Hush

hadn’t. But a man she’d just made love to had been murdered while she was still in his home.

Hotchkiss had said there was nothing wrong with having sex but surely he hadn’t meant casual sex with a near stranger-and a client to boot. And would the cops even believe her story? She thought of the explanation she would give them. That after she and Keaton had made love, she’d gone out to the terrace alone-and fallen asleep. While she was out there, snoozing in the night air, someone had entered the apartment and butchered her bedmate without her ever hearing a thing. Even though it was true it sounded ridiculous. They’d suspect she had done it.

Rubbing her forehead, she tried desperately to think. What she needed to do, she decided, was to just get home. She would be safe there and could decide how to handle things once she had a clear head. After checking once more behind her, she hurried down the street and swung right onto Spring Street. There would be cabs on Broadway. But then she stopped in her tracks. Once Keaton’s body was discovered, the police would surely interview everyone they could find who’d been in this area. And like she’d seen on TV crime shows, wouldn’t they also go to cab companies to see what fares had been picked up around this time of night in SoHo? A cabbie might easily recall her: a woman all alone, dressed in a trench coat. The police would find out who from the clinic had been at the dinner and put two and two together.

So she had to take the subway instead-and buy a MetroCard with cash.

There was a station for the C line at Sixth Avenue and Spring, she remembered, and that would take her to Eighty-sixth and Central Park West. But subway stations had cameras. What if the cops watched the tapes to see who’d entered any station within a certain radius? She ducked into the dark doorway of a building to calm herself. She felt short of breath, like she was being smothered. Calm down, she told herself. The best thing to do, she realized, was to walk-for blocks and blocks. And finally, when she was far enough away, she would find a taxi.

With her head lowered, she made her way to Broadway and then turned north. She walked fast, so fast a stitch came and went in her side. But she didn’t dare run-or else someone might take notice. She felt like one of those lost dogs she sometimes saw at night in the city, trotting along without ever stopping. Every half block, she checked behind her, terrified someone might be following.

For a while she saw practically no one. Sometimes a car or a delivery van would drive by and she’d duck in a doorway. At Houston Street she turned west and made her way to Seventh Avenue. Once there, she crossed the street and headed north. People began to emerge from apartment buildings, bound for work. She kept her eyes trained on the ground, not daring to make eye contact. In the east, she noticed, the sky began to grow light.

Just before six-thirty, she reached Twenty-third. Spots on her feet were raw from walking so far in her sandals, and though she was wearing only her trench coat, her back felt damp with sweat. A cab came barreling down Seventh and she hailed it, telling the driver to turn around and head to the Upper West Side. As she leaned back into the seat, tears of relief pricked her eyes.

She started to give her address and then stopped herself. The driver would have a record of it. Plus, she couldn’t let her doorman see her coming in at this hour. I have to go somewhere, she thought, but where? The driver glanced back at her through the Plexiglas.

“You gonna give me an address?” he said.

“Yes, yes,” she said. She blurted out the cross streets of a diner twenty blocks south of her apartment, where she sometimes took the kids before school. She would wait there and go home closer to eight, when the doorman would be busy hailing cabs for people.

The diner was half full. Some people sat in groups or pairs, but most were alone, reading the Post or Daily News or a paperback book. She made her way toward the back, to a table in the corner. Without thinking, she started to unbutton the top of her trench and then realized she had nothing but her panties on underneath. The thought almost made her laugh manically. She rested her head against the tips of her fingers, trying to regroup. On the table was a smudge of hardened ketchup, and the sight recalled the huge, horrible stain next to Keaton. Tears welled in her eyes again. He had touched her, made love to her. And now he was dead.

She ordered coffee, and though the taste nearly made her ill, she forced herself to drink it. She needed the caffeine, she needed to break through the dense fog of terror and think. For the first time she asked herself why-why was Keaton dead? Was it a burglary gone awry? There had been no sign of forced entry; the apartment hadn’t looked “tossed.” The murderer must be someone who knew him, Lake deduced. Keaton looked as if he’d been attacked as he slept. That meant someone had gone there with the sole purpose of slashing Keaton’s throat. And if she had been in the bed with him, she would be dead now, too. She let out a gasp at the thought. Her kids-it would have ruined their lives.

For a few moments Lake fought with the idea of calling the police after all. Her failure to get in touch before now wouldn’t be hard to explain-she’d fled in panic, worried that the killer had still been in the apartment. And the forensic evidence would confirm that she didn’t kill Keaton.

But would it? What if the weapon was still in the apartment-a butcher knife, for instance-and it had been wiped clean? They’d think she’d wiped it clean. It wasn’t hard to imagine the scenario the cops would form in their minds. A recently dumped, possibly drunk, possibly unstable divorcee sleeps with a hot doctor. She asks when she’ll see him again, he makes it clear he isn’t interested. In a drunken rage, she takes a butcher knife to him while he sleeps. Even if she weren’t arrested immediately, she would be a “person of interest,” like in those cop shows.

Jack would have a field day with that. He’d convince a judge to give him custody until her situation was resolved. And that’s what Hotchkiss had warned her about. He’d said that it was almost impossible to regain custody once it had been lost temporarily. So even if her name was cleared, she could end up without the kids.

That meant she couldn’t tell the police. She flashed back to Keaton’s loft, making certain in her mind that she’d grabbed everything of hers. There was still evidence of her there, of course. Her bodily fluids in the bed perhaps, her fingerprints on the cognac glass. But from what little she knew, she was pretty sure that the police couldn’t ask for her DNA or fingerprints unless they had legitimate reason to suspect her. And what reason could there be? She’d never spoken to Keaton at dinner and she’d left alone.

She wondered whether she should call someone-Molly, for instance-and ask for guidance. But wouldn’t that put the person in some kind of legal jeopardy?

What she did have to do, she knew, was to go to the clinic today-as horrible as that would be. She would have to act normal and be cooperative when the police arrived-as they surely would.

She stayed in the diner for another half hour. At seven-thirty she left and just walked, back and forth along the side streets, slowly making her way home to West End Avenue and Eighty-fourth-keeping her eyes down the entire time in case someone she knew was nearby.

Half a block away from her building, she stopped and positioned herself by a parked truck, watching the front. A light drizzle had begun, which was lucky for her. She could see that Ray, the morning doorman, was busy trying to flag down a cab for someone. Having no luck, he moved farther up the street to the corner. The person waiting stood under the building’s awning keeping an impatient eye on the corner. Fortunately Lake didn’t recognize him and she saw her chance. She bolted to the main door and slipped inside.

Rather than chance the elevator, she took the stairs, two steps at time. When she finally slammed her apartment door behind her, she let out the strangled sob that had been lodged in her throat for hours.

In the kitchen she poured a glass of water and gulped it down, and then, as she sat at the table, she let the tears come. A man who had made love to her had been murdered. And though she’d escaped death, she wasn’t safe. Everything in her life was in jeopardy now.

She showered, scrubbing her body red with a loofah, and then dressed in a white shirt and dark-blue pencil skirt for work. Staring at her reflection, she wondered ruefully if things would have gone differently last night if she’d worn something other than the sundress. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so sexy for the first time in ages, so ready to be seduced. As she remembered the sundress still in her purse, her stomach tightened. She would take it-and the trench coat, too-to the dry cleaner’s on the way to work, just in case.

Lake arrived at the clinic shortly before ten. A few women sat in the waiting room, leafing listlessly through magazines. As she headed down the corridors past the nurses’ station, it was clear from the easy manner of the staff that no one had heard anything yet. For the first time she recalled what Keaton had said to her in the Balthazar lounge-that he might not be joining the clinic after all. What had that been about?