the men heated up his dinner. “Of course, the almighty Ellery Hathaway was right there in the middle of it, like usual. She’s on the job five months and she’s running point on a case like this? Come on.”
“Conroy’s running it. He was there, too.”
“Should’ve been Nickerson’s case. He’s done a kidnapping before.”
“So has Hathaway,” the other guy reminded him, and they both chuckled.
“Send one kidnapped girl to find another? Sure, okay. By that logic, it’s the FBI guy, what’s his name, who should be running the whole investigation. He’s the one who found her.”
“He was here earlier. I saw him.”
“Mr. Hotshot FBI himself? And they still haven’t solved the case? Damn, there goes my faith in the Feds. What’s his angle here, anyway? Don’t we already have enough G-men up in our business?”
The microwave beeped and she heard the door pop open. “You said it yourself: the almighty Ellery Hathaway. Where she goes, he goes. She’s, like, his pet project or something.”
“Or something,” said the other one, and they both laughed again. “You think he’s nailing her?”
Ellery shrank back in her chair, her face aflame. She’d kept her relationship with Reed private to the point where they’d argued about it. We can have dinner in a restaurant, he’d said the last time he had visited. It’s not a crime. He didn’t appreciate how it felt to have his entire life chronicled for public consumption. She could only imagine how the tongues would wag if everyone found out they were dating.
“Think about it,” continued the first guy. “Markham’s got a thing for serial killers, right? She could be like a memento.”
“You’re disgusting, Callahan.”
“Hey, those scars of hers are disgusting. Have you seen them? Who wants a woman who’s been carved up like a piece of meat?”
Ellery leaped to her feet. She knew she’d get these comments no matter what, but it pained her to hear Reed dragged into it. The two men jumped when she materialized behind them, a move that would confirm her status as the division whack job, hiding as she’d been behind a vending machine in the break room. Ha, she thought when she saw their uniforms and their horrified faces. I outrank you.
“De—detective Hathaway,” stammered Tommy Burris, the less offensive one of the pair. “We, uh, we didn’t see you there.”
“I’d hope not. Otherwise your little conversation would be straight-up actionable as opposed to just wildly inappropriate.”
“Our apologies. Ma’am.”
Callahan sucked in his lips, but he didn’t back down from her stare. She took several steps, advancing on him slowly. “Something you’d like to ask me about, Callahan?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Really.” She closed in to the point where his dinner steamed up between them. His fingers tightened around the Tupperware, but he didn’t flinch. “Because it sounded like you had a lot of questions about me.” She deliberately pulled up each sleeve in turn, showing off the scars. He glanced down once and then quickly away. “There’s nothing I can clear up for you right here, right now?”
“No,” he said, his jaw clenched. He no longer met her gaze.
“Three days,” she said softly, moving her body so he had to look at her. “That’s how long I spent with him and his knife. How long do you think you would have lasted?”
He did not answer.
“That’s what I thought.” She backed off infinitesimally and glanced down with disdain at his congealed dinner. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving now. It smells in here.”
She drove home, still stinging, and trudged to her front door. Upon opening it, she nearly turned around and left again. Ashley and Tula were playing keep-away with Bump’s tennis ball while he raced back and forth between them, barking vociferously. At her arrival, he broke free and came bounding over to meet her, skidding to a halt on the hardwood floor and immediately flopping at her feet, his tail thumping all the while. She sank down and buried her face in his fur. “Hey there, good boy.”
Reed appeared from the kitchen, a dish towel in his hands. “Hi. I saved a plate of chicken Marsala for you. Also a big glass of wine.”
“I need to shower first.” She could pretend it was the sticky summer heat and not the men’s words that left her feeling dirty.
“Any word on Wintour?”
“No change.”
Reed put his hands on his trim hips for a moment, assessing her. “All right,” he said to the girls, “who wants to go down to the park with me to exercise the hound?”
“Me, me!” Tula greeted the idea with enthusiasm, but Ashley hung back.
“Not me, thanks.”
“Ellery? Can I bring you anything?”
She shook her head. The steady stream of hot water rushing over her was all she wanted. That, plus a little peace and quiet.
