Faye ran through the first long room lined with sleeping chambers, following the bright beam of Cully’s flashlight through the inky darkness, and then she sprinted through the second one. The staircase waited for her at its far end. Exhausted, she told herself that it wasn’t as tall as it looked. Her legs and her lungs might be tired but they would take her to the top, where she could get a cell signal and call Ahua for help.
She wobbled as she hauled herself up the old stairs and her breath came short, but she could see sunlight leaking under the door that would take her into the alley. She was going to make it.
Stooping to pass through the door leading out of the low shed that concealed the staircase, Faye stepped into dazzling daylight shining through lead-gray clouds. It was so bright and her eyes were so dark-adapted that even late-afternoon sunshine was too much for her. The alley ran east to west, so the slanting of the sun toward evening illuminated all of it. She needed a bit of shade to help her see the phone’s screen.
Things might have been different if Faye had turned around and seen the shadow cast by the shed directly behind her, but she was too exhausted to even be standing, much less trying to save a kidnapped woman’s life. She broke into a run again, a limping and stumbling run, heading for the mouth of the blind alley because she knew that there would be something on the sidewalk—a tree, a bus stop shelter, something—that would block the sun and let her make a critical phone call.
* * *
In this moment, watching Faye Longchamp-Mantooth sprint out of an alley where she has no reason to be, I know to my core that Lonnie has ruined everything. He ruined my life long ago, my mothers’ lives, my sisters’ and brothers’ lives. He ended Gabe, Zeb, and Orly’s lives, or allowed them to end, which is the same thing.
In death, he has ruined the only victory that I could ever have over him, and he has done it by simply failing to follow the plan. How hard would it have been for him to stay underground long enough for me to blow him to smithereens?
Apparently, it was way too hard. And now here I am, face-to-face with another person who needs to be silenced before I’ve even decided what to do about poor Stacy Wong. I know that Faye Longchamp-Mantooth needs to die, because there can be no reason that she went down that alley except because she wanted to get underground. The dust and grime coating her clothes says that she’d succeeded. And the emotion on her face says that she has found Stacy.
But there is still hope. I am armed and I have the advantage of surprise. I do not have the moral high ground as I did when I killed Lonnie, but I still have loved ones to protect. I can do what needs to be done. I just wish that the rather likable Faye Longchamp-Mantooth hadn’t been caught in the ever-expanding destruction sparked by Lonnie and his evil.
* * *
As Faye came out of the alley she nearly ran into the shade tree that she’d been hoping to see. Skidding to a stop, she found Ahua’s number and placed the call. As his phone rang in her ear, she looked around her for the first time. Less than a block away, Kaayla, Grace, and Lucia stood near a service entrance for the South Tower. They all had very serious expressions on their faces. Faye hoped the maids weren’t in trouble with their boss, then she realized that the serious expressions were focused on her, not each other. She supposed that she did look a little the worse for wear, and they probably had seen her running out of the alley like wild tigers were after her.
Kaayla was holding a sleek phone in one hand, with a finger poised to scroll through whatever information showed on its face. Perhaps she’d taken notes on the maids’ failings and was now using them to ream Grace and Lucia out. This would explain their body language, which was so tense that Faye worried that she’d interrupted Kaayla as she fired them.
The thin, expensive phone in Kaayla’s hand held Faye’s attention. A memory was tickling at her mind. It was a recent memory, but it was fogged by pain and fear. Faye worked hard to reach through that fog and was rewarded by a single image, as clear and self-contained as a snapshot. It was Kaayla’s hand, and it was holding an old clamshell phone until the bomb blew it out of her hand.
Ahua had said that pressure cooker bombs were often set off remotely by cell phones. Faye realized that bombers who didn’t want to be caught wouldn’t use their own phones. They’d use burner phones that couldn’t be traced to them and they’d get rid of them immediately. And Kaayla, who spared no money on her professional appearance and would certainly not carry a cheap clamshell phone, had been holding something that looked an awful lot like a burner phone at the exact time of the blast.
It would have made sense for either of the other two women to carry an inexpensive phone. Kaayla, by contrast, stood there in her crisp suit and holding a purse that was way too pricey for one of her employees to carry. The slim phone in her hand now was the one that matched her self-image.
Kaayla was looking at Faye intently, as if by seeing her run, dusty and filthy, out of the alley where Stacy’s hiding place could be accessed, she had proof that Faye was now dangerous.
