would carry her.
Alex was there, on the grass, orchestrating yet another epic confrontation between his small army of Ben 10 figurines. Michelle didn’t slow down. She just stormed over to him, tucking the gun under her waistband without breaking step, and scooped up his tiny, three- and- a-half-foot frame in her arms and kept going.
“Ben,” the boy protested as a toy flew out of his tiny grasp.
“We gotta go, baby,” she said, breathless, one arm clasped around his back, the other pressed down against the back of his head, holding him tight.
She sprinted across the lawn to the door that led to the garage, stopping to glance back only once she reached it, her heart jackhammering its way out of her rib cage. She saw one of them appear through the patio doors just as she flung the garage door open and ducked inside, fiddling with its key to lock it behind her.
“Mommy, what are you doing?”
His mouth was moving, but nothing was registering as her eyes surveyed in all directions, her mind totally channeled on one thought: escape. She told him, “We’re just going for a ride, okay? Just a little ride.”
She flung open the door of her Jeep, hustled Alex inside, and clambered into the driver’s seat. The Wrangler was parked with its back to the garage’s tilt-up door, which was shut.
“Down there, sweetie,” she told Alex, herding him into the passenger’s foot well with a careful mix of urgency and tenderness. “Stay there. We’re gonna play hide and seek, okay?”
He gave her a hesitant, uncertain look, then smiled.
“Okay.”
She dug deep and found him a smile as her fingers fired up the ignition. The V6 sprang to life with a throaty gurgle.
“Stay down, all right?” she told him as she threw the gear lever into reverse, floored the gas pedal, then turned to face back and yanked her foot off the clutch.
The Jeep bolted backward and burst through the garage door, careening onto the street in a storm of rubber and twisted sheet metal. She spotted a white van parked outside the house and slammed the brakes, and just as the Jeep screeched to a halt, she saw two men, also in white coveralls, rushing out from her front door. She slammed the car into gear and roared off, keeping a nervous eye in the mirror, expecting the white van to come charging after her, but to her surprise, it didn’t. It just stayed in its spot and receded into the distance before she hung a right and turned off her street.
She snaked her way past slower cars and turned left, right, and left again at the next crossings, zigzagging away from the house, keeping one eye peeled on her rearview mirror, her mind ablaze with questions about Tom and what had happened to him. She didn’t know what state he was in, didn’t know whether he was even still alive, but she had to get help to him, fast. She reached into her back pocket, pulled out her phone, and punched in nine- one-one.
The dispatcher picked up almost instantly. “What’s your emergency?”
“I’m calling to report a shooting. Some guys showed up at our house and—” She suddenly realized Alex was in the car with her, eyeing her curiously from the foot well of the passenger seat, and paused.
“Ma’am, where are you calling from?”
“We need help, okay? Send some squad cars. And an ambulance.” She gave the dispatcher her address, then added, “You need to be quick, I think my boyfriend’s been shot.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
Michelle thought about whether or not to answer as she glanced at Alex, who was still staring up at her, wide-eyed. She decided there was no point in adding any more information at this point.
“Just get them there as fast as you can, all right?”
Then she hung up.
Her heart was thundering away furiously in her chest as she checked her mirror again and flew past another slow-moving car. There was still no sign of the van. After about five minutes, she started to breathe easier and helped Alex up and into the front seat, where she belted him in. It took her another half an hour of just putting miles between her and her house before she felt she could pull over, and finally did so in the parking lot of a large mall out at Lemon Grove.
She didn’t move for a while. She just sat there, in shock, picturing Tom—and started to cry. The tears smeared her cheeks, then she looked over and saw Alex staring at her, and she forced herself to stop and wiped them off.
“Come on, baby. Let’s get you back into your seat.”
She got out of the car and helped Alex into the back and onto his booster seat, belted him in, then got back in and sat there again, shivering, collecting her thoughts, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Trying to figure out what to do next. Who to call. How to deal with the insanity of what had just happened.
She looked up into the mirror and glanced at Alex. He was just sitting there, looking tiny, staring at her with those big, vulnerable eyes of his, eyes that fear had now firmly in its grip, and as she stared at his face, one name broke through the daze and the confusion swirling around inside her head. And although it was someone she hadn’t spoken to for years, right now, it seemed like the right move.
She scrolled her phone’s contacts list, found his name, and, mumbling a silent prayer that his number hadn’t changed, hit the Dial button.
Reilly picked up on the third ring.
2
MAMARONECK, NEW YORK
I was dumping some dry cleaning and a beer-heavy grocery bag on the passenger seat of my car when my BlackBerry warbled.
It was a typical July morning in the small coastal town, hot and still and humid, but I didn’t mind it. Between the unrelenting heat wave that had turned Manhattan into a sweaty, oxygen-starved cauldron for the past couple of weeks and the heightened-alert July Fourth weekend I’d just spent there dealing with its associated onslaught of false alarms and hysteria, a quiet weekend by the ocean was definitely a heavenly proposition, regardless of the supernova looming overhead. As an added bonus, my Tess and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Kim, were out in Arizona, visiting Tess’s mom and her aunt at the latter’s ranch, and I had the house to myself. Don’t get me wrong. I love Tess to death and I love being around them, and since Tess and I got back together, I’ve realized how much I hate—truly
The name that flashed up on my screen made my heart trip.
Michelle Martinez.
Whoa.
I hadn’t heard from her for—how long had it been? Four, maybe five years. Not since I’d walked away from what we had going during that ill-fated stint of mine down in Mexico. I hadn’t thought about her for years either. The marvelous Tess Chaykin—I don’t use the term lightly—had burst into my life not too long after I’d got back to New York. She’d snared my attention in the chaotic aftermath of that infamous horse-mounted raid at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and had quickly engulfed my world, infecting me with that earnest, addictive lust for life of hers and crowding out any musings I could have had about any past loves or long-gone lovers.
I stared at the screen for a long second, my mind running a meta-trawl through possible reasons for the call. I couldn’t think of any, and just hit the green button.
“Meesh?”
“Where are you?”