“Come on, Sir Sheds-a-lot,” Reed said with a sigh as he took up Bump’s leash. “Let’s go ogle the neighborhood poodles.” Bump woofed his approval and began heading for the door.
Ellery stood under the shower until the hard shell of the day melted away at her feet. She got out and dried herself without looking at herself in the mirror, as was her custom. She wished she could lock herself alone in the bedroom, but she knew Ashley was out there, waiting for her. Her stomach’s feeble rumble reminded her she hadn’t eaten much all day. She dressed in leggings and an old T-shirt of Reed’s and went in search of the dinner he had left for her.
“Hey,” Ashley said, brightening at the sight of her. She had a water glass and a line of pill bottles in front of her.
“Hey,” Ellery said as she eyed the orange prescription bottles. “What’s all that for? Aren’t you in remission?”
“Yeah, but I still have to take this stuff to keep it that way. My body could reject your cells at any time.”
“Oh.” She felt deflated. The battle, it seemed, was never fully won. “I’d just have to give you more then,” she assured the girl.
Ashley gave her a sad smile. “It doesn’t work like that. You get one shot. If my body rejects your DNA, then there’s no rebooting it. Maybe I could find a new donor…” She trailed off and Ellery got the grim picture of how likely this would be.
“Then you’d better take those,” she told the girl.
“I did already.” Ashley began tucking them into her bag. “I did some laundry earlier. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s fine.” Ellery ate a bite of chicken, which was tender and flavorful. Reed knew his way around a kitchen. “But, uh, we’re going to have to have your dad come get you pretty soon.”
Ashley regarded her with gray eyes so like her own. “He’s your dad, too.”
Ellery laid down her fork. “No,” she said. “He’s not.” A dad helped you with your homework when you got stuck. He taught you how to drive a stick shift. He brought you comic books when you were sick and put a cold cloth on your forehead. Ellery hadn’t had a dad since she was around Tula’s age, when John Hathaway walked out the door and into his new life.
“He is,” Ashley insisted with sudden tears in her eyes. “We’re—we’re sisters.”
Ellery didn’t feel that part, either. She barely knew this girl. “Look,” she said, “I think it’s great that he pulled his act together for you. He learned from his mistakes. He did better the second time around.”
“Who’s to say he won’t do it again?” Ashely swiped at her eyes with her fingers.
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Ellery sighed. She suspected if John Hathaway was going to wimp out and disappear again, he wouldn’t have stuck it out through Ashley’s cancer. “It’s true. I don’t know it. We don’t always know what any of the people in our lives are capable of. I doubt your parents figured you’d run off here to Boston.”
“No.” She mustered a smile. “I usually do what I’m told.”
“Good,” Ellery said as she took up her fork again. “You should keep doing that.”
“You don’t,” Ashley said, taking the seat next to her. “Reed said you answer to no one but yourself.”
“That’s a character flaw,” Ellery told her, trying to sound convincing. She waved her fork around. “I’m working on fixing it.”
Ashley snorted with disbelief. “Yeah, I’ll just bet.” She rubbed one blue-painted nail along the granite counter. “Reed is your boyfriend, right?”
Ellery coughed and nearly choked. “I guess,” she said as she reached for her water. At the last second, she grabbed the wine instead. This definitely felt like a conversation that required alcohol.
“I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve never even been kissed. That’s pathetic, right? I’m sixteen.”
“It’s not pathetic. You’re young. You’ve been busy kicking cancer’s ass. Now you can concentrate on, um, other pursuits.” God, she hoped like hell that Ashley’s parents had already given her The Talk. There wasn’t enough wine in the world for that conversation.
“No one is going to want me,” Ashley mumbled to her lap. “They think of me as the sick girl. After my first round of treatment, I went back for a few weeks and no one would sit near me. I found out someone had started a rumor that I was radioactive. They even put one of those hazard stickers on my locker.”
“Are you radioactive?”
Ashley scoffed. “No.”
“Then it doesn’t matter what they think.”
“It does if you want someone to take you to prom. Or sit with you at lunch. I’m supposed to be so happy I got to survive, right? But I don’t want to go back to that hellhole. All the other girls, they’ve been going to parties and wearing the right clothes and makeup and it’s like they speak a different language. My hair is, like, two inches long.” She held out a few strands to illustrate.