Finally, Ahua answered his phone, Fate set to work blurting out information while she could, because Kaayla’s expression was terrifying. Faye was in good shape, but she was exhausted and Kaayla was probably ten years younger than she was. Faye didn’t think she could outrun her.
Backing away from the three women, Faye started talking without waiting for Ahua to say hello. “Kaayla set off the bomb. Stacy’s underground.” As she spoke, she backed slowly away from Kaayla and the fierceness in her eyes.
Ahua was trying to talk, but she kept steamrolling right over him. “Kaayla sees me and she knows I know. We’re behind the South Tower.”
In one motion, Kaayla dipped her hand into her stylish leather handbag, pulled out a handgun, and let the bag fall to the ground. “She’s got a gun.”
Wrapping the other arm around Lucia’s neck, Kaayla pulled the woman close and pressed the gun’s muzzle to her head.
“Drop the phone or she dies.”
* * *
Ahua cursed at the sound of Faye’s phone hitting the sidewalk. He shouted “Come!” as he barreled out of the command center, followed by four agents who had no idea where he was taking them. Ahua didn’t have much of an idea himself, but he could certainly take himself behind the South Tower and see what was there.
* * *
Faye never took her eyes off Lucia’s weeping face, not while Kaayla was picking up her purse and telling her to back slowly into the alley, not while she was ordering her to open the door to the lean-to shed, and not while she was forcing all three of them—Faye, Grace, and Lucia—to go down the stairs by pressing the muzzle of a handgun to Lucia’s head.
Some of the jigsaw pieces were starting to fit, but not all of them. Kaayla had certainly had the opportunity to mastermind the bombing. As assistant manager of the Gershwin Hotel, she was in a position to know about the hidden staircase, but Faye couldn’t quite work out the reasons for the location and timing of the blast. She knew of no reason for Kaayla to bomb her own hotel on purpose.
But maybe she didn’t. Maybe she had explored as far as the painted room—but no farther, based on the tracks in the dust—and had sent Alonso Smith there to set off the bomb. Ahua had said that footprint evidence on the staircase was scant. He could say that nobody but Alonso had been past the foot of the staircase, but he couldn’t say much about the stairs. Or maybe she’d gone down that far, but had told Alonso to take the door to the left and go further before setting the bomb. And maybe he was supposed to walk away from it alive, but Faye doubted it. Kaayla was a dark-haired woman born in the eighties, so she fit the profile of Lonnie’s daughters, probably the oldest one, Lonna. Any surviving child born to Alonso Smith might be happy to bomb him out of existence.
The note in Lonnie’s pocket had addressed him as “Father,” and it was written by the person who provided him with the bomb. The letter-writer claimed to be helping him obliterate evil, but the bomb given to Lonnie was a modestly sized people-killer, not something that would bring down a building if detonated below the building’s foundations.
If it had blown up underground, it would have destroyed nothing but Lonnie. From Kaayla’s point of view, Lonnie embodied quite enough evil to be ripe for obliteration, all by himself. She had sent him underground with a cell phone to be used as a dummy detonator, keeping the real detonator phone for herself. When he was safely underground, she had activated it or, more likely, activated a timer right after she took Faye’s picture with Cully. And Faye had thought she looked nervous because she’d just met a movie star.
Kaayla must have felt confident that he would die alone with his evil, never to be found. But he had ruined her plan by aborting his mission and coming back upstairs into the hotel lobby where Kaayla stood waiting for him to die.
Faye couldn’t stop looking at Lucia’s stoic face. Kaayla had given her a flashlight and ordered her to hold it. Her fear only revealed itself by her trembling lips. They were walking through the first underground chamber and Faye’s steps were slowing as she worked through what Kaayla had done.
This was the key. Alonso didn’t know that the bomb would kill him. Kaayla had planned the whole thing as a way to kill Alonso Smith remotely. She wouldn’t see any blood gush or hear any groans. She would probably never see the body. In fact, it might never even be found.
Stacy was probably headed for a similar fate, dying underground so that Kaayla would never have to see what she’d done. Faye remembered the ham sandwich and milk carton and knew that Kaayla couldn’t even bring herself to starve Stacy while she figured out how to silence her. She also knew now that the napkin she’d seen with the food, blue like the Gershwin Hotel’s linens, was a clue that should have pointed her to Kaayla.
