“Consider the alternative,” I said. “My erstwhile uncle-in-law won’t be satisfied until someone stops breathing. Sean was framed. We framed him. Maybe he figured it out and made Vincent a believer.”
Sarah lifted the lid off her eggs Florentine and set it back down without so much as glancing at her plate. Then she took a little tour of the balcony, running her hand absentmindedly along the railing. She looked as though she’d lost her wits.
“It never ends,” she said. “You turn what you think is the final bend, but the road just goes on and on and on.”
“Oh, it’ll end,” I told her. “Everything does. The question is how it will end, and whether or not there’ll be anything left for us afterward.”
She sat back down, her eyes glassy, her mouth hanging open.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “What in the world are we going to do?”
Before I could answer, bells started going off somewhere in the room behind us—long, short, long, short. It was the ringtone on my burner phone. Only one person knew the number.
“That’s Serena calling,” I said, not sure yet whether I had the will to answer.
Sarah sprang up.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “I haven’t talked to Serena in ages.”
“The phone’s on my nightstand.”
I followed her inside, watched her lunge across my bed, grab at the phone, knock it to the floor, and then go scampering after it on hands and knees.
“Serena?” she said. “Serena, are you still there?”
“Put it on speaker,” I said.
She fumbled for the button. The voice that filled the room wasn’t Serena’s.
“She’s sitting right here,” a man said. “Would you like to speak with her?”
Defoe. I recognized his nasal, wispy voice, remembered telling Vincent that his right-hand man sounded more like a librarian than a killer. “Sheep’s clothing,” Vincent said. It sounded like a warning. I thought now that maybe it was.
“Sarah,” Serena said, “whatever you do, don’t—”
Defoe snatched the phone back.
“Is it Sarah I’m speaking with?” Defoe said. “I thought this was Anna’s line.”
I started to answer, but Sarah beat me to it.
“It’s Sarah,” she said. “And if you hurt her, I swear to God I’ll—”
“Feisty,” Defoe cut her off. “Just like your beloved aunt. She’s here, too. Want to say hello?”
Sarah clutched at her chest. I hoped to hell she’d remembered her insulin.
“Don’t you listen to a word this cadaver says,” Lindsey yelled. “He’s using us as bait, and I won’t—”
“As you can tell, the gang is all here,” Defoe said. “I thought I’d invite you to the party.”
Sarah looked up at me from where she sat slumped between the beds. It was clear she’d reached her limit.
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “You need us to bring anything?”
“Do my ears deceive me, or is that the Widow Costello?”
“Hello, Defoe. How’s life as Vincent’s trained monkey?”
“Always so brave,” he said. “At least from a distance. Last time I saw you, you were fleeing the scene of an accident. You’re lucky I didn’t call the police.”
“Thanks for that. Now about this little shindig…”
“Here’s the deal: it’s a kind of surprise party. At least, we want the location to be a surprise.”
He told us to pull up outside Lindsey’s house at 8:00 p.m. on the dot. There would be a black sedan parked at the curb. We were to follow it to what he called the “party house.”
“Needless to say, any sign of an uninvited guest—or guests—and the evening will end very badly for your friends.”
With that, he hung up. The room went as quiet as a crypt.
Part III
Chapter 40Sarah Roberts-Walsh
“SLOW DOWN,” Anna said. “We won’t make the flight if you get pulled over.”
I took my foot off the gas until the speedometer hit seventy—a compromise she’d have to live with.
“We need to call the police, Anna. This is way, way, way above our pay grade. We’re dealing with professionals here.”
“Anthony was a professional,” she said.
“A professional accountant.”
“That’s what it said on his tax returns, but there was more to Anthony than numbers. We took him down, didn’t we?”
Her sense of calm was only inflaming my panic. I wondered what kind of chill pill she’d taken. Probably a benzo or four. I thought maybe I should ask her to share.
“We had surprise on our side then,” I argued. “Vincent’s men know we’re coming. They have Serena and Lindsey hostage. The police—”
“Will get them killed.”
“And we won’t?”
“No. Because we’ll have surprise on our side again.”
“What are you talking about?”
I wanted to scream, It’s not your aunt with a gun to her head!
“I know where they are,” she said, her voice neutral and detached, as if she was practicing to be a hypnotist.
“You’re clairvoyant now, is that it?”
“No, ma’am. I just have a good memory for sounds. You didn’t hear that chiming in the background? Defoe had to raise his voice to talk over it.”
I tried replaying the call in my mind, but I’d been too frantic to pick up on anything past Defoe’s instructions.
“Anthony hated that clock,” Anna said.
“What clock?”
“The grandfather clock in his uncle’s country getaway. It was so damn loud you could hear it two floors up, in the attic bedroom where we always slept. Kept Anthony awake all night long. There was something haunting about it, he said. I think he believed the place was literally haunted.”
“You’re saying that’s where they have Aunt Lindsey and Serena? In Vincent’s cabin?”
“I wouldn’t call a four-thousand-square-foot home a cabin, but yeah—that’s where they’re holed up.”
I thought it over while I darted in and out of traffic, one hand hovering above the horn. Maybe she was right, but I couldn’t see how it changed anything.
“All the more reason to call the cops,” I said. “They can swoop in there now. Vincent’s men won’t know what hit them. Hell, they’re probably napping, saving their energy for the big night.”
Anna sniggered.
“Hard to believe you were married to a cop for all those years,” she said.
“One bad apple doesn’t mean—”
“Oh, please. The
