“Never. How about reporting? Is that your
He thought about it for a second. “No. Writing might be, but the reporting is just a part of it. I’d like to do more. I’ve been working on that novel for a few years now, but I’m never quite willing to call it done. It’s probably some deep-seated fear of failure, undoubtedly traceable to my parents. Someday, when I’m over it, I’d like to be able to say I’m an
Ellie knew he was trying to ease her fears, but she wound up laughing. Some whiskey trickled down her chin. “Sorry,” she said, wiping the dribble with a napkin. “Very attractive, I’m sure.”
“Delightful, actually, but I should be the one to apologize. A little over the top?”
“No, I’m sorry. It was incredibly sweet.”
“And sweet makes you spit whiskey?”
“No, it was just really funny to me.”
“Oh good. Funny’s what I was going for.”
“It’s just that, here we are, saying that maybe we’ll wind up being friends, and we’ve already slept together. I’m sure it’s perfectly normal, but if you had any idea what a nun I’ve been. My stupid idea about having one anonymous night of passion – I just realized how funny it is.”
Ellie found herself laughing uncontrollably. The stress of the case, her nervousness about seeing Peter again, and the surreal quality of this second first date all culminated at once. To her inestimable relief, Peter joined her.
Two hours later, lying next to each other in Ellie’s bed, they were both still smiling when Ellie’s cell phone rang.
“Ignore it.” Peter pushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from her forehead and kissed the newly revealed spot on her face. For a second, Ellie was tempted. She could let it ring. She could pretend she was Ally the paralegal, who wasn’t in the middle of a murder investigation. But the thought lasted only a second. She flipped her phone open on the third ring.
“Hatcher.”
“Detective Hatcher, this is Officer Griffin Connelly, Tenth Precinct. I’m sorry to bother you after hours.”
“Not a problem.” Ellie sat up and pulled a sheet over her naked body. Peter smiled and pulled it off of her with one finger.
“They can’t see you over the phone,” he whispered.
Ellie was so distracted by the thing Peter was doing to her stomach that she almost missed what the officer said next.
“I’m at St. Vincent’s Hospital with a Jess Hatcher. He says he’s your brother?”
OFFICER CONNELLY WAS a thin man with fair skin and light brown hair. He waited for Ellie outside of a treatment room in St. Vincent’s emergency care center. Peter had initially insisted on coming with her, and to her surprise, she actually wanted him to. But she ultimately persuaded him to go back to his apartment. If whatever happened to Jess had anything to do with the case, she didn’t want to find it on the front page of the
“Thanks for waiting for me, Officer. I just wanted to make sure someone was with him until I got here.”
“I had a hard time explaining it to my sergeant. Is there something more to this than meets the eye?”
“Nothing but a protective little sister. Please thank your sergeant for me.”
According to the statement Jess had given to Officer Connelly, two men had jumped him outside of Vibrations before his shift. He didn’t recognize either of the men and was too busy getting his ass kicked to give a helpful description – two white men, average height and weight and, in Jess’s words, “apparently royally pissed off at me for reasons unknown.” She felt a knot in her stomach as Connelly related the story.
“Lucky for your brother you’re on the job. Bouncer at a strip club, random assault in the parking lot? We were searching him for drugs when he told us to call you.”
“You can finish up if you think it’s appropriate, Officer.”
“Not necessary. Just get your brother whatever help he needs.”
Ellie found Jess reclining on a narrow hospital bed. He tried to sit up when she walked in, but winced from the movement. The smile he forced onto his face seemed to pain him as well.
“Note to self: Cracked ribs hurt.” He eased himself back down into the bed.
“What happened, Jess?”
“It looks like I finally found a beating I couldn’t talk my way out of.”
Ellie always saw Jess as younger than his true years – always happy, never worried, almost invincible. But she hated the way he looked right now – tired, too old to be in this position, and extremely vulnerable.
“They just attacked you in the parking lot for no reason?”
“I went outside to call you, and there they were. Could this have something to do with the picture I showed the Vibrations manager? Seth thinks it was the same guy he saw with Tatiana, by the way.”
Ellie wondered how she’d managed to endanger Jess by verifying the relationship she suspected between Charlie Dixon and Tatiana Chekova. Had she read Dixon entirely wrong? Then Jess asked her if the man in the picture was Russian.
“Why? The men who did this to you were Russian?”
“Russian, Czech, Romanian, Ukrainian. Slavic, whatever. One of those. When I left the apartment, I noticed a couple of guys standing across the street. I didn’t think much of it, but I’m pretty sure they were the same ones who did this to me.”
“Why didn’t you say something to the officer?”
“Because my beat down came with a warning, Ellie. And if it was only for me, I would have told them to fuck themselves. But it was about you. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but they said to back off. Next time we’re both dead. And they know where you live. Ellie, please, you’ve got to get off this case.”
33
ELLIE’S CALLS WERE ALL PUT THROUGH TO FLANN’S VOICE MAIL. When he didn’t return three back-to-back messages, she tried to tell herself that the policing could wait until tomorrow. She tried to sit and comfort her brother like any other family member of an assault victim. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the Slavic accents of the men who had beaten Jess.
She wanted mug shots. She wanted a positive ID from Jess. She wanted to track them down and, in an ideal world, find them resisting arrest. She wanted an excuse to act on her rage.
But while she worried about protecting her brother, he was still trying to shield her from the threat that had been delivered through him. He refused to let her pass the information on to Officer Connelly, promising that if she did, he would stick to his bogus cover story. So she kept coming back to the same dilemma: Either she needed to leave Jess’s side to print some pictures of suspects for him to ID, or she needed to find Flann.
She tried Flann’s cell phone one last time, then dialed directory assistance and requested a listing for Miranda Hart. She’d apologize to Flann later for bothering the mother of his child but, at that moment, all she could think about was her own need to get some help. The operator connected her directly.
“Hello?” The woman sounded distracted. Ellie heard water running in the background and the faint sounds of a television.
“Ms. Hart?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Ellie Hatcher. I’m Flann McIlroy’s partner at the NYPD. I really need to find him, and he’s not answering his phone.”
The running water stopped. “I’m not sure why you have this number. He doesn’t live here. He never has.”
“I thought maybe he was there with your daughter. Or maybe you could tell me where he took her for dinner?”