Kaayla’s refusal to look at murder as she committed it was her Achilles’ heel, but Faye had no idea how to exploit it.
Faye remembered the three little bodies in the painted chamber, all of them Alonso’s sons and all of them born after Kaayla. If Faye had lived Kaayla’s life, watching three little brothers waste and die without the help of a doctor, she might have grown up homicidal, too. And she might have a strong aversion to ever again watching anyone die.
Faye might even be willing to say that Kaayla had done the world a favor when she killed her father, but there was no redemption for beating Stacy, drugging her, and locking her up while she hardened her heart enough to murder her. And why did she need to silence Stacy, anyway?
So that she could never tell anyone that she’d seen Kaayla defacing the paintings in an attempt to hide any clues that might help the FBI track down the family of Alonso Smith.
They stood outside the door to Stacy’s prison. Kaayla was holding the gun in one hand and the padlock that Cully had destroyed in the other.
“It was a flimsy lock. No wonder you were able to break it. That’s why I was on my way down here with a better one,” she said, pulling a bigger padlock out of her pocket. Its shank was way too stout for Cully’s bolt cutters, even if he had been on the right side of the door to use them.
Kaayla pulled the damaged lock out of its hasp and dropped it to the floor, hooking the new one into its spot, ready to use after she had pushed Faye into the room with Stacy and closed the door. And, Faye supposed, Lucia and Grace, too. She couldn’t imagine Kaayla leaving witnesses able to incriminate her. Would all of their bodies—Faye’s, Lucia’s, Grace’s, Cully’s—ever be found? Only if the FBI was able to find a way into this portion of the Chinese catacombs.
Holding a gun on Faye, she said, “Open the door. Now, back in slowly or I’ll shoot you right here where nobody will ever find you. I’ll shoot all of you.”
Faye did as she was told. Stacy was in the chair where she’d left her, unconscious and wrapped in her chains. Cully had heard them coming and had hidden any evidence that he had been there. She saw him hiding behind the open door, holding his puny toy gun at the ready and unaware that Kaayla held a real one. She didn’t know what good keeping Cully’s presence a secret was going to do them once that door closed, but information had power. It made sense to limit who held that power.
“Give me the hacksaw. Or the bolt cutters or whatever you used to destroy that padlock.”
Faye reached into the shadow where Cully waited and picked up the bolt cutters, throwing them through the open door.
As she stood waiting for Kaayla to force Grace and Lucia through the door, she saw her drop the gun to her side, releasing Lucia. The two maids stood free at her side as Kaayla began shoving the heavy door shut. Her laugh echoed in the small room where Faye stood and in the large room on the other side of the closing door. Finally, Faye understood.
“Your sisters. They’re your sisters and they helped you kill your father.”
Kaayla didn’t answer her. She just laughed until the closed door damped the sound, changing it into something quiet and chilling.
Faye signaled to Cully that he shouldn’t speak, pantomiming that Kaayla had a gun. The old door was solid, but it didn’t block all sound. She waited until she heard the footsteps fade into nothingness before she said, “His daughters killed him. All three of them. Kaayla, Grace, and Lucia.”
She turned her eyes to the walls, covered with paintings of Lonnie and his family that Kaayla had never bothered to destroy because she thought they’d never be seen. Now Faye saw them for who they were.
Kaayla, the oldest, leaned against her mother’s knee or stood at her father’s side, watching the younger children. Lucia, with her prominent cheekbones, was easily distinguishable when Faye knew how to look, and she was discernible in many of the paintings as a small girl standing beside the slightly older Grace. The babies’ identities shifted, but Faye could usually tell by the context whether she was looking at Grace or Lucia or one of the frail boys. The doomed family’s history was splattered all over these walls. No wonder Kaayla had wanted to obliterate it.
“Are you finished looking at the pretty pictures?” Cully whispered. “Because we need to get out of here.”
Faye looked at the door’s iron hinges. They might be able to cut leather straps with Cully bolt cutters, but they would be no match for the stout ironwork.
“Not that door,” Cully whispered. “The other one.”
His eyes traveled to the little metal door in the wall that led into the storm sewer that would take them to the river and safety.
“You already cut the padlock,” she said. “I saw you.”
“Yep. ’Cause a smart man never lets himself get bottled up in a box canyon.”
* * *
Ahua stood behind the South Tower on a public sidewalk that offered no clue to where Faye was. He wished he was standing in a deep quiet forest, where her path would have been marked by scuffled leaves and mucky footprints. Instead, he had a concrete sidewalk, a heavily traveled city street, and a nearby alley paved in asphalt.