Ellery tried to remember being sixteen. She’d been the freak at her school, too. She hadn’t cared. She did recall the feeling of being trapped in her tiny apartment with her damaged body, how hopeless it felt, how doomed. Your reality at sixteen was the only one you’d ever known. “It gets better,” she told Ashley.
“Yeah, that’s what they all say. Trust me. No boy is ever going to want to kiss me. I’m the lamest girl who ever lived.” She put her head down on the counter, and Ellery frowned at her, debating internally whether to say anything more. She took a breath.
“Reed is my first boyfriend,” she muttered.
Ashley whipped her head up. “What?”
Ellery’s ears grew hot. She’d never even used the word before, let alone had an actual male companion to fill the role. “So, there you go. You’re not even the lamest one at this counter, okay?”
“Oh my God. You mean you never had sex with anyone before? You’re, like, thirty.”
No need for The Talk then, Ellery thought with relief. “I didn’t say that. I said I’d never had a boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Ashley contemplated this for a moment. “How is it?” she asked finally.
“Hello, we’re back!” There was a burst of noise at the door, and Reed came in with Tula skipping beside him. Bump smiled the grin of a dog who’d gotten his own cone. “I know you said you didn’t want anything,” he said to Ellery. “But this double chocolate fudge brownie from the bakery seemed to be calling your name.” He kissed the top of her head and placed the wrapped dessert next to her plate.
Ellery smiled in spite of everything. “You know what?” she said to Ashley. “It’s pretty great.”
That night in bed, she lay awake but exhausted. Her brain hummed even as her bones felt like they could sink into the mattress. Her apartment felt too people-y. Tula had the couch. Ashley slept on an air mattress on the living room floor, and Reed lay next to Ellery, giving off heat and an air of concern. “We could turn on some music,” he said as she shifted restlessly under the sheets again.
“No.” Her brain told her she should be at work, looking for Chloe. Her body couldn’t get out of bed. She wished Reed would hold her, but she didn’t know how to ask for this. She’d trained him to give her space and she didn’t want to take it all back because she had a single night of weakness. “I’m surprised you haven’t said, ‘I told you so,’” she grumbled into the pillow. “You were right that we shouldn’t have sent Lockhart into Wintour’s house.”
He rose up behind her. “I’m in no position to gloat. You caught a predator. Just maybe not the one who took Chloe.”
“What are the odds?” She rolled onto her back and looked at the slowly rotating ceiling fan. The question was rhetorical. They both knew how many sex offenders walked the streets every day. “Lockhart’s in jail while they figure out what all they want to charge him with.”
“Not much, I would expect.”
“For his sake, I hope Wintour lives.” She faced him, tucking one arm beneath her head. “Are you ever going to tell me what the deal is with Houston?”
“There isn’t much to tell. Sarit is apparently thinking of moving there, and she would of course be taking Tula with her.”
“Can she do that?”
“She would need to file for full physical custody. Kimmy thinks she has a reasonable shot at getting it because some of her grievances are grounded in reality.”
“Such as?”
“My work. Travel. It keeps me away, as you know.”
“And now me.” She knew Sarit was not her biggest fan.
Reed took her hand and kissed it. “Don’t worry about it. This is my problem, not yours. I will find an answer.”
Then why did his kiss feel so much like regret? She touched his face in the semi-darkness, stroking the sandpapery stubble along his jaw. “Your family has to come first,” she whispered to him. “I know that.”
“You are that,” he answered gruffly, gathering her against him.
She wriggled in his embrace, relishing the feel of his lean body against hers. She lived all her life on borrowed time, but none was as sweet as this. When they were alone together, she and Reed made sense. Out in the world, they were a curiosity, a freak show, and no one would forget their origin story. She knew Reed’s family thought he hung around her out of obligation or pity, and on her darkest days she thought it as well. In her dreams, when the closet door opened she only saw two faces on the other side. With Reed in her bed, Coben would always be there, too.
Gingerly, she laid her ear against Reed’s chest, the place where his own scars lay. She could never guess from its strong, reassuring rhythm that Reed’s heart had nearly ceased for good. Tonight, she didn’t need to hide behind the noise of the television or radio. She listened to the steady drumming of his heartbeat and imagined she could hear it say her name.