alert.
I glanced at the screen, fearing another delay, but then let out a breath when I saw that the message was from Em.
Who else? I could almost see her there on her early free period in the Brearley library illegally texting. Her books open in front of her, her phone under the table.
I thumbed the View button on the touchscreen.
“Willlllsonnnnnn!!” her text read.
Despite my full-blown hurry, I smiled. Then I laughed out loud. It was a reference to the stupidest and our hands-down-favorite part of the movie
It was also our way of saying hi. All day long, Emma and I texted each other silly inside jokes like that.
There was another jingle as another text came in.
“Worst 80s band?” Em wanted to know. “REO Speedwagon?”
Since I’d actually been there, I had to disagree: “Close,” I texted back as I walked. It was a glacial process for someone over the age of sixteen. “Culture Club. Their hit song was ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.’ The answer was yes. Google ‘Boy George’ if you don’t believe me.”
“Fine,” Em texted back in a finger snap. “Movie quote throwdown!
“What does a space ranger actually do?” I texted her back pretty quickly this time. Em would be proud.
Then I pocketed my phone as a sudden lump caught in my throat. After a moment, I started crying. As I walked, I started sobbing uncontrollably right there in front of Fifth Avenue’s tourist shops and luggage stores and overpriced pizzerias.
Because I suddenly realized, Em actually wouldn’t be proud of me.
What would Em think of me when everything came out? I wondered, snorting into the lapel of my faux Burberry coat. When she found out that I’d been lying to her ever since she could walk? That I was an impostor? That someone had died because of me?
Who was I kidding here? The idea that I could exonerate Harris in a week while keeping the house of cards that was my life from quickly becoming a game of 52 pickup was a tall order even for someone with my extensive creative skills. I’d dodged a bullet at Rockefeller Center, but it was just the beginning, I knew. The deeper I went into this, the more I would be at risk. What the hell was I doing? I had one mother of a skeleton in my closet, and here I was about to put the key in the lock and turn.
My phone text jingled again.
“There’s a snake in my boots,” Em had typed.
There’s a snake in your family, I thought, shaking my head at the phone.
Chapter 66
PETER MOVED SMOOTHLY with the morning rush hour crowd on Fifth Avenue, a half block behind Jeanine.
He couldn’t decide what surprised him more. The fact that Jeanine was actually alive or how incredible she still looked. She was what now? Forty? Yet, look at her—stylish, confident, model thin, regal. Audrey Hepburn in
Despite the fact that he’d only glanced at her, Peter
The unlikeliness of coincidences didn’t matter to him. He paid close attention to things and made it a point to remember everything and everyone. Especially faces. The way he operated, you forgot a face at the peril of your life.
He was fifty, yet his senses and instincts were as sharp as ever. Bravo, Jeanine, he thought, as he trailed her. Not too many people walking around on this earth could brag about putting one over on Peter Fournier.
He ran to catch up as she turned the next left around a corner. Dead-ending the shadowed side street two blocks to the east was a massive, dirty old building: Grand Central Terminal. He and his family had visited it on their first day up here.
He had his small police backup Glock in his ankle holster, but since the station was crawling with antiterror cops, there was no way he could use it. That left the illegal spring-loaded blackjack he kept snug in the small of his back, ever since his days on the Boston PD, or his belt buckle knife. The knife, then. He could have it out and in and back as quick as a coin trick. Open the femoral in her leg and keep going. He began to visualize it. Don’t even make eye contact. Flank her, stab, and saw.
He relished what he had to do now about as much as a carpenter relished using a hammer to hit a nail. There was no glee. There was just brutal necessity, covering his margins, business. He was no animal. He was just one of the rare breed of men who were born unafraid to wield violence as the efficient tool that it was.
A soft, aching warmth filled his chest as he remembered the outrageous romantic times he had shared with Jeanine. The way she looked coming out of the Gulf with the water sluicing off her tan, incredible body. The bullhorn outside the bathroom was a classic. The cut-your-throat creases she used to iron into his uniform shirts.
No question, of all his dead wives, she was by far his favorite.
Heading down the slightly sloping street toward Grand Central, Peter shook his head sadly at his runaway wife.
“Oh, Mermaid, we had ourselves some times, didn’t we?” he whispered, keeping his eyes centered on the back of her fancy ivory spring coat.
Chapter 67
I WAS ONLY MILDLY MELTING DOWN by the time I came off Vanderbilt into Grand Central. I’d managed to stop crying at least by the time I hit the west marble staircase above the main concourse.
It never failed to amaze. Cream-colored marble everywhere, the famous tsunami-sized windows, the constellation mural on the massive green ceiling.
Walking through its old-world elegance in my business clothes, I always felt instantly classy, a true New Yorker. I’d often pretend I was in an old movie, Eva Marie Saint in
Thirty seconds later, I was across the massive cathedral-like space in the long corridor that led toward Lexington Avenue. The mall was lined with businesses. I passed a jewelry store, a boutique, a shoeshine stand, a Starbucks.
I dodged all the way to the left as a fresh batch of people started spilling into the corridor and up the stairway that connected to the Lexington Avenue subway lines.
But not far enough, apparently. I winced in pain as some Wall Street jackass in a pinstriped suit rushing past stepped on my right foot.
My toes felt severed. I stopped against the wall in the crowded passageway and slipped off my open-toe