Thanks to Faye, he had the name of the person responsible for the bombing, presuming that she was right about that, and Faye Longchamp-Mantooth had not struck him as a person who would claim to know something unless she was absolutely sure. She had also given him a lead on Stacy’s location and, even better, she had given him real hope that Stacy was alive.
But had Faye given him enough information to ensure her own safety? It didn’t seem so, and that made him want to break something.
“You,” he said, pointing at the agent nearest him. “Find out where the call that just came to my number originated.”
That would be useful information but getting it would take too long. Faye had been taken by a known killer. He had to do something quickly, but what?
Faye had said that Stacy Wong was underground and now Faye, too, had vanished. Maybe she was underground now, too. If so, Ahua only knew one way to get there, down a staircase in the bombed-out lobby of the historic Gershwin Hotel.
“Come,” he said, taking off down the sidewalk, trusting that the three agents who weren’t working on tracing the location of the killer’s phone would follow in his wake. They did.
* * *
Joe couldn’t think of any more places in the Tower Annex where he wasn’t supposed to be. He had snooped into all of them. He couldn’t think of any more places to look for Faye, but he was undaunted because Faye was hardly ever where anybody would expect her to be.
Thinking that maybe she was hanging out on the loading dock or beside the dumpsters—because why not?—he slipped out a door labeled “Employees Only” to take a look out back. Faye was not there but four FBI agents were, and they looked totally stressed as they ran past him. One of them was Ahua and another was Bigbee.
Joe called out to him, “Have you seen my wife?”
Ahua said only, “No,” but Bigbee managed to convey the truth to Joe with eye contact, a cocked head, and raised eyebrows. Joe followed them at a generous distance, figuring that it was a free country and he could jog where he pleased. If Ahua noticed, he didn’t let it show.
* * *
I linger outside the door to Stacy’s cell, listening to Faye and Stacy whisper. They are certainly talking their way through a set of options that are uniformly poor. I’m not crazy about my options, either.
I have to kill them, of course, but the idea that Lonnie is reaching back from the grave to destroy two more lives makes me incandescent with rage. Stacy and Faye have done nothing wrong, but their continued existence will violate the only rule that Lonnie got right: Protect family at all costs.
I have to protect Grace and Lucia. They have nobody and nothing but me. Because of Lonnie’s paranoia about the government, they don’t actually exist on paper. They have no legal identification beyond the fake passports I had someone forge to make it possible for me to hire them. Those passports could never stand up to the scrutiny of immigration agents. We were all homeschooled, but their birth mother, Sandra, never finished elementary school and her first language wasn’t English. Despite my best efforts over the years since I moved them into my apartment and set about helping them build lives in the real world, they are still functionally illiterate.
My birth mother, on the other hand, was a high school math teacher and she taught me well. A GED and community college were options for me, but not for my sisters. If I were to go to jail—or to the electric chair, and I don’t much care whether it is one or the other—my sisters would immediately be jobless and soon homeless, and they would be vulnerable to deportation to…somewhere. There was once a time when immigration officials could have been made to understand my sisters’ situation, but that time is not now. Where does the U.S. send people these days when they quite literally have no country?
The gun is heavy in my shaking hand. I don’t want to shoot Faye and Stacy. I don’t want to see the looks on their faces when they realize what is about to happen to them. I don’t want to see the spraying blood. I don’t want to hear them scream or groan or gurgle, but I don’t have it in me to let them starve to death. I need to think of something quick and painless.
As I linger outside the padlocked door for a long time, my head is bowed and my eyes are closed as if I am praying over the matter, but I am years past being able to pray. My sisters keep saying “Kaayla?” in those soft, sweet, dependent voices that I love so well, despite the terrible burden that comes along with them.
Finally, the answer comes and it is poison. Surely there is something in the hotel’s maintenance closet that will solve the problem of Faye and Stacy. Rat poison? Maybe. If the two women get hungry enough, they will eat what I give them. Their bodies will stay where they are and my sisters will finally be safe. In a way, their corpses will mirror my three little brothers’ bodies, resting for decades. Even if they are found, they will be found too late for their killer to be found and punished.
My cherished sisters will only be safe when Stacy Wong and Faye Longchamp-Mantooth are silenced, so that is what I will have to do.