the office, birdlike in her movements, ursine in her protective nature. If you weren’t expected, you did not run the gauntlet that was Nicole Lanier. She looked at Michael, at the casual way he was dressed. “Okay. Why was the door locked?”
“Where am I supposed to smoke my crack, in the hall?”
“Why not?” Nicole said. “The rest of us do.” She looked at the clock. “Um, aren’t you supposed to be in court?”
“I’m on it.” He pulled off his QDA windbreaker, took his suit out of the dry cleaner’s plastic bag. “Running late.”
“Want me to call over there?”
“No, I’m good.”
“You don’t look good.”
“Sweet talker.” He handed Nicole his briefcase. “Just get this in some kind of order for me. Outline on top. I’m going to change and be out of here in two minutes.”
Nicole took the briefcase, but didn’t move. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Nicole.”
“Okay, okay, boss.” She took the briefcase from him, but still didn’t leave.
“You know, if you don’t leave right now you’re going to see me naked.”
“Beats looking through the keyhole.”
Michael shooed her away. Nicole winked, spun on her sensible heels, closed the door.
Michael took a deep breath, looked around his office. Everything was where it was supposed to be: his desk, his bookcases, his apartment-sized fridge, the framed articles on the wall, even the 8? 10 photograph of him and Tommy at ground zero, a picture taken on September 13, 2001. Everything was the same, but suddenly looked completely different, as if he were a stranger in this place he knew so well, as if the comfortable, well-worn things that made up his life had now been replaced by duplicates.
Focus, Michael.
Yes, Viktor Harkov’s murder changed everything. And yes it was entirely possible that the state of New York might discover the illegalities surrounding the adoption, and start proceedings to take his daughters away. But that did not change the fact that the state of New York – and more importantly, a girl named Falynn Harris – was depending on him today.
He stripped off his T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, slipped on his suit pants, dress shirt. He tied his new tie – the one Abby had given him in a ritual that suddenly felt as if it had taken place weeks earlier – then put on his suit coat. He gave his hair a quick brush, checked himself in the mirror. It was as good as it was going to get. He opened the door, grabbed his briefcase, bumped a quick fist with Nicole for luck, and headed down the hall. He was already five minutes late.
TWENTY-THREE
Sitting at the dining-room table, Abby felt as if she were going to throw up. The words Aleks had spoken still seemed to be ringing in her ears.
They are my daughters.
When Zoe Meisner had come over, Abby met her at the edge of the property. Abby explained away the man named Kolya as a man who was there to give them a price on some landscaping. Zoe had given Abby a sly smile – Eden Falls was nothing if not discreet about its various trysts and daytime assignations – and it was probably due to her salacious suspicions that Zoe had scurried away rather quickly, only to observe Abby and Kolya from the alleged cover of the small greenhouse at the rear of the Meisner property.
They are my daughters.
As much as Abby wanted to believe it was all a bad dream, as much as she wanted to believe this man was lying to her, that it was some sort of ploy to extort money out of them, one look at Aleks’s face told her it was none of the above. There was no mistaking the resemblance. He looked like the girls.
But why, after all this time, had he shown up now? What did he want?
Abby watched the girls playing tag, each taking turns being ‘it’. They never seemed to let each other take the role of seeker or sought too long. Abby wondered what it would be like to be that selfless. She loved Michael with all her heart, but she had to admit to a certain dark glee at besting him at backgammon or chess or even gin rummy. Not so for the twins.
Abby looked at the corner of the lot. She noticed a small shiny object. When she focused she realized it was a bow, a shiny pink bow. A breeze soon gathered it up and tumbled it across the yard.
It’s from the party, Abby thought. The party that now seemed to be a hundred years ago, a time when her family was intact, and there were no monsters in a place called Eden Falls, New York.
While Kolya watched her from the backyard, Abby turned her head to the sounds of the house. She heard footsteps above her – barely, Aleks seemed to be extremely light on his feet. She heard a closet door open and close. She tried to think of what he might find. There wasn’t much. Most of their important papers – the deed to the house, insurance, passports – were in the file cabinet in the office on the first floor. There was a jewelry box on the nightstand, but nothing in it of value. She and Michael used to joke that if the jewelry box cost more than the jewelry, you don’t need a jewelry box.
Then there was the gun. The gun was usually kept in a foam-lined aluminum case on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, beneath a box of old greeting cards. Had she locked it? Of course she had. She always locked it.
Then it hit her. The alarm system. The panic button. It was across the living room, three steps to the right, next to the front door. If she could just get there without Aleks or Kolya noticing, she could have the police on the way in minutes.
Was this the right thing to do? Would these men hurt her or the girls if the police just showed up at the door? What would Michael do? What would Michael want her to do?
She tried to put all these questions out of her mind as she slowly rose to her feet and, before she could think of a reason to stop herself, ran to the foyer.
TWENTY-FOUR
The window, powell thought. Why was the bathroom window open?
Standing in the middle of Joseph Harkov’s shabby apartment, Powell tried to put Viktor Harkov’s last few hours together. It was something at which she was very good. She didn’t always understand the finer points of forensic detail, but she was quite skilled at divining the motives and movements of people.
In her years on the force, she had faced a number of obstacles, each one of them cleared with her fierce determination to succeed and advance, her unyielding belief in the power of logic.
She had grown up in Kingston, Jamaica, a shy, serious girl, one of five daughters born to Edward and Destiny Whitehall. They were poor, but they never went hungry, and until her death from cancer at the age of thirty-one, Destiny, who took in washing and sewing for the smaller hotels along the bay, saw to it her children’s clothes were always clean and pressed.
Desiree had married Lucien Powell when she was just fifteen, a gangly dawta sketched of skinny arms and legs, topped with a seemingly constant blush, an embarrassment given rise with each of Lucien’s sweet proposals, beginning when she was only fourteen. Day after day Lucien would follow, always at a respectable distance, preaching Desiree’s not-quite blossomed loveliness to the hills, to all who would listen. Once he presented her with a basket of lilies. She kept the flowers alive as long as she could, then ultimately pressed them into a dog-eared copy of The White Witch of Rose Hall by H. G. de Lisser, her favorite book.
Then, after more than six months of this gavotte, Lucien walked her home. Standing on her mother’s porch, with a simple kiss on the cheek from Lucien Powell, Desiree’s heart was forever detained. Seven months later, with
